Hopes of Office Lure Migrants Home

A farmer from Northern California hopes to claim the mayoralty of this impoverished town in today’s closely watched election and, in so doing, open a new chapter in Mexican politics.

Andres Bermudez, the “Tomato King” from Winters, is favored to be among the first emigrants elected to local office since the state of Zacatecas last year eased candidacy rules for natives with dual citizenship or U.S. residency.

The Zacatecas elections take place as other states consider similar laws and politicians across the country try to reach out to emigrants, an increasingly important political and economic force.

On June 15, President Vicente Fox proposed a law to allow Mexicans in the United States to cast absentee ballots in federal elections. Currently, Mexicans with dual citizenship or residency must be in the country to vote.

If passed, the measure could have a significant impact on the 2006 presidential election. It could enfranchise a potential electorate of nearly 10 million in the U.S., half of whom are legal residents or American citizens. The rest are undocumented.

Bermudez said his victory would “open the doors” for numerous other Zacatecans living in the United States who are thinking about running for office. “I myself know 26 guys ready to come back and run for mayor in towns across Zacatecas. But all are afraid that what happened to me could happen to them,” Bermudez said.

The candidate was referring to 2001, when he won the Jerez mayoralty only to be disqualified by the federal election commission for not meeting residency requirements. The reversal was a “betrayal” that he ascribes to dirty politics practiced by the party he belonged to then, the Democratic Revolutionary Party.

Bruised but unbowed, Bermudez is back, running again for mayor, this time under the banner of Fox’s National Action Party, or PAN, and promising to help lift Jerez out of the poverty that drove him away 30 years ago. He said his winning would mean more investment and jobs for Jerez, a hardscrabble cattle-and-corn-raising town that has seen better days.

“I will personally invest $1 million in two canneries that will create 600 jobs -- if I win. You have my word on that,” the 54-year-old Bermudez said in an interview Friday in the leafy main plaza of this town 300 miles northwest of Mexico City.

The state law that eased eligibility requirements for candidates was largely a response to the uproar that surrounded Bermudez’s disqualification, particularly among his numerous and well-organized Zacatecan supporters in the United States.

Included in the new law was the stipulation that at least two of the 30 state assembly seats elected every three years must be for emigrants. In today’s elections, Zacatecas and two other states, Chihuahua and Durango, are electing governors, mayors and state legislators.

Zacatecas is especially attentive to its emigrants because it has the highest per capita rate of flight of any Mexican state. About 800,000 Zacatecans live in the United States, more than half of the state’s current 1.3 million people. They are also the state’s economic mainstay: Native sons and daughters sent about $480 million home in remittances last year.

“Immigration -- the Zacatecans’ contribution to the U.S. labor force -- is the most important economic activity in the state,” said Miguel Moctezuma, a social science professor at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas.

Wayne Cornelius, a professor and immigration expert at UC San Diego, said the election of immigrants to local political offices can only strengthen transnational ties. “The idea is that so much talent has been lost by the high-immigration states that they almost have to reach out to the expatriate community,” Cornelius said.

After crossing illegally and penniless into California in 1974, hiding in the trunk of a car with his pregnant wife, Bermudez went on to make a fortune selling tree and vegetable seedlings to the U.S. Forestry Service and Wal-Mart. He said he now grows and sells 57 million plants a year.

The importance of the state elections extends beyond the charismatic mayoral candidate. Four Mexicans who, like Bermudez, emigrated to the United States years ago and found prosperity have come back to run for the state legislature. All are touting their tenacity and know-how picked up in the process of “making it” in the United States.

“I want to bring good government without corruption. I want to be the link,” said Maria Dolores Mendivil, 39, a state assembly candidate. Mendivil crossed the border into Texas illegally at age 16 and now owns a heavy equipment import-export business in Laredo.

Mendivil, who is running as a PAN candidate, said a primary goal if elected would be to monitor how the state government spends the hundreds of thousands of dollars that emigrants contribute to community projects such as schools, roads and drainage projects. She said many projects are rife with waste and delays because of poor oversight, leading to rising disenchantment among emigrant donors.

Roman Cabral, 50, a general contractor from Norwalk who is running for the state legislature, agreed. “Sometimes we feel robbed,” he said.

Cabral and fellow natives of the Zacatecan town of Valparaiso have helped finance a kindergarten, a drainage project and stadium improvements under a matching government funds program.

“Costs are up and projects are sometimes not getting finished, and if that doesn’t stop people in the States will cut their support,” said Cabral, who is representing the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Mendivil acknowledged that her candidacy and those of other immigrants returning home to run for office are not always welcomed. “They say, ‘So you think you are going to come here and fix our lives?’ I say, ‘At least I am coming with clean hands.’ ”