With Chiapas Cease-Fire, Political Fallout Begins : Mexico: The same semi-feudal power structure that shut out rebellious Indians has long delivered the vote for PRI.

The fighting appeared to have halted in southern Mexico on Thursday, but the political fallout from 12 days of guerrilla warfare has barely begun.

The uprising that cost more than 100 lives, observers say, is an indictment of a semi-feudal system that has left many Indians feeling powerless, with no way to resolve their problems by peaceful means.

Yet that same system is what guarantees that Chiapas, the state bordering Guatemala, turns out a solid majority for the ruling party election after election.

With a presidential vote upcoming in August, analysts said, politicians may be reluctant to dismantle the power structure in a state that has become known as a strategic reserve of votes for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

But they seemingly have little choice. “Chiapas may be a mother lode of votes for the PRI, but it could also be its tomb,” warned Cecilia Romero, assistant secretary general of the National Action Party, the major right-wing opposition party.

Even as the government appeared to be moving toward peace with the rebels by meeting two of their demands for negotiations--calling a unilateral cease-fire Wednesday and recognizing them Thursday as a “political and military force”--the consequences of the uprising were becoming more clear.

Besides crowding the presidential campaign off the front page, the rebels have changed the focus of the debate, pushing issues of poverty and unequal distribution of wealth into the foreground.

Further, the violence in Chiapas has pointed out the pitfalls of what critics of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari call Salinas - troika: perestroika (restructuring) without glasnost (political openness or reform) .

Salinas’ fast-track, free-market economic reforms contrast sharply with the lack of change in a political patronage system that has kept his party in power for six decades.

Salinas supporters have argued that economic change had to precede political shifts to avoid the risk of social upheaval. The appearance of the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas, combined with the immediate support the group received from urban guerrillas setting off bombs in the capital and other cities, makes that reasoning seem dubious now, analysts said.

Freedom and democracy lead the list of the rebels’ demands.

Chiapas’ Indians are governed by traditional leaders-- caciques (political bosses) who are closely tied to the PRI. Those who live outside their ancestral villages generally work for large cattle ranches whose owners also have close PRI alliances.

In the 1991 midterm congressional elections, more than three-fourths of Chiapas voters cast ballots for the ruling party, according to the Federal Electoral Institute. That compares with 60% nationwide. In four remote communities, the PRI won 100% of the votes.

*

Those high percentages raise suspicions of fraud.

Andrea Dabrowski--of the campaign of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, an opposition party presidential candidate--observed that, “Almost everyone has pointed to the political closure, not allowing a legal means of expression, as being at the root of the violence.”

Those lessons have resulted in a major victory for the progressive wing of the PRI, evident in the appointment of human rights advocate Jorge Carpizo MacGregor as Mexican interior minister, said Roderic Camp, a political scientist at Tulane University. Carpizo, who replaces an old-style PRI politician, will be responsible not only for domestic policy in the current crisis but also for organizing and certifying the legitimacy of the August presidential elections.

“His personal integrity is such that he would not be willing to certify an election that was broadly fraudulent,” said Camp.

That increases the pressure on PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio to win cleanly at the same time the focus of the campaign is shifting to issues, such as social concerns, that may not favor his party or him personally.

As social development minister, Colosio was in charge of the Solidarity anti-poverty program, which was supposed to solve the desperate problems of starvation and illness that the Zapatistas say are at the heart of their rebellion.

Adding to the embarrassment, Salinas has called on skilled negotiator Manuel Camacho Solis to reach an agreement with the rebels. Many Mexicans felt that the popular former Mexico City mayor should have been his party’s presidential pick. “Colosio looks less and less like a good candidate,” said Castaneda.

At the same time, the violence has made left-leaning Cardenas look less radical. “People are starting to ask, what’s worse,” said Castaneda, “Cardenas or the guerrillas blowing up the whole place?”