EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Almost six years ago, a twice-failed populist candidate came to Juarez to launch a third bid for the presidency of Mexico.
“We begin our campaign here, in Ciudad Juarez, where our homeland begins, where (President Benito) Juarez found refuge while fighting conservatives and (foreign) invaders,” Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said during that 2018 stop at Juarez Monument Park.
On Saturday, the woman the president of Mexico has endorsed to take over the reins of the United States’ largest trading partner and neighbor to the south will be in Juarez trying to follow in his footsteps.
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo has scheduled a 4 p.m. rally at Juarez Monument Park that is expected to draw thousands, said Cuauhtemoc Estrada, coordinator of the MORENA Party in the Chihuahua legislature.
“Doctora Claudia,” as her supporters call the environmental scientist and former Mexico City mayor, kicks off her campaign Friday afternoon in the Mexican capital and flies to Juarez the next day. It’s a move to show the importance she places on the border, supporters said.
“Chihuahua and Juarez are very important to her, and she is here to show that,” said Pedro Torres Estrada, a MORENA Party member and candidate for the Chihuahua legislature.
Sheinbaum is in a three-way race many analysts say will result in Mexico electing its first woman president. Sheinbaum heads a three-party coalition (MORENA, Green Ecologist Party, and Workers Party) competing against Xochitl Galvez (PAN, PRI, PRD) and Jorge Alvarez of Movimiento Ciudadano.
The latest polls published by leading Mexico City newspapers El Universal and El Financiero give Shainbaum a lead of between 16 and 23 percentage points over Galvez, with Alvarez, a last-minute stand-in, in single digits.
Galvez begins her campaign in Zacatecas, a state ravaged by drug cartel violence and a symbol of Lopez Obrador’s failures, members of Galvez’s National Action Party (PAN) say.
“AMLO came here six years ago with great fanfare, but the federal government has forgotten Juarez. We have no hopes things will be different with Sheinbaum,” said Alberto Vela, secretary general of PAN in Juarez.
Opposition leaders are worried about the lack of federal infrastructure spending – new highways, better export venues – and the exponential growth of organized crime many attribute to AMLO’s “Hugs, not bullets” hands-off approach to the cartels.
PAN made history in Juarez, ending decades of one-party rule by the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) in the mayoral office in 1983 and in state government in 1992. That MORENA now rules the city fits in Lopez Obrador’s ongoing jabs at conservatives.
Vela and other PAN sympathizers said Galvez will likely be in Juarez in mid-March.
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