“The Power of Mario Marín: An Analysis of his Successful Campaign for Governor of Puebla”

I have already written in a previous column about the Marín factor in the succession of Melquiades Morales Flores.

After a bureaucratic career that included a stint as a civil judge, Mario Marín Torres grew in the public life of the state with attitudes that he abandoned when he came to power: humility, modesty and a vocation for service.

The “yes, sir” accompanied him in that transit.

The bowed head and a polite voice in a whisper were also there at the right time.

Everything combined: the gestures, the discretion and even the cheap little suit.

Once in power, Marín left all this behind, but after decades of humiliation, he had already managed to permeate among the popular sectors, who saw him as one of their own.

And that happened both in the countryside and in the cities.

Even the way they walked contributed to that affinity.

For this reason, when he decided to challenge Governor Melquiades Morales and seek the PRI’s candidacy for Casa Puebla, he was already halfway there.

I explain.

Don Melquiades offered him the Ministry of Public Education once he left the mayor’s office of Puebla.

Marin said “no thanks”.

Morales pushed him to open his notary office —today completely lost— and our character opened it and went to campaign.

On the night of the inauguration, the governor wished him a long life in the notary business —“the best of jobs,” he agreed—, and the former mayor only smiled, sarcastically.

A few days after that anointing, Marín began touring the entire state with his closest friends and operators.

It started in Zacatlán.

I was presenting a book by Don Genaro Cabrera at the Municipal Palace when I discovered Marín and his family among those present.

He did not know then that he was at the start of a campaign that would culminate in his assumption of the governorship.

After said presentation, Teodomiro Ortega offered a dinner at his house in which the main character was Mario Marín.

At one point, he and I exchanged words.

(The good relationship we had in his years as Undersecretary of the Interior had become tense and distant. And it is that he did not tolerate my ironic hauls).

That night I began to detect a certain change in his personality.

The shoes, the clothes, the watch, and even the manners, spoke of a metamorphosis.

It is the metamorphosis of power, I told myself hours later.

Marín already had the support and sympathy of Roberto Madrazo Pintado, the national leader of the PRI, and the governor’s son: Fernando Morales Martínez.

The two persistently did their job.

He only needed to win all the polls.

That’s why he started this crusade with no charge to distract him.

The succession that we see today requires an applicant who goes on an adventure one hundred percent.

Charges work, but they are distracting.

It is useless to go from time to time —in free time— to meet the people, if the people who go to public events are tame.

They are the same as always covering —and collecting— the fee.

These spell acts are fine for the networks, but it is not in that area where true complicity is gained.

Marín knew it very well, and that is why he went to enter the town: to sleep among them and walk its streets in the mornings, afternoons and nights.

He was at their parish festivals, at their baptisms, at their weddings.

He had time to do it.

He left vanity and comfort aside.

The characters who tour the state today divide their time between public office and the rallies that they organize.

The contact they have with people is reduced to selfies.

The communities do not feel they belong to them.

Do you really want to win the vote and the hearts of the people?

There is a solution:

Resign your positions, get into the town and stay to sleep even in the most modest houses.

How can we forget that Echeverría and López Portillo sometimes even spent the night in shacks during their campaigns.

And they did everything for the domestication of the vote.

Once in power, they never returned through those wild areas.

And if they did, it was on army planes and at express rallies.