Which Candidate Does Mexico Really Want?

The buzz about Ignacio Santoscoy began last summer when his handsome, chiseled face--set off by thick brown hair and piercing blue eyes--began appearing on billboards in Mexico’s largest cities. They carried two simple words: “El Candidato” (The Candidate).

The man who sought the country’s highest office was a political hybrid, navigating the turbulent waters of the ruling party while pushing for a radically different, more democratic Mexico. It was only a matter of days before each turn of Santoscoy’s political life was available for public consumption--and it was usually accompanied by orchestral theme music.

Drawing a thin line between fiction and reality, “El Candidato,” a serial television melodrama, quickly caught the attention of Mexico’s political and intellectual set much the way “The West Wing,” the NBC White House drama that has become a Beltway favorite, has in the U.S. Infusing its plots with details drawn from real-life politics in Mexico, “El Candidato” became one of the country’s most-talked about soap operas, or telenovelas.

Mexican intellectual and author Carlos Monsivais, 62, saw glimpses of his country’s political evolution in the show. “The PRI [Mexico’s ruling party] is dead, and this telenovela is a preview of its funeral,” he said.

Premiering in August, “El Candidato” appeared on a broadcast landscape filled with news that Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo was breaking with the tradition of appointing his successor. Instead, Zedillo ushered in Mexico’s first open presidential primary.

“El Candidato” wove its stories out of breaking news events whose summaries were written up by the network’s news department each morning and handed over to the show’s producers. Santoscoy’s battles mirrored those of the real candidates, and his emotions reflected the passions of the electorate--with producers getting up to 300 e-mails a day from viewers suggesting plot lines.

In essence, “El Candidato” became the stalking horse for a historic campaign season in which observers say Sunday’s election could become a watershed moment in Mexico’s democratic future. Observers and pundits seem to agree that while this election has not been perfect--in fact, opposition candidates already have voiced accusations of fraud--there is an earnestness to keeping things clean that has not been seen before.

“Without a doubt this is the most open election,” said Jorge Buendia, a specialist of public opinion at the Center for Research and Economic Teachings, a university in Mexico City. Indeed, “El Candidato’s” dramatic framework was built on that notion that the next leader of Mexico would be chosen by the people.

This presidential election is the country’s first since 1994, when the ruling party’s presidential candidate and its secretary-general were assassinated within six months of each other. In the wake of those deaths, there were reports of widespread suspicion that the politicians had been victims of a government conspiracy.

But as last August gave way to September, democracy seemed like it might just have a chance. People continued to express their frustrations over the lack of personal security and the omnipresence of drug traffickers. The primary target of their dissatisfaction became the PRI, the political party that had been in power for 71 years.

Saying ‘What Every Mexican Wants to Hear’

The producers fed all of these sentiments--from hope to mistrust--into “El Candidato’s” drama machine, creating a personal life for Santoscoy and filling it with turmoil too. He was ensnared in a dicey affair and was going to have to choose between his politically viable marriage and his ravishing mistress.

Viewers responded, with the telenovela gaining popularity as it tracked the fictional presidential race and Santoscoy, whose desire for change was calibrated to match those undercurrents sweeping through Mexico’s real electorate.

“Finally, Ignacio Santoscoy was saying what every Mexican wants to hear, what you hear in the street. About security. About corruption,” said Elisa Salinas, vice president of telenovela production for the show’s network, TV Azteca.

But Santoscoy’s maverick style and outspokenness were not unnoticed by authorities. The actor who plays Santoscoy, Humberto Zurita, was unexpectedly invited to dine with President Zedillo several months ago. Zurita and his colleagues were convinced he would be questioned about the telenovela, but when he arrived at the presidential palace, Zurita was relieved to find himself among authors, actors, athletes and decision makers honoring the president of Nicaragua.

That wave of relief lasted only a few minutes. As he took his seat at the presidential reception, Zurita was grilled by a member of the government who wanted more details about the telenovela.

“[He asked] who Santoscoy is supposed to be and what would happen,” said Juan David Burns, director of production for TV Azteca. “They wanted to know where the telenovela was going.”

Where it was going depended on what was happening on the real campaign trail. Over the course of “El Candidato’s” nine-month run on television, reality and drama were seamlessly plaited together into one media project. “El Candidato” became the first interactive telenovela in Mexico’s history, changing its plot lines based on e-mails from viewers who wanted their hero to imitate, or reject, what was occurring in real life.

As one viewer wrote: “If the intent is to strengthen the image of change in the ruling party, it seems important to me that the candidate survive. . . . It would be very disheartening for Ignacio . . . to die like Colosio [Luis Donaldo Colosio, the presidential candidate who was assassinated in 1994] and not finish his candidacy.”

After Vicente Fox, a real Mexican opposition candidate in the current campaign, hung up a portrait of the Virgin of Guadeloupe at a political debate, viewers tuned into see Santoscoy doing the same. The holy icon’s presence at a political event provoked intense reaction in a country where great pains have been taken to separate church and state.

As last year’s months-long, massive student strike at Mexico City’s National Autonomous University continued to rage, viewers tuned in to listen to Nina, a female student in “El Candidato,” complain about her canceled classes. When would they start again? When could she resume her studies?

“It used to be one party for 70 years and one formula of telenovelas,” Burns said. “Now those things are changing.”

