Baja Holds Trump Card as Shaky PRI Regroups

Jorge David Soler has always been a party man.

More than five decades ago, Soler noted, he helped found the Baja branch of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish acronym as PRI. He has faithfully helped direct the local party, attended to party business and served as a federal labor judge.

“I was devoted to the party,” Soler recalled during a recent interview at a hotel he owns here.

No more. At the age of 75, the affable and prosperous Soler has abandoned the ruling party and become an activist for a very distinct political vision: the National Democratic Front, the nationalistic opposition coalition headed by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the front’s presidential candidate and the son of Lazaro Cardenas, the revered former Mexican president and PRI member who served from 1934-40.

The surprising defection of Soler, and many other one-time PRI loyalists, says much about why voters in Baja California and throughout Mexico delivered such a stunning repudiation to the ruling party in the presidential and congressional elections last month. The PRI’s presidential candidate lost Baja for the first time ever. This is one of a handful of states, plus Mexico City, where the PRI has acknowledged losing the presidential tallies.

History in the Making?

Now, there is a growing belief that next summer’s scheduled gubernatorial elections could be shaping up as a historic event, perhaps yielding the first-ever opposition governor in Mexico since the PRI consolidated its power in 1929. The Baja election is among the first gubernatorial races scheduled in Mexico after last month’s contest.

“If the opposition takes advantage of this situation, there is certainly the possibility that they could win the governor’s election,” said Tonatiuh Guillen, a political scientist at the College of the Northern Frontier, a research institution in Tijuana. “Baja California is in the vanguard.”

J. Jesus Blancornelas, editor of the independent weekly Zeta, was more emphatic.

“If the PRI doesn’t put forward a good candidate, they’re going to lose,” said Blancornelas, who, like others here, is highly critical of the quality of PRI candidates.

Suddenly, it appears, Baja California has joined the ranks of economically critical northern states, where popular discontent is on the rise and the PRI is facing serious threats to its long-time hegemony.

Though Baja has a relatively small population--it is home to perhaps 3 million--its economic importance is considerable, and growing. The entire border region is important to the national government as a source of foreign revenue, thanks largely to tourism and the rapid growth of the maquiladora industry--export-oriented assembly plants jointly owned by Mexican and foreign interests, often huge multinational corporations.

“They (PRI leaders) see part of the future of their economy in these northern states, and now they see themselves losing there to the opposition,” said one government insider who asked not to be identified. “It worries them a lot.”

Nationwide, the PRI’s presidential candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, received a bare majority of votes cast--and that majority was itself tainted by widespread charges of fraud. Never before had a ruling party’s presidential candidate received less than 70% of the vote, analysts said.

The national voting patterns were mirrored by the equally jarring Baja results, in which Cardenas narrowly defeated the PRI’s Salinas--an outcome that most observers, even Cardenas supporters, had judged unthinkable beforehand. PRI candidates did sweep the six congressional races and two senatorial contests in Baja, but the opposition said those victories were more a function of fraud than voter satisfaction with a group of lackluster candidates.

Focus on Baja

Though Mexico’s final electoral configuration is still in doubt, pending final ratification in Mexico City, many observers are already focusing on next summer’s Baja gubernatorial election. No firm candidates have emerged, but at least one opposition figure, Ernesto Ruffo Appel, the well-known mayor of Ensenada and a leading figure of the right-wing National Action Party, has been mentioned as a prospective candidate. National Action’s conservative, pro-business agenda may be less palatable to Mexico’s great masses than Cardenas’ populist pronouncements, but Ruffo’s popularity throughout Baja is undisputed, as is his stature as an anti-PRI symbol.

“People here vote for candidates, not for parties,” noted Blancornelas, the journalist.

While Americans, accustomed to a two-party system, may not be fazed by the prospect of a governor’s seat going from the Democrat to Republican columns, or vice versa, the notion is viewed as almost revolutionary in Mexico--home of a de facto one-party republic and heavily centralized system in which governors are considered the direct representatives of a near-imperial president.

Opponents have charged that the PRI resorted to massive fraud in recent years to forestall losses of the gubernatorial seats in the northern border states of Chihuahua and Sonora. The election of an opposition governor would severely test the system, raising the prospect of open hostility between Mexico City and the state.

