Evelyn Cecia Salgado Pineda leaned on her father's shoulders while the bad news arrived. Félix Salgado Macedonio's candidacy for governor of Guerrero was slipping out of his hands, despite the protests he had mounted at the gates of the National Electoral Institute (INE) with hundreds of his followers. It was April 12 and the electoral authority left the Morena politician out of the race due to irregularities in the pre-campaign expenses, despite leading the polls. The decision took away the possibility of being governor again after two other failed attempts in 1993 and 1999. Or maybe not. The ambitious veteran politician still had an ace up his sleeve. Evelyn Salgado became, a month before the elections, the alternate candidate and the heir to the campaign. "They plucked our fruits,they cut down our branches, but they couldn't kill our roots ”, wrote Salgado Macedonio to announce the transfer of powers. Evelyn Salgado Pineda was, from that moment, with the task of being the root of her father's legacy and shining with her own light despite the long shadow of Félix Salgado Macedonio.
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Morena pulls López Obrador to win Guerrero
Born 39 years ago in Iguala, Guerrero, Salgado Pineda is the oldest of five sisters. Graduated in Law from La Salle University in Cuernavaca, her political career has been short and scant. When she was 22 years old, she worked as an advisor to the PRD deputy Guillermo López Ruvalcaba in the Morelos Congress; Between 2006 and 2008, during the municipal presidency of her father in Acapulco, she was appointed president of the municipal Integral Development of Families (DIF) system and currently, with the government of the PRI Héctor Astudillo, she served as delegate of the Secretariat of the Woman in Guerrero in the delegation of the Port, city where she resides. Although Salgado Pineda had expressed no interest in taking his father's position, he did not hesitate to back down as soon as the moment arrived. "My father has been my guide in the social struggle,It has trained me in values and has taught me to conduct myself with honesty. The decisions will be mine. He will be my guide ”, affirmed the candidate.
Record of the candidacy of Evelyn Salgado for governor of Guerrero by Morena TWITTER @MARIO_DELGADO / Europa Press
Félix Salgado Macedonio cannot count on someone more loyal than his daughter Evelyn. In the middle of the scandal over the two complaints of rape and other allegations of abuse and sexual harassment against the morenista, Salgado Pineda has publicly defended him. "He is a good person and a good father of the family," she said while she was an official of the Secretariat for Women. Both she and her team, aware that the complaints of sexual violence are what has most hurt her father's reputation, have seized several feminist slogans such as the cry “I do believe you”, to support the candidate in the campaign . Whenever possible, he defends the loving image of Salgado Macedonio as a husband, father and political mentor. "El Toro had a pure wife, so he is the darling of the house", Salgado Pineda dedicated him with admiration.
In her speech, full of obviousness and commonplaces, the Morena candidate has known how to exploit her role as a mother and as a young woman, but avoids addressing thorny issues such as gender violence and the right of women to have an abortion. "My commitment is with women and with our allies, men, because this is not a fight of women against men, it is a fight against inequality," he declared before his supporters in the municipality of Tlapehuala, in Tierra Caliente. Unlike his father, it is evident that Salgado Pineda does not feel comfortable on stage in front of the crowds and prefers to read some parts of his speech, which detracts from his freshness and empathy with people. "Rebellion springs from this blessed land that is Tierra Caliente and resistance against injustice is in our blood",pronounced this weekend. On many occasions, Salgado Macedonio, who continues to campaign even though he is not a candidate, draws more applause than his own daughter.
The appointment of Evelyn Salgado has not sat well in some sectors of the party in Guerrero. Despite the fact that Morena leads the polls two to one due to the carry-over effect that López Obrador has, the rank and file do not agree with the decision. Until a few weeks ago, the new candidate was practically unknown to public opinion and voters. "Many of the colleagues believe that the matter should not be treated as a consanguineous inheritance, as if it were a monarchy," says Sergio Montes, founder of Morena in Guerrero. The lack of experience and vocation arouses mistrust in more than 30% of the party in the state that does not believe that Salgado Pineda will govern after winning the elections. “She is not ready. He does not have the political office, nor the experience that gives you being in various positions of popular election ",Montes points out. The ex-counselor of Morena considers that Guerrero is one of the most complex states to govern in the country. Plagued by violence and insecurity, 66.5% of its population lives in poverty, according to the latest study carried out by Coneval.
