Renegade Mayor Tests Zedillo’s Promise : Mexico: City leader is jailed for not giving bridge tolls to federal government. President has pledged to share power.

President Ernesto Zedillo faced a potentially serious test of his promised new age of Mexican federalism Wednesday after more than a dozen key local and national officials from opposition and ruling parties rallied behind a renegade mayor jailed this week for violating federal law in asserting local sovereignty.

The issue: international bridge tolls, and who has the right to the millions of dollars in revenue collected by Mexico each year at border crossings with the United States.

As Mayor Francisco Villarreal, 64, spent his second day in jail for refusing to turn over to the central government the revenues from the Santa Fe Bridge between his border town of Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Tex., mayors from other Mexican border cities and federal legislators in the capital warned Zedillo that the controversy has the makings of a regional revolt over the broader issue of the federal government’s traditional, authoritarian rule over states and towns.

To protest Villarreal’s jailing, Mayor Isaac Uribe Alnis, the opposition mayor of Ojinaga, also took over from federal authorities the tollbooths on the bridge to Presidio, Tex. Other mayors indicated they may follow suit.

The brewing confrontation appears to be testing Zedillo’s repeated vow to cede many powers to the states and cities. Last week, the president signed an agreement with governors and mayors calling for constitutional reforms that will establish “a new Mexican federalism” to empower local governments.

The growing support for the jailed mayor of Ciudad Juarez is challenging Zedillo to act on those promises, and at the toughest level of all--money. The local protest movement along the border comes amid Mexico’s worst economic crisis in more than a decade, a time when the federal government is as strapped for cash as the state and municipal governments. Now, local officials are demanding that Zedillo’s proposed new federalism include not just more political power, but a larger piece of the revenue pie as well.

Calling on Zedillo to intervene in the controversy before it spirals into a rebellion all along the border, five federal legislators from the border state of Chihuahua--including two members of the president’s Institutional Revolutionary Party--endorsed a compromise proposed last week by the national executive committee of the jailed mayor’s National Action Party.

Citing the impact of the economic crisis on cities and states--many deeply in debt and now teetering on the brink of bankruptcy--the proposal calls for constitutional reforms that would commit 100% of the border bridge tolls to pay for development projects in the cities where they are collected.

The revenues are significant. Mayor Villarreal said the international bridge in his town alone took in nearly $10 million last year.

But the border-city mayors who rushed to Villarreal’s support already have taken the Ciudad Juarez controversy a big step beyond urban finance, announcing that they will convene a meeting April 21 in Ciudad Juarez as an open challenge to the federal government and a show of support for Villarreal, who is charged with violating federal law last week by setting up local tollbooths on the Santa Fe Bridge and refusing to remit those revenues to Mexico City.

“The core of the problem is not just economic resources, Mr. President,” declared Mayor Hector Osuna Jaime, the opposition chief executive of Tijuana, in an open letter Wednesday to Zedillo. “It is a call to the conscience of all Mexicans who believe in democracy. It is a call to the will that you have expressed for authentic federalism. . . .”

Mayor Horacio Garza Garza--a member of the ruling party--declared in his border town of Nuevo Laredo that his colleague’s arrest demonstrated a clear “lack of justice.”

He underscored the growing municipal militancy along the border by adding, “I believe that this is a historic opportunity, and we must assume risks and struggle with conviction for our citizens without concern about what could happen to us personally.”

Even as the mayor was being locked in his cell Tuesday, Zedillo’s Interior Ministry was sanctioning daylong public forums in every Mexican state capital on the subject of “New Federalism,” inviting public officials, academics, researchers and special-interest groups to present proposals on how to implement the new policy.