Macuspana, Tab. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, candidate of the Progressive Movement, vowed to "liberate" the people of Mexico from the crisis that is, to win the race. Day / Carlos Ramos Mamahua
By DAMIEN CAVE
GUADALAJARA, Mexico — It is essentially a battle, cynical commentators joke, between the Pretty Boy, the Quinceañera Doll and the Tired Has-Been.
Mexico’s presidential campaign has begun, and the disdain seeping from these common descriptions of the three main candidates reflects what experts say are low expectations. Mexican voters, polls show, have been losing faith in democracy as their nation teeters between modern success and violent failure.
This is a country of conflicting messages, of economic growth and decapitated heads. It is the United States’ third-largest trading partner and a majority middle-class country, but one held back by corruption, impunity, poverty, red tape, monopolies and a culture of discomfort with confrontation.
Whoever wins on July 1 will inherit a Mexico disillusioned and stuck, caught between forces of the past that resist change and the frustration of those who have begun to expect more from their leaders.
Crime in particular requires immediate attention. More than 50,000 people have died in drug-related killings since late 2006, and the justice system is a farce: more than 98 percent of crimes go unpunished, according to studies of government data.
“Mexico is at a crossroads in terms of dealing with organized crime,” said Pamela K. Starr, an expert on Mexican politics at the University of Southern California. Referring to the current president, Felipe Calderón, she said: “It’s quite clear that the government absolutely must confront organized crime, and it’s absolutely clear that the Calderón strategy hasn’t worked.”
The country’s oil sector also needs an overhaul to turn around the money-losing, state-owned monopoly, Pemex, and bring in private investment to develop new reserves. Meanwhile, declining illegal immigration to the United States has the potential to alter the dynamics of American-Mexican relations.
Most voters, accustomed to unresponsive government after decades of single-party rule, do not expect even most of these challenges to be addressed.
And yet, the candidates’ first official campaign events on Friday revealed more than might have been expected — about their sales pitches and personalities, at least. Policy proposals were less forthcoming. But this year’s race is shorter because of new laws (which even ban negative campaign ads), so for all three contenders the past few days were the start of a three-month sprint to Election Day, during which they must answer the core questions of their candidacies.
Enrique Peña Nieto, the telegenic front-runner sometimes called the Pretty Boy (or Gel Boy because of his styled hair), needs to persuade voters that he represents a new, corruption-free Institutional Revolutionary Party, or P.R.I., the party that ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000. But can he prove he is not just a handsome meringue atop an old authoritarian party?
Josefina Vázquez Mota, a former education secretary under the current president, has perhaps a greater challenge. She has been called the Quinceañera Doll because she is always smiling, but her party — the P.A.N., or National Action Party — has been in charge for 12 years, a time of rising violence and continued corruption. Can she convince Mexicans that she represents a break from her party and become the country’s first female president?
And even for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a liberal former mayor of Mexico City who lost the last election in 2006 by 0.6 percentage points, the past and future compete. The oldest of the candidates, sometimes called the Tired Has-Been, he must answer the question of whether he has put aside the radical populism of his last campaign to govern as a moderate.
Much Hope, Few Details
Green neon glow sticks and oversize beach balls flew through the air — along with some young supporters who crowd-surfed on the outstretched arms of their friends and fellow fans, who all wore white in well-organized solidarity.
“It’s the color of hope,” said Ricardo Sánchez, 21, smiling with a bunch of friends just steps from a mariachi band. “We’ve got a lot of hope in this guy.”
Even before Mr. Peña Nieto, 45, appeared at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, the first moment he could legally begin campaigning, the rally in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, felt more like a victory party than a campaign kick-off. Thousands of supporters filled one of the city’s main squares to hear a speech that was heavy on promises and light on details about how those goals would be achieved.
Criticizing blights like poverty, insecurity and corruption, offering change and “light and hope” (the cue for supporters to point their flashlights in the air), Mr. Peña Nieto played to the crowd’s emotions. “Many people’s lives are afflicted by worry,” he said. “And what’s worse, they’re living in fear.”
He pledged to make Mexico safe and prosperous. And with a big smile, he praised Mexican women for their strength, then publicly signed a poster listing his major promises.
It was part of an expansive, orchestrated show of confidence. Rallies for P.R.I. candidates were also held at midnight in other major cities. And over the Easter holiday, the party plans to set up dozens of sports kiosks nationwide giving out inflatable soccer goals, soccer balls, hats and other party paraphernalia.
Some analysts described the campaign as a throwback to the classic giveaway politics of what the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa once called “the perfect dictatorship” because the P.R.I. maintained control with mass mobilizations, not ideology, through the cover of democratic elections. Others, however, said that over the last 12 years when it was out of power, the P.R.I. has come to recognize that with Mexico more democratic, the party can fulfill its promise of effective government only with a landslide victory, not just for president but also in the legislature.
