Where voters are wooed by tortillas
NEZAHUALCOYOTL, MEXICO— It’s election season in Mexico, which means the hijinks have begun.
Vote-buying, illegal spending and other forms of cheating are so common here that major political parties sometimes reference the phenomenon in their slogans (”Take what the others give, but vote National Action Party!”). Past candidates have been caught wooing voters with handouts of gift cards, eyeglasses, building supplies and even washing machines.
This year, in a rough-and-tumble suburb of Mexico City, it’s all about tortillas.
In Nezahualcoyotl, a working-class city of one million, several dozen tortillarias associated with a left-leaning political party have been selling corn tortillas for half the normal price. On the weekends, many go even further, selling two kilos of tortillas for one —in exchange for the buyer’s name and contact information.
The rest of the city’s tortilla-makers are incensed. They say the party is trying to win over voters illegally, and is hurting their business at the same time.
“It’s impossible for us to compete with this situation,” complained Sergio Jarquin Munoz, a hearty man who owns three tortillarias in “Neza,” as Nezahualcoyotl is known.
It was a cool weekday morning at Jarquin’s small tortilla factory, and members of his staff were pulling perfect round tortillas off a silver conveyor belt. “It’s not fair,” he said, passing a hunk of corn masa, or dough, between his hands like worry beads. He said declining profits already have forced him to let go of three employees.
In recent months, Jarquin and other tortillarias owners have spoken out about what they see as unfair competition, organizing protests and toting signs that warn: “Nezahualcoyotl’s tortilla industry is at risk of bankruptcy!”
The man Jarquin blames for it all is Armando Soto, a congressman from the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, who is running for mayor of Neza in elections to be held July 1. It’s a crowded ballot; voters also will choose new members of Congress as well as a new president.
Soto’s name and picture are featured on large banners hung outside some of the shops offering discount tortillas, along with the phrase: “2018 — let’s do it better.” The shops are painted yellow and black, the PRD’s colours, along with the party’s logo of a rising sun.
Soto insists he is not paying the stores to sell cheaper tortillas and advertise on his behalf. He said he would never try to win over voters with something as basic as a tortilla. “You don’t play with hunger,” he said.
But the owner of the stores selling discount tortillas, Roberto Samano, said a foundation Soto helped create has been providing the tortillarias with support, including upgrading and maintaining equipment. Samano said he is able to offer such cheap prices because of the help, because he buys ingredients in bulk, and because he is content making profits of centavos, instead of pesos, on every kilo of tortillas he sells.
“This has always been a project aimed at helping people who have less,” he said.
Whether or not the tortilla scheme is illegal all comes down to whether the discount tortillarias are designed to influence voters on Soto’s behalf.
Under Mexican election law, political parties and politicians are allowed to give voters gifts, as long as the gift is not meant to influence their votes. The cost of such gifts must be reported to election authorities, and can’t exceed campaign spending limits.
Polling done by University of Texas professor Kenneth Greene, who researches Mexican elections, found that 21 percent of Mexicans were approached with an offer to illegally buy their vote in the 2012 presidential elections. “I think the practice is increasing,” he said.
Greene said the pressure to hand out things to voters often comes from the ground up, in part, he said, because voters are disappointed with elected officials’ performance in office.
“Nobody has been able to seriously deliver,” he said, so “people have been asking for stuff. People say: ‘What are you gonna give me?’”
The government has created several mechanisms to check vote-buying and other illegal election tactics, even creating a special prosecutor for electoral crimes. But violations of those rules are usually punished with fines, and in the past have not been considered grounds for annulling elections.
International observers are worried about the possibility of vote-buying and other fraud in the highly contested presidential election, in which Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is going up against several opposition parties, as well as at least three independent candidates. Pena Nieto fired the electoral prosecutor last fall after he spoke out about an ongoing bribery investigation related to the PRI.
Back in Neza, tortilla-makers say they don’t care whether the tortilla scheme is legal, they just want it to stop.
“They’re playing dirty,” said Sophia Cruz, who owns a corner store called Tortillaria Mexico. She has refused to lower prices for her airy, delicate tortillas, which are famous in these parts. On market days such as today, when street vendors sell their wares on her street, she used to have a line down the block. Now customers come only every few minutes.
It was already a hard time for tortillamakers thanks to hikes in gas and electricity, she said. They’ve also had to compete with the changing diets of Mexicans, who are increasingly choosing foods such as pizza, hamburgers and sushi.
While the going rate for tortillas is about 75 cents (U.S.) for a kilogram, the discounted stores have been selling them for as little as 37 cents a kilogram.
That may not sound like a huge cost difference to some, but it is to many in Mexico, where the minimum wage is only about $4.70 a day.
Customer Cyntia Carina Hernandez Contas, 29, said she had tried the discounted tortillas. She wasn’t turned off by the political connections —she’s used to parties trying to woo her with giveaways —but she didn’t like the taste. She said she has remained loyal to Cruz’s tortillas even if they’re twice the cost.
“They’re thinner than the others,” she said. “It’s worth it.”