By Sara Burnett
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 19, 2003

Armed Mexican soldiers prove just how seriously the Mexican government is taking their new election process as they secure the incoming ballot boxes on Election Day in Mexico City's federal district.

MEXICO CITY, Mexico - Behind metal bars and down a long hallway, two Mexican soldiers armed with rifles, clipboards and humorless expressions flank a frosted-glass door.

Every few minutes young men rush past them carrying suitcase-shaped cardboard boxes.

Inside the room they place the boxes lengthwise on marked shelves, like safety deposit boxes being returned to a bank vault.

As they come and go, the soldiers record the exact military time.

It is as though these boxes contain some kind of national treasure.

And in a way, they do.

Inside are ballots that will determine who next will lead Mexico's Camera of Deputies, the equivalent to the U.S. House of Representatives in a country that saw its first truly democratic election just three years ago.

The ballots also will decide whether Aurora resident Juan Barcenas and Skokie resident Enrique Murillo win seats in the Mexican congress.

Barcenas, a shop owner, and Murillo, a political scientist, are two of 10 legal U.S. residents and Mexican citizens conducting a controversial long-distance campaign for representatives seats in Mexico.

The notion that Mexicans here could seek office in their homeland has some anti-immigration activists and fellow Mexicans up in arms.

If elected, Barcenas and Murillo will continue to live in the suburbs.

They likely will open an office in Chicago, where they will help local Mexicans with everything from arranging for dead relatives to be buried in Mexico to getting Mexican social security benefits.

They will travel to Mexico the five or six times a year the deputies convene.

Since both men are Mexican citizens, there is nothing in Mexican law prohibiting them from being elected. And there are plenty of people who believe that for the $10 billion Mexicans send home each year, they should have a say in Mexican government through their own elected officials.

There are nearly 25 million Mexicans living in the United States today.

More than 1 million - about 13 percent of the population - lived in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That's almost twice the number who lived in the same counties in 1990.

So Barcenas and Murillo have spent the months leading up to the July 6 election talking to Mexicans all over Chicago and the suburbs, asking them to call their relatives in Mexico to urge them to vote for their liberal party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution.

If the party, known in Mexico as the PRD, wins enough votes, one of the men could win one of 200 at-large seats.

It's a long shot for sure, but Barcenas and Murillo have plans nonetheless.

The first thing they'd do is push to give Mexicans in the United States absentee voting rights.

"If this time we win one," says Barcenas, 56, "it's a foot in the door."

So the stakes are high as the polls close at 6 p.m. Sunday, July 6, in Mexico City.

At the local election office where the soldiers stand guard, representatives from each of the 11 parties on today's ballot gather at tables arranged in a "U," a large screen displaying results as they are entered into a nearby computer.

By 7 p.m., election officials begin arriving with the first boxes of ballots.

Agustin Martinez de Castro, the president of this office, pulls a yellow sheet of paper from the side of the boxes and reads the results into a microphone.

Almost immediately, workers sweep the boxes across the hall and into the guarded depository, where they will be kept under lock for a recount later.

Martinez de Castro, the man in charge of ensuring the results from this site are not corrupted, is matter-of-fact about the armed military presence.

"They are here so no one tries to kill me."

The odor of tacos and quesadillas waft from the "Maria Esther" food market in northern Mexico City as Gustavo Medina approaches the voting booth out front.

It is just before 6 p.m. on Election Day, and Medina, accompanied by his wife, still is wearing the shiny blue suit he wore to Sunday Mass.

The couple are en route to dinner. But first, they must stop to cast their votes.

"I always vote," the 50-year-old lawyer says.

Though turnout for this election will top out at 41 percent - the lowest since 1952 - voter turnout averages 58 percent for both presidential and non-presidential elections, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. In the 2000 presidential election that saw reformer Vicente Fox rise to power, about 60 percent of voters cast ballots.

Even Mexico's low is higher than U.S. turnout, with roughly 39 percent voting in the last comparable election, 2002's congressional contest. And 49 percent turned out for the last U.S. presidential election.

The reason for the greater Mexican turnout is the variety in candidates, says Martinez de Castro, the president of the election office.

In Mexico today, there are 11 parties on Medina's ballot compared to the dominant two-party American system.

"In the U.S., you have the choice to elect between Coke and Pepsi," he says. "In Mexico, we have tequila, Coke and lemon juice."

Others say more Mexicans vote because of greater national pride, because elections are held on Sunday - when most people don't have to work - or because everyone is automatically registered to vote at 18.

Enrique Murillo, left, and Juan Barcenas campaign at an Aurora restaurant in hopes of earning a seat in the Mexi-can congress. Neither was elected during midterm elec-tions, but with so much money pouring into Mexico from immigrants here in the United States, Barcenas and Murillo say they deserve representation in the Mexican government.

The Mexican government also spends more money funding campaigns, says Rudy Lopez, national field director for the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute in Chicago.

Though television ads are banned in the weeks leading up to Election Day, banners cover virtually every inch of Mexico City. People paint their party name on the sides of their homes and businesses.

"In Mexico, Election Day is an event," Lopez says.

But that passion for voting often wanes when Mexicans move to the United States, largely because candidates don't come into Latino communities as much.

