Michoacan Governor Welcomed in O.C.

Hundreds of Mexican immigrants in Santa Ana met Michoacan Gov. Lazaro Cardenas Batel on Friday to pay homage to this grandson of a Mexican president, who is remembered for nationalizing the country’s petroleum industry.

They came to ask for help, for new plazas and roads back in Michoacan. And they came to see a Mexican leader who, with their help, could someday become that nation’s president.

More than any economic report on globalization, it was a testament to how little the border means in this part of Orange County, a city where an estimated 100,000 people -- about one in three -- come from Michoacan, an arid agricultural state midway between Mexico City and Guadalajara.

Michoacan “is not just a place,” said Edward Hernandez, chancellor of Rancho Santiago Community College, which hosted a question-and-answer session for the governor. “The beauty in its people ... is where they go. That is where Michoacan is.”

The opportunity to shake hands and kiss babies in Santa Ana was not lost on the 38-year-old governor, a member of an important Mexican political family who has been considered a possible presidential candidate for the center-left PRD party.

Those who showed up -- along with an estimated 2 million natives of the Mexican state who now live elsewhere in the U.S. -- could soon have the right to vote in Mexican elections.

“I appreciate the opportunity to be near the people. There is a need for us to represent all Mexicans,” said Cardenas after the meeting, which attracted immigrants ranging from busboys to business owners to the community college campus. “It’s an obligation we have because there will be no democracy in Mexico, not politically or socially, until we give all Mexicans the right to vote.”

Mexico is considering how best to implement legislation that allows millions of its citizens living outside the country to participate in presidential elections in 2006. Meanwhile, Michoacan’s state legislature is debating a measure that would allow emigrants to vote in state elections. Already nearby Zacatecas state has given emigrants that right and created two seats in the legislature to represent them.

During a daylong tour of Santa Ana, Cardenas met with leaders of Santa Ana’s soccer leagues, which include 60,000 Latino players. He also talked with members of the City Council, and educators at the college’s international business program. In the evening, he addressed more than 400 immigrants at the Delhi Community Center.

For Michoacan natives, the governor’s visit was a chance to approach a Mexican politician with political star-power similar to that of a Kennedy. Old-timers recalled the day they met his grandfather, Lazaro Cardenas, in their villages or had seen his father, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a former Mexico City mayor and presidential candidate.

Many of those who shook hands with Cardenas came with written pleas for help. Pedro Rodriguez of Los Angeles, 62, wants assistance improving the plaza in his native town. Ernesto Figueroa, 36, of Santa Ana, a former Army sergeant in Iraq, wants roads improved in his native Cotija de la Paz. Anaheim resident Gabriela Herrera, 32, asked if the governor could help her husband, a native of Zamora, Michoacan, who is in jail in San Diego.

Santa Ana resident Pedro Magallon Cardenas, who said his grandfather and Cardenas Batel’s were cousins, came to get help in exporting mangos from an orchard he wants to buy in Michoacan.

Though he made no promises, Cardenas kept a list of the requests -- and, for many, that may have been enough. They came for the thrill of meeting a governor whom they identify with more than California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“He’s a Cardenas, and he makes me proud,” said Magallon Cardenas, 27, president of the Santa Ana Youth Soccer Assn., who came to the United States when he was 4. “His grandfather and his father did a lot for Mexico. He’s like a Kennedy. I can tell you that Schwarzenegger would not get as good a reception here.”