Picasso, J.S. Bach May Vote in Baja Election : Evidence of Fraud Raises Fears That PRI Is Gearing Up for Rigged Victory

The alchemists of Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party have been mixing their potions, it is said, along the deep-rutted streets of the squatter’s community known as Camino Verde.

The product of these latter-day conjurers, critics say, is not gold yielded from lead, but rather the raw material of which elections are made: votes.

They have been successful to the extent of inflating the voting rolls in Camino Verde--a pro ruling-party stronghold--by more than threefold, opposition leaders charge. And that’s just in one neighborhood.

“We’ve found that the fraud has been massive and crude,” said Cecilia Barone de Castellanos, campaign coordinator in Tijuana for the opposition National Action Party, as she brandished pages of allegedly phony voter registration credentials from Camino Verde.

Casting a Spell

It’s election time in Mexico, and the nation’s peculiar electoral alquimia-- alchemy, as electoral fraud is not-so-fondly known here--appears to be casting as mesmerizing a spell as ever.

With the campaign for Sunday’s elections drawing to a close--up for grabs are the Baja California governor’s seat, four municipal governments and 15 state legislative slots--allegations of voting misdeeds have begun to dominate headlines here. The election has attracted international attention, as Mexico’s ruling party, known by its Spanish acronym as the PRI, faces the possibility of losing control of a governor’s seat for the first time in history.

Throughout Baja California, official figures show that the total number of registered voters has risen by more than 10% in the past four months--a proportionately huge increase that opposition leaders say is evidence of tampering.

On Friday, the muckraking weekly Zeta published allegations that even the departed have been called on to vote in Ensenada. The newspaper published a copy of the death certificate of one registered voter, Jose Sanchez Meza, who passed away on Jan. 6, 1988.

“Miracles of the Electoral Commission,” read the headline. “The dead are revived and will vote.”

Such charges are as much a part of the electoral fabric of Mexico these days as blaring loudspeakers, mass rallies and giveaways of food and other amenities. Just last week, the opposition National Action Party said that it found 15,000 ballots already marked in favor of the PRI in the bathroom of a government printing office in northern Chihuahua state, where hotly contested elections are also slated for Sunday.

Fraud Part of Process

While fraud has been part of the Mexican electoral fabric for decades, the growing strength of Mexico’s opposition parties has focused increased attention on the phenomenon. Also, opposition leaders have had additional resources to document the problem.

This year’s allegations, complete with apparently substantive evidence of clear irregularities, observers say, tend to undermine claims by Mexico’s President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who took office Dec. 1, that he is committed to electoral reform and a true democratic opening. Opponents maintain that Salinas himself owes his position to a rigged vote last summer.

“Mexico City can bemoan (fraud) and denounce it, but its continued presence illustrates the continuing problem of control over what the party does at the state and local levels,” said Wayne A. Cornelius, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego. “It’s going to be very difficult to police the actions of PRI apparatchiks and government types at local levels to prevent the usual shenanigans from going on again.”

As always, the chief target of such allegations is the all-pervasive ruling party, the PRI, which has dominated Mexican politics for six decades. Since its founding in 1929, the PRI has never lost the presidency or a single governor’s seat. Until last July’s elections, in which President Salinas of the PRI won a narrow and much-disputed victory over a popular opposition leader, PRI presidential candidates routinely commanded 75% of the vote or more--almost unheard-of majorities in true multi-party systems.

“The PRI always wins, doesn’t it?” is a frequent response in Mexico to inquiries about prospective election results.

Although PRI officials say their hands are clean, few independent observers dispute the fact that fraud on a scale unimagined by even the late Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has been an integral part of the system in Mexican politics. Traditionally, observers say, PRI leaders have resorted to fakery even when they didn’t have to, eager as they were to amass the largest majorities possible in their districts, the better to curry favor with party leaders. It was a way of climbing the PRI success ladder.

In what many analysts consider a hopeful sign, the PRI mayor of the northern Mexican city of Hermosillo, Mexico, recently resigned from office after being charged with electoral fraud. Experts gathered at a conference on U.S-Mexico relations in San Diego last week said they could recall no similar case.

But, among opposition politicians, hope for a true political opening is dimming with every new allegation of fraud by PRI loyalists.

