Andrés Bermúdez Viramontes/Arizona Republic

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0125migrantvote25.html (dead link)

The Arizona Republic Jan. 25, 2003 12:00 AM

Migrants seek voice in Mexico politics

Tessie Borden Republic Mexico City Bureau

MEXICO CITY - As their numbers and influence grow, Mexican migrants in the United States are building the political muscle to demand a say in politics back home.

Unlike Americans abroad, millions of Mexicans who live in the United States are not allowed to vote absentee in Mexico elections or be elected to office even though they voluntarily sent more than $10 billion home last year. Remittances are second only to oil in Mexico's sources of income.

Part of the money goes to hometown governments to pay for municipal projects through migrant clubs. So Mexican migrants, both legal and illegal, unfurl a familiar American slogan: "No taxation without representation." They want a voice to go with their open purses.

"We have never been permitted to vote, so I never got an elector's credential or anything," said Antonio Viramontes of Phoenix, who arrived in the United States 20 years ago from the Mexican state of Zacatecas. "If I could, I probably would."

Viramontes became a U.S. citizen more than a year ago and voted in his first U.S. election. But he says he still feels close to his home state, follows its politics and has family there.

"I would like to participate in an election," he said.

More than 1 million Arizona residents, or one in five, were born in Mexico or trace their roots to Mexico, according to the 2000 census. There are 9.1 million Mexican-born residents in the United States, about half of whom reportedly are illegal, the census estimated.

Natives of Mexico who become U.S. citizens are not asked to surrender their Mexican passports. Since 1998, Mexico has permitted them to maintain their Mexican citizenship.

No voting by mail

Mexico's constitution makes no political distinction between Mexicans abroad and those at home. It simply states that every vote must be cast within the country's borders. U.S. citizens abroad can vote by mail.

But Mexican politicians acknowledge, at least in principle, migrants' right to vote and be voted into office, even when they live outside the country. Migrant leaders such as Chicago's Raul Ross Pineda say they remember the old days, when Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party dominated politics. Migrants were reviled as traitors, and having the vote was only a dream.

"This is not a new idea," Ross Pineda said. "This is a very mature and not at all improvised process."

But politicians fear the migrant vote because it is hard to predict, analysts say. And there are logistical questions ranging from who may register to how one would vote.

Those questions were discussed this week at a forum on migration held in Puebla. There, Jorge Durand, a researcher at the University of Guadalajara, warned that Mexicans' numbers in the United States could stand in the way of their getting the vote. In 1988, he said, 75 percent of Mexicans in the United States were concentrated in 33 counties. In 2000, that same percentage lived in 114 counties in 26 states. An election to take all of those eligible to vote into account would be difficult and expensive.

In 2000, when Vicente Fox became Mexico's first president from an opposition party, migrants became fashionable. He called them heroes. Many are thriving businessmen in the United States. Some are naturalized and vote in U.S. elections while keeping track of who is mayor back home.

Migrants hoped they might cast a ballot in the Mexican congressional election this year or in the presidential contest of 2006. For two years, they lobbied Fox, his Cabinet, the Congress and leaders of Mexico's political parties.

They got nowhere.

In July 2001, Andres Bermudez, a naturalized U.S. citizen and grower known as the Tomato King, ran for and won the mayor's seat in his hometown of Jerez, Zacatecas. Fox made Bermudez a hero among heroes. Two months later, election officials threw out the victory, saying Bermudez hadn't met residency rules.

But the failures provided an opening for what some say will be the ultimate triumph for the migrant vote.

Bermudez supporters said the state of Zacatecas should grant its migrants what the federal government has denied them: the right to participate in Mexico's political life.

'Away . . . but present'

"We arrived at the idea that, although migrants are away, they are present," said Miguel Moctezuma, who drafted a bill that lets migrants hold office but not vote in elections. "Migrants are interested in what happens in their destination country but also what goes on in their country of origin."

Zacatecas lawmakers are expected to vote by April.

"These are beneficial, favorable changes," said Eustaquio Marquez, a Zacatecan living in Phoenix.

Advocates in other Mexican states with high migration rates are mobilizing, too.

In Michoacan, a bill to allow voting and holding office is only weeks away from going to legislators. Sinaloa researchers are conducting a census of Sinaloans in the United States to gauge interest in a migrant voting law for them, possibly by 2005. Puebla officials have begun similar talks.

Supporters remain optimistic about state measures. They say they have solid backing on both sides of the border.

"It would be a real benefit," Marquez said. "If they took in to account all those Mexicans who reside in the United States, if they took our vote and our hopes into account, they would have more realistic elections."