Thousands in Tijuana Cheer Rival Candidate

Opposition Mexican presidential aspirant Cuauhtemoc Cardenas brought his diffuse nationalistic vision and campaign for electoral justice to this border city Sunday, prompting an outpouring of political fervor not seen here in many years.

“We will not compromise or negotiate the public will,” the dour-faced Cardenas told thousands of enthusiastic followers gathered for a downtown rally under the midday sun.

Cardenas, who maintains that electoral fraud by the ruling party apparatus cost him his victory in the July 6 presidential voting, vowed to continue his effort aimed at forcing what he called an honest count, and he urged Baja California residents to participate in the nonviolent campaign.

Spirited Half-Mile March

After the rally, thousands of supporters from a broad range of socioeconomic backgrounds followed Cardenas on a peaceful but spirited half-mile march through downtown, past the gaudy tourist cantinas and kitschy shops frequented by U.S. tourists, who seemed confused by the spectacle. Many additional well-wishers joined in the march, swelling crowds that police initially estimated at 3,500, although that number seemed low.

“Viva Cardenas!” shouted the enthusiastic marchers, many of whom carried banners deriding the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known here as the PRI. “The people voted, and Cardenas won!”

The rally and march, as well as other similar events scheduled for later this week throughout Baja California, are part of the nationwide effort by Cardenas’ coalition party, the National Democratic Front, aimed at forcing government officials to correct alleged irregularities in last month’s voting or annul the vote altogether. The ruling-party candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, has been declared the winner of the presidential contest.

The challenge by Cardenas, himself a former high-ranking PRI official and the son of a revered former president, is considered perhaps the most serious threat the ruling party has encountered since it consolidated its power in 1929 and began to rule a de facto one-party state. Officially, the PRI has never lost a presidential election; the bare majority garnered by the PRI’s Salinas in the July contests was the party’s worst-ever showing.

Baja California is one of a handful of states, along with Mexico City, where the PRI has acknowledged Cardenas’ victory in the presidential voting. However, the ruling party swept congressional elections here, a result that critics also attribute to electoral chicanery. Cardenas’ victory here, and the enthusiastic welcome he received in this city of a million inhabitants, seemed to belie Tijuana’s reputation as politically apathetic.

“This is a historic moment for Mexico,” said an exultant Esteban Avalos, a baker who held a pro-Cardenas banner.

“We will not recognize a president who was elected based on electoral fraud,” Cardenas told his cheering supporters, one of whom held aloft an effigy of Salinas. “We are fighting for an administration with legitimacy, one that takes office because of the will of the people, not because of electoral manipulation.”

The coalition leader once again called on the government to release the electoral results from 25,000 local polling sites whose tallies he said have not been made public.

Cardenas, as he has done at other post-election stops, urged citizens to participate in a nationwide protest movement that is to begin Sunday. He requested that supporters of his National Democratic Front put out their lights for a moment at 8:15 each evening starting Sunday, as a symbolic gesture of support.

“There may be a need of massive marches to state capitals,” Cardenas told the crowd, prompting supporters to volunteer their services on the spot. “There may be the need of a march on the capital.”

‘Millions Will Respond’

Said one man in the crowd: “Millions will respond.”

However, Cardenas warned that his fight for reform could be a long one. He urged the continuing unity of Mexico’s leftist parties, which have joined together to support him but have a fractious history.

“The lucha (fight) has no end; it will continue,” he said. “We will have to field candidates for local, state and national elections.”

Cardenas, dressed informally in jeans and an open-neck white shirt adorned only with a tiny Mexican tricolor, drew one of his biggest cheers when he invoked the name of Hector Felix Miranda, the combative Tijuana columnist who was slain here earlier this year in a case that became a cause celebre. Cardenas broadly accused government forces of complicity in that slaying and several others, including the killing of two Cardenas campaign workers and the recent slaying of a well-known television journalist in Ciudad Juarez.

‘Government Using Violence’

“On July 6th, Mexicans . . . voted against violence. . . . We will fight using legal means,” said Cardenas, who spoke forcefully but not with extreme emotion, rarely smiling.

“The Democratic Front has not chosen for violence,” he said at an earlier press conference. “It is the government that is using violence.”

At the press briefing, Cardenas emphasized the importance of relations between Mexico and the United States.

“Both countries will continue to have a close relationship,” said Cardenas, who has rejected characterizations by his opponents that he is an extreme leftist. “There have been mutual advantages to both sides in this relationship.”

Among those making the trip here to welcome the candidate were representatives of numerous Mexican-American organizations from the United States. Cardenas called for closer ties between Mexicans in Mexico and people of Mexican ancestry in the United States.

“The great need and poverty in Mexico has created all this enthusiasm for this leader,” said Sergio Almanza, a Mexican citizen who resides in Los Angeles and has been a pro-Cardenas activist in the immigrant community there. “Mexico needs a change.”