“The modern P.R.I. understands that it needs legislative leaders in congress who actually know how to deal with legislation and know how to persuade members and bargain with others,” said Jorge I. Domínguez, a Latin American studies professor at Harvard.
Indeed at least for now, Mr. Peña Nieto seems to be benefiting from the fact that to many people he looks nothing like the P.R.I. of old — even though he is a wealthy former governor of Mexico State, with P.R.I. leaders for relatives.
“He is good-looking,” said María Alonzo Barragán, 52, as the candidate moved through the crowd. “But he is also honest, responsible and hard-working.”
Promising a Difference
Ms. Vázquez Mota also started her campaign early Friday, with a smaller rally at her party headquarters in Mexico City, where she immediately argued that the P.R.I.’s years of control “are still holding us back.” Her campaign slogan — “Josefina Diferente, Presidenta 2012” — also signaled to voters, perhaps with a wink, that she was not like those other guys in her party, Mr. Calderón and his predecessor, Vicente Fox.
She is not just a woman, her campaign suggests. She is a woman who understands struggle, having grown up in a shabby one-story home that she visited for breakfast on Friday morning. And, her first day on the trail aimed to show she is a woman ready to listen.
“What would you like to see different?” she asked again and again on Friday, in a classroom of second graders at the school she attended as a child. “If we work hard, all dreams are possible.”
Speaking to the adults, mostly women, she also made clear that while Mr. Peña Nieto was most comfortable speaking in platitudes, she preferred to address issues that hit closer to home. Her promises were those that she, as a working mother of three, knew they wanted to hear: a full school day with afternoon activities so that children could play sports, learn an instrument, read more books and do their homework; a little more help so that overtaxed families could “share time together.”
That message sounded fresh and appealing to some.
“If you know how to run a house, why can’t you run a country?” said Laura Rodríguez, 35, a single mother of three, who said she had been persuaded on the spot to vote for Ms. Vázquez Mota. “Men are always first; where is the space for women, who are always left behind?”
And yet, if Ms. Vázquez Mota, 51, can win only by proving how different she really is, are after-school programs enough? Luis de la Calle, an economist and a former under secretary of international trade, said Ms. Vázquez Mota and Mr. López Obrador could overcome Mr. Peña Nieto’s strong lead only by making bold proposals. “The average Mexican is a lot more modern than our politicians,” he said. “The average Mexican is willing to hear more about Mexican taboos like reforming the energy sector or really changing the tax system.”
The four points in Ms. Vázquez Mota’s platform sounded a lot like the five promises of Mr. Peña Nieto. Both candidates emphasized the need for a more transparent, functioning justice system, for jobs, for improving Mexico’s image abroad.
The difference, some of Ms. Vázquez Mota’s supporters said, was that she could be trusted to follow through. “How many years of the P.R.I. did we have?” Ms. Rodríguez asked. “I trust that Josefina will change the direction of things.”
Measured Populism
Workers. Love. And change.
Mr. López Obrador, 59, wearing no tie or sport coat, pounded the podium while sweating profusely under a scorching sun in his hometown of Macuspana, in Tabasco State, on Friday, as if he were determined to disprove his recent admission that he has “less vigor” now, during his second run for president.
The other candidates, he said, “represent the same thing.” Only his campaign represented the alternative of “honesty, justice and love, lots of love.”
Tabasco and other southern states gave Mr. López Obrador lots of love in 2006. Poverty is worse in the region than in other places, and voters are more open to the leftist ideas of Mr. López Obrador and his Party of the Democratic Revolution. But even in friendly territory, he seemed to sway between his brand of populism and the more moderate approach that analysts say he must adopt to climb from third place, where he has stagnated for months in opinion polls.
He has toned down his campaign slogan, from “For the good of everyone, the poor come first,” to the less confrontational “Real change is in your hands.” He also pledged to revitalize the economy by focusing on the working class, suggesting that he saw work, perhaps even more than government aid, as a vital tool for lifting Mexicans from poverty.
He still refuses to acknowledge his loss in 2006, insisting it was fraud. He told voters that one of the country’s biggest challenge was to make sure that the election results can be trusted.
The families of crime victims may have other priorities, but the crowd of thousands in Tabasco said they would stand with him, even it meant a repeat of the street protests that nearly shut down Mexico City after he disputed the 2006 results. “The whole country is willing to unite in defending the ballot boxes,” said Francisca Policroniades, 72.
That message may not be the most persuasive. “Andrés Manuel still carries a lot of negatives from dragging on the last campaign,” said María Elena Morera, of the nonpartisan civic group Citizens for a Common Cause. “He kept campaigning for a long time after that, and that generated a lot of wear and tear that’s not a problem for the other candidates.”
The real test for all three candidates will come with undecided voters, who make up nearly a third of the electorate, polls say. Whether they vote may say more about the state of Mexican democracy than whoever wins.
“A great leap forward,” Ms. Starr said, “demands that Mexican society suddenly comes to accept the reality that in a democracy you have a right and a responsibility to hold your leaders responsible.”
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