Salgado Macedonio, the candidate they call El Toro without fence

Félix Salgado Macedonio and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 1994 during a protest against electoral fraud in which they traveled from Tabasco to Mexico City on foot.

Salgado Macedonio is nicknamed El toro sin fence.

Unpredictable, brave and ready to attack, the politician is facing one of his most complicated tasks these days, just when he is about to reach the only political position that has resisted him so far: the governorship of Guerrero.

He will fight for her in June, but the pre-campaign has become a political storm that may not stop the momentum that this man treasures in his land, but it is moving the foundations of the party that supports him, Morena, that of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Three women have denounced Salgado Macedonio for rape.

One in 1998 when the alleged victim was a minor, another in 2016 against a worker from the newspaper

La Jornada de Guerrero

, when the politician was director of the newspaper and a third case that was presented before the Commission of Honesty and Justice of Morena.

"He took off my top with force, put his hand on my neck, raped me and with my pants down and all sweaty he looked for his wallet, took out 100 pesos and threw them in my face as if it were garbage," he told EL PAÍS one of the women.

In addition, at least three other women accuse the candidate of sexual abuse and harassment.

Despite the complaints and with the support of the president, El Toro still stands.

Félix Salgado Macedonio (Pungarabato, Guerrero, 1957) has been a deputy, twice candidate for governor of Guerrero for the PRD, senator and mayor of Acapulco.

It was in that party, the PRD, where he met the president and where they served for almost three decades.

For the past 32 years, he has amassed great power in Guerrero.

Neither the protests within Morena nor on the streets seem to affect him.

But, in the midst of the storm, it is the support of the president from the National Palace that keeps him standing.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador has downplayed the complaints against his candidate and has described them as "a product of electoral times" and "politicking."

For López Obrador, his candidacy is immovable because, according to him, he is the candidate with the most internal support after conducting a series of surveys of local activists.

"There is a media lynching campaign," said the president.

He was questioned about the victims, about impunity, about violence against women, and was asked three times this week about the candidate's case in Guerrero in his daily morning conference.

The defense was frank: Salgado Macedonio will be a candidate until a court proves his guilt.

99% of crimes due to sexual violence are not punished in Mexico.

"As the leader of the majority, I always have to take care of ours and you are one of us," said Ricardo Monreal, leader of Morena in the Senate, last November.

It is not the first time that López Obrador has defended the senator to the last consequences.

In 1999, when he was president of the PRD, he came to protest in the Zócalo of Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero, as a "moral governor," arguing that there was electoral fraud.

Félix Salgado escaped the chair on that occasion only by 14,500 votes difference with René Juárez of the PRI.

“Salgado has always been one of López Obrador's followers and has been very lopezobradorist since he created Morena.

He came to record a song in his honor and Andrés likes that very much.

He likes to be honored, "says a fellow party.

"I do not crack or betray me, I am the peje from Tabasco, I forgive my enemies, but what they did is disgusting," Salgado Macedonio sang in 'La cumbia del Peje' that he composed for López Obrador in 2012, the last election that the now president of Mexico lost.

Akin to the most radical currents within the PRD, those who know Salgado Macedonio describe him as a maximalist and provocative.

He prefers to consider himself a "social fighter", as he has stated on numerous occasions.

An agronomist and journalist by profession, he was the leader of the National Union of Press Writers (SNR) and owner of the newspaper

Acción

in the late 1980s. At that time, Salgado Macedonio combined his career as a reporter with his beginning in politics.

In the 1988 elections, he ran for the National Democratic Front (FDN) of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas as a federal deputy for Iguala.

On August 26, 1988, Salgado Macedonio broke into the Chamber of Deputies at the age of 31 and denounced electoral fraud against him by the PRI.

To prove it, he emptied three sacks of compost full of ballots semi-burned with his name.

After that, Carlos Salinas de Gortari nicknamed him "the costal deputy."

The lower house recognized the victory of Salgado Macedonio and gave him his first deputation.

Salgado himself acknowledged that there he won "his first battle against the powerful."

