Strong vote for recount in Mex. elex

"They say that history repeats itself, but this time it is not going to happen because we are not going to allow it," said Víctor Hugo Lozano, a 42-year-old restaurant worker from Oaxaca, Mexico.

On Thursday, Lozano took part in a "Vigil for Democracy" at the Mexican consulate in Manhattan. Participants in the vigil demanded a vote-by-vote recount of the July 2 Mexican presidential election results.

"The Mexican community [here] wants to be sure that there is still some democracy in Mexico," said Joel Magallán, a Jesuit brother who is executive director of Asociación Tepeyac, a Mexican advocacy group that organized the vigil.

Lozano and Magallán were referring to the fact that according to the official count, left-winger Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, lost the presidential contest by 0.6% to conservative Felipe Calderón, of the National Action Party (PAN), the party in power. PAN is the favorite of Washington and the Mexican business class.

They also were talking about how López Obrador's followers are sure that massive fraud was committed.

"It is not the first time," Lozano added. "It also happened in 1988, when the Institutional Revolutionary Party, in power those days, stole the election from Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas."

The 1988 election story is a sordid one. Cárdenas, the Party of the Democratic Revolution candidate, was ahead in the vote count against Carlos Salinas de Gortari, of Institutional Revolutionary Party. Then, in the middle of the night, the computer system at election headquarters crashed. When it was restored hours later, Salinas - one of Mexico's most reviled public figures - was declared the winner.

Those days, López Obrador was one of the main architects of the Cárdenas' campaign.

Today in Mexico City, hundreds of thousands of López Obrador's supporters from all over the country will hold a massive rally to demand a recount. Calderón, outgoing President Vicente Fox and their party fiercely oppose it.

"What is their problem with the recount?" asked López Calderón during a TV interview. "El que nada debe, nada teme." (If you have done nothing wrong, you have no reason to worry.)

Vigil participants delivered a letter for Fox to the Mexican consulate.

"In the name of Mexican immigrants who are Tepeyac members and other Mexican immigrants in New York," the letter read in part, "we want to ask for your impartial intervention in this electoral process to guarantee a transfer of power and a strong democratic government."

To expect impartiality from Fox may be asking too much, not only because Calderón belongs to his party but also because López Obrador promised to be the president of the many millions of poor Mexicans.

Despite Fox's glowing assessment of the state of his country's economy, under his presidency, 4 million desperate Mexicans risked life and limb to get to the U.S., hoping for a better life.

Ironically, while President Bush rushed to congratulate Calderón even before he was declared president, López Obrador, who has said he will create more public works and social programs for the poor and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, would probably be more effective at curbing illegal immigration to the U.S.

"We come to the U.S. out of necessity," said Fausto Romero, 23, a restaurant worker from Puebla. "In Mexico, we can't even buy food for our families. But with jobs and more opportunities, we would never leave."

In the midst of so much uncertainty, one thing is 100% sure in Mexico: Without a recount, its democracy will have lost whatever credibility it may have had.