Christian conservatives will always prefer fiction over reality.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Rallying all over the country to fulfill the difficult task of gathering 1 million signatures by early January, the 49-year-old has ignited controversy in this deeply Catholic nation, where abortion activists and the LGBTQ+ community lead advocacy campaigns of their own.

Raúl Tortolero, a writer who sympathizes with Verástegui, said the former pop singer champions a “new right” by advocating for values resembling Donald Trump in the United States, José Antonio Kast in Chile and Santiago Abascal in Spain.

Frida Espinoza, who is 23 and co-founded an anti-abortion organization, said that she connected with Verástegui after listening to his life testimony — how he renounced fame and vices to embrace God — and is willing to support him even if he has little chance of getting on the ballot alongside Sheinbaum and Gálvez.

When López Obrador was elected in 2018, he played a role as an outsider because he and his party —Morena — defied political structures, said Diego Fonseca, a writer and editor who recently published a book about populism in Latin America.

“In many democratic countries, we have seen politicians like Verástegui cynically campaign to conservative voters on the promise to bring back ‘Christian’ or ‘traditional’ values,” said Cristian González, researcher at Human Rights Watch.

But some of these politicians, who Verástegui has said he admires, like Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro or Trump have rallied against LGBTQ+ rights, marriage equality and abortion while distracting attention from attacks on judicial independence, trust in the electoral system and press freedom, González said.

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