4 Residents to Help Oversee Mexico Vote

Several Ventura County residents are headed to Mexico this weekend to monitor that nation’s hotly contested presidential race.

Supervisor John Flynn, Oxnard Harbor District Commissioner Jesse Ramirez, Ventura College professor Mayo de la Rocha and KOXR radio station manager Miguel Marquez will join more than 800 foreign observers recruited to help ensure that Sunday’s balloting remains free and fair.

The election--a three-way contest described as the most competitive in Mexico’s history--could bring revolutionary change to the long-troubled nation, a shift observers say they want to witness firsthand.

“It’s a big honor,” said Ramirez, who flew Thursday to a mountainous region in Mexico’s Chihuahua state to oversee the voting. “This could be a great opportunity to see some significant changes come about.”

But while observers are eager to watch the political drama unfold, there is little evidence that such enthusiasm extends to Mexican expatriates living in Ventura County.

Unlike other areas of the Southland, where activists are engaged in an unprecedented campaign to encourage Mexican citizens who live in the United States to cast ballots in their home country, there is not a similar push in Ventura County.

Some local expatriates say they have neither the time nor the money to travel to Mexico to take part in the election.

Others are turned off by the corruption that has long plagued the Mexican government, saying the situation will never change regardless of whether they show up and vote.

“I gave that up a long time ago, it’s too depressing,” said Mexican native Antonio Garcia, a community college instructor and public health advocate with Oxnard-based El Concilio del Condado de Ventura.

“Very few people will go down there--I think only the fanatics and people who live by the border,” he said. “I’ll leave it to the people down there to fight it out.”

In a country accustomed to virtually automatic victories by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, this year’s presidential contest stands apart.

Final opinion polls released this week show PRI candidate Francisco Labastida holding a thin lead over challenger Vicente Fox of the center-right National Action Party. Three-time presidential challenger Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the center-left Democratic Revolution Party is running a distant third.

In a departure from previous elections, Mexico has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to create a professional electoral organization, a change that has prompted many to tout this as the most open and free election in Mexico’s history.

Luz Elena Bueno, who heads the Mexican Consulate in Oxnard, said international observers--such as those she hand-picked from Ventura County--will play a key role in that process.

“Their function is to be present at the polls to see that people vote free and feel free to participate,” said Bueno, adding that Mexico has allowed such international oversight since 1994.

“It’s a very important election for us,” she said. “Our democracy is growing and people want to participate.”

Flynn, who flew Thursday to the Mexican state of Guanajuato, said beyond serving in an official capacity, he is eager to have a front-row seat for what promises to be an important chapter in Mexico’s history.

“I think it’s an historic moment,” he said. “Even if the PRI wins, this is the first time that considerable, well-organized opposition has risen to the top.”

With the stakes high and the top candidates running neck and neck, Mexican officials are bracing for a deluge of voters from north of the border. An estimated 1.5 million migrants in the United States hold Mexican voting cards, and candidates have been working hard to earn their ballots.

In response, Mexican officials have increased the number of polling places along the 2,000-mile border for Mexicans who are away from their home districts.

But neither Bueno nor any of the observers have heard of organized campaigns to push Mexican voters in Ventura County to the polls.

De la Rocha, a history professor at Ventura College, said he believes many Mexican nationals locally have become disconnected with affairs in their homeland and disenchanted with the way government operates.

“There’s a good deal of cynicism--a lot of expatriates here don’t feel anything is going to change and that voting is futile,” said de la Rocha, who is headed to the border town of Mexicali. “I’m trying to fight that. I’m excited and feel very good that Mexico is about to change.”

De la Rocha and others say if Mexican leaders truly wanted to encourage widespread voter participation, they would allow mail-in absentee ballots.

Indeed, many immigrants were angered when Mexican legislators killed a proposal to set up polls at Mexican diplomatic facilities in the United States.

“Many of those who want to vote can’t afford to go to Mexico,” said 60-year-old Oxnard resident Maria Hernandez, who became an American citizen in 1995.

“I would like to participate, but it’s very hard for an older person like me to travel alone,” she said. “But I voted in this country as soon as I could. Regardless of what happens in Mexico, I live here and the politics in this country affect me more.”