To many of Mexico's poor, election a setback

MEXICO CITY -- For millions of Mexico City's poorest residents, the recent presidential election was about hope. They flocked to vote for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, their former mayor, who championed the downtrodden and made them feel they had a savior.

But with official results giving a narrow victory to his conservative opponent, Felipe Calderón, those expectations have been dashed for now, unless a recount demanded by López Obrador proves him the winner.

Yesterday afternoon, hundreds of thousands of López Obrador loyalists, including many who marched from other states, converged on the capital's historic Zócalo plaza to vent their frustrations and show solidarity with their hero. In a sea of banners, they shook their fists and tooted kazoos, chanting ``Vote by Vote!" and ``Obrador! Presidente," pledging to protest until all 41 million votes are recounted.

López Obrador vowed to file legal appeals to the electoral court today and called for peaceful nationwide marches to the capital from every voting district starting Wednesday.

Local security officials estimated the crowd at 280,000.

Addressing the throng, López Obrador denounced ``an economic and political power group that is used to winning at any cost without any scruples. The country doesn't matter to them, and even less the suffering of the majority of Mexican people."

His attack on class divisions struck an emotional chord with his followers, some of whom cried as they pressed against metal barricades to cheer their candidate. ``They stole our votes, and I feel so impotent," said a weeping Norma Zambrano Falcón, 31, a housewife. Zambrano said López Obrador helped her family in ways no politician ever had when he was mayor, extending low-interest home loans to two sisters, high school scholarships to three nephews, and a pension to her elderly father.

``They manipulated the vote count because he's humble like us, and he wants to help the poor," she said. ``We know he won, and we've got to fight beside him."

López Obrador has alleged tens of thousands of counting irregularities at the polls. Calderón's initial margin of victory was halved last week when votes were checked from 2,600 polling stations, and López Obrador has demanded the court recount every ballot. A legal battle could drag on until September, but with strict rules governing when ballot boxes can be opened, it seems a long shot that he could snatch victory.

Some analysts blame the candidate for whipping up expectations and assuring followers of victory. After Calderón's advantage was confirmed Thursday afternoon, women sobbed in front of López Obrador's party headquarters, and one pushed her way through a crowd to weep on the candidate's shoulder.

This city of 9 million is carved up by stark disparities, from high security walls fronting the mansions of Las Lomas neighborhood to the ramshackle hovels and disintegrating apartment blocks of Iztapalapa. And last Sunday's vote divided largely along income lines.

Calderón, a lawyer and economist with a public administration degree from Harvard, promised business-friendly free market policies, and his apparent win has buoyed Mexican markets and currency.

If his victory is confirmed by the electoral tribunal, the challenge for Calderón, who received 15 million votes, will be to earn the trust of the 26 million people who cast ballots for his opponents and 30 million registered voters who didn't go to the polls. He vowed in his victory speech ``to work without rest to achieve equality of opportunities that will permit millions of Mexicans to overcome poverty."

But for low-income working people such as vegetable seller Margarita García, promises of macroeconomic stability and low interest rates mean nothing if you can't qualify for a bank loan.

García used to struggle to pay $72 a month to rent a tiny room that shared a communal bathroom with a dozen others. Under the low-income housing program López Obrador launched as mayor, she got a 30-year loan to buy a one-room apartment. She pays $16 a month in mortgage and has her own bathroom, she said proudly.

López Obrador ``gave me a leg up; I know I can make it now," said García, 61, who earns $9 a day.

Like much of Latin America, Mexico is beset by gaping income inequalities, where half of the population of 103 million subsist in poverty while the top 10 percent enjoy 43 percent of the country's consumption, according to the National Statistics Institute. About 12 million Mexicans have crossed the US border in search of better-paying jobs, while the country has at least 10 billionaires.

Against that backdrop, López Obrador, a former Indian-welfare officer from the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, was elected mayor in 2000 on a platform of expanding social programs.

Millions benefited from his housing loans, universal basic pensions for the elderly, aid to single mothers and the disabled, free breakfasts and school supplies in elementary schools, expanded health services, and microcredit business loans.

His administration undertook ambitious public works, adding 45 subway trains, a metro bus system, and an elevated highway. It built 16 new high schools, a new university, and the first new public hospital since 1986, according to official data.

Critics say he was a free-spending populist who threw money at the poor rather than spurring private investment to create high-paying jobs. His administration was pilloried for a lack of transparency in accounting and for allowing an explosion in unlicensed taxi drivers and street vendors.

López Obrador's detractors said that if he were elected president, his programs would burden the state with debt and welfare dependency.

Calderón, of the National Action Party, or PAN, stumped for more and better-paying jobs and loans, and said he would help the poor by extending scholarships and healthcare and discounting utility bills. He won the support of conservative low-income people who believed López Obrador was a danger to the state, and from those who have received aid from the current PAN administration of President Vicente Fox.

But García's family is dubious. One of García's six children, Vicente Razo García, 30, a former manual laborer, got a $900 microcredit loan to start a salsa business, and now earns $363 a month. And he studies part-time at the University of Mexico City, established by López Obrador's government.

His sister, Blanca Rosa Razo García, 37, used to live with her three children in a rat-infested plywood shanty without a toilet or enough water to wash daily. Desperate, she was at the point of turning to prostitution, she confided.

One night, she slept in front of the mayor's office among 200 other petitioners. At 6 a.m., when López Obrador arrived, she told her story. The mayor sent city workers to help her apply for $30 in monthly assistance as a single mother, and a housing credit. Six months later, she was approved for a $64-per-month month loan.

``I've never heard of anything the PAN has done for the downtrodden," she said bitterly. ``The truth is, the chances we the poor had to better our lives are gone now. We're just lost, we have no hope anymore."