Cipriana Jurado is determined to vote in the Mexican elections from her home in the United States. Somehow zapped from the voter rolls in the last Mexican presidential election of 2012, Jurado says she will make sure no such denial of her right to vote from abroad will occur in this year in the July 2 elections. For the New Mexico resident, the stakes are too high.
“(Voting) is important so our country has a genuine chance,” asserts Jurado, a longtime political and community activist who was forced to flee Mexico because of threats to her life. “We’ve lost a generation in Mexico because of violence. Young people are victims of violence in Mexico, whether it’s official or organized crime.”
For the third time since 2006, Mexican nationals residing in the United States like Jurado will be able to cast ballots by mail for president. And now, because of a 2014 political reform, they will help choose senators as well as governors in several states where the seats are also up for grabs on July 1, including the powerhouse states of Mexico City and Jalisco, home of Guadalajara.
The right of Mexicans to vote from abroad was won as the Mexican diaspora exploded in numbers to more than 12 million people scattered across the globe (about 10% of the Mexican population), the vast majority of them located in the US.
As Mexicans worked and settled in El Norte and elsewhere, they gained greater recognition in Mexico thanks to the economic role of migrants who sent more than $28 billion in remittances back home in 2017 alone; Mexicans living abroad demanded a bigger voice in the political affairs of their homeland.
The looming, almost mythic presence of the migrant in Mexican national life was showcased in Tijuana May 20 at the presidential candidates’ debate, where migration was a major part of the evening’s agenda.
Though El Paso’s Hope Border Institute criticized the four presidential contenders for lacking specifics in their answers, the immigrant advocacy organization noted the historic political event.
“Remarkably, given longstanding Mexican migration to the US, this is the first time that issues related to migrant rights have emerged as a major theme in presidential elections, primarily in response to President Trump’s rhetoric and policies,” the Institute later observed.
Although Mexicans enjoy the right to vote from abroad, involving migrants in the electoral process has been far from smooth sailing.
According to the latest numbers from the official National Electoral Institute (INE), only 181,256 people are registered in the exterior voter roll and authorized to cast ballots. Still, the INE considers the number a step forward from 2006, when 34,000 migrants mailed in ballots and 2012, when more than 41,000 did likewise.
INE chief Lorenzo Cordova countered reports of a disproportionate number of registrations arriving from St. Petersburg, Russia, dismissing the stories as “fake news.” Only 70 registrations had come from Russia, he said in an INE press statement.
Cordova praised the promotional work done by Mexican consular personnel in the US. in publicizing the elections and processing voter registration. The 2018 election cycle will bolster “... the idea of citizenship and the exercise of the rights of our compatriots beyond our borders,” he assured.
But many migrant advocates, activists and scholars criticize the total number of expected voters from abroad as way too low. They blame the small voter roll on burdensome paperwork requirements for registering to vote, logistical hassles migrants encounter in connecting with Mexican consulates charged with issuing new election credentials, lost work time and out-of-pocket expense, inadequate publicity, and government disinterest in a population that tends to vote for opposition parties. A worsening political environment for immigrants in the United States weighs heavy.
“The process is just too complicated, but I think more important, the Mexican population here in the US today lives under shadows and fear,” Dr. Tony Payan, director of the Baker Institute’s Mexico Center at Houston’s Rice University, said at a recent forum on the Mexican elections in El Paso. “Why would you expose yourself to ICE?”
Dr. Irasema Coronado, professor of political science at the University of Texas El Paso and longtime borderlands scholar, added that lower-than-desired migrant political participation is explained in part by the decision of many Mexican immigrants to chuck their home country’s politics into the past. Migrants, she said, have “already voted with their feet.”
Despite the myriad problems surrounding the migrant vote, Mexico’s major political forces increasingly see strategic value in harnessing the support of immigrants here. Conceivably, in tight races, the foreign-based vote could even make the difference.
The campaign of presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his left-leaning National Movement for the Regeneration of Mexico (Morena) party is especially active in Mexican communities across the United States. Morena activists are busy promoting Lopez Obrador’s 50 point program that vows increased Mexican government defense of immigrants in the US, economic development at home, higher wages for workers, free public education and other reform measures designed to improve daily life south of the border.
Reaching for the heavens, Lopez Obrador pledges the fourth transformation of Mexico, comparing his envisioned administration with the War of Independence, the War of the Reform and the 1910 Mexico Revolution.
Based in New Mexico, Jurado coordinates Morena’s work in the Southwest. She outlined several important campaign tasks, including fostering a two-way dialogue between migrants here and relatives in Mexico as a get-out-the-vote strategy for Lopez Obrador and organizing delegations of migrant election observers to travel back to Mexico for the elections.
“This is important because we’ve had the unfortunate experience of frauds, and with observers at the polls it would help us avoid fraud or denounce it,” she said. Surveying Mexico’s current socio-political circumstances, Jurado characterized the 2018 elections as a historic opportunity that might not repeat itself for a very long time.
She pondered, “If change doesn’t happen who knows how many years or centuries it will be for it to come?”
According to the INE, the mail-in migrant ballots will be counted beginning the afternoon of July 1 at the Tec de Monterrey college campus in Mexico City. Afterward, the ballots will be stored in a warehouse.
Kent Paterson is a freelance journalist who divides his time between Mexico and the US Southwest.
From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2018
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