Mexico Opposition Party Alleges 56 Political Killings

The opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party on Monday charged that 56 of its members and supporters have been killed in political violence during the 18 months since the party’s leader, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, ran for president and forged the new leftist force.

At least 16 of the victims died in the last month after hotly contested elections in the poor farming states of Guerrero and Michoacan, both strongholds of Cardenas.

In a complaint filed with Interior Minister Fernando Gutierrez Barrios, party officials alleged that most of the 56 victims died in violence stemming from fraudulent elections. The government, they added, effectively has granted “immunity” to the killers by failing to solve the crimes.

“This is more than a dirty war,” charged Porfirio Munoz Ledo, a federal senator from the party, known as the PRD. “What we have today is a threat of armed warfare. And here are the dead to show for it.”

Several victims on the PRD’s list had been activists in Indian and peasant organizations as well as having been followers of Cardenas. Because land issues historically have been the source of much violence in Mexico, it is unclear whether those deaths are linked to party activities or to racial and agrarian conflicts.

Munoz Ledo headed a party commission that met for an hour with Gutierrez Barrios, who oversees elections, internal security and federal police. Afterward, Munoz Ledo said the party and government had agreed to form a joint commission to investigate each case on a computerized list that he presented to Gutierrez Barrios.

Gutierrez Barrios did not speak with reporters after the meeting, and officials of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, could not be reached for comment. In published statements last week, Rafael Rodriguez Barrera, secretary general of the PRI, denied official party responsibility for the violence.

“Violence benefits nobody,” Barrera said. “We do not practice it, and we do not recommend it.”

Twelve of the victims on the PRD list were killed in Cardenas’ home state, Michoacan, where he once served as governor under the PRI.

Cardenas broke with the governing party in 1988 to challenge its 60-year rule and ran in the presidential election. President Carlos Salinas de Gortari claimed victory, but Cardenas netted an unprecedented 31% of the official vote count with a coalition of leftist parties behind him. Cardenas won four states and Mexico City, a bloc of congressional seats and the first-ever opposition seats in the Senate.

According to PRD officials, the killings began on the eve of the presidential election. Cardenas aides Francisco Xavier Ovando and Roman Gil Heraldez were found shot to death in an automobile in downtown Mexico City on July 3, 1988. No one has been apprehended in those slayings.

The next month, as Cardenas followers disputed the official vote count, four student supporters were stopped in an automobile on the outskirts of Mexico City. Later found dead, they were Ernesto del Arco Parra, Jose Luis Garcia Juarez, Jorge Flores Vargas and Jesus Ramos Rivas.

That case also remains unsolved, as does the December, 1988, disappearance of Jose Ramon Garcia, a Cardenas organizer from Cuautla in Morelos state. The government has spent thousands of dollars on an investigation into Garcia’s disappearance and recently replaced a special investigator on the case.

Last year, Cardenas broke up the alliance of leftist parties that ran him for president and formed his own Democratic Revolutionary Party. The new PRD has suffered from financial and organizational difficulties and has confronted the ruling party’s traditional talent for co-opting its foes; many former Cardenistas have joined forces with the government.

But the PRD has participated in nearly a dozen state elections during the last year. In Michoacan last month, the government conceded 52 mayors’ posts to the PRD, including the state capital of Morelia. But the ruling party claimed 56 town halls for itself, and Cardenas is disputing 32 of those.

Similar disputes exist in Guerrero, and in both states the contested elections have led to violence. Cardenas backers have blocked highways, occupied town halls and set up parallel governments in many places. In some cases, fights have erupted.

Cardenas supporters allege that state and local police are implicated in some of the killings, as well as members of the official party. Among the recent killings reported by the PRD were:

In Coyuca in Guerrero, on Jan. 1, four Cardenas supporters were shot, allegedly by PRI supporters. The dead men, found the following day, were Bernabe Flores, Jose Manuel Palacios, Clemente Ayala and Roberto Dias.

On Jan. 2, Santos Hernandez Garcia, watchman for the PRD offices in Aguas Blancas, was beaten to death.

On Jan. 13, gunmen allegedly from the PRI killed three Cardenistas in the town of Durazno, Guerrero. The victims were Adelaido Barrera, Ismael Reyes and Antonio Pablo Terrero.

Police allegedly killed two PRD militants and wounded three on Jan. 19, when members of the ruling party tried to retake the presidential palace in Jungapeo, Michoacan, from Cardenas supporters. The dead were Salvador Gonzalez and Cipriano Chacon.

Two days later, a police officer shot and killed Ernesto Cambreon in Apatzingan, Michoacan.

A confrontation between PRD and PRI supporters in the Jacona, Michoacan, market left Javier Macias Salcedo dead on Jan. 23.