During the ’94 presidential election many Mexicans had hoped for change, both politically and, by extension, culturally. But with the assassination of Colosio, those hopes were temporarily snuffed out. He was shot to death at a campaign rally in a neighborhood here known as Lomas Taurinas. Santoscoy’s character is thought by many to be modeled on Colosio, but TV Azteca producers insist they tried to create a candidate who had a mixture of qualities drawn from the present and the past.

Earlier this month, residents of Lomas Taurinas spent a warm night around the memorial plaza to Colosio, a green and gray stage that sits at the bottom of the canyon. Young boys showed off their skateboarding skills while a group of mothers talked quietly with one another. Workers returning home came upon the scene at the bottom of a steep hill that funnels them down to the hardscrabble canyon.

Rosamaria Cabrera, 34, sat in front of her friend’s tangerine-colored home, directly across from the large statue of Colosio waving his left hand at the people in a crooked row of homes etched into the hillside.

“They killed Colosio for telling the truth, but Ignacio [Santoscoy] will survive because he’s in a telenovela, and he tells the truth,” she said with a smile that revealed a tiny rhinestone on each front tooth. “The only good telenovela on is this one. The others are only about love, fighting, he leaves her, she leaves him. But this one is real. If he were a real candidate, I would vote for him.”

“In previous administrations it would have been impossible to produce ‘El Candidato’ because the government exercised much more authority over the content of the telenovelas,” said Alvaro Cueva, a longtime and widely published television critic.

Airing weeknights at 10, the telenovela segued into the 10:30 p.m. national news, a lineup that was deliberate, said network executive Salinas.

“We were in very close connection with the news department. They would send us their hot spots for that day at 7 a.m., and we would follow along with [that day’s events on the campaign trail],” she said. “We could divulge what had happened on ‘El Candidato’ before [viewers] got it on the news.”

While “El Candidato” was TV Azteca’s No. 1 show for the year, it never drew a bigger audience than the comedy show on the larger competing network, Televisa. On a weeknight in early June, “El Candidato,” earned a 10.3 rating, according to the national ratings service, while Televisa’s comedy “Furceo,” which airs at the same time, earned a 29.4 rating, nearly triple the audience.

“There is an opening that allows television producers to deal with political, sexual and social conflict like we have never seen, but [the ratings] show that it is not working at a commercial level [yet],” said TV critic Cueva.

Still, it has proven to be a significant success for TV Azteca. The network’s audience has grown but, more important, the TV series has reinforced its public image as a risk-taking, progressive broadcaster.

And the demographic profile of the people who are now tuning into the network has begun to change. Like “West Wing,” with its earnest staff and likable U.S. president portrayed by Martin Sheen, “El Candidato” drew an audience that was primarily wealthier, better educated and more politically involved than average viewers. What the audience lacked in numbers it compensated for in the disposable income advertisers crave. TV Azteca has already sold the 225 episodes of “El Candidato” to networks in more than 15 countries. Telemundo, the second-largest Spanish-language television network in the United States, is currently pondering how and where “El Candidato” might fit its schedule.

Ending the Season Before the Election

This telenovela, which many consider groundbreaking, is not the first project to take on the ruling party. It follows “La Ley de Herodes” (Herod’s Law), a feature film, also produced in Mexico, that tested the boundaries of free speech by criticizing the PRI by name. This winter Mexican moviegoers finally got to see it, despite widely publicized efforts by the government to censor the script or delay its release until after the presidential election.

Though there were rumors of pressure to end “El Candidato” before Sunday’s election, TV Azteca executives insist their decision to wrap the telenovela in mid-June was not due to government pressure--subtle or otherwise. They simply felt their show might unduly influence voters.

“We involved a lot of things from the real campaign and candidates, but we don’t want tointerfere with the elections,” Burns said.

Victor Aviles, spokesman for the Federal Election Institute, which oversees Mexico’s presidential election, said he has no method to measure the influence of “El Candidato” on voters, but he emphasized that there was no government pressure to conclude the story line before the election.

At press time, opinion polls for the real election cited the PRI’s Francisco Labastida Ochoa, who once served as Zedillo’s interior minister, nearly tied with Fox, the northern governor with a telegenic smile who represents the central right National Action Party. Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solorzano, the former Mayor of Mexico City who represents the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution, was in a distant third.

But just as the real elections ramped up to a feverish pitch, the producers of “El Candidato” decided to give the people a voice in their hero’s fate.

Three endings were developed. In one, Santoscoy was felled by an assassin. In another, he got the girl and the vote. In the third, viewers were reminded of the importance of exercising their right to vote. The plan was to cull through the e-mails and choose the ending that seemed to reflect the majority of viewers, who ultimately chose an ending that gave weight to the voting process.

While it might seem droll to have the hero ride off into the sunset as a civics lesson thunders in the background, “El Candidato” wrapped up on June 16 with just that. Ignacio’s mistress said her love for him had nothing to do with the fact that she had just cast a vote for his opponent, then a montage of political heroes dating back to the 1920s rushed across the screen. A voice-over reminded Santoscoy’s fans that their vote is the weapon of freedom and democracy.

“Instead of betting on a really melodramatic ending,” says Salinas, “we finally created a conscience.”