For a debilitated PRI, the old formula of electoral fraud may not be an option in Baja in 1989. The state’s overwhelmingly urban nature also makes fraud more difficult, analysts say, as the Baja electorate is relatively well-informed and less susceptible to manipulation. In addition, opposition observers have greater access to voting precincts than in states with huge populations in isolated and rural communities.

On the other hand, some observers note that the PRI still controls the military, police and other resources that could be put to use if necessary to ensure victory.

“There is still that hard-line faction within the PRI,” one analyst said.

In Baja voting, according to official results released thus far, Cardenas received about 37% of the votes cast, compared to 36% for the PRI’s Salinas and 24% for Manuel Clouthier, the conservative National Action Party’s candidate. Though Cardenas’ margin of victory is slim, it is nonetheless unprecedented in Baja.

Officially, PRI officials called the results in Baja “a great triumph,” in the words of Maritza Nava, general secretary for the party in Tijuana, who pointed to the congressional victories.

“It was a very clean election,” said Nava, rejecting opposition claims to the contrary.

Housecleaning Expected

Privately, however, party loyalists and others say there was shock and dismay at the opposition vote. A long-overdue party housecleaning is expected, analysts say. The results further tainted the already equivocal reputation of Gov. Xicotencatl Leyva Mortera, the present PRI governor, known widely as Xico (pronounced Hee-Ko), who has been a lightning rod for criticism.

“I think the party got a clear message from the people that they will not allow themselves to be taken advantage of any more,” one government official said. “Xico is headed for the refrigerator.”

Officials of the Cardenas front, known here widely as Cardenistas, have reacted gleefully to the election results.

“Our victory was a surprise, but a pleasant one,” acknowledged Blas Manrique, a longtime leftist leader in Tijuana who has joined the Cardenas coalition. “If not for massive fraud, we would have won by a lot more.”

Representatives of the National Action Party, who deride the Cardenistas as recycled PRI loyalists and dangerous leftists, agree with the new coalition on one point: Fraud was widespread in the elections.

“There were tremendous irregularities,” said Jesus Antonio Rivera, Baja chairman for National Action, who mentioned alleged instances of ballot-box stuffing, multiple voting and improper disqualification of opposition votes, among other incidents.

The ruling party’s present predicament caught analysts off guard. Before the elections, Tijuana, the most populous city on the northern border, had been considered perhaps the most Priista (pro-PRI) of the often-rebellious border cities. The opposition protests that have characterized border cities such as Ciudad Juarez and Piedras Negras have been notably absent in this relatively prosperous city of more than 1 million.

But mounting discontent with the PRI and its perceived legacy--seemingly endless economic austerity--have clearly energized the once-dormant opposition here. The final factor was the emergence of candidate Cardenas, whose populist, nationalistic themes, though nebulous, have clearly struck a chord in Baja and elsewhere in Mexico. For now, at least, Mexico’s often-fractious left seems unified behind him.

If the Cardenas forces hope to win next year’s gubernatorial race, however, the left must maintain that uncharacteristic unity. Cardenas’ coalition must also put forward a candidate with wide appeal.

“We will be unified, and we will have a strong candidate,” vowed Arturo Saldana Rico, coordinator for Cardenas’ Democratic Front in Baja. “We will have observers at every election booth. We will not permit fraud.”

There is palpable excitement about next weekend’s planned visit to Baja by Cardenas, who is scheduled to address rallies in Tijuana, Mexicali, Ensenada and Tecate. The opposition has vowed to block the inauguration of President-elect Salinas, who is scheduled to take office Dec. 1.

But pragmatists say the opposition will eventually have little choice but to accept the new president, probably after negotiating some concessions--maybe even some governor’s seats, but that remains pure speculation. Despite that Realpolitik assessment, the Cardenistas here are already speaking as though the PRI’s demise were a fait accompli. Jorge David Soler, at 75 still a political activist--and a Cardenista candidate for senate in the July elections--says he has no regrets about leaving the PRI after more than half a century of service.

“Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, like his father before him, is the conscience of Mexico,” said Soler.