Clubs in U.S. Spark Political Change in Mexico

His hands are blackened from radiator grease at his auto shop in Oxnard, but Juan Duran sees his future cleaning up Mexican politics.

The 32-year U.S. resident recently ran for mayor in his hometown of Tepetongo in the Mexican state of Zacatecas. A recent change in Mexican law allows dual nationals to run for office. It was a well-organized network of Zacatecas clubs in the United States that triggered Duran’s interest in politics.

Though immigrants from Mexico have long sent money back to their families, the clubs take such philanthropy to a more formal, and politically potent, level.

Now U.S. activists like Duran are running for offices in Mexican cities thousands of miles away, hoping to effect dramatic change in their hometowns.

“My life is here, but my life is also there,” said Duran, who lost the mayor’s race but plans to try again. “I want to make things better for the people in Zacatecas.”

In Oxnard, seven clubs funnel money into projects in Zacatecas, a poor, largely desert state in central Mexico. Club members, mostly farm workers and longtime U.S. residents, organize $15-a-head ranch dances and $5 carwashes. Duran’s club has fewer than a dozen core members but routinely draws hundreds to such events.

Last year, Duran’s group sent $8,000 to Tepetongo (population 10,000), helping to pay for a used ambulance and to build a kiosk in the center of town. This year, Oxnard groups have sent about $49,000, a sum to be augmented by donations from local, state and federal governments in Mexico.

Ten years ago, there were 37 Zacatecas clubs in the United States. Today, there are 240. Revenue generated by the clubs, a projected $1.75 million this year, is so significant in Zacatecas that the state funds a representative whose main job is to help organize the U.S. clubs.

With government donations, the sum will this year reach $7 million, the maximum Mexico allows for U.S.-organized projects.

“The border is just a line,” said the Los Angeles-based representative, Manuel de la Cruz. “This allows us to communicate family to family as though the border didn’t exist.”

For many, it’s blurred. About 600,000 migrants from Zacatecas live in the United States, about half the state’s current population, according to researchers at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas.

After oil and tourism, remittances from the United States are the state’s biggest source of income. No Mexican state loses as many residents per capita to the United States.

But they are not altogether lost. Oxnard club members visit Zacatecas for a yearly convention organized by the governor. They attend another annual convention in the United States.

Each year, they host the governor in Oxnard for the coronation of the local Zacatecas beauty queen. Oxnard’s club leaders have even met with Mexican President Vicente Fox.

A new “Zacatecas Hour” on Oxnard’s Radio Lazer plans to connect live with a meeting of Zacatecas mayors, allowing callers from Oxnard to pose questions about the state of their hometowns.

The clubs have an informative Web site, and some members use the Internet to keep up with the activities of club members back home.

The main fund-raisers, outdoor dances at a local ranch, attract crowds. Farm workers decked out in cowboy hats, boots and ornate belts dance to traditional tamboraso music till 2 a.m. Organizers net as much as $6,000.

The groups were traditionally apolitical. But many U.S. contributors hope for more political say in their Mexican hometowns.

“They have enormous impact in their communities, because they’re the ones who help the towns,” said Zacatecas Gov. Ricardo Monreal in a telephone interview. “They should have the same rights as Zacatecans here.”

De la Cruz, the governor’s envoy, said the U.S. activists are impatient with corruption and single-party rule that for decades dominated Mexican politics.

“There is the opportunity to change, because many of our people who come here have learned a profession, how to vote, how to participate,” he said. “It can change political life, economic and social life in our towns.”

Lupe Gomez, leader of a federation of local clubs, said he proposed the Office for Mexicans Abroad, which was created by Fox. And, Gomez said, it was U.S. Zacatecas leaders who first suggested the 1998 dual-nationality law.

The Zacatecas groups are neutral on Mexican political questions. But members like Duran have set their sights on political office. Three Americans took advantage of the change in Mexican law and ran for mayor in Mexican towns this summer. In the city of Jerez, one succeeded. All three got their start in the U.S. Zacatecas network.

Over platters of carne asada at a picnic in Bubbling Springs Park, members of the Oxnard clubs spoke reverently of Andres Bermudez, the mayor-elect in Jerez. Bermudez, called “El Rey del Tomate,” or the Tomato King, is a former farm laborer who rose to manage a tomato fortune.

Once president of the Northern California Zacatecas federation, Bermudez beat a candidate from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had ruled for 70 years until Fox’s election.

The club members laud Duran.

“He represents all of us,” said Ricardo Lopez, a real estate agent who heads the federation of Oxnard’s Zacatecas clubs. “This is the beginning of a new era.”

They discuss their hope of electing Mexican American deputies to Zacatecas’ parliament. They want to be able to cast absentee votes in state elections.

The state’s governor supports both initiatives for 2004, independent of similar measures being discussed at the national level.