He continues to use the photo of that day as a profile on his social networks and as an argument for his political campaign.

One of the party cadres with the greatest weight in Guerrero had been born.

During the 90s, he participated in various social protests and seizures of roads, airports, and town halls.

They were also years of internal disputes within the different groups of the PRD.

In 1992 he was elected state leader of the PRD in Guerrero and in 1993 he ran for the first time as a candidate for governor.

In 1999 he tried again without success, while, as a senator (1994-2000) his career continued to be plagued by scandals and he became known for arriving at parliamentary sessions dressed in leather and riding his motorcycle, which he called "Armadillo."

In 2001, already as a deputy, he starred in an autobiographical film:

Guerrero

.

During his artistic career he recorded several discs of ballads.

In 2000, television captured him apparently drunk and fighting with policemen in the street.

“I have more negatives than positives.

I know that I am not running for cardinal, nor am I a saint.

I am incorrigible, "he said on another occasion.

Between 2005 and 2008, when he was mayor of Acapulco, the violence figures skyrocketed in the city.

It was said then that there was a fight for control of the plaza between the Beltrán Leyva cartel and Los Zetas.

Édgar Valdez Villarreal

La Barbie

, head of the Beltrán Leyva in Acapulco, controlled the municipal police and had the municipal authorities on the payroll, according to documents from the Attorney General's Office and two judicial investigations in the United States.

The port of Acapulco became one of the main cocaine transfer points from Colombia.

During that time of terror, the beheaded in the streets, the shootings and the extortion gave the coup de grace to one of the most important tourist destinations in Mexico.

In the midst of the records, the films and his heated parliamentary speeches, his fellow party members remember him as someone "womanizer", "jacarandoso" and "joker".

Charismatic among his co-religionists and strongly criticized by his rivals, in 2019 he was caught wearing a watch of more than 200,000 pesos ($ 9,700) during a Senate session.

"Fame is bad.

Very bad ”, he said about himself,“ womanizer, partygoer, gambler, drunk ”.

What in the 90s were seen as the adventures of a cheeky deputy, today has a completely different reading.

The explosion of the feminist movement in Mexico has prompted several complaints from former employees, fellow party members and militants who have accused the politician of sexual abuse.

Salgado Macedonio has never faced consequences after the accusations.

Excerpt from the music video for "La cumbia del peje" written and performed by Félix Salgado Macedonio.RR SS

"He is a cacique with a lot of power and a great capacity to mobilize people," says a party source.

In the midst of the scandal, Salgado Macedonio's response has been to respond to feminist protests with expressions of support from his followers, especially women: "I am a woman and I believe in Félix Salgado Macedonio," repeat those who support him.

The candidate, born in the town of Las Querendas, is of humble origin and has projected his career as a politician close to the poor, something that López Obrador appreciates and defends.

"In the president's calculation, the political cost of sustaining him is less than the loyalty that Felix Salgado has shown him," says the source.

"The more the feminist movement insists on demanding his resignation, the more López Obrador will try to defend him."

It is in them, in feminists, where Salgado Macedonio has run into an unexpected wall.

Groups of women have protested against him daily in the streets of Chilpancingo and Mexico City.

They threw Molotov cocktails at the candidate's campaign house and have tried to challenge his registration with the Guerrero Electoral Institute.

More than one hundred Morena legislators, including senators and deputies, sent a letter to the party leadership demanding that Salgado Macedonio's candidacy be withdrawn.

"We will not be the ones who go out to defend the indefensible when we seek the vote," they point out in the document.

The Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sánchez Cordero, has publicly stated that a candidate with these accusations, "cannot be a favorite for a political party" and requested those who are responsible, to prove that "the transformation towards a more supportive Mexico" and without violence is a reality.

Now he has chosen to remain silent, although his attitude of resistance, of not abandoning the candidacy, continues to make good that phrase with which he challenged the criticisms of his political detractors years ago: “I am like this, I am incorrigible, I am unpredictable, everything that say about me is true ".

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