This Saturday afternoon, on what would have been Michael Jackson’s 51st birthday, thousands of people will gather on a plaza in the middle of Mexico City and perform a two-minute routine to ‘Thriller.’ Plans for the event sprung up organically on Facebook, where a group titled ‘Yo Si Bailo Thriller‘ (or ‘I Will Dance Thriller’) first appeared in the days after Jackson’s death. As of Wednesday morning, the group had 12,105 members.

If even a quarter of those users arrive and join the chorus line of zombies, organizers say, a world record would be broken. Thousands have already been showing up for the open-air Sunday rehearsals. In that sea of people, one individual has consistently stood out, the choreographer. He is an unusually pale and slight 23-year-old who goes by the name of Hector Jackson, and will lead the routine at Mexico City’s Monument to the Revolution on August 29. As he has week after week during practices, he’ll do it with such a vigorously faithful impersonation of MJ that … hold on, could that actually be Michael Jackson? Like, for reals?

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“When I first heard they were doing ‘Thriller,’ I thought, Que hueva [what a drag], why would I go?” Hector Jackson admitted, as he drove me around his neighborhood the other day in a modest red sedan. “Then I saw it was getting attention, and I go, ‘Well, why don’t I get in touch with them?’”

Hector did, reaching out to the organizers of the event and suggesting that he could provide the official choreography for the masses. They immediately agreed, filming him performing the routine in a studio and uploading the clip to YouTube and the group’s site. It was an easy decision. After all, Hector Jackson knows ‘Thriller’ by heart.

In fact, he knows the choreography to all of Michael Jackson’s biggest videos, and has meticulously constructed costumes to go with each number. Hector is a full-time MJ impersonator. Although there are several others like him who work the private party circuits of Mexico, performing MJ but mostly as camp, Hector Jackson stands apart. Just look at him. The performer — who politely declines to reveal his given name, he’s just ‘Hector Jackson’ — looks and moves uncannily like the real thing.

His hair, face, and skin-tone — a sort of smoky gray — are entirely Michael. Specifically, Michael circa 1993, “his boom,” according to Hector. In MJ mode, he wears short black slacks, white socks, and soft black shoes, to get those moves right. His curly black hair is usually tied in an MJ-like pony tail, often under a black fedora. Indoors or out, he sports sparkling MJ aviator glasses. Performing, Hector Jackson pops, balances on his toes, moonwalks, and mugs. He suggestively handles his crotch, and you’d think our beloved Michael Jackson never left us.

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Except this Michael is speaking Mexican Spanish, running around one of the most congested and chaotic cities in the world, thousands of miles away from Hollywood or Gary, Indiana, and sees his work as just that. Work, or “chamba,” as the quintessential Mexico City colloquialism goes.

It started simply enough for Hector Jackson, who in ‘real life’ is working on finishing a law degree. “A friend in middle school let me borrow a CD once, ‘Dangerous,’ and I never gave it back,” he explained as we drove, his voice even and mellow. “I started liking his songs, I started investigating more, and it started as a game. Dancing like him. And what started out as a game is now a matter of work. A lot, a lot of work.”

He recalls that he showed up one day to a television impersonation contest on this 16th birthday. He didn’t win, but offers to perform at events and parties started coming his way. “People started paying me, paying me, and now I’ve been doing this for almost 8 years. The more I perfected the show, people just started seeing me as Michael. … It was good.”

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Hector picked me up in the middle of rush hour at the metro station Puebla on Line 9, the stop nearest to his house in Agrícola Oriental on Mexico City’s central-west side, near the airport. He was dressed casually, in a white tee, jeans, and a red baseball cap. We drove some blocks to his seamstress, Ana Velasco Pichardo, in a small house on a residential street. There, he was getting his ‘Wanna Be Starting Somethin’‘ shimmery gold body suit re-done, for a special event the next night at a high-end strip joint in leafy San Angel. (He doesn’t undress, he said, but the girls around him do). It was a cozy little living-room shop, with relatives and neighbors, women and little girls, sitting around and chatting warmly over their sewing machines.

“To imitate him, you have to really feel the persona,” Hector went on. “You have to be Michael, not be Hector. Be Michael up there on the stage. Feel the vibe.”

Indeed. Much like Japan or Korea, Mexico is a society where pop fanaticism borders on the … well, fanatical. Here, you don’t just love your idols, you literally become them. To perfect his MJ look look, Hector uses make-up tape to give his nose an upward arch, assuring me that it’s not surgically altered. A little tweezing on the eyebrows, a little shadowing make-up on the chin clef, which he insists is naturally his, lots of hair styling for that distinctive MJ sheen, and, voilà.

If his days are busy, as they have been recently, he just keeps the make-up on. It’s Michael Jackson, maneuvering the streets of post-modern Mexico City. “Work,” Hector shrugged. “Wherever they hire me, that’s where I’ll be.”

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No one wanted Michael Jackson to die. But he did, on June 25, in his mansion in Los Angeles. Here in Mexico, the King of Pop’s passing has given thousands of people a reason to get together and re-enact ‘Thriller,’ possibly MJ’s biggest and most influential hit ever. On Sundays, they come together at the plaza and practice the routine over and over and over without ever seeming to tire or bore of it.

It’s not the prettiest or sharpest of chorus lines. Young and old, men and women, even in a little section for knee-high toddlers, the ‘Thiller’ fanatics don’t dance with total precision. When the routine leans left, every other person seems to be leaning right. Yet there’s no denying that getting together for Sunday ‘Thriller’ practice is generating a sense of community, reminding some of the phenomenon that occurred when photographer Spencer Tunick managed to get almost 20,000 people to pose naked on Mexico City’s central Zocalo square in 2007.

“Like with Tunick, it’s a way to transcend, even if you’re just an extra,” said high school teacher Alicia Yañez, as she watched the rehearsal two Sundays ago. “You know that you were there, that you participated. But this is about a Mexican initiative. Tunick was a foreign idea. This has more merit.”

Yañez watched with a pleased smile on her face, proudly informing me that her daughter was in the throng. I watched. It really is a sight to behold, so many people dancing American pop together under the majestic Mexican sun. It has reminded me of just how deeply Michael Jackson’s music and message touched so many millions around the world. But here, it wouldn’t be Mexico without vendors hawking all kinds of pirated MJ merchandise on the sidelines, from bejewled white gloves to T-shirts and posters, as well as drinks and snacks.

Week after week, Hector Jackson is there, leading the zombies, being mobbed by fans and cell-phone cameras, signing autographs, Hector Jackson. Since MJ’s death, his work schedule has ballooned. He’s traveled across Mexico to perform his Michael Jackson numbers, from Oaxaca to Guadalajara. He even had to turn down invitations to L.A. and Atlanta, he said.

Regrettably, this MJ does not carry a U.S. visa.

So has all this buzz given Hector Jackson any, uh, new social advantages? “I have to say no,” Hector said, laughing slyly.

Does he think the Mexican MJ mania will ever die down? Nope, he said. “Look at [Tejana music legend] Selena. She wasn’t even that international, and look at any impersonator of Selena, and you start dancing and singing her songs. Now look at Michael.”

You’re not nervous?

“No, up to this moment, no. But who knows when the day comes. I might not go at all, out of anxiety,” he quipped.

He’s just working a lot, he added with a note of satisfaction in his voice. Everywhere he looks, he mused, on TV, in newspapers, in magazines, he sees his face, the Mexican Michael Jackson.

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