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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2005 
López Obrador Meets With Bustamente
 Wire services
| | President Vicente Fox, reviews the troops during the Independence Day parade in the capital’s Zocalo on Friday. |
Although Andrés Manuel López Obrador was prohibited from going to United States to campaign with Mexican migrants earlier this week, he traveled to Tijuana on Friday and met with California's Lieutenant Gov. Cruz Bustamente.
Bustamente, who is of Mexican descent, said he supported López Obrador's bid for the nation's presidency next year with the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and slammed California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's policies which have been perceived as anti-immigrant.
López Obrador had scheduled a private meeting Thursday with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and a news conference on Friday, Mexican Independence Day.
But he canceled the trip after a federal election official said the visit could violate Mexican campaign rules.
At stake was a chance to address as many as 100,000 Mexicans who were expected to gather Thursday night in Los Angeles to celebrate Independence Day. Mexicans living abroad will be eligible for the first time next year to cast ballots by mail in a presidential election back home.
The political scuffle did not play well north of the border. Mexicans in Los Angeles, disappointed about the canceled visit, said it seemed foolish to give them the right to vote but not the right to see and hear candidates.
"For us, it's the same kind of politics that we left behind," said José Medina, a community organizer in Los Angeles. The electoral institute, he said, "is acting like la migra (immigration enforcement). They're not giving a visa to him to cross the border. They are building more borders instead of opening them." |
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