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US Mexican Votes Affect Two Countries

Mexican Independence Day parade in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood. Pat Nabong / Chicago Sun-Times

Talk about potential electoral clout! Over 37 million people of Mexican origin live in the US, 10.7 million of them Mexican-born. As Jorge Mujica recounts in this week’s interview, Chicago has been a magnet for Mexican migrants for more than a century. Today, at 670,000, it has the second largest Mexican population in the US. According to the most recent census, one out of every five Chicagoans identifies as Mexican.

Roughly half of the Mexicans in the US are eligible to vote, and as the 2024 election looms larger and larger, US politicians from both parties salivate over capturing those and other Latino votes. But another important election is on the horizon — México is also slated to choose a new president and Congress in 2024. These two elections will determine the trajectory of each country on the key cross-border issues of immigration, trade, drugs, and guns. 

While most US voters don’t think about how each country’s policies affect the other, Mexicans do. They have experienced first-hand how policies favoring US corporate interests over the needs of México’s farmers and workers have impoverished and displaced them, creating binational families.

Mujica and other Mexican radical activists follow in the tradition of Ricardo Flores Magón, a revolutionary leader in the democratic movement of 1910. He fled persecution by crossing the border. From within the US, he masterminded uprisings in México while also organizing US workers. Today, Chicago’s Mexicans exert pressure for local and national change. And they passionately support progressive political developments in México. 

In 2024, their votes can make a dramatic difference. That’s why Mujica and his comrades are working tirelessly to get out the vote — for both elections. 

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The Chicago/México Connection

Jorge Mujica has been a visible and vocal leader in Chicago’s Mexican community for decades. He is one of the three conveners of the historic immigrant rights marches in Chicago in 2006. His electoral activism includes running for US Congress in 2009, for Chicago Alderman in 2015, and he currently serves as an alternate Morena diputado in México’s Chamber of Deputies. 

I understand there’s a big Mexican population in Chicago; why is that?

Are Chicago Mexicans active in Mexican politics? Do they vote?

When I got to Chicago in 1988, I found a lot of activity in favor of progressive presidential candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas — even though we didn’t have the right to vote. That’s a story! We didn’t get the right to vote until 1995. And then it was almost impossible to do so: you had to travel to México to register, and then you had to pick up the voting card in person, still in México, three weeks after that. 

Later, Mexicans were allowed to petition for voting cards at the nearest consulate — which might not be very near! — and had to send the ballot by mail to the National Electoral Institute of México. We still have to re-register for every election. I’m an example of how the process doesn’t work. I know the ropes, and I really wanted to vote in 2022. But I failed — just too many hurdles. 

In spite of the difficulties, we keep going. Chicago is México’s US political capital. While Los Angeles has a larger population, they’re not active the way we are. In 2000, we held our own symbolic election. Even though our votes didn’t count, we set up 42 polling places, and 10,000 people voted. We kept doing it after that, and we’ll do it again in 2024.

Rafael Barajas, president of Morena’s National Institute of Political Formation, speaks to Morena Illinois

Mexican law prohibits Mexicans from engaging in political activity abroad, for fear that the US could influence Mexican elections. But in practice, we are active, and it is all in the open, aboveground. México knows we have Morena chapters, and somehow we’ve even been able to send delegates to the Morena convention. We’re recognized, we participate — even if it’s supposedly illegal! 

No one has any idea how many Morena chapters there are, they keep cropping up. 80? 100? 150? We have eight chapters in Chicago alone. Political activism is alive and well.

The Magón brothers at the time of the 1910 Mexican revolution provided radical leadership to Mexicans in the US, and they haven’t been the only ones. Is there radical leadership today?

I was in a communist youth organization in México, and I was influenced by the leftist-led student uprising at Tlatelolco in 1968. When the progressive party, the PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática), was founded in México in 1988, we also founded our own PRD organization in Chicago. To do that, we pulled together eight leftist organizations, eight “tribes.” We succeeded in unifying all into the PRD. 

