CHIMALHUACAN, Mexico — "How many of you have relatives on the other side of the border?" the guest from California asked 200 fellow Mexicans at a political rally here.
At least 50 hands went up and the visitor, newly energized, railed against the plight of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. "Migrants are treated like criminals there," Jose Jacques Medina declared, and they need one of their own -- namely, himself -- to represent them in the Mexican Congress.
Days earlier, Alberto Alvarez greeted vendors in a Mexico City street market, schmoozing with a faint Chicano accent acquired in Connecticut. The candidate's selling point sounded even more foreign -- accountability.
"Tired of electing candidates and not hearing from them again?" he asked, taking down each voter's address. "I will write and tell you where to find me. I will not disappear."
The veteran Los Angeles County labor organizer and the young New Haven real estate agent are pioneers on Mexico's campaign trail. They are among half a dozen congressional candidates seeking to give the country's diaspora, including as many as 27 million people in the U.S., a voice in governing Mexico.
Three of the candidates, including Jacques and Alvarez, have a chance of winning seats in a legislature where only one returning migrant has ever served before.
As the July 6 election nears, these outsiders are stirring up the campaign with American ideas -- and meeting some resistance.
Jacques, for example, took his own party to court, claiming bias against migrant candidates.
Alvarez, meanwhile, has been labeled a pocho -- slang for an Americanized Mexican caught between two cultures -- by his political foes. During a radio debate, one of his rivals declared: "I do not come from abroad to impose solutions."
For decades, Mexicans who went north were scorned at home, branded as traitors by governments deeply suspicious of the U.S. That prejudice has been eroded by the flood of migrants and the remittances they send home -- about $10 billion last year.
A law that took effect in 1998 allowed Mexicans who had become citizens of other countries to regain their nationality and property rights in their homeland. Mexicans in the U.S. suddenly were able to see their potential as a force for democratic change south of the border. But they have made few inroads.
