Salinas Builds Dam--and Support : Mexico: The president promises public works projects he can deliver. His strategy is strengthening his political base.

For more than 50 years, the apple growers of Canatlan appealed to the nation’s president to build a dam, and for 50 years, successive presidents gave them promises but no dam.

The Durango state farmers began to call the dam “the golden dream of Canatlan” and ceased to believe it would ever be realized.

Now, however, in what the growers regard as something of a miracle, construction crews are working around-the-clock to finish a 3,500-foot dam across the Sauceda River in time for President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to inaugurate it later this month.

“This time, I really think they’re going to finish it,” said farmer Reginaldo Hernandez. “There’s a lot more reality in the policies of this president than others. Salinas is one of the few who has responded with real public works.”

The dam project for the Sauceda River valley is an example of how Salinas has systematically built support for himself--83% in a recent Los Angeles Times poll--and for the beleaguered Institutional Revolutionary Party that has ruled Mexico for 62 years.

The official party, called the PRI, won a sweeping victory in midterm elections Aug 18. Although the vote was marred by fraud charges, the ruling party’s triumph was generally attributed to public works projects such as the Canatlan dam, which bear Salinas’ trademark signature, “Solidarity.”

Salinas, whose credibility was undermined by his own fraud-tainted election in 1988, understood early in his term that Mexicans from all sectors of society were fed up with empty government promises. His clearly stated strategy is to promise only what he can deliver and to deliver what he promises.

“People believe in the Solidarity program, and they realize it is the program of a PRI president,” said Marquil Humberto Estrada, assistant to the mayor of Canatlan. “They don’t talk about the party. They talk about the great president who keeps his promises.”

To that end, Salinas has institutionalized the compromiso presidencial --the presidential commitment--with a special office under his domain that is responsible for tracking progress on every school, health clinic, road and other public work that he promises.

Salinas is not so much making the wheels of government work as he is circumventing the huge bureaucratic quagmire that so often has prevented projects from seeing completion. Government projects move forward now because he orders them to move.

“From the moment this became a presidential commitment, everything changed,” said Francisco Unzueta, project engineer on the Canatlan dam since 1984. “We are doing the impossible to get this done on time because it is a presidential commitment.”

According to Luis Carbajal, a lanky 60-year-old electrician and unofficial town historian, Jesuit missionaries operated a rudimentary but functional dam on the Sauceda River in the last century until their lands were confiscated in the reform of President Benito Juarez.

The angry Jesuits argued that ignorant peasants would never be able to operate their dam and, when it burst the following year, their words were taken as a hex.

The region’s farmers first asked the government to build a dam in 1938, when President Lazaro Cardenas visited Canatlan to inaugurate a school on the town square. Nothing ever came of their request.

Their appeals to half a dozen presidents who followed netted lots of nods and even a couple of geological studies, but no dam.

“I remember very well President Adolfo Lopez Mateos (in the early 1960s) saying, ‘The government of the Revolution will build the . . . dam,’ ” Carbajal said. “But he didn’t say when.”

President Miguel de la Madrid hired a company to build the dam in 1984 for about $1.7 million. But the company built only half a dam and was fired in 1986. The government ran out of money, and the project hung in limbo.

A second contractor hired in August, 1990, for about $2.1 million also floundered and was fired last December.

Then came the crucial change--a commitment from Salinas.

During a visit to Canatlan on March 21, Salinas vowed to release another $2.5 million to hire a reliable contractor and finish the dam.

“To the people of Canatlan, I say we are going to inaugurate that dam together and get it working for your benefit. . . . We will see each other at the end of this year to inaugurate the dam and fulfill my word.”

Money and machinery flowed. Bypassing the usual bidding process, the government picked a Mexico City contractor to do the job. A new manager was named in the Durango office of the National Water Commission to oversee the project. As the deadline approached for Salinas’ visit, the work force was tripled and began laboring 24 hours a day. Additional funds were authorized.

Technically, the dam was funded out of the regular government budget rather than out of Salinas’ $3.3-billion pet program, Solidarity, that is paid for with income from the sale of state companies. But government project maps bear the twisted red, white and green Solidarity logo.

One of the opposition’s main criticisms of Salinas’ program is that he portrays normal public works--the job of government--as an extraordinary presidential gift and that they are designed to support PRI political campaigns. A disproportionate share of government investment has gone to areas that opposed Salinas and the ruling party in 1988, they say.

Canatlan residents believe that the strong opposition showing in 1988 forced the government to respond with projects such as the dam. Now, they say, such projects have helped to dilute the opposition’s strength.

The dam at Canatlan will provide water to 465 families to irrigate a total of 5,000 acres of apple orchards. The year-round water should double the farmers’ crop.

Reginaldo Hernandez, a leader of the ejido , or communal farmers union, said farmers are irritated about rising costs and competition from imported American apples and that they fear an agrarian reform proposal. And yet they support the president.

“Many generations listened to candidates and presidents talk about the . . . dam,” said Hernandez. “Farmers were tired of signing blank checks and being told they’d receive the goods later.”

This time they’re getting the goods.