'The Rooster' plays for people power

In his bid to win Mexico's presidential election Sunday, leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador can count on a secret weapon: the yellow dune buggy stuffed with campaign fliers that volunteer activist Raul Esquivel drives to rural hamlets surrounding this town in southern Mexico.

The senior citizens of Mexico City are Lopez Obrador's secret weapon too. They clip out newspaper articles to make campaign fliers, and write songs about their hero - Lopez Obrador's nickname is "the rooster"- that they'll sing to anyone who will listen.

For two years, Lopez Obrador and his supporters have been preparing for this moment: the homestretch of a campaign in which thousands of grass-roots volunteers and a seasoned party apparatus have the chance to make history and bring the left to power in Mexico for the first time.

Holding a narrow lead in most pre-election polls, Lopez Obrador and his Democratic Revolution Party (PRD in Spanish) are counting on people power to carry them to victory over the better-funded campaign of conservative Felipe Calderon, whose big-media buys mirror U.S. campaign tactics.

"There was a time when all the PRD did was get people to fill up the plazas for rallies," said Gumercindo Toledo Diaz, a longtime party activist in Morelos state, which includes Amacuzac, a rural municipality with about 18,000 residents. "But those people don't all vote. We've learned that you win by getting people to the polls on Election Day."

Of the three major parties fighting in the election, Calderon's National Action Party, or PAN, has the smallest network of grass-roots organizations.

PAN leaders believe a massive, last-minute media buy will sway the estimated 10 percent to 15 percent of voters who remain undecided. At least three different television spots this week warn voters of a financial meltdown should Lopez Obrador be elected.

But PAN is not ignoring the impoverished masses, either. In rural Mexico, the party is counting on the network of support built by Calderon campaign manager Josefina Vasquez Mota, who was Secretary of Social Development under President Vicente Fox. That Cabinet position gave Vasquez Mota access to innumerable contacts among rural leaders.

"Campaigns are like wars - you start them from the air, but you win them on the ground, with infantry," said pollster Maria de las Heras, whose poll for the Mexico City newspaper Milenio gave Lopez Obrador a lead of 5 percentage points last week.

At least on paper, the best ground operation belongs to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. During seven decades in power, the PRI perfected the system of voter coercion by which gifts, cash payments and threats of aid cutoffs cajoled poor people into casting votes for the ruling party.

But after its umbilical to federal coffers was cut by the election of PAN's Fox in 2000, the PRI's influence diminished rapidly in many areas of the country. The party's candidate, Roberto Madrazo, lags in third place under the taint of corruption charges.

Last week, a federation of 30 unions that once was a bulwark of the PRI threw its endorsement to Lopez Obrador.

In Amacuzac, where the PRI controls the local government, residents say Election Day or Election Eve gifts have been a local tradition, and the PAN appears to have stepped into the gift-giver role. The party organized a big lunch recently in Amacuzac.

"Everyone went to that," said Catalina Estrada Delgado, a 47-year-old grandmother and undecided voter. In a region with as much poverty as hers, few people can afford to turn down a freebie.

Later, the Lopez Obrador ground troops rolled into town. The two dozen activists included Esquivel (who earns his living as an electrician), his wife, Maria Elena Caspeta; a one-time California cherry-picker named Ricarda Bahena and Ana Laura Castillo, a 27-year-old single mom who brings her 5-year-old daughter. (next page »)