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State Elections to Test Mexico’s Ruling Party : Opposition Parties Pose Stiff Challenge to PRI and President Salinas’ Commitment to Reform

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Times Staff Writer

The purple scar that cuts across Carmen Zalpa’s nose and under her left eye has become a badge of courage for the Indian woman who heads a village committee in support of leftist leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas.

Zalpa was hit in the face by a brick last month during a confrontation with police who were escorting the ruling party’s candidate for the state assembly on a campaign swing through her village of Acachuen.

To protest the incident, Zalpa and dozens of other peasants have occupied the city hall in this rural town in the state of Michoacan and have built stone barricades in the streets to prevent the police from evicting them. They are demanding the dismissal of the Institutional Revolutionary Party mayor, local justice officials and the six-member local police force, and are calling for honest state assembly elections July 2.

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“Before, it was joy that made me a Cardenista . Now it is anger,” Zalpa said. “We will vote legally next month, and we will win. If not, we are willing to die here.”

Test for Salinas

Although the election is for the traditionally powerless state legislature, it has taken on national importance as a test for President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s commitment to democracy and political reform. It is one of three hotly contested state elections that will be held on the same day.

In Baja California, the PRI, as the ruling party is called, faces stiff competition in the gubernatorial race from the rightist National Action Party, whose candidate, a popular former mayor of Ensenada, is tied with the PRI candidate in the polls. In its 60 years, the PRI has never lost an election for governor.

Municipal and legislative elections also will take place in the state of Chihuahua, another stronghold of the National Action Party, called by its Spanish initials, PAN. The right-wing party held seven mayoralties there from 1983 to 1986, including Ciudad Juarez on the border and Chihuahua City, the state capital. These cities as well as the governorship were claimed by the PRI in 1986 elections that the PAN charged were fraudulent.

But while all three state races are expected to be close, it is in Michoacan that the PRI may face its toughest challenge to maintain order and the legitimacy of the election. Here, the name Cardenas is nearly sacred and the Cardenistas are militant.

Cardenas’ father, Gen. Lazaro Cardenas, was one of the country’s most beloved presidents. He is regarded as a national hero for expropriating the nation’s oil industry in the 1930s. After his term, the general returned home and, for the next 30 years, acted as benefactor, channeling demands of the poor to the government.

Cuauhtemoc Cardenas was a popular governor of this Indian farming state before he broke with the ruling party to run for president last July. Many of the peasants note proudly that Cardenas has dark skin, as they do.

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In the presidential election, Cardenas won 64% of the vote in Michoacan. His coalition of parties took 12 of the state’s 13 seats in the lower house of the federal legislature, an unprecedented opposition victory.

With their new-found strength, Cardenas’ supporters occupied more than 50 city halls last fall to demand the removal of Michoacan Gov. Luis Martinez Villacana. Martinez Villacana, who followed Cardenas into office, has fired hundreds of Cardenas supporters from state government posts and overturned many of his policies. Ironically, many Cardenas policies, such as a ban on weekend liquor sales, were unpopular until the new governor reversed them.

Removed 2 Governors

Among Salinas’ first acts as president was the removal of Martinez Villacana, along with the equally disliked governor of Baja California, Xicotencatl Leyva Mortera. Although the latter’s term is up this year, the Michoacan term has two years to run. The PRI-dominated state legislature named Genovevo Figueroa as interim governor but, theoretically, a new legislature with a Cardenista majority could appoint a governor to complete the term.

The PRI, therefore, is running hard in the race for 18 legislative seats, and it is campaigning from the awkward position of both incumbent party and opposition. National PRI President Luis Donaldo Colosio has made five trips to Michoacan and plans another before the vote.

“We’re dedicating three days a week to these elections (in Baja California and Michoacan) and the other three days to the rest of the country,” Colosio said.

The PRI moved from its old offices in downtown Morelia, the capital of Michoacan, to four floors of a modern high-rise building that also houses the federal secretaries of treasury and budget and planning. The party has set up an elaborate campaign structure with 26 departments, including ecology and sports. The national party has sent in dozens of campaign workers, several of whom expect to remain through mayoral elections scheduled for November.

