OAN’s Elizabeth Volberding
3:50 PM – Wednesday, September 13, 2023
One of Sound of Freedom’s producers, Eduardo Verástegui, registered on September 7th as an independent candidate to run for the president of Mexico in the 2024 elections.
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Verástegui, 49, who is a Mexican actor, producer, and founder of the Viva México Movement, expressed his intention to run for president to the National Electoral Institute (NEI).
Following his submission of the required documents, the NEI will decide in a matter of days whether he has met the standards and will then issue a certificate verifying his candidacy.
In less than 120 days, he must collect a number of signatures equal to 1% of the list of registered voters in the country distributed over at least 17 states “with an equal percentage in each of them,” which is equivalent to about 1 million signatures.
Verástegui was extremely successful as an actor on soap operas before turning his hand to conservative and Christian activism. Furthermore, he used his role as a producer to illustrate the message that “God’s children are not for sale” in the Sound of Freedom film.
Verástegui stated that he is hopeful to use the strength from the Sound of Freedom, a film about the dark truths of widespread child trafficking, to enter the world of politics. He expressed that his goal is to “put an end to child trafficking” once and for all.
“The most important thing from this film is that we need to leave behind a permanent legacy and change legislation to ensure countries cooperate better in ending child trafficking,” he explained to Newsweek from Vatican City.
The Sound of Freedom touches on a story of former U.S. Homeland Security officer Tim Ballard, played by Jim Caviezel, who leaves his government job to create an anti-child-trafficking organization called “Operation Underground Railroad” (O.U.R.).
If elected, Verástegui would like to improve the system for monitoring and disclosing cross-border child trafficking.
“Say there is a house on fire with children in it and you have one fire truck coming from this direction and another fire truck coming from the other direction,” the producer said of the children trafficked each year. “But then one driver tells the other, ‘no this is my territory,’ and they start arguing and the children end up dead. What you want is for them to both use their fire hoses to put out the flames to save the children and they can have their arguments later. In real life we have real children ‘on fire’.”
According to data from the International Labour Organization (ILO), 10.1 million children were victims of modern slavery in 2016, and the numbers have only risen since then.
Sexual exploitation accounts for 79% of all forms of trafficking, making it the most prevalent, according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
“Mexico is not doing well, there’s more poverty, more security issues, more crime, just more and more bad things… it really broke my heart,” Verástegui explained. “I was not raised to be a politician but people said, ‘that’s why we should do it, people are tired of political powers.’ They don’t believe in politicians and they don’t believe in these false promises.”
Juan Carlos Leal, a pro-life and pro-family politician and former state representative of Nuevo León, communicated his eagerness for Verástegui’s candidacy.
“We’re very happy, celebrating Eduardo’s decision to be an aspirant, for this time, for the presidency of the republic. I believe that he has the support, not of hundreds or thousands, but of millions of Mexicans who are in favor of life, family, and fundamental freedoms,” Leal said in a statement.
The Sound of Freedom producer has from September 15th to January 6th to raise signatures ahead of the June elections.
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