Governor’s Foes Take Over City Halls in Mexican State

Opposition party supporters seized city halls throughout the state of Michoacan and demanded the resignation of the governor, a member of the ruling party, officials said Sunday.

Democratic Front supporters occupied 19 city halls Saturday afternoon to force the ouster of Gov. Luis Martinez Villicana, according to a state government statement. Villicana is a member of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party.

The government newspaper El Nacional quoted Marciano Razo Amezcua, leader of the Democratic Front in Michoacan, as saying that Martinez Villicana had “squandered the public treasury” and “fomented political hatred” in the southwestern state.

Situation Unclear

It was unclear Sunday how many city halls remained occupied. Police in Tocumba and Jiquilpan said that their city halls were not occupied Sunday afternoon but that crowds were gathered outside. An official for the Michoacan state press office said that several attempted occupations had failed.

The official, in the state capital of Morelia, said the city halls were seized by members of the Authentic Revolutionary Party, part of the Democratic Front coalition. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there had been no violence.

“We are negotiating with them, even bringing them food,” he said.

Most of the municipal buildings seized were in small towns, the official said, and most of the occupying groups also were small. He said 10 people had been at the city hall in Tocumba but about 800 had occupied the building at Zacapu.

El Nacional quoted Razo Amezcua as saying the seizures were unrelated to the Dec. 1 inauguration of President-elect Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

Victorious Candidate

Salinas was the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s victorious candidate in the bitterly contested July 6 elections, which opposition leaders said were plagued by fraud.

The presidential runner-up, Democratic Front candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, won the most votes in Michoacan, his home state. Although the governing party has not lost a presidential election since it was founded in 1929, its margin of victory in the last election was its smallest ever.

“State authorities will not and cannot accept this insane pressure, nor any other provocation,” state government secretary Genevevo Figueroa Zamudio said in a statement about the take-over protests.

Opposition Sen. Cristobal Arias said the only objective of the protests was to achieve Martinez Villicana’s dismissal, the Mexico City paper La Jornada reported.