Ensenada’s Abuzz as New PAN Mayor Gets Set to Govern

The political flyers, posters and billboards have been removed. Politicians no longer burden residents with their promises, but this seaport city is still abuzz with last month’s mayoral elections. The reason: the candidate of the opposition National Action Party, known by its Spanish acronym as PAN, has been declared the winner, handing the increasingly activist PAN its first solid beachhead in Baja California.

“They tried to say I was a crook, a drunk, a smuggler,” said Ernesto Ruffo Appel, the mayor-elect, recalling a campaign that at times was very dirty.

“We needed a change,” said a fish vendor, expressing his fatigue with the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, which has dominated Mexican politics for more than half a century.

“We’ll be back at the next election,” vowed a city official and PRI loyalist. “We have to be.”

Ruffo’s victory has spurred intense discussions, speculation and political gossip throughout the border state of Baja California. PAN officials hope it is the start of a movement; PRI strategists dismiss it as a fluke, with some asserting it was financed by right-wing elements of the Roman Catholic church and the U.S. government.

Ruffo’s election comes at a time when PAN forces throughout northern Mexico are mounting a considerable challenge to the long-dominant PRI. In the state of Chihuahua, across the border from Texas and New Mexico, so-called panistas have taken to the streets claiming massive fraud in electoral contests there.

In Mexican border regions, a number of factors--the presence of a thriving business elite, traditional norteno independence and close contacts with the United States--have combined to create a particularly fertile ground for the PAN, a rightist party with its roots in the conservative business community. Assisting PAN’s emergence is widespread discontent with the nation’s economic crisis and a general disgust with corruption, which is identified with the ruling PRI.

PRI appears to have had difficulty finding ways to counter PAN’s appeal in the north.

“It is assumed in Mexico City that losing the northern states may be particularly dangerous because already the United States exerts a lot of influence on the perceptions and views of the population,” said Gabriel Szekely, a Mexican political scientist who is the acting associate director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego.

Although Ruffo’s election marks the first time PAN has won a city hall in Baja California, the opposition party has won numerous mayoral seats in other parts of Mexico. But no opposition party has ever won a governor’s post or the coveted presidency. Few analysts believe the PRI is committed to a two-party system in the U.S. sense. Even mayor-elect Ruffo is clearly suspicious.

“I believe it’s too early to say that there’s a true democratic opening,” Ruffo said.

Despite PAN’s recent gains, there is considerable doubt about whether the party’s new-found strength represents a true embrace of the party’s conservative doctrine. In Baja California, independent analysts universally say PAN’s victory here is more a reflection of Ruffo’s personal popularity and a widespread disenchantment with corruption, declining living standards and the ruling PRI.

“I voted for Ruffo, not for the PAN,” is a frequent comment heard here.

“People voted against the economic crisis; they didn’t vote for the PAN,” said a PRI official here.

Indeed, when questioned, few voters could describe PAN’s conservative, business-oriented agenda, which critics describe as anti-worker and anti-peasant. But, as in Chihuahua, PAN’s anti-corruption rhetoric seems to have found a receptive audience here.

“The PRI is robbing the country,” said Ramon Cuevas, a curbside fish salesman who described himself as a former PRI loyalist.

Here in Ensenada, where the citizens are known for their fierce pride and independence, there is some precedent for political iconoclasm.

Three years ago, Ensenada voters elected Baja California’s first opposition mayor--but, ironically, he ran under the banner of the the left-wing Socialist Workers Party, whose philosophy is totally contrary to that of PAN. In that case, too, observers say, citizens voted for the person--the popular David Ojeda Ochoa--and not for the party. In fact, one of Ruffo’s key advisers in last month’s election worked three years ago for the socialist campaign.

“In three years, Ensenada voters have gone from electing a member of a leftist party to electing someone from a rightist party,” said J.L. Perez Canchola, director of an immigration study institute in Tijuana and an unsuccessful mayoral candidate there. “Obviously, these are votes for the candidates and not for the parties’ programs.”

Although disappointed about not winning the campaign, PRI officials in Baja California dismiss the PAN victory as an aberration. Meanwhile, they have attempted to put the Ensenada vote in a favorable propaganda light.

“Ensenada demonstrates that we do have a true democracy,” said Miguel Angel Torres, chief spokesman for the governor’s office. “We have clean elections here.”

After debating the reasons for PAN’s victories, political discussions here typically turn to the next burning question: Just why did the PRI-dominated government agree to recognize PAN’s victory?

