Emigres to U.S. Make a Weak Showing

Despite predictions from political organizers that massive numbers of Mexicans living in California would return to Mexico to vote in Sunday’s presidential election, far fewer appeared to have made the trek.

Those who did cross the border to vote had to stand in long lines beside Mexicans from other regions of their country who found themselves away from home on election day.

Unlike the United States, Mexico has no legal provisions for absentee ballots or voting by mail. A move to permit voting at Mexican consulates in the U.S. died last year in the Mexican legislature.

In Tijuana, the Mexican city closest to the millions of Mexican nationals living in California, there were only 15 polling places open to out-of-towners, each with 750 ballots.

Even for those 11,250 ballots, Mexicans living in the U.S. had, in effect, to compete with residents of Mexicali, the states of Sinaloa and Michoacan, and other places. The stated reason for limiting the ballots at such polling places was to reduce the possibility of fraud.

The practical result, however, was to reduce the potential impact of the emigres. Vicente Fox of the National Action Party and Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the Democratic Revolution Party campaigned in California as if the election outcome depended on voters there.

In the polling places, the emigres were far outnumbered by voters from other Mexican states.

Some of the emigres arrived early to ensure that they would get a ballot.

Even before the polls opened, Ruben Sanabria, who lives in Chula Vista, was in line to vote at the polling station closest to the border, outside the Golden State Pharmacy.

“I have one foot in the U.S. and one in Mexico,” he said. “I belong to two countries. I feel great.”

Plans for bus caravans organized by the parties apparently did not materialize. A group from Washington state that had hoped to make a grand entrance on horseback was stymied when Mexican officials refused to let its members’ horses cross into Mexico.

David Silva Villalobos and Juan Jose Bocanegra, dressed in Mexican cowboy gear, had hoped to ride their horses to one of the polling places for maximum media exposure. They had made the trip although neither had registered in time to vote.

Even without horses, they hoped that their presence might aid the movement in Mexico for absentee balloting.

Those waiting in line offered varying explanations for the small number of returnees, including the possibility that it is illogical to expect people who have moved away to travel hundreds of miles to vote.

“Transnationalism is a fad for academics and reporters,” said Gregory Rodriguez, a Los Angeles-based fellow at the New America Foundation who was accompanying his fiancee and her aunt as they waited to vote at the post office. “In reality, most Mexicans who move north are more interested in what’s happening in their new neighborhood, not back home.”

In Mexico, as in the U.S., apathy is always a factor in elections.

“Most Mexicans just don’t believe their vote will make much difference, that there is a real chance for change,” Gregorio Fuentes, a San Diego attorney, said as he waited at the post office. “Coming back to Tijuana is just too expensive and time-consuming.”

In all, Mexican election officials had promised to set up 110 polling places along the six Mexican border states for Mexican citizens living in the U.S. and for Mexicans who were not in their home districts.

If all 110 places were set up, and each had its 750 ballots, this would amount to a maximum of 82,500 votes in a country with 58.7 million eligible voters, including 1.5 million in the U.S.

There were indications Sunday that not all the polling places had 750 ballots; one site in downtown Tijuana, for example, was 250 ballots short for reasons that officials could not explain.

Because of the laborious process of validating the credentials of out-of-town voters, lines for “special” voters stretched blocks. Meantime, lines for Tijuana voters were short and moving briskly.

Ildefonso Alcazar, a welder from San Jose, drove eight hours to be here early to secure a ballot.

Alcazar’s only disappointment was that so few fellow Mexican emigrants seemed to share his passion to return in order to vote.

“Maybe they’re just too busy with their new lives in El Norte,” he said.

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Perry is a Times staff writer, Castaneda a special correspondent.