"If they don't see them in their neighborhood or on their television, they don't feel that connection," Lopez said.

For Medina, there's another reason to vote.

Throughout most of his voting life, Medina cast his lot with the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI.

The conservative PRI controlled Mexico for 71 years, its presidents hand-picking their successors.

Corruption - and a PRI victory - was expected on Election Day. There was no need to read up on various candidates before voting, no real competition to consider.

But now things are different in Mexico. Now there is a party for everyone, Medina says.

Before heading into the voting booth, Medina must give election officials his voter ID card. An election judge hands him a ballot.

The Mexican ballot is one 8 1/2-by-11-inch sheet of paper emblazoned with the large, colorful icons of each party and the name of the party's candidate in small type below.

After Medina places an "X" on the symbol of the party he is supporting, he stuffs the ballot in a box, then returns for his card. By now, another worker has punched it.

Before Medina can have the card back, the worker also must color the pad of Medina's thumb with a dark marker that will not erase - even with the strongest of soaps - for about a week. That mark will prevent Medina from visiting another voting booth using someone else's ID card.

The marking started after passage of a 1994 election reform law that also established independent offices to oversee elections. Prior to that time, agencies connected to the PRI ran elections.

Since the early 1920s, the sale of alcohol has been banned on Election Day. The law is intended to cut down on drunken fights between rivals.

When the polls close, the workers count ballots by hand. Observers from the PRI and the PRD - the only parties to have representatives on hand all day - look over their shoulders.

Results are written on a yellow piece of paper, then stuck to the side of the ballot box and taken to election headquarters.

Medina declines to say for whom he voted or which party he hopes will take power in the 500-seat Camera of Deputies.

But he is clear on one thing: the victors should be Mexicans living in this country, not people who "abandoned" Mexico to find a better life.

"They cannot be informed of the problems of this country," Medina says. "That is not right."

Medina is not the only one who feels that way.

Some immigration reform groups were highly critical when, in 2000, Los Angeles businessman Eddie Varon Levy became the first U.S. candidate elected to Mexican office.

Glenn Spencer, president of the California-based Voices of Citizens Together, cited Levy's victory as an example of Mexicans trying to take over the southwestern United States and secede from the nation.

Barbara Coe, founder of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, calls the idea of voting rights and migrant candidates "a total sham."

If a person is going to come to the United States, and in many cases become politically active and vote here, their allegiance should be to this country only, Coe says.

"It's obvious their loyalty lies with Mexico," Coe says. "You can't serve two masters."

Even within the PRD there is disagreement - so much so that the party did not approve any funding for immigrant candidates' campaigns.

Carlos Leija, an undocumented immigrant who works in a Bensenville office, sees things differently.

Most Mexicans living in the United States still have property or business in Mexico, he says. At the very least, they send money and are Mexican citizens so they have a right to have representatives who understand their needs.

Mexican voters put an "X" over the party and candidate for whom they are voting.

"These kind of guys (candidates) are aware of the struggling Mexican people have in their life," says Leija, 44. "Maybe the people (in Mexico) don't know as much."

If they are elected, the so-called "immigrant candidates" would represent those needs, says Barcenas, who came to Chicago in 1981 to work in marketing for beer companies like Miller and Stroh's and now has dual Mexican and American citizenship.

"There's no representation," adds 44-year-old Murillo, who crossed into the United States illegally when he was 17 and has lived here permanently since 1985 as a legal resident with a "green card."

"We believe we need that representation," he says.

So Murillo and Barcenas found themselves in an Aurora taco shop one weekday before the election, trying to persuade immigrants to urge relatives to vote for them.

As they handed out yellow campaign flyers, they listed the services they could provide: Helping with immigration, ensuring fathers living in Mexico pay child support, convincing the Mexican congress to give immigrants an absentee vote.

"There are too many problems," Barcenas said that day. "The Mexican people here need too much."

The help likely won't come quickly.

Only one of the candidates living in the United States, Manuel de la Cruz of California, was selected to fill an at-large seat, according to results that became official in August.

Barcenas isn't discouraged.

Already, preparations have begun for the 2006 race.

Murillo, Barcenas and other PRD members in the United States plan to attend the party's national convention in Mexico this fall to lobby for support for immigrant candidates.

They also plan to work with other parties, including the PRI and the National Action Party - traditionally their political rivals - to organize in the United States.

"The more candidates we have on the next ballot, the better for the immigrants," Murillo says.

Already, people from three Mexican states have floated proposals to allow their citizens living in the United States to vote absentee in elections for president, governor and federal office.

Other proposals are more grand.

One, discussed by the International Coalition for Mexicans Abroad and supported by the PRD's immigrant candidates, would lump all Mexicans living in the United States into their own voting district.

"Then we could campaign here, and people could vote right here," Barcenas says.

But if any of it is to become reality, the men agree they have a lot of work to do.

"We have to open up their eyes, because a lot of them (the new Mexican legislators) need to be informed about our struggle," Murillo says.

They may have failed in their first campaign, Barcenas says, but he insists the loss was "a good one."

"I'm satisfied," he says. "We learned what we have to do for next time."