Mexican political parties are courting voters living in Texas ahead of the Mexican presidential election.

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DALLAS. In a corner of Oak Cliff’s El Ranchito Mexican restaurant, about 50 leaders of the Mexican-American community gathered for fajitas earlier this month, while members of the Mexican National Action Party launched a campaign to vote for Mexico’s 2024 elections. President elections.

The group was led by Marco Cortés, national president of the centre-right party known in Mexico as PAN. He arrived with his campaign troop and was greeted with hugs and a kiss on the cheek as the mariachis in the background blew their trumpets. He was accompanied by former 2018 presidential candidate Ricardo Anaya and Mexico City’s first migrant congressman, Raul Torres.

Nearly half of all immigrants in Texas – about 2.5 million people – are from Mexico, and they represent a huge pool of potential votes for Mexico’s political parties. All Mexican citizens can vote from abroad in the presidential election, but only a small proportion registered to vote in previous elections, and even fewer actually voted in Mexico’s elections.

Cortes and other PAN officials see this as an opportunity worth seizing as the party challenges President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Moren Party. Morena changed four states in last year’s gubernatorial election and now holds 20 of Mexico’s 32 gubernatorial posts.

At an event in Dallas, the party launched its first “Comité Azul de Acción Migrante” — or Blue Migrant Action Committee — a network of Mexican migrants in the US that encourages others to join the party and helps out with voters ahead of elections.

One: Former 2018 presidential candidate Ricardo Anaya addresses leaders of Dallas’ Mexican business community at El Ranchito Mexican Restaurant in Oak Cliff on February 6, 2023. Last: Raul Torres (right), Mexico City’s first migrant congressman, receives applause after speaking at the “Comité Azul de Acción Migrante” event. Credit: Jaime Carrero for The Texas Tribune.

Nearly 11 million Mexican citizens live outside the country, and most of them live in the United States.

“[Mexican migrants] have a voice,” Cortez said, “and the ability to influence and advise their family who live in Mexico.”

Texas has “a huge concentration of migrants, and that’s why we’re here,” said Juan Hernandez, former coordinator for the Mexican Office of Mexicans Abroad during Vicente Fox’s presidency. Hernandez, who also runs a migrant relief office in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, said the party is “promoting voting for Texans who are Mexican citizens because they need to be informed of their rights.”

According to Ariel Ruiz Soto, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, the number of Mexicans eligible to vote in the US has doubled since 2005, a milestone widely celebrated by political leaders in the country’s most recent presidential election. The unbiased think tank is based in Washington DC and tracks trends in immigration data around the world.

In the last Mexican presidential election in 2018, more than 80% of the nearly 182,000 Mexican migrants who voted from abroad lived in the US, according to Mexico’s national election agency. Morena received over half of the overseas vote in this election, while support for the PAN among expatriate voters declined for the second straight election.

But despite the support he has received from those voters, López Obrador and his party are wondering if independent agencies like the Federal Electoral Institute, a non-partisan agency that runs elections in Mexico and creates polling stations for Mexicans living abroad, are needed. .

López Obrador, who cannot run for re-election under Mexican law, argued that the Federal Electoral Institute was costing the country too much and pushed for the agency’s budget to be cut.

At a Dallas restaurant adorned with a portrait of the Virgin Mary, colorful papier-mâché decorations and red roses, Cortez addressed the audience in Spanish and warned that the president’s left party was trying to limit the voting rights of Mexicans abroad — calling it a “risk to democracy.” .

Morena’s federal congressman Hamlet Almaguer said the party is in favor of giving voters abroad more opportunities to vote. Almaguer said the party has a close relationship with Mexican citizens in the US and that other members of Morena’s Congress regularly visit cities like Los Angeles and Chicago.

“It would be very important to get citizens involved abroad and encourage voting ahead of 2024,” he said. “It will be important for our party to organize a campaign abroad and guarantee the massive participation of Mexicans abroad.”

Cortez told a gathering in Dallas that he believes the 2021 constitutional reform has the potential to expand his party’s U.S. voting bloc. The law guarantees Mexican citizenship – and the right to vote in Mexican elections – to all descendants of Mexican citizens, not just the first generation. born outside of Mexico. This means that there will be more voters in the US who will be able to vote.

In previous elections, Mexican citizens residing in the United States or elsewhere could only vote by absentee ballot by mail. In the state elections, Mexicans living abroad were allowed to vote electronically using their voter IDs by logging into an online system created by the Federal Electoral Institute, which opens around September, a year before the election.

The agency has yet to determine voting rules for the 2024 presidential election, but Cesar Ledesma, secretary of Mexico’s federal voter register, said Mexicans abroad would have three options: by mail, electronically, and in person at a Mexican consulate. or the embassy.

“Easier voting for those abroad gives those who have left the country the opportunity to continue to play an active role in caring for their families and friends back home,” said Lidice Edith Sanabria, a participant originally from Cuernavaca, Mexico, who is member of a group of Mexican women in Dallas-Fort Worth who campaign for women’s rights.

Sanabria said many Mexican citizens living in the US struggle to feel connected to their home country.

Ruiz, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, agrees. “For a long time, many Mexican immigrants to the US felt marginalized from Mexican politics despite having made such a significant economic contribution,” he said.

Mexicans living in the US sent a record $58 million back to Mexico in 2022, more than 13% more than in 2021, according to the Bank of Mexico.

With the huge increase in potential voters due to the 2021 reforms, PAN is planning more events across the US. The party plans to visit and open more migrant action committees in cities where large numbers of Mexican migrants have registered to vote, including Chicago and Los Angeles. and New York ahead of the presidential election.

“Perhaps the Mexican population abroad will not have a decisive vote in the elections of the upcoming presidential cycle,” Ruiz said. But if we want to improve [outreach abroad] for the future, every step now matters.”