Warning Sign for Ruling Party : Political Unrest Sweeping State in Northern Mexico

What used to be the picture-pretty city hall here, a white stucco building with a big brass bell, is a sad sight these days.

Fire and smoke have blackened the walls, and there is no glass in the windows. An acrid smell lingers, and people pass quickly on the sidewalk, sidestepping the debris and grinding bits of shattered glass beneath their shoes.

The city hall was set ablaze by an anti-government mob in a night of rioting on Dec. 29, and that act symbolizes the political restlessness that is sweeping across the northern state of Coahuila in the wake of last month’s contested municipal elections.

For the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, the most durable political machine in Latin America, what happened here is a warning sign that it may have unaccustomed trouble winning elections as Mexico enters a politically significant year.

In July, governors will be elected in seven states, and strong challenges by the opposition National Action Party are expected in at least three of them--Sonora, Nuevo Leon and Guanajuato. The PAN, as it is called after its initials in Spanish, is a right-of-center party that has emerged in recent years as the government’s most serious rival.

The PAN claimed victory in at least 16 of the 38 municipal elections in Coahuila state on Dec. 2, an impressive showing in a state whose very name evokes memories of the Mexican Revolution and its favorite son, the revolutionary martyr Francisco I. Madero.

But the official results gave virtually all of the victories to PRI candidates--National Action Party leaders talk of outright fraud--and anti-government violence erupted in at least four cities.

In the city of Monclova, the outgoing National Action Party mayor refused to recognize the official results. He turned his office over to his own party’s candidate, Pedro Esquivel Medina, whose followers control the municipal building. The PRI candidate, the official winner, holds sway in another building.

Tension and Violence Tension and sporadic violence, including the firebombing of an automobile dealership owned by a prominent political figure, gripped the city until a recent wave of freezing weather sent everyone indoors for a spell. But the basic question of who controls the city remains unresolved.

Nearby, in the smaller town of Villa Frontera, PAN followers--Panistas, they are called--confronted the Institutional Revolutionary Party in the City Hall shortly after the PRI winner had taken the oath of office on New Year’s Day and ousted him and his supporters from the building.

In another town, Escobedo, Panistas are reported to have kidnaped the PRI mayor, stripped him naked and tied him to a post in the town plaza until his supporters came to the rescue.

And here in Piedras Negras, a border city of 120,000 people 140 miles southwest of San Antonio, Gov. Jose de las Fuentes Rodriguez, a PRI man, barely managed to get out of the City Hall on the night of Dec. 29, after administering the oath of office to new Mayor Carlos Juaristi Septien, a fellow party member, before a mob descended on the building.

Armed with sticks, bottles, rocks and Molotov cocktails, the mob fought with state riot police until it was dispersed by tear gas, then re-formed a couple of hours later to finish the job.

Such unseemly political activity by supporters of the National Action Party--a group whose most prominent members are church-going, coat-and-tie business leaders--has prompted Pablo Emilio Madero, the party’s presidential candidate in 1982, to declare, “We are a political party, not guerrillas.”

Nonetheless, people have a right to defend their vote, Madero said, adding, “This wave of protest is an energetic reaction on the part of a people victimized by injustice.”

Dr. Eleazar Cobos, a 43-year-old endocrinologist who ran for mayor here under the National Action Party banner, said PAN election workers in Piedras Negras have compiled documentary proof from all 56 precincts that the party won the election by several hundred votes. But he said the state legislature, sitting as an electoral college, nullified the results in several precincts because of “irregularities” and changed the results in others to give the victory to the PRI.

However, Juaristi Septien, the new mayor, said that the nullification of some precinct results in Piedras Negras actually hurt the PRI more than it did the PAN and that his victory was legitimate.

Cobos now faces a dilemma that also evokes memories of the Mexican Revolution. Like many revolutionary leaders, Cobos has sought refuge across the Rio Grande, hiding in the United States from what he says is political persecution in Mexico. He was interviewed in the living room of his father-in-law’s house in the small Texas border town of Eagle Pass.

At least 20 National Action Party members have fled to Eagle Pass. Cobos said that unless they are promised freedom from arrest in Mexico, they will ask for official political asylum in the United States.

Such a move, they know, would bring political embarrassment to Mexico, which professes democratic ideals. They are hoping the threat will push the government into a compromise under which Piedras Negras and the other contested towns will be run by government-appointed city councils in which the PAN holds a majority.

“The government proclaims democracy in all international forums,” Cobos said. “ . . . It says it wants to bring democracy to Central America, but it doesn’t have democracy at home.”

Francisco Martinez, Cobos’ 60-year-old campaign manager, said there is a list of 43 PAN supporters who are wanted in Mexico for allegedly inciting the Dec. 29 riot in Piedras Negras.

“The governor and his people don’t want to seek reconciliation or compromise,” he said. “They have placed us against the horns of the bull no matter which way we turn, and they offer only one way out--shut up or go to jail.”

Juaristi Septien has converted an old exposition hall across town into a city hall. In an interview, he accused Cobos and his followers of inciting the riot.

“It was almost a major tragedy,” he said. “I could hear them screaming as I came out of City Hall under a hail of rocks and sticks. They screamed, ‘Kill them! Burn them alive! Kill them all!’--things like that.”

The National Action Party, born in 1939, is accustomed to running second behind the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Occasionally, the PAN wins a local election here and there--the biggest cities it controls are Ciudad Juarez on the border and San Luis Potosi in the central part of the country--but the PRI has never lost a race for governor or for the federal Senate.

In 1982, PAN candidate Pablo Emilio Madero, a businessman who is a nephew of Franciso I. Madero, won 16.4% of the vote for president, compared to the 74.4% given to Miguel de la Madrid of the PRI.

Thus at the national level, the National Action Party is not yet considered a serious threat to its rival, but the economic crisis that De la Madrid has had to contend with from his first day as president has created a political opening for the PAN.

Authoritarian, Corrupt The PRI government’s austerity policies, while generally accepted, are unpopular, and although De la Madrid himself is perceived as forthright and honest, his party is seen in some parts of the country as authoritarian, unimaginative and corrupt.

This is particularly true in the the north, an area where the private-enterprise ethic of the National Action Party is more deeply ingrained in the populace and where resentment of the central government in Mexico City crops up frequently. The central government is perceived as failing to understand the problems of the border states.

A PAN government in Mexico City would have a decidedly more conservative foreign policy, disdaining the present government’s close ties with Cuba and Fidel Castro. Domestic policy would be more businesslike under the PAN, with government control of the economy replaced by a freer rein for business and the dismantling of government agencies that compete with private enterprise.

Little Reaction But National Action’s popularity seems to be based more on resistance to the PRI than on ideology. The most successful local PAN campaigns, such as the one in Piedras Negras, have been based on a throw-the-rascals-out theme. The party’s constant refrain, one that gains strength with the passage of the years, is that Mexico is due for a change.

Throughout the current wave of unrest in Coahuila, there has been little reaction from the De la Madrid government in Mexico City.

Manuel Bartlett, the Cabinet minister in charge of political activity, reaffirmed the other day that elections are to be conducted fairly and that the popular will is to be respected regardless of the outcome.

The opposition is skeptical. According to Madero, the PRI shows no sign of being willing to share power. That, in his view, is the fundamental problem.

“I think it looks pretty bleak,” Cobos said. “We intend to keep fighting for justice, but we expect repression and violence to be the answer.”