Most Chicago Mexicans identify with the left. In 2018, AMLO got 69% of the vote in México; he got 78% here. The PRI polled at less than 5%. Why? Because for most Mexicans, neoliberal PRI government policies are the reason they had to emigrate.

Do you think many Mexicans in the US will vote in the 2024 Mexican election? What reforms are they looking for?

We can only vote for the president and senators; we can’t vote for representatives in the Chamber of Deputies, which is like the US House of Representatives. So it seems contradictory that there are Congressional representatives who, like me, are migrants to the US.

How can this be?! In 2021, a suit was filed in México federal court, which asserted that migrants constituted a disadvantaged group, and therefore had a right to affirmative action. The court agreed. So citizens living abroad were included as candidates on the ballots of the different Mexican states. Voters in México elected 11 people living abroad, 10 from the US. I’m an alternative Morena diputado myself. Representatives do not explicitly represent migrants, since we didn’t elect them directly, but there is a relationship between the diputados and the Mexicans who all live in the US.

It looks like Claudia Sheinbaum will be México’s next president. Do you think she’ll be as good as AMLO? 

Claudia is a leftist, AMLO is not. I’ve trusted Claudia since she was 20! Morenistas in Chicago did a poll on the people running to become Morena’s presidential candidate, and Claudia polled at 80%. I believe that she will be able to lead México down the path AMLO charted to a fourth revolutionary transformation.

   NEWS ALERT!

Want to Know More about México?

Is your appetite whetted for more information and analysis? The México Solidarity Project has launched a new web resource — México Solidarity Media. You will find everything you want to know in one place. This English language website provides news, translations of the best Spanish language articles, progressive analyses, multimedia resources, and the Bulletin. Check it out at: https://mexicosolidarity.com

Latin America Stands Up to Israel

This article appeared in Jacobin on 11/12/2023, and has been edited for brevity.

At the demonstration  on October 22, 2023 in México City/LUIS CORTES (REUTERS)

On October 31, Bolivia was the first American nation to announce that it was severing diplomatic relations with Israel. Announcing the decision before the General Assembly of the United Nations, its spokesperson said that Israel “is disrespectful of lives, of peoples, of international and humanitarian law.”

That same day, President Gustavo Petro announced that he was recalling Colombia’s ambassador to Israel. He had written,“We do not support genocides.”

The stance of Bolivia and Colombia, both part of Latin America’s “second wave” of leftist governments, were one thing. But then President Gabriel Boric — decidedly more of a moderate, especially in foreign affairs — announced that Chile, too, was recalling its ambassador. He was succinct in a tweet: “Nothing justifies the barbarity in Gaza. Nothing.” 

Then on November 3, Honduras announced that it, too, was recalling its ambassador. And Argentina stated, “Nothing justifies the violation of international humanitarian law.” Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva echoed the cry heard at marches up and down the region: “This isn’t a war; it’s a genocide.”

México also weighed in. After criticizing as "unacceptable" the United States veto of a Security Council resolution that would have called for a humanitarian pause for the entry of vital supplies to Gaza, Mexico’s Alicia Buenrostro, its United Nations representative, said Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on civilians “could constitute war crimes.” 

Why the Support for Palestine?

Sympathy for the Palestinian cause in Latin America can be explained by two fundamental reasons: a historical sympathy for oppressed and colonized peoples, and Israel’s own history in the region.

Israel has supported a laundry list of the worst names in recent Latin American history, including Rafael Trujillo, Augusto Pinochet, Luis García Meza, Efraín Ríos Montt, Anastasio Somoza, and Jorge Rafael Videla. It trained, armed, and provided intelligence to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile; it kept arms flowing to Nicaragua and El Salvador during arms embargoes; it provided advanced American weaponry to Honduras. It provided military aid to Costa Rican police, to the military junta in Argentina, to right-wing paramilitaries in Columbia, and assisted in the "“Palestiniazation of the Maya population in Guatemala. With memories of dictatorships and state-sponsored massacres still fresh in the region, Israel’s role is not forgotten or forgiven.

Where’s the Democracy?

