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Posted on Wed, Feb. 08, 2006


`Tomato King' picks his way in mayoral job

BY HUGH DELLIOS
Chicago Tribune

JEREZ, Mexico - Pointing the truck up a stretch of newly paved road, the illegal immigrant-turned-Mexican success symbol showed off what he's accomplished since he came home from the United States and made history.

"This is the road I made `illegally,'" said Andres Bermudez, the first U.S. resident to campaign and win the mayor's seat in his Mexican hometown, rolling his eyes and sounding exasperated.

"The Tomato King" has returned. Bermudez, who made a fortune in the California tomato fields after sneaking into the United States in the trunk of a car in 1974, is back trying to help his people in the impoverished central Mexican highlands.

In his trademark black attire, from hat brim to boot tips, the gruff high school dropout with the sun-reddened complexion says he's doing it his way, the can-do American way. And his goal, he says, is to turn Jerez into "a little United States."

But little more than a year after his victory was celebrated by immigrant activists on both sides of the border, Bermudez's opponents say the mayor's way amounts to a tyranny of broken rules, municipal funds diverted to unauthorized road projects, town business steered to his relatives, exorbitant cell-phone bills for calls to California, and worse.

Months of recriminations and deadlock came to a head in December when several Town Council members blockaded themselves inside Town Hall, demanding the mayor's ouster. They were dislodged by Bermudez supporters who broke down the doors and handed control back to the mayor, who was overcome with emotion and wept.

"He's authoritarian and he's vulgar," said Adriana Marquez, the town councilwoman who has spearheaded the opposition. "He thinks he's a king, but he's already got his kingdom in the U.S."

Bermudez, 54, retorts that his foes have blocked his biggest plans out of pure politics, jealousy and anti-Americanism. He says they are rich people who oppose his efforts to shift more resources to poor farmers so the poor don't have to immigrate as he did.

"I knew it would be tough, but not this much," Bermudez said.

"Look, Mexico needs a change. They need someone who comes from outside, somebody that thinks in a different way," he said. "You got the rules, but sometimes you got to break the rules, especially if you are helping people."

The mayor says he is so frustrated that he often wishes he never had left California. There he owns a mansion with a pool outside Sacramento, purchased with his ample earnings from inventing a better tomato-planting machine, hence the nickname, and selling saplings to the U.S. Forest Service.

Bermudez said he is worth more than $6 million. But since he left California to pursue the mayorship in 2001, he has run up tax debts of nearly $800,000 to the state and federal governments, according to a report by the Sacramento Bee newspaper. Bermudez said he has paid it down to $500,000 but for the all property he owns, the amount is "no big deal."

The tale of the "Tomato King" is one of the more extraordinary experiments in Mexico's attempt to promote a binational identity and awareness among immigrants and create a greater role for them in the country's affairs.

Bermudez's return to Jerez was the result of a campaign by officials in Zacatecas to make it the first Mexican state where expatriates can hold office.

He was elected Jerez mayor in 2001. But his victory was overturned by federal election officials who ruled that he did not meet the residency requirement of living in Jerez for at least one year.

His supporters then successfully campaigned to have the state constitution changed so the residency requirement was only six months.

"`The King' became a symbol of the immigrants' struggle," said Miguel Moctezuma, a professor of politics at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, who wrote the constitutional change. "He says, `Behind me will come many Andreses.'"

Bermudez easily won election again in 2004, after a campaign in which he handed out personal checks for school repairs, promised to bring the tomato industry to Jerez and told poor farmers he could get them U.S. work visas.

Despite his unorthodox, man-of-the-fields demeanor, many saw him as a sort of Jackie Robinson, pioneering the way for more immigrant help in reforming Mexico. And Bermudez embraced the role of local man who left to initially pick peaches, received his green card in 1983 and then returned in triumph to serve as an example for his poor community of 60,000.

Currently most Jerez families live at least partly on money sent home by locals who live in the United States.

"I'm sorry, but I feel more American," said Bermudez, crediting the hard life of an undocumented worker for making him tough. "It's not because of the time you live there. It's that you learn how they do things. You dream of having a house and you buy it. Here? No way."

Since returning, Bermudez counts three road projects among his achievements. He arranged free bus trips for students to the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, an hour's drive away in the state capital, he hoped to bring a university extension to Jerez, and he constantly directs money to citizens who plead for help as they parade daily past his big desk, where his black hat sits in the "in" box.

Bermudez has earned the admiration of villagers within his municipal district, such as people standing in their doorways to watch tractors paving a badly rutted road in the village of Los Haros last month.

"For 10 years we've been asking them to fix it, but this village wasn't a priority," said Barbara Roman, 23, whose husband left in November to work in construction in California. "Now it is, because the other guy (Bermudez) came. Because he was a migrant, he knows how a village suffers."

But the mayor's relationship with town leaders, merchants and journalists has been strained from the day of his inauguration. They were angered when Bermudez held a party at a bullring while they waited for him at an official ceremony at Town Hall.

Since then, Town Council members have protested that Bermudez ignores laws requiring him to consult them before spending town money. They say he runs up unexplained bills and steers town business to his brother's restaurant and to other cronies.

"It's irresponsible management," said Jose Peralta, the town's financial controller. "He just says `I want to do this' and so he does it."

Especially troubling, the opponents say, are matters such as the mysterious whereabouts of $500,000 that Bermudez solicited from a national brewery to help pay for the town's annual festival last year.

Bermudez insists the money was a private donation "to help the Tomato King." He said when he found he couldn't spend it on the festival as he wished, he put it in a private bank account "until the time we know what to do with it."

Last year Bermudez faced a legal complaint of sexual assault from a young woman in town. He denies the allegation, saying that it was concocted by his opponents and that the woman tried to extort money from him.

Weaving his way through supplicants and well-wishers at Town Hall, Bermudez vows to finish his 3-year term because he believes he is the best man to help the town. But, he insists, it's not because he is enjoying it.

"I'm getting really tired of this," he said. "But if they're going to fight, I'm going to fight too."