Mexico Troops Oust Dissidents in 14 City Halls

Armored vehicles rolled into Michoacan state as opposition supporters were ousted Thursday from city halls they had shut down in December to dramatize election fraud charges against Mexico’s ruling party.

By late Thursday, the official news agency Notimex reported that protesters from the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) in 14 of the 17 city halls had either been dislodged or had surrendered. The buildings had been shut down by the demonstrators since the disputed municipal elections.

The government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari ordered the troop movement after appeals from the governor of Michoacan for help in ending the occupation.

Morning television programs showed videotape of armored vehicles rolling through the streets of the state capital of Morelia, 150 miles northwest of Mexico City.

At midday, Notimex reported that PRD sympathizers had been ousted at city halls in Apatzingan, Ciudad Hidalgo, Brisenas, Chavinda, Huandacareo, Cotija and Jacona. Later, seven more city halls were cleared. Notimex said that 80 dissidents had been arrested by late Thursday.

Mexico’s attorney general said there was no violence.

“There hasn’t been even one blow nor one drop of blood,” Atty. Gen. Enrique Alvarez del Castillo was quoted as saying by the private Televisa TV network.

The PRD says the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI, which has ruled Mexico 61 years, cheated it out of victory in the December elections in Michoacan.

The state has been a problem for the PRI since the 1988 presidential race, when native son and PRD founder Cuauhtemoc Cardenas came in second to Salinas in an election that was clouded by charges of vote fraud.