It is considered axiomatic by world elites that Western democracies are superior to Latin American ones. But lo and behold, it turns out that these “inferior” democracies are doing a much better job of reflecting citizen views. In the United States, a bipartisan majority of 66 percent agrees that its government should call for a cease-fire, but barely 4 percent of the House of Representatives concurs.

The UK is debating whether waving a Palestinian flag is a criminal offense, the French Senate is considering a bill to make insulting the state of Israel a crime, and pro-Palestinian protests are being criminalized and broken up in France and Germany. 

For at a critical moment in the history of this century, it is Latin America — and not the United Nations, European Union, or any other international organization that purports to act in the interests of peace — that is taking the humanitarian lead on the world stage.

Recent news reports and commentaries from progressive and mainstream media on life and struggles on both sides of the US-México border, compiled by Jay Watts.

Mexico’s ruling party appears to have dodged possible desertions in the run-up to 2024 elections Associated Press. As even the AP admits: “In the face of López Obrador’s continued popularity, however, there have been only a few minor defections.”

Pedro Mellado Rodríguez, Ebrard, un peligro para Sheinbaum, AMLO y la 4T sin embargo. Hasta entonces estará claro si el anuncio que hizo Marcelo Ebrard el pasado lunes 13 de noviembre del 2023 fue honesto, verdadero y honrado, cuando aseguró que seguiría en Morena, no sin antes advertir que no renunciaría a su aspiración de ser candidato presidencial en el 2030.

Mexico Slams Texas Anti-Immigrant Measures Telesur English. The new measures will foster hostile environments that can lead to hate acts or crimes against the migrant communities.

Carlos Fernandez-Vega, Mexico SA La Jornada. La tasa oficial de desocupación en el país registra el menor nivel histórico y sólo en lo que va del presente año el número de empleos registrados, hasta octubre pasado, en el IMSS suma cerca de 923 mil plazas, 74 por ciento de las cuales son permanentes.

Dánae Vílchez & Verónica Martínez, The anti-abortion group targeting Mexico’s pregnant women – and children Open Democracy. Vifac and other anti-abortion groups in the region portray themselves online as pro-choice support groups or abortion facilitators, but sources familiar with the group’s activities described pregnant people being misinformed and coerced into continuing their pregnancies.

Alejandro Calvillo, Por qué no al maíz transgénico sin embargo. Sobre el glifosato, se trata de un herbicida declarado por la Organización Mundial de la Salud como posible cancerígeno.

Republicans Want to Invade Mexico Latino Media Collective. Journalist, playwright and MSP member Kurt Hackbarth speaks with WPFW radio’s LMC  about the possible catastrophic consequences of a US invasion of Mexico.

«No hay gobierno que vea y escuche las exigencias de los pueblos»: EZLN des Informémonos. «Se vio que la estructura de cómo se estaba gobernando, de pirámide, no es el camino. No es de abajo, es de arriba. Si el zapatismo fuera sólo el EZLN pues es fácil dar órdenes. Pero el gobierno debe ser civil, no militar,>> dijo en una entrevista-comunicado el Subcomandante Moisés.

Mexican magnate’s firm says it’s too poor to pay US bondholders the tens of millions owed Associated Press. Ricardo Salinas Pliego is a frequent ultra-right wing critic of President AMLO who exalts wealth and capitalism and the sound of his own voice.

Rafael Montes, TEPJF obliga a Dresser a ofrecer disculpa pública a Andrea Chávez por violencia política Milenio. La neoliberal Denise Dresser es una experta favorita de la clase dominante desconectada de México y de los periodistas estadounidenses visitantes, quienes sólo más tarde descubren que sus análisis erróneos son una base inestable sobre la cual construir correspondencia en el extranjero.

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice. We see the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of México as a watershed moment. AMLO and his progressive Morena party aim to end generations of corruption, impoverishment, and subservience to US interests. Our Project supports not just Morena, but all Mexicans struggling for basic rights, and opposes US efforts to undermine organizing and México’s national sovereignty.

Editorial committee: Meizhu Lui, Bruce Hobson, Agatha Hinman, Victoria Hamlin, Courtney Childs.  To give feedback or get involved yourself, please email us!

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