Analysts claim that in a number of past elections, notably the 1968 campaign in Tijuana and the 1983 contest in Mexicali, the government refused to acknowledge PAN victories. In Mexico, winning a majority of the votes doesn’t guarantee victory.

Ruffo, the mayor-elect, maintains that PAN’s thorough campaign left the ruling party no alternative. Observers describe the PAN’s effort here as one of the best-organized ever in the state, complete with computer printouts, mass rallies and hundreds of election-day poll-watchers.

“We didn’t allow them the chance to manipulate or change the results of the election,” Ruffo said. “If they had looked to change the results, there would have been a very high cost.”

Indeed, the negative international publicity of such a move would certainly have further tainted the prestige of the PRI. As one Tijuana professor commented: “It could have been a little Chihuahua right here in Baja California. That would have looked very bad.”

Another factor, analysts say, has to do with the makeup of Ensenada. The city already had had a socialist-party mayor, so ruling party officials can claim that the socialists lost the city, not the PRI. Moreover, Ensenada lacks the political importance of Mexicali, the state capital, and Tijuana, the most populous Mexican city along the border. Recognizing the PAN victory in Ensenada may simply have been “throwing bones” to the opposition, in the words of one political scientist.

“They could afford to give up Ensenada, but I don’t think we’ll ever see a PAN mayor in Mexicali or Tijuana,” said one observer.

With the election out of the way, Ruffo spends much of his time in PAN’s small offices near downtown planning his three-year administration, which doesn’t begin until Dec. 1. His office is crowded with advisers and supplicants seeking a word with the new mayor.

“To me, this is a very important time,” said Ruffo, a chunky, informal man who wore jeans and an open shirt on a recent morning. “We’re looking for qualified people for my administration . . . We plan to go to each of the different areas of the city to contact people we saw during the campaign, to establish priorities.”

Ruffo, a former general manager of the large Zapata fish mill, has been an upper-middle-class resident of Ensenada most of his life, although he was born in San Diego. Even ruling party officials credit PAN strategists for selecting a charismatic candidate who appears to be respected throughout the town. (PRI, by contrast, has a national reputation for picking dull party loyalists with little mass appeal.)

The mayor’s post is the first elective office for Ruffo, who has a degree in administration from the Technological Institute in Monterrey. He said he plans to return to the business world. However, Ruffo has suddenly become PAN’s highest-profile figure in the state and could conceivably be a future gubernatorial candidate, though he says he’s not interested.

Why did he leave a secure position to become involved in the problematic world of minority-party Mexican politics? “Every time you go into a cafe, you hear people complaining about how bad things are, over and over again. Finally, you say, ‘Am I going to keep making complaints about the problems or am I going to do something about them?’ I felt like I had to pay my dues.”

Ruffo’s popularity is not likely to translate into dramatic changes for residents of this huge municipality spread over 21,000 square miles and somewhat akin to an American county. The great majority of the 300,000 residents reside in the city of Ensenada. A foundering fishing business, battered by low tuna prices, remains the dominant industry, followed by tourism and agriculture.

In the past 20 years, the exploding population has transformed the once-sleepy fishing village into a big city plagued by all the problems of modern urban Latin America: crime, poverty and, for many, lack of vital services such as public transportation, running water and electricity. As in other Mexican cities, colonies of impoverished squatters ring the city’s outskirts, often living in precarious shacks fashioned from scrap wood and metal.

There’s not a lot a mayor can do, particularly because the heavily centralized Mexican system gives little taxing ability and limited powers to municipalities. Improving city services is his No. 1 priority. He talks generally about efforts to better services and cut down on municipal corruption, but specific policy recommendations remain embryonic.

His philosophy, though, is clearly a conservative one. He talks about a possible program, sort of a Mexican “workfare,” in which squatter residents would do community service in order to secure titles to land. “I don’t want to give the land to the people as a gift,” he said. “They must work for it.”

Ruffo often sounds like a Reagan Republican, holding forth on the values of private enterprise, individualism and hard work. Such comments, typical of panistas, are at odds with the more paternalistic form of government practiced by the PRI.

“One of the important beliefs (of PAN) is that the individual must help himself, and not wait for some higher power to help him,” Ruffo said. “The individual is responsible for himself.”

Asked to describe PAN’s principles, he said: “It stands for work, for individualism . . . It’s not socialism.”

Taking a broader political view, Ruffo maintains that the Mexican system is due for a major shake up, noting the widespread discontent that has characterized the nation’s economic crisis. “I am totally sure that Mexico is going to change,” he said. “I don’t have a crystal ball, but I know people want something. Maybe it’s the PAN, maybe something else. But it’s not the PRI.”