Mezcala de la Asunción would be an improbable campaign spot for a run-of-the-mill presidential hopeful.
Not so for Maria de Jesús Patricio Martínez, the most unconventional contender in the 2018 election race.
Marichuy, as she is better known to the masses, is a traditional healer from Tuxpan, Jalisco who was chosen as the representative of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) to make a bid as independent presidential candidate. She is traveling the country in a preliminary campaign to enlist 866,000 registered voters whose signatures are required to gain a slot on the ballot. It’s an uphill battle, but if she succeeds she will be the first indigenous Mexican since Benito Juárez to seek election for the nation’s top government post.
An enthusiastic crowd of supporters welcomed Marichuy at her December 5 stopover in Mezcala, the Lake Chapala region’s indigenous stronghold. Dressed modestly in a typical hand-embroidered blouse and jeans, the rising political figure arrived at the plaza accompanied by leaders of the local Comuneros association, led by Huehuenches, the town’s traditional masked dancers.
Ascending to the central bandstand kiosk she was introduced by a pair of speakers who detailed the health issues and social woes of the local populace. Marichuy followed, referring in plain talk and measured voice to common problems that impact the well-being of the country’s surviving native tribes: the plundering of their ancestral territories, contamination and hoarding of water resources, destruction of forests, imposition of projects by government and private enterprise without the people’s consent, the terror inflicted by organized crime. “The problems that you suffer here are like those occurring in other indigenous communities,” she observed.
Marichuy currently ranks in third place among the top five contenders for registration as independent presidential candidates. She trails behind Margarita Zavala, wife of former President Felipe Calderón who bailed from the Partido Acción Nacional to seek a candidacy, and Jamie “El Bronco” Rodríguez Calderón, incumbent governor of Nuevo León and the nation’s first state chief executive elected as an independent.
They must all meet the February 12, 2018 deadline to rack up the requisite number of signatures, equivalent to one percent of registered voters, to achieve formal designation as candidates.
Born on December 23, 1963, Marichuy is a Nahua descendant who grew up to become a practitioner of traditional medicine and founder of the La Casa de Salud Calli Tecolhuacateca Tochan, a community health center in Tuxpan. She has gained recognition as an outstanding human rights activist, emerging as a strong female voice in the Zapatista movement. On May 28 of this year, 840 CNI delegates from 60 indigenous communities named her as their national spokeswoman and representative for the 2018 presidential race.
She is campaigning on the CNI’s anti-capitalist platform based on the principles to serve and not self-serve; construct and not destroy; obey and not order; propose and not impose; convince and not conquer; work from below and not seek to climb; represent and not replace. Those ideals are meant to appeal equally to indigenous people relegated to hard-strapped rural communities and to the down-trodden inhabitants of urban centers.
The effervescence Marichuy has sparked at the grassroots level has put her on a distaff par with U.S. presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. A team of her backers will be present at this weekend’s P’urépecha festival in Ajijic to collect signatures from INE card-holders who care to jump on the bandwagon.