Murder in Mexico

Under the best of circumstances, today’s presidential election in Mexico was going to be closely watched for violence or other signs of political instability in that important but deeply troubled nation. But the weekend killing of two aides of a leading candidate has cast a vast cloud over the voting. Unless the murders are solved soon, they could call into question the very legitimacy of the Mexican political system.

It may not be known until well after the election whether the deaths of Francisco Xavier Ovando and Roman Gil Heraldez occurred as the result of a common street crime or were, as their political colleagues contend, calculated assassinations. The two men were top aides in the presidential campaign of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a popular leftist politician who is challenging the powerful Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in a hotly contested race. Although the PRI has not lost a major election in 60 years, Cardenas is given a better chance than past PRI opponents of diminishing the official party’s support because he is the son of Mexico’s most revered modern president, Lazaro Cardenas. He is also, along with several key aides like Ovando, a former PRI member who broke away from the official party last year, accusing it of being undemocratic.

Charges like that are not new. They have been made not just by the PRI’s political opponents but also by Mexican and foreign analysts who have marveled at the official party’s ability to maintain popular support despite the corrupt and heavy-handed methods of some of its leaders. In recent years, however, as a continuing economic crisis has cut deeply into the living standards of the average Mexican, complaints about the PRI and its style of governance have been heard more and more from the man on the street.

The growing public discontent in Mexico is reflected in the heavy turnout at rallies in support of Cardenas and the other major opposition candidate, Manuel Clouthier, of the right-wing National Action Party. Both men have predicted a close election and warned that PRI leaders might use fraud or violence to steal the election for the official party’s candidate, economist Carlos Salinas de Gortari. With the violent deaths of Ovando and Gil, such allegations can no longer be dismissed as mere campaign rhetoric.

The government of outgoing President Miguel de la Madrid must now make every effort to solve these crimes as quickly as possible. To do anything less would only feed public cynicism, both in Mexico and outside the country, about its political and legal systems.

It is troubling to note, for example, that when the bodies of the two men were first found late Saturday night, the Mexico City police and the city’s normally aggressive press treated the incident as a common street crime. They did so despite the fact that an expensive watch and other valuables that Ovando had in his possession were not taken by whoever shot five .22-caliber bullets into his head. The investigation has now been taken over by the federal government’s Interior Ministry, which is responsible for domestic security. Even that may not satisfy the many PRI critics who suspect the Interior Ministry of being part of the ruling party’s political apparatus. The investigation must be as open as possible, with information provided to both the national and foreign press.

Some Mexican officials will resent calls for extraordinary measures in a criminal investigation, but this is no ordinary crime. More important, these are not ordinary times in Mexico. The world is watching this year’s Mexican election more closely than it has watched a political changeover in that country since 1910, when Mexico suffered through a long and bloody revolution. Many people genuinely fear that unless political change can take place peacefully in Mexico another revolution is inevitable. Mexico’s leaders can best put such fears to rest by showing the world that political violence has become unacceptable and that suspects will be aggressively pursued, rapidly tried and severely punished.