Indian village triumph marked Mexico leftist

TUCTA, Mexico, Mar 8: Mexican presidential favourite Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was 24 when he came to this tiny Chontal Indian village and transformed it from a bug-infested swamp into a bustling handicrafts centre.

Poor villagers, unable to speak Spanish, watched with amazement as the fresh-faced political science graduate moved into a mud hut and spent the next few years digging drainage canals, planting crops and teaching handicrafts.

Nearly 30 years on, the man they call a hero is challenging the hold of Mexico's oldest political party on the votes of the underclass and leading opinion polls to be the next president in the July 2 election.

''They say a man like that who fights for the poor is born once in 100 years,'' said Trinidad de la Cruz Hernandez, 77, who moved from a shabby wooden hut to a pretty cement house after Lopez Obrador got him carving cedar wood drums and masks.

A shopkeeper's son from a scruffy nearby town where many struggle to pay their grocery bills, Lopez Obrador decided to base himself in Tucta after being made head of Tabasco state's Indigenous Institute in 1977.

''In 70 years the government did nothing for us. But Andres lived among us and changed our lives. With him as president it would be a different Mexico,'' said de la Cruz Hernandez.

Many low-income Mexicans feel the same, from rural indigenous villages to grimy Mexico City neighbourhoods where, as the capital's mayor, Lopez Obrador gave pensions to the old.

Mexico's business class worries, however, that Lopez Obrador's left-wing policies could destabilise the economy. Some critics call him a dangerous demagogue who will swell the country's debt.

But millions see him as the first politician to care about the poor in a country where, despite huge oil riches, one in five people cannot afford to eat properly.

''He has not just talked the talk, he's walked the walk during his five years with the Chontals,'' said George Grayson of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, author of a new book on the presidential candidate.

''He identified with the people. He would work side-by-side with them on whatever project was underway,'' he said.

HISTORIC FOES

Nationally, the conservative ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon has strong backing from the rich and the middle class.

But all three candidates are vying for the support of Mexico's poor majority.

In that battle, Lopez Obrador, 52, is luring many away from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled for 71 years until 2000. The PRI's party machine still holds sway in poor towns across Mexico, but its candidate, Roberto Madrazo, is trailing in opinion polls. The contest between Lopez Obrador and Madrazo throws together two old political foes, both born in Tabasco, who battled for the state's governorship in 1994.

Madrazo won the election but Lopez Obrador claimed massive fraud. Animosity between the two camps in Tabasco is still as heated as the eponymous pepper sauce.

''Lopez Obrador is a Communist. We saw what the left did in Russia and Cuba, we don't want that here,'' said market trader Antonio Zavalete, 71, at a recent PRI rally in Tabasco.

''I've been voting PRI for 50 years, I'm not changing now.'' The PRI represents stability for millions who have never voted any other way. Although it lost power in 2000, its nationalistic red, green and white colours are daubed all over towns where families depend on the party for building permits or public services.

''Madrazo is already our leader. We've been waiting years for him to be president,'' said poultry wholesaler Maria Martinez at a rally in Cardenas, an hour's drive from Tucta.

Analysts see the Tabascan vote split in half between the smooth-talking Madrazo, and Lopez Obrador, who has an austere lifestyle and drives a beat-up Nissan car.

Nationally, though, Lopez Obrador holds a clear advantage over his rival, helped by his pension plans, attacks on the free-market reforms of the last two decades, and a new shift to the left across much of Latin America.

Lopez Obrador's supporters say the PRI's grip on towns and villages across the country, based in part on decades of patronage and corruption, is collapsing.

''The PRI used people to get votes. People would sell themselves for a kilo of beans,'' said Sebastian Seferino, 42, from the Chontal town of Nacajuca.

Seferino says he lost his water plant job under the local PRI government when he joined protests in the 1990s, led by Lopez Obrador, over toxic spills from oil wells and pipelines.

''There is still support for the PRI but the opposition is louder. People are smarter. Lopez Obrador taught indigenous people they have rights,'' he said.

Tucta is still poor, but Lopez Obrador's programmes brought basic services, literacy and employment. Most people have roomy homes and several went to university and got good jobs. Many are artisans or take tourists on boat trips on canals lined with blossom trees and banana plants.

''Before, we had houses made from sticks. We hardly ever ate meat. We were rejected and cut off because we couldn't speak Spanish,'' said Argelia de la Cruz, who runs a library where children are poring over books.

''When Andres arrived we took no notice of him, we thought he was crazy. But he woke us up. Now people can speak Spanish and defend their rights. Everyone will vote for him.''

REUTERS