Among the Poorest States

Michoacan, west of Mexico City, is among the poorest of the nation’s 31 states and is a primary source of illegal immigrants in the United States. Mexico’s ailing economy can only work against the PRI in the legislative election, as it did last July.

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Early this year, interim Gov. Figueroa and federal authorities announced a multimillion-dollar development plan for the state. It is not clear how much of the money has been forthcoming, although several highways have been repaved recently and at least a few other long-promised public works projects have been started.

Opposition parties charge that the PRI uses such government programs before elections to win support for the party. Cardenas supporters say the government promised more than it could deliver in the Michoacan plan, and so it may backfire.

The Cardenistas have problems of their own. The coalition of four parties that backed Cardenas for president has since fallen apart, and Cardenas has formed his own party, the Revolutionary Democratic Party. Cardenas is not a candidate. Not only does his new party lack name recognition, but one of the old parties that split with Cardenas also bears his famous last name. The party that delivered the most votes to Cardenas last July has its own slate of candidates.

Political analyst Jorge Zepeda Patterson, a university researcher in Zamora, Michoacan, said that many urban voters who cast ballots for Cardenas last July did so as a protest against the PRI and not necessarily in support of Cardenas’ policies. Those protest votes do not automatically translate into backing for Cardenista candidates.

The government and Cardenas’ party both charge that the other has been fomenting violence to frighten voters away from the polls. Michoacan traditionally has suffered a high level of violence involving land disputes and marijuana trafficking, but in the last year there has also been political violence between the PRI and the Cardenistas .

In such confrontations, one person was killed and three others were wounded in the town of Charapan, four were wounded in Mirandillas, the PRI municipal president was stoned in Maravatio and eight Cardenistas , including Carmen Zalpa, were wounded in Acachuen.

Cardenistas are still holding at least a dozen city halls to demand, in most cases, a new municipal president, or mayor. In several towns, among them Cheran, they have set up parallel governments.

Cheran’s “Mayor Elected by the People,” Adalberto Munoz Estrada, occupies the first floor of the town hall and presides over public celebrations, such as those on Cinco de Mayo. The “Mayor Elected by the Congress,” Manuel Sta. Clara, works at home signing official documents.

The state government apparently has decided against using force to evict the Cardenistas from the town halls. Sta. Clara said that congress initially advised him to stay in his house and avoid provoking the opposition. He said he did not go out for two months after the state named him to replace another unpopular mayor.

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In Chilchota, Cardenas supporters say they were attacked by the municipal police force that accompanied PRI legislative candidate Ramiro Pena Diaz to Acachuen last month. Pena Diaz has charged that his group was attacked by the Cardenistas and that the police intervened.

There is some question about how much control Cardenas and his national party exercise over local supporters. The PRI insists that Cardenas could order his people out of the town halls; Cardenista federal deputies from Michoacan say that the people made the decision to take over town halls on their own.

The other looming question is whether the PRI government would be willing to recognize a Cardenista majority in the state legislature. The ruling party has long been accused of stealing elections.

Salinas, who the opposition claims won through fraudulent elections, has committed himself to fair and open voting. Analysts argue that Michoacan would not be a threat if the PRI lost it because it is not vital to the country’s economy or national security. Moreover, an opposition congress, especially with the PRI governor, could be an experiment for Salinas’ goals of political reform.

On the other hand, Salinas and the PRI have an aversion to Cardenas, whom they view as a traitor for leaving the ruling party elite, called the Revolutionary Family. Cardenas continues to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Salinas, and the PRI is said to fear giving him a statewide power base.

But the cost of fraudulent elections could be high.

“It is very possible that electoral fraud could unleash violence that not even the Cardenista leaders could stop,” Zepeda Patterson, the university researcher, said.

Even if the PRI were to win fairly a majority of the legislative seats, many of the poor and semi-literate Cardenas supporters are not likely to believe it. They do not trust the PRI government.

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