Mexico’s Consul General Replaced in Unpopular Move : Diplomacy: Outgoing emissary was viewed as helpful and accessible. Controversy forced new official from earlier post.

Fausto Zapata Loredo, who served as governor of San Luis Potosi for 13 days last year before controversy forced his resignation, has been named Mexico’s consul general in Los Angeles.

In a terse statement issued Wednesday night, the Foreign Ministry said that Zapata, 51, would replace Jose Angel Pescador Osuna, who has been recalled to Mexico City.

Latino public officials and others in Los Angeles reacted with anger and disappointment to the loss of Pescador, 45, who had served in the plum assignment for two years. After a series of unpopular consul generals, he has been viewed as helpful and accessible.

“I’m surprised and saddened by the news,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, who used his friendship with Pescador to raise the Mexican government’s visibility in Southern California.

Los Angeles businessman Fernando Oaxaca, who has longstanding ties to Mexican government officials, said: “Pescador did more than any of the previous consul generals to understand the Latino community and its social and political structures.”

Pescadero did not criticize his reassignment. “As a public servant,” he said, “I serve where the president of Mexico thinks I can do best.”

Zapata, a politician with the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and an experienced diplomat, is expected to assume the Los Angeles post by September, officials in Mexico City said. He was declared the winner of a hotly contested gubernatorial election last year against a popular coalition candidate, Dr. Salvador Nava.

Over opposition cries that the ruling party committed election fraud, Zapata was sworn in on Sept. 26 at a ceremony attended by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Nava staged his own defiant “inauguration” at rally that night.

The protests against Zapata continued with sit-ins blocking entrances to the governor’s palace and a march toward Mexico City led by the cancer-stricken Nava, 77. Zapata confronted demonstrators at the palace with his supporters, provoking a scuffle and forcing his way into the building.

Less that two weeks after his inauguration--and just before Nava and thousands of his supporters reached the capital--Zapata sent a letter of resignation to the San Luis Potosi state legislature. He said he was stepping down to allow for “a political solution” and “peaceful coexistence” between the ruling party and its opposition.

He is believed to have resigned at the president’s behest. Salinas named federal congressman and longtime friend Gonzalo Martinez Corbala as interim governor.

Nava died of cancer last month.

Zapata, who dropped out of public sight after leaving the governorship, has previously served as a federal congressman and senator and as a foreign ambassador.

Mexican opposition leaders in Los Angeles, who consider the PRI to be corrupt, said Zapata’s presence in the Southland might re-energize local efforts on behalf of Chuahtemoc Cardenas, who claims Salinas’ 1988 presidential victory over him was obtained through election fraud.

Miller reported from Mexico City and Ramos from Los Angeles.