Suspicions suggest that her father could relieve her as interim governor and stand for reelection the next six-year term.
That would be the reason why the politician would have rejected Morena's offer to be a state leader, just as he did with the former candidate Raúl Morón, in Michoacán.
According to the party's statutes, no senior official can nominate an immediate family member for a representative position.
"It is obvious that he is using his daughter," says Sergio Montes.
Evelyn Salgado Pineda (left, wearing a white shirt) walks with her father at a campaign event in the 1990s.RR SS
According to close sources, Félix Salgado, like Machiavelli in the shadows, controls Evelyn Salgado's campaign from beginning to end. Make the decisions about what to say, where to go, and who to partner with. “It has decided the majority of Morena's candidacies in municipalities and councils, including that of Abelina López for the Mayor of Acapulco. Adela Román - current mayor - was seeking re-election, but he imposed Abelina ”, says a journalist who asks not to give her name for fear of reprisals. "He has taken over the party and has made very powerful alliances with the PRI members who do not support Mario Moreno Arcos [the official candidate]," says a Morenoite militant.
Without a personal brand and a few weeks after the appointment with the polls, Evelyn Salgado's electoral program is very similar, if not the same, as that of her father, of which she takes advantage of the image and tries to be her living reflection. He wears the same warming hat that Salgado Macedonio usually wears and reproduces his words in each proselytizing act. “Do not lie, do not steal and do not betray the people. Long live President López Obrador ”, he concludes in his speeches. Everything is in the script. Not to change, not even the slogan of the campaign has changed, which continues to be: "There is a bull", in reference to his father, who is nicknamed
El toro sin fenced
. In this express construction of her image, dominated by paternalism and condescension, the candidate has agreed to appear on the ballot on June 6 with the pseudonym of
La Torita
, although no one called her that to date. “Evelyn is intelligent, she is very wise, very serene, very prudent. She has been my advisor and she is better prepared than me, ”Salgado Macedonio pointed out during his daughter's first campaign act.
Morena has tried to dress the nomination of the candidate as an act of female empowerment. Both the national president of the party, Mario Delgado and the general secretary, Citlalli Hernández, defend that the selection of Salgado Pineda was made through a survey where it was the best valued by citizens, but the explanation does not convince everyone. To make it easier for those surveyed to know who she was, the pollster had to refer to her as “the daughter of Félix Salgado Macedonio”. “It was a falsehood. They put her to compete with two applicants who had no chance of winning, ”says Montes. Beyond his father's controversies, the local press has published that Salgado Pineda drags his own related to drug trafficking. The woman is married and separated from Alfredo Alonso,son of Joaquín Alonso Piedra, known as
El Abulón
, a businessman from Acapulco who was arrested at the end of 2016 and accused of being an operator of the Beltrán Leyva cartel in the city.
Sun Tzu wrote in
The Art of War
, one of the books Salgado Macedonio refers to in his rallies, that the best victory is to win without fighting. A phrase that the former candidate has made his own in recent weeks. On the verge of being excluded from the fight, he has managed to master the process with skill, multiplying his forces and transforming his campaign into his daughter's campaign without taking a step back. "Now there are two of us, a bull and a torah [
sic]
." Only they know what those words mean. Less than a month before the elections, Evelyn Salgado is looking for a place in the shadow of her father that will allow her to become the first governor of Guerrero. Meanwhile, she is still leaning on his shoulders.
Felix Salgado Macedonio, former candidate of the Morena party for the governorship of the State of Guerrero and Evelyn Salgado observe the session of the National Electoral Institute INE, during the vote the Morena candidate was disabled to continue in the electoral contest.
Monica Gonzalez / The Country
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