“We are constantly frustrated by fraud and other electoral chicanery,” charged Diego Fernandez Cevallos, a member of the national committee of the National Action Party (PAN) during the San Diego conference last week. PAN officials have alleged that their candidates have been robbed in rigged elections in recent years throughout the nation, notably in the northern border states of Chihuahua and Sonora. They fear the same in Baja.

Charge of Sour Grapes

In the view of PRI leaders, such allegations amount to sour grapes on the part of opposition leaders unable to mount successful campaigns. While PAN activists charge the ruling party with creating a “culture of fraud,” PRI officials respond that the allegation is simply something to fall back on with every new defeat at the polls.

“National Action tries to cultivate this image of electoral fraud being everywhere,” said Bernardo Sanchez Rios, a federal senator from Tijuana who is the president of the city’s PRI committee. “They want to cover up for their losses. That’s what this is about.”

But charges of fraud emanate from most every opposition party, not just the PAN. Leaders of the reformist Party of the Democratic Revolution, which is also contesting the elections in Baja California, joined in denouncing the alleged deception in Baja California.

“I don’t see where the PRI is respecting the integrity of this election,” Martha Maldonado, the party’s gubernatorial election, said in an interview Friday.

In the case of Camino Verde, a Tijuana neighborhood long regarded as a veritable PRI fiefdom often independent of municipal control, opposition parties have reported that voter registration rolls mushroomed from 8,769 to 29,741--more than tripling--during April, the cutoff month for registration. (Residents must be 18 to vote in Mexico; before registering, they must present authorities with evidence of their identity and residence. Some weeks later, they receive their official voting credentials; their fingerprints are kept on file.)

Presumably, the newly registered voters of Camino Verde would cast their ballots for PRI candidates. The names of relatives of a number of community party leaders were listed multiple times, according to examinations of official records by opponents and the press.

There were also some more singular names. Among those registered to vote: Pablo Picasso and Juan Sebastian Bach.

When National Action officials attempted to verify matters in the streets of Camino Verde earlier this month, they maintain that they were obstructed by thugs who broke vehicle windows and punctured tires. They left.

Officials such as the PRI’s Sanchez describe such vote-registration irregularities as “human” mistakes that are being rectified, and will not affect the voting tally. They point out that the the State Election Commission, which oversees the voting process, is an independent body. Commission officials, whose independence has been questioned by the opposition, have denied there is any evidence of wrongdoing in Baja.

Questioned Sharp Rise

Opposition leaders have questioned the recent sharp rise in the voting rolls in Baja California--the numbers grew by some 82,000 in the past four months, with the total now topping 900,000 eligible voters. Between 1986 and 1988, the latter a presidential election year, the number of eligible voters rose by fewer than 575.

Ernesto Ruffo Appel, Baja gubernatorial candidate of the opposition PAN, attributed the increase in an interview principally to a rise in fraudulent registrations by the ruling PRI.

But Arturo Guerra Flores, general secretary of government for Baja California, traced the big hike to a series of less sinister factors, including voter registration campaigns by various parties and heightened interest in the elections. “There has been absolutely no fraud,” Guerra declared during an interview Saturday at his office in Mexicali. Guerra, who twice served as state president of the ruling PRI, presides over the state administration of the voting.

The opposition has filed a criminal complaint in connection with the Camino Verde case, and is calling for a complete sanitizing of the voting rolls--although it is unclear how that could be accomplished before election day. PAN officials have even raised the possibility of withdrawing their candidates from the elections. But that would be a drastic step--and potentially counterproductive.

Apart from inflating vote totals, the electoral fraud could have another impact: Higher abstention. Political apathy has led growing numbers of Mexican voters to abandon the polls on election day; some fear that renewed reports of “alchemy” could accelerate the trend, even in heated contests such as those in Baja California.

“Some people will say, ‘Why vote? It’s not worth it,’ ” noted J. Jesus Blancornelas, editor of the weekly Zeta.

But, at a voting registration office in the Colonia Libertad last week, business was brisk. Among those picking up credentials was Jose Luis Ortega, 20, who said he was going to cast his first ballot ever.

“I’m voting for the PRI,” Ortega told a reporter afterward. “They always win, don’t they?”

Times staff writer Marjorie Miller contributed to this story.