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By Monica Campbell
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Naomi Cadena stood elbow to elbow with her friends in a downtown Mexico City bar last week to watch the final debate in Mexico's hotly contested presidential election. But as the leading candidates Felipe Calderon and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador swapped barbs and took turns calling each other a bald-faced liar, the 29-year-old television producer turned away from the televised slugfest and shook her head. "They aren't debating ideas, there are no concrete proposals, and it's only going to get nastier until voting day," Cadena shouted over the taco-munching, beer-swilling crowd. No wonder, she added, that so many of her friends are turned off on politics and seem loath to back any candidate in the July 2 voting.
It's this alienated attitude that 27-year-old Andres Rivera, founder of Tu Rock es Votar ("Your rock is to vote"), hopes to change. Inspired by the U.S. Rock the Vote campaigns of recent years, Rivera's group is joining other nonprofit youth organizations and MTV Latin America in an unprecedented push to get young Mexicans to the polling booths. Even if the campaign nudges only a small percentage of voters out of their homes on Election Day, it could affect the final outcome. More than 30 million Mexicans currently fall into the 18-to-34 age bracket, according to the Federal Electoral Institute, the government-funded body that regulates municipal, state and federal elections nationwide, and they comprise 45 percent of Mexico's total electorate, up from 37 percent in the country's last presidential election six years ago.
Most polls show that young voters, like most Mexicans, are currently split among three presidential hopefuls: Calderon, a 43-year-old advocate of free-trade economic policies from President Vicente Fox's center-right National Action Party; Obrador, 52, of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, and former state governor Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). And like the rest of the voting public, these twenty- and thirtysomethings are mainly concerned about economic growth, crime, corruption, access to education, and the yawning gap between Mexico's haves and have-nots.
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Opinions vary on the percentage of young voters who, like Naomi Cadena, remain undecided as the campaign enters its final three weeks. Pollster Jorge Buendia of the Ipsos Bimsa research firm in Mexico City puts the figure at around 17 percent, in keeping with other national polls. But Enrique Davis, the 32-year-old founder of the Mexico City-based civic group Fundacion Todos Participando, puts the undecided youth vote at around 40 percent. Davis bases his estimate on what he and the youth movement's network of 8,000 volunteers gleaned from open-forum discussion groups at university campuses and towns throughout Mexico. "We'll ask roomfuls of students if they still haven't picked a candidate, and plenty of hands will go up," says Davis. "There's a lot of indecision out there."
Turnout among young Mexicans has fluctuated widely. In the historic 2000 presidential election, won by Fox, two of every three young Mexicans cast ballots in hopes of ending the authoritarian PRI's 71-year-long reign. But only 30 percent took part in Mexico's 2003 midterm elections, considerably down from the 42 percent average overall. What happened? The euphoria surrounding the 2000 election had mostly evaporated during the intervening three years. Poverty rates hadn't budged, migration to the United States had increased and scandals that would shock most American voters continued to engulf politicians of every stripe.
For activists like Rivera, the poor showing in 2003 was a wake-up call that young people were dropping out of politics just as Mexico's democratic transition was getting underway. Youth organizers refused to blame the low turnout on apathy, however. Instead, argues Davis, young voters felt disconnected from the political process, and that's what this year's youth initiatives hope to address.
Against that backdrop, groups like Tu Rock es Votar have teamed up with Peace Jam, a nonprofit education initiative based in Colorado, and other nonprofit, nonpartisan civic groups like Causa Joven (Youth Cause), to inform young voters about the candidates and their platforms via blogs, e-mail and chat rooms. Some political analysts criticize the movement, saying it only targets urban youth. But the organizers counter that young people now pack Internet cafes in even the remotest Mexican villages. Slogans like "Don't let anyone else decide for you on July 2" adorn everything from billboards to pizza boxes to soda cans, thanks to blue-chip corporate sponsors like Coca-Cola, Burger King and Yahoo! All three political candidates are actively wooing the youth vote. Pollsters agree that a bigger youth turnout wouldn't favor any particular candidate over the others.
The youth-vote mobilization drive has enlisted the help of top-drawer Mexican celebrities. Free rock concerts backed by the United Nations Children's Fund have featured the Mexican pop icons Julieta Venegas and Natalia Lafourcade. Television spots showcase some of the country's hippest actors and rock stars reciting everyday complaints about muggings, poverty and corruption. The ads end with a no-nonsense punch line: "If you don't vote, shut up." Emmanuel Del Real, a.k.a. Meme, the 37-year-old keyboardist for Mexico's most popular rock band, Cafe Tacvba (yes, there's a V instead of a U), decided to participate in the ads on account of the 24/7 commitment that volunteers were putting into the campaign. "There's this excitement about trying to tear down this wall that young people put up when it comes to politics and all the messiness associated with it," says Del Real. "I felt that I was in the right place, doing my part to convince the younger generation to take responsibility for the future of their country. Now let's see if they show up."
The importance of the voto joven (youth vote) is not lost on the candidates. Plenty of campaign promos will be broadcast during the monthlong World Cup soccer tournament. Calderon has launched a youth-oriented line of clothing in his name while Lopez Obrador pledges to create 30 new tuition-free universities. "There are 12 million new potential voters in this election," notes Jesus Ortega, Lopez Obrador's campaign chief. "Reaching them is critical for us." Recently, all five candidates participated in commercial-free, informal conversations in MTV Latin America's Mexico City studios. The interviews aired on both MTV Espanol in the U.S. and MTV Latin America. During the rap sessions, candidates fielded questions from young audience members. But given the unfamiliar nature of the event, the presidential candidates appeared stiff and stumbled when asked about gay rights, a recent movie they liked or the last CD they bought. "Part of all of this," explains Davis, "is just trying to mix things up and break Mexico's stodgy political mold."
It's far from certain what impact the hip youth vote campaign might have on the final result. First-time voter Miguel Angel Rodriguez, 21, a waiter from the capital's poor outskirts who serves coffee in a middle-class Mexico City neighborhood, has seen several Tu Rock es Voter billboards and applauds any effort to convince young people to become involved in the political process. But Rodriguez says that many of his peers in the working-class barrio where he lives are struggling to find their political voice amid the hard times of life on the lower rungs of Mexican society. "I've always felt distant from politics and figured it was best to stay away from the whole process," he says. But Rodriguez found the motivation to vote after a recent series of talks about the upcoming election with his boss and co-workers. He remains unsure about which candidate will end up getting his support, but he vows to make up his mind by the morning of July 2.
Some experts like Dan Lund of the Mexico City-based polling firm Mund Americas question whether young voters will be swayed more by an MTV Latin America broadcast than by spontaneous discussions at work, church or the family dinner table. But in an election where the two front-runners are running neck and neck in the opinion surveys, organizers of Mexico's Rock the Vote campaign are betting that even a modest boost in turnout among the 18-to-34-year-old crowd could tip the scales next month.
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