Mexico Trucker Online

MEXICO CITY — Should the populist candidate win Sunday’s election, he would trade in the posh presidential residence for the storied National Palace downtown that would bring him closer to everyday people.

For now, it’s completely surrounded by people yelling — without end.

Some of them wield cleavers in their hands, while other vendors offer anything from metal rattlesnake eggs to toy mice — all sold under a constant vocal drone formed by the mixture of hundreds of low and high-pitched offers.

On the edge of the central plaza, the National Palace borders the beating heart of this city, which is what presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party wants to be close to.

“This is where he should be, rather than so far way,” said José Torres, 40, standing next to a child sleeping on the sidewalk while he hawked small toy cars — two for about 40 cents — and umbrellas.

 If López Obrador wins, he has said he’d move into the enormous palace, rather than the ritzy Los Pinos, the presidential residence since 1935 that sits at a distance from civilization in a buffer of fenced-in green space.

The vow is a symbol of his campaign, a way to show he wants to be close to everyday Mexicans rather than the upper echelons of the rich. Famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera extensively portrayed the historic struggle between classes, which still is rampant today, on several walls of the stone palace, including a corrupt church, government and military.

The potential move has drawn mixed reaction.

“It could be done, there is space, but logistically it wouldn’t be recommended,” said Jaime Bourges, a manager of a museum inside the palace that honors former president Benito Juárez, among the last presidents to live among the tall archways; he also died there in 1872.

But it’s a different era, Bourges said. There’s much more congestion and working next to a window can be like living next to railroad tracks.

“Listen to all this noise; they are selling everything — all the way to underwear,” he said, looking through his tall office windows. “I don’t know what this guy is thinking, what his idea is.”

Part of the idea is to follow in the footsteps of Juárez, who was the only indigenous president of Mexico and often is referred to as this country’s Abraham Lincoln.

“It would be good to have the president working close by, being able to see him,” said Javier Montesinos Alvarez, the dayshift security supervisor at the building’s public entrance.

Some locals are more skeptical, saying López Obrador is using the poor to get power.

“He’s crazy,” said Enrique Díaz, 61, a retired hospital lab technician who toured the building with family, and asked Montesinos about the potential change. “These populist strategies just get poor people fired up, make them think, ‘Oh, that’s where Benito Juárez lived, too.’”

Spaniard Hernán Cortéz began construction of the original structure in 1523 on top of Aztec ruins. The historic Metropolitan Cathedral is adjacent.

Maru Parra, 43, a volunteer educator at the palace, which takes up a few city blocks, said she hopes it stays what it is: rustic, historic, and open to the public.

“There is already Los Pinos and it’s already set up for a president,” she said, adding that investing resources into fitting the palace for a residence would be contrary to López Obrador’s campaign promises