MEXICO CITY, Aug 22 (AFP) - It is hard to know how many gringos are living in Mexico, but one thing is sure: There are enough US voters here that the two candidates have sent in their relatives to campaign south of the Rio Grande.
And, there are more norteamericanos living here than the 500 or so votes that decided the 2000 presidential election.
"The expatriate community is a pie that Democrats as well as Republicans want a slice of," Autonomous Technical Institute analyst Rosana Fuentes told AFP.
In July, Diana Kerry, sister of Democratic candidate John Kerry, visited Mexico, and on Friday George P. Bush, nephew to President George W. Bush, set off on a four-day campaign swing here.
One obstacle to both is a lack of statistics on the US population here. Estimates range from 100,000 to one million.
At the beginning of his visit, George P. Bush, said that 100,000 of his compatriots live south of the border. Ana Maria Salazar, Kerry's representative here, said not having accurate numbers made it "difficult to launch a national campaign."
"The US Embassy in Mexico City says there are 300,000 to 500,000, but no one knows how many with certainty, because Mexico is a country where Americans feel at home, without the need to associate with their compatriots," Salazar said.
"That is on top of the persons with dual citizenship, on whom there is little data," she said.
With little more than nine weeks to election day on November 2, there simply is not time to locate them.
"There are all kinds: retirees, students, businessmen," Salazar said.
The lack of statistics means she will spend her Saturday in a marketplace, where, she supposes, she will run into eligible voters, and will then invite them to visit an Internet site where they can request an absentee ballot.
Fuentes said US citizens in Mexico could number one million.
George P. Bush, who was key in the 2000 campaign among the Mexican-American community, will meet US voters behind closed doors with members of the US community and business leaders to relay a "personal message" from his uncle.
Larry Rubin, the Bush campaign representative in Mexico, said that George P. Bush will show his wife, Amanda, around the land of her mother, which Republicans are betting will show off their candidate's ties with Mexico.
Both will meet with the US community living in San Miguel de Allende, a small colonial town in the northwestern Mexican state of Guanajuato.
George P. Bush, as well as Diana Kerry, will also visit Jalisco, to the west.
The only statistic that both camps agree on, according to Ana Maria Salazar, is that the largest chunk of US citizens living outside their country live in Mexico, "and we are sure that there are twice as many as in Canada."