NEWS ANALYSIS : Mexico Tries to Erase Image of Chaos Before Elections

The Mexican government is desperately trying to put the turmoil of early 1994 behind it as the country approaches the Aug. 21 presidential election.

The special prosecutor’s finding, announced Tuesday, that a 23-year-old factory worker acted alone when he fatally shot ruling party presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio is the latest example of efforts to calm this nation on the eve of the most closely contested presidential race in 65 years.

After decades of peace, Mexico has been rocked by violence this year, creating an image of instability that the government is eager to dispel.

First, Indian rebels took over several county seats in the southern state of Chiapas on New Year’s Day. Then on March 23, Colosio was killed at a campaign rally in the highest-profile political assassination in this country in more than six decades.

The murder of the Tijuana police chief and a series of kidnapings of wealthy businessmen have embellished a chaotic image that the government wants to erase.

Officials are using government aid, publicity and a bit of well-placed pressure to address the problems.

They have, for example, initiated a $900-million giveaway program in Chiapas in an attempt to undermine the rebellion there. The Zapatista National Liberation Army, which occupied several county seats and generated international sympathy with its demands for democracy and better living conditions, has been surrounded militarily for months.

Now, the government is attempting to cut the Zapatistas off politically as well, officials acknowledge privately. Manuel Camacho Solis, the controversial former Chiapas peace commissioner and Bishop Samuel Ruiz, the former mediator in the conflict, have been replaced by lower-profile officials.

The Zapatistas’ own sudden reluctance to talk with reporters--after welcoming dozens of journalists to their camp for several months--has helped the government build its case. Reporters turned back at rebel roadblocks have begun to describe the movement as cornered and even irrelevant.

But stuffing this genie back in its bottle could prove more difficult than the government expects. That is partly because, with federal elections approaching, Congress also is becoming harder to control.

Tuesday’s announcement fixing the blame for Colosio’s death only on suspect Mario Aburto Martinez has met with widespread skepticism.

“This verges on incompetence,” said Alejandro Encinas, an opposition member of the congressional committee that has been investigating Colosio’s killing. “They have made a political decision to sweep it under the rug.”

Further, the judge in the case has yet to act on requests from lawyers to release three men imprisoned and awaiting trial as part of an alleged conspiracy that the prosecutor’s office said it has discarded.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Manuel Tello’s admission before the Mexican Senate that he has lobbied other Latin American nations to promote President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s candidacy for director of the nascent World Trade Organization has provoked a new round of protest from opposition parties.

At the same time, hard-liners within Salinas’ own Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) are becoming increasingly restive with the conciliatory line the government has taken in Chiapas.

Merchants and ranchers meeting in the state capital of Tuxtla Gutierrez demanded that the Mexican army disarm the Zapatistas.

In Mexico City, PRI congressional deputies Gen. Ramon Mota and Cuauhtemoc Lopez on Tuesday accused Ruiz of channeling financial aide from Europe and the United States to the Zapatistas. They demanded a federal investigation.

“These expressions of antagonistic positions do not help much,” said Hector Hernandez, who is in charge of carrying out the government’s pacification program in Chiapas but who is not negotiating with the Zapatistas.

In a two-hour news conference, Hernandez outlined the plan, including construction of 20 rural health clinics and rehabilitation of 72 others, a milk distribution program, school breakfasts, highway construction and electrification.