Unrest Flares Again in Mexico Over Elections

Lingering discontent over last month’s Mexican election results flared into violence in the big industrial city of Monterrey at week’s end as the issue of voting fraud remained unresolved.

Complaints about the election have been raised ever since the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party claimed overwhelming victories in the July 7 balloting for the lower house of Congress and for some state governorships and municipal offices.

The persistence of these protests defies a widely held local theory that Mexican elections contribute to the nation’s stability by offering at least an illusion of change.

Late Friday, the National Action Party, Mexico’s largest conservative opposition group, organized a mass rally in Monterrey, capital of Nuevo Leon state and an important industrial center. The meeting, called to demand that the newly elected state governor resign, ended in violence.

Demonstrators threw rocks, coins and sticks at police guarding the statehouse. Authorities responded with tear gas and clubs, and a few arrests were reported.

Party spokesman Jose Luis Coindreau complained Saturday, “In response to a few tossed coins, the police answered with tear gas and nightsticks.”

Several protesters at the Nuevo Leon governor’s recent inauguration also were detained, and National Action officials complained of police “repression.”

The party’s leaders had long forecast that election fraud would result in violence. The Monterrey incidents were the most severe since the vote.

On election day, National Action supporters rioted in the northern border town of San Luis Rio Colorado. Subsequent demonstrations, all of them minor until Friday, have included blocking of traffic, hunger strikes and an occasional march in various Mexican towns.

National Action is appealing some of the election results to the Mexican Supreme Court. Leftist parties have also joined the outcry, haggling over the 100 seats reserved for minor parties in Mexico’s 400-seat Chamber of Deputies.

The governing party, known by its Spanish initials PRI, dominates Congress and the nation’s city halls and has not lost a governor’s race in more than 50 years of rule.

In the July vote, the PRI swept the seven governorships at stake and virtually all the congressional and municipal posts. Complaints about election results are a staple of Mexican politics and generally subside after a time. But July’s elections coincided with severe economic troubles that made the PRI less popular than usual in northern Mexican states bordering the United States.

Traditionally, the northerners resent domination by the powerful central government in Mexico City. In addition, they have had to witness a serious decline in the value of the peso, which many merchants trade for dollars to buy imports from the United States.

National Action’s candidates responded to such discontent with the promise that they could do better, and they thought they had a good chance of winning the governorships of Neuvo Leon and Sonora states.

However, election day was marked by what even impartial observers termed blatant ballot-box stuffing and other irregularities. The National Action candidate for governor of Sonora received no votes in several precincts in his hometown, causing him to quip that apparently he had voted against himself.

PRI officials offered several explanations for such anomalies. Perhaps the most unusual was an assertion that National Action had carried out the fraud.

“They did it to undermine the prestige of the government,” said Manuel Alonso, a spokesman for President Miguel de la Madrid.

Alonso also suggested that overly zealous PRI officials might have altered the vote.

“The party is so big, it is hard to control,” he said. “But I assure you, the president was on the phone ordering that the vote be clean.”

The central government is sensitive to fraud charges for several reasons.

De la Madrid has pledged a “moral renovation” in government that includes a crackdown on corruption. Electoral cheating damages the administration’s image of cleanliness.

Mexico also worries about its appearance abroad, especially at a time when it is trying to cope with a huge foreign debt. Mexican officials are proud of this country’s long period of stability, unique in Latin America, and they recoil at charges that their system resembles that of a “banana republic.”

“The reports from embassies in Europe were not good,” one embarrassed Foreign Ministry official said. “All they spoke of was fraud.”

It is not clear how far the National Action Party will carry its protests nor how long the PRI will tolerate anti-government demonstrations. Violence had been expected to erupt in Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, but that city has been quiet since election day.

Police clearly have not been turned loose on demonstrators, although the government has warned against a threat of instability caused by National Action’s activities.