Mexican Opposition Leader Looks Homeward in Crucial Political Test : Elections: Cardenas’ future hangs in balance as his left-of-center party takes on ruling PRI in Michoacan state vote.

Cuauhtemoc Cardenas piled into a white Suburban with half a dozen aides for a high-speed drive from Mexico City to his home state of Michoacan, talking strategy all the way. At the entrance to this farming town, the populist leader embraced a crush of supporters in straw hats and marched to the central square under a searing morning sun.

“We are going to defend the victories that we will win in a free vote,” said Cardenas, whose first name is pronounced Kwow-TAY-Mohk. “We will redouble our forces at the polls to make sure everyone is allowed to vote.” Then he was off again at a breakneck pace to another plaza, and another.

Although Cardenas is not a candidate for office in Michoacan, his political future hangs on the outcome of Sunday’s election for governor and 113 town mayors. And he is running hard. Cardenas wants to prove that his left-of-center Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) not only can win its first governorship but that it is strong enough to keep the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party from stealing the election.

The government, on the other hand, would like to trounce Cardenas’ candidates and, with them, any chances that Michoacan’s native son might have of a serious challenge for the presidency in 1994.

President Carlos Salinas de Gortari has made eight visits to Michoacan in the last three years and has spent $1.6 billion on federal public works projects there, said Jorge Hidalgo, a spokesman for the state PRI, as the ruling party is called.

“Salinas wants to destroy all the credibility of Cardenas and prove the futility of the Democratic Revolutionary Party,” said political analyst Adolfo Aguilar Zinser. “If Cardenas cannot politically defend his own state, that finishes him.”

Cardenas answered angrily, saying: “This will not be the end of the PRD. That is wishful thinking on the part of some people.”

The state is polarized. Both sides warn of post-election violence and already are blaming each other for what has yet to happen. Almost a dozen Mexican civic groups plan to monitor the vote, and former President Jimmy Carter, who oversaw elections in Nicaragua, Panama and Haiti, said he will send a delegation to advise the Mexican observers. The government officially will not allow foreign monitors.

Cardenas is the son of Gen. Lazaro Cardenas, who served as president of Mexico in the 1930s and became a national hero for expropriating the oil industry from foreigners and distributing land to poor farmers. Like his father, Cardenas was a member of the PRI and served as governor of Michoacan. But he left the ruling party when the country was in economic ruin to challenge Salinas in the 1988 presidential race.

On paper, Salinas won 51% of the vote. But opponents charge the election was stolen.

Many critics say Salinas has a visceral dislike for the tall, dark Cardenas and a vengeance to destroy his party. No matter who wins the vote, they say, he will not allow a Cardenas governor in Michoacan.

In Mexico, electoral fraud has been common practice and contested elections are decided by the president. Last year, Salinas intervened to oust the ruling party winners of the governor’s races in Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi after the opposition charged fraud.

Raymundo Riva Palacio, a columnist for the newspaper El Financiero, argued that while Salinas may be willing to let the National Action Party win the governor’s post in Chihuahua state in a vote also to be held Sunday, “strategic” concerns would prevent him from accepting a Cardenas victory in Michoacan.

“By their logic, if the PRD wins the governorship, it is a factor of instability for foreign investment. The regime wants an alternation of parties, but parties that share their national economic program. The PRD would break that cohesion,” Riva Palacio said.

He and other political analysts believe the government does not want to risk violence in the northern border state of Chihuahua, where many foreign-owned maquiladoras , or assembly plants, are located. But Michoacan, in central Mexico, has little industry, and Salinas already has used the army and police to put down demonstrations there.

PRI officials insist there will be a free and fair vote in Michoacan on Sunday and that their candidate, Eduardo Villasenor, will win by such a large margin that no one will be able to contest the results. Independent polls show PRI leading.

Villasenor, 46, is a wealthy pig farmer and relative newcomer to politics. He won the mayor’s post in his hometown of La Piedad in 1989 and a seat in the federal Chamber of Deputies last year. While his nomination divided the ruling party locally, its intention was to show voters that the government means to bring business to the long-ignored state.

“Michoacan can’t be left behind in modernization, can’t be left out of President Salinas’ program,” Villasenor told a women’s forum in Morelia recently.

He has drawn support from people who are tired of government corruption and believe his wealth will keep him from stealing. Throughout his campaign, Villasenor has handed out materials and machinery to build wells and other public works projects--a strategy the opposition attacks as vote-buying.

“We’re doing this instead of advertising. These are works of a social character funded by the PRI’s finance committee,” Villasenor said. But the ruling party also has blanketed the media with ads.

Cardenas’ gubernatorial candidate is Cristobal Arias, 37, a federal deputy who once served as PRI party chief in Michoacan. Arias--whose nomination also divided his party--is trying to convince supporters that it is worth their while to vote and that an opposition party can win and work peacefully with the PRI federal government.

“This is a chance to demonstrate that there can be a real alternation of power,” he told supporters in Indaparapeo. “We will serve the majority but also the minority, and we will guarantee respect for our political adversaries.”

Violence has been a primary campaign issue for both sides. Villasenor promises “peace and development” and accuses the PRD of fomenting violence.

Arias counters that fraud foments violence. He and civic groups accuse the government of tampering with voter rolls, spending state funds on the PRI, monopolizing the media, intimidating voters and dominating the electoral commission. The PRD has filed a complaint with the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Human Rights Commission.

Cardenas won Michoacan in the 1988 election. His then-coalition took the first two federal Senate seats ever to go to the opposition, as well as 13 congressional seats. But the next year, two elections for a state legislature and mayoral posts were marred by fraud.

In response, angry Cardenistas blocked highways and occupied city halls for months. Scores of people were injured and several were killed in political confrontations. Salinas called out the army and police to put down the protests, and the government recognized PRD victories in 52 of 113 town halls. Then Salinas launched his campaign to win the hearts and minds of Michoacan voters.

Governing has been a double-edged sword for the PRD; like all parties, it has won support in towns where its mayors have worked hard and lost it where its mayors have failed to deliver on promises. Last year, the PRI recaptured all but one of the federal congressional seats. Arias claims that election was also fraudulent but that the PRD decided to focus its energy on the gubernatorial race rather than fight for a couple of legislative seats.

The PRD, he said, has taken heart from the protests in the Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi gubernatorial elections and has planned its post-election campaign “to defend our rights and victories.”

“Vote,” he urged supporters in Indaparapeo. “This is one of the most important elections in decades in the life of the state and the country.”

For Cardenas and the PRD, that is certainly true.