Mexico State Governor Resigns Amid Protests : Politics: The ruling party’s leader in San Luis Potosi quits two months after his fraud-tainted election.

Fausto Zapata, the ruling party’s new governor of San Luis Potosi, resigned Wednesday night under pressure from daily demonstrations and a march on Mexico City by his defeated opponent in the fraud-tainted state election two months ago.

In a brief letter delivered to the state legislature, Zapata said he is stepping down to make way for “a political solution” that would allow “peaceful coexistence” between the official Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its opponents.

The legislature scheduled a session today to name an interim governor, who could call new elections.

It was the second time in two months that the party has been forced to back away from declared victories in bitterly contested state races in Mexico’s Aug. 18 elections. On Aug. 29, Guanajuato Gov.-elect Ramon Aguirre announced that he would not take office in that state, although he claimed to have won the election.

Opposition parties in Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi asserted that the elections were rigged and mobilized thousands of their supporters in repeated street protests.

In San Luis Potosi, Zapata was challenged by Salvador Nava, a feisty but cancer-stricken 77-year-old ophthalmologist backed by a coalition of three political parties.

Zapata was sworn in Sept. 26 at an official ceremony attended by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and a tightly controlled crowd from the ruling party. While Zapata pleaded for “dialogue and understanding,” Salinas warned that he would not bow to “pressure from groups that act on the edge of the law.”

Nava staged his own symbolic inauguration at a mass outdoor rally that same night. Two days later he set out with several thousand demonstrators on the southward march to Mexico City, while scores of women supporters staged daily sit-ins at the entrances to the state government palace to prevent Zapata from going to work.

On his first days in office, Zapata did official business from home. But in a move that may have cost him the governorship, he showed up at the palace with a crowd of women supporters last Monday and forced his way through the blockade. A scuffle erupted, and one of the protesters accused Zapata on national radio of stepping on her face on his way into the building.

Zapata then set up his government in another city, but it was clear that he was never in control of the state.

A government official who declined to be identified said Zapata resigned “because of the tension in San Luis.”

The official said the legislature is expected to name former federal congressman Gonzalo Martinez Corbala, a member of the ruling party and longtime family friend of Salinas, as interim governor.

Nava and about 100 protesters had covered about 115 miles of the 260-mile trek to Mexico City when word of Zapata’s resignation was broadcast. Hundreds of his supporters in the state capital erupted in celebration outside the palace.

“I am really happy because the protests worked,” said Laura Ariztegui, an activist in Nava’s coalition. “We have kept a man who was not legitimately elected from governing. We showed we are not a minority.”

But National Action Party spokesman Alberto Loyola called the resignation a presidential decision that “goes halfway,” eliminating Zapata while apparently leaving the ruling party in power.

Supporters of Nava said he has halted his march but will resume it unless the interim governor calls new elections within 18 months. He had planned to reach Mexico City on Nov. 1, the day of Salinas’ state of the union speech.

Carlos Ramirez, a political columnist for the newspaper El Financiero, called the resignation “the defeat of Salinas by a popular movement, the likes of which has not been seen here in a long time. . . . The people said they did not believe in the electoral process. They did not believe that (Zapata) won.”

The PRI has controlled Mexican politics for 62 years and only once has conceded defeat in a gubernatorial election. Nava first challenged the PRI in San Luis Potosi’s 1961 governor’s race and lost. After weeks of street protests against election fraud, he was arrested and jailed for a month.

His middle-class movement remained strong in the state and, in 1987, forced the PRI governor to resign amid protests similar to those of recent weeks. The governor called out riot police to crush protests over municipal elections won by the PRI, and the brutality drew nationwide attention.