Returning migrants remaking Mexico through politics

MEXICO

Returning migrants remaking Mexico through politics
Migrants are coming home from U.S. with dollars, ideas and little patience for the old way of doing things.
By Jeremy Schwartz

MEXICO CITY BUREAU


Sunday, June 22, 2008

LUVIANOS, Mexico — Seir Benítez left this remote town high in the Sierra Madre mountains 12 years ago in hopes of escaping a harsh life in its dusty fields.

He traded dramatic mountain views and grinding poverty for an apartment in Austin and a job in a tool factory. He spent eight years in the United States, venturing as far as Florida and Nebraska, before returning home with enough money to build a house.

Benítez, 28, also came back filled with new ideas of how Luvianos, in the state of Mexico, should be governed. He is considering a run for mayor, joining a wave of politically active migrants who many in Mexico believe have the potential to reshape the countryside.

"I want to create jobs so that other young people don't have to migrate," said Benítez, who works for Luvianos' city government and peppers his conversation with references to Austin's flea markets and Riverside Drive restaurants.

In isolated pockets throughout Mexico, especially in far-flung rural areas, groups of migrants are entering the political arena. For many returning migrants, the lessons they learned in places such as Austin are guiding their forays into politics. Before they left Mexico for the United States, many of them were the poorest, and often the least educated, residents of their towns and villages. They are returning with dollars, ideas and little patience for the old way of doing things.

An hour south of Acapulco, and a world away from its luxury hotels and exclusive beaches, several migrants have their sights set on the mayor's office of San Marcos, in Guerrero state. They are political novices: former construction workers, roofers and line cooks who talk of recycling programs and free school breakfasts, things they observed while living in the United States.

Fed up with generations of corruption and authoritarianism, they are looking to take political control of their sweltering, hardscrabble hometown of 45,000, which will hold its primary election June 29.

"The migrants leave, they come back years later, and they see nothing has changed," said Carlos Villanueva, 37, a former illegal immigrant who worked in Atlanta and is running for mayor of San Marcos. "You tell yourself something has to change. We don't want any more eternal peons."

Mexico is bracing for a significant return of migrants in coming years, a potential reverse exodus fueled by the slowing U.S. economy, record numbers of deportations and Mexicans reaching their savings goals. The return of so many migrants has the potential to bring a new political force to Mexico.

"Migrants are not easy to co-opt politically," said Miguel Moctezuma Longoria, who studies migrant political behavior at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas. "They become an independent force with the capacity to question the way things are done, and as such they represent a radical change on the political scene."

Jesús Cortés, one of Villanueva's advisers, is emblematic of the migrant philosophy taking hold in San Marcos and throughout Mexico. He grew up watching the "caciques" — the area strongmen — trade power among themselves, arrange elections and divvy up the town's few resources. As a young man, he picked crops and deeply felt Mexico's crushing class divide.

He migrated to Atlanta at 19 and over the next 23 years earned enough to build his dream house in San Marcos.

"The old ideas of rich and poor don't apply any more," Cortés said. "We are going to have a total change. We want democracy here."

For decades, migrants in the United States have sought to influence Mexican politics, both through the right to vote in presidential elections and through powerful hometown associations that are regularly courted by candidates. But only recently have returning migrants sought to run for office in hopes of bringing about American-style change.

In the past five years, migrants have entered politics with vigor: There are four federal legislators, at least five state representatives and dozens of mayors and city council members.

Migrants are most politically powerful in the central states of Zacatecas and Michoacán, which have the highest rates of migration to the United States.

In Zacatecas in 2003, migrants living in the United States won the right to run for office (though many Mexican states have strict residency requirements for candidates). Zacatecas reserves two spots in its 30-seat state legislature for migrant lawmakers who maintain residences in the United States. A California resident ran for governor of Michoacán last year.

The best known migrant politician to return home and run for public office, Andrés Bermúdez, captured imaginations on both sides of the border when he ran for mayor of Jerez, in Zacatecas, in 2004. Bermúdez, nicknamed the Tomato King for the fortune he made in California's tomato fields, told voters that he wanted to make Jerez into a "little United States." He won and has since won a seat in the federal Congress.

But Bermúdez, like many other migrant politicians, did not have any easy time once he assumed office as mayor in 2004.

He and two migrants elected in other cities that same year encountered a wall of opposition that included protests and demands for their resignations.

In all three cases, the migrants were accused of being tyrannical, condescending and corrupt. In all three cases, the migrants said the opposition stemmed from furious caciques who saw a pipeline to money and influence threatened by the migrants' campaigns.

"They were stepping on toes of the established political culture," said Michael Peter Smith, a University of California at Davis professor who recently co-authored a book on migrant political activity. "They see themselves as democratizers who are opening up new spaces in Mexican political life."

Martín Carbajal, a former Fort Worth furniture factory owner elected in Apulco, Zacatecas, in 2004, said powerful interests tried to buy him off shortly after he was elected.

"We threatened their interests and opened up the eyes of the poor that they didn't have to be controlled by the caciques," he said.

Carbajal said he ran into trouble when he took aim at the federal relief programs he said were being plundered by powerful interests. When he tried to divert such programs from "people who didn't need it to the truly poor," he said, he confronted a backlash from established interests, which led to a recall campaign.

In San Marcos, Villanueva is preparing to face an onslaught of opposition if he is elected.

"They want to hold onto power, whatever it takes," he said of the political establishment. "They know if I'm elected they won't get their sweet deals."

Campaign workers say opponents have tried to buy them off and intimidate poorer voters. Villanueva said he plans to build an alliance of "vulnerable sectors" — the poor, students and women who he hopes will withstand the inevitable opposition if he is elected.

Most migrant politicians say they were inspired by America's political and justice systems, but experts say migrant political movements usually require another factor: organizing themselves in the United States.

Moctezuma said hometown clubs formed by migrants in U.S. cities usually send money back home, often for large public works projects like building roads or health clinics. From 2002 to 2007, migrants sent back about $90 million as part of a Mexican program in which migrants contribute to public works projects.

"When they do this, they aren't just expressing their love for Mexico, they are getting involved in the transformation of those communities," Moctezuma said. "It lets them see that they can bring about change."

It's a change that many migrants believe may be the best hope for Mexico's countryside.

jschwartz@coxnews.com
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/06/22/0622mexmigrants.html