Campaigning to Keep Mexicans Home

Presidential candidate Felipe Calderon took center stage in the town square of this dusty, down-in-the-heels pueblo and asked several hundred cheering supporters, “How many of you have family in the United States?”

Nearly all raised a hand.

“I also have a cousin and brother-in-law looking for work there,” said Calderon, a lawyer and economist whose campaign is built on the promise of creating enough jobs to keep Mexicans home.

The surprise admission was one of the few unscripted moments during a recent campaign swing by Mexico’s most conservative candidate, from the National Action Party of President Vicente Fox. It was spoken in empathy. But it showed the reach of the country’s immigration problem, and laid bare Calderon’s political dilemma.

The question facing his candidacy is whether voters among the poor and aspiring middle class are willing to invest years in the promise of a better life that many Mexicans believe is more easily obtained by heading to the United States, as millions of their compatriots have done.

Calderon said he would extend Fox’s free-market policies. He has promised to bring investment capital, good schools, honest government and lots of jobs.

But who wants to wait?

Fox, who cannot run for reelection, had nearly six years to improve the lot of Mexicans, who continue to cross the border, legally or not, said the more skeptical men and women along Calderon’s campaign route last weekend.

Calderon’s fortunes remain tied to Fox’s record: sparing the country a financial crisis but failing to enact reforms or raise incomes -- except among the rich -- that are enough to brag about.

Calderon’s leftist opponent, and the front-runner in most polls, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, promises a populist grab bag of big-ticket public works projects and cash payments to single mothers and senior citizens, which he gave out while mayor of Mexico City.

But neither candidate can deliver any time soon what Candelario Vasquez found on Long Island and in New Jersey: well-paid work and steady promotions.

After 11 years abroad, Vasquez, 33, is back home, earning a fraction of his U.S. wages as an electrician and mechanic. The big money up north, he said, was not worth the stress of raising a family as an illegal immigrant.

His brothers, though, working in Boston and New Brunswick, N.J., he said, aren’t likely to return to Mexico except by force.

“One of the ideals of Mexicans is to work and make a life for their families,” he said.

And prospects here are as thin as the soil, said Napolina Samora, 63, whose two sons live in Brooklyn. “What they earn they have to spend to live, so I have to make do with what I have,” he said of his money saved from dwindling fall and winter harvests.

“The rest of the year is a struggle,” he said. “The dirt here is tired, and fertilizer is too expensive.”

Calderon’s pitch -- that private investment will lead to jobs, stability and an end to illegal immigration -- appeals to people in both countries. After only a few minutes, residents here reveal a longing for absent loved ones. Some abroad send money home and keep in touch by phone; others are lost in the underground.

For Calderon to win the July 2 election, he’s going to have to persuade the many poor in towns like this one that there is reason for hope, that he is one politician who is telling the truth.

“I like his proposals, but they all promise the same -- jobs,” said Jose Velazquez, 72, a retired office assistant.

“Calderon says a lot, but what’s he done?” said Victor Naquil, 60, one of the chronically underemployed farmers here. “People are saying about his party: ‘You haven’t done anything for us. We’re going to vote for a guy who’s done things, Lopez Obrador.’ ”

Calderon began his weekend tour through the southern states of Puebla and Oaxaca with high hopes. A poll earlier in the week showed him gaining on Lopez Obrador, which Calderon aides credited to a tougher campaign, with TV commercials attacking the front-runner as an overspender and something of a demagogue.

In speeches, he taunted Lopez Obrador for skipping out on tonight’s first presidential debate, calling him a coward. The only other major candidate to participate will be Roberto Madrazo, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, who appears to be lagging in third place. Fox broke a 71-year PRI stranglehold on the presidency in 2000.

Calderon, 43, is conservative only by Mexican standards.

He promises universal healthcare and after-school child-care for children and teens. He proposes a superhighway connecting the Pacific with the Gulf of Mexico. He says he’ll pay highland farmers to replace their meager crops with pine trees and other native growth. To other farmers, he promises cheaper fertilizer.

Candidates can invest millions on TV and radio ads, but Mexicans outside the big cities still want to see and hear their champion in person, shake his hand and get a kiss on the cheek.

For every appearance this last weekend -- there were at least two a day -- the party faithful arrived by the busload, toting Calderon signs; wearing Calderon shirts and hats; waving blue, white and orange balloons.

Each time, Calderon passed through a long gantlet of well-wishers, took the stage and held his palms up, the campaign’s symbol for clean government.

Ear-piercing firecrackers, live bands, confetti cannons and his pop-style campaign song masked the occasionally lukewarm response of the crowds.

Many expressed pride at the marches in favor of immigration reform but said they feared for family and friends living in the United States.

“Your children go north and you never see them again,” Calderon told the crowd in one speech, with evident sympathy.

He also shared their caution. When asked about the two relatives he mentioned, Calderon, through a spokeswoman, declined to elaborate, saying only that he preferred to maintain a low profile for his family.