Leftist Leader Criticizes Mexican Government During Visit to L.A. : Politics: Former presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas says crisis will continue unless there are reforms.

The battered Mexican peso has gained somewhat against the dollar. The financial pages point toward economic stabilization, if not a slight recovery. Officials in Mexico City voice muted hopes that the worst of the crisis is past.

Cuauhtemoc Cardenas begs to differ.

“I see no way out of crisis if the government continues its current policies,” said the longtime standard-bearer of the Mexican left, who was in Los Angeles on Thursday at the tail end of a 10-day stump through the United States and Canada.

Twice defeated as a presidential contender--he finished a distant third in last year’s national elections--Cardenas is not nearly the imposing political force he once was. Many on Mexico’s fractured left say openly that a new leader is needed, that Cardenas’ day has come and gone, his doleful countenance an unwelcome reminder of defeats past.

But at an energetic 61, Cardenas clearly has no intention of going away or abandoning the political life embedded in his lineage. He is the son of the late Lazaro Cardenas, the still-revered ex-president and potent symbol of Mexican nationalism.

Cardenas’ stop here is yet another indication of the expanding bonds between Mexico and Los Angeles, home of the largest population of Mexican nationals outside their homeland.

The veteran political combatant has many allies here, testament to an organizational effort launched during the 1980s after he split from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and launched his first bid for the presidency. He has long championed a central expatriates’ cause: the right to cast absentee ballots in Mexican national elections, a proposal eyed warily by rulers in Mexico City despite its widespread practice elsewhere.

Today, Cardenas’ central agenda calls for a more immediate and sweeping change: the formation of a new “Government for National Salvation,” a vehicle for the abolition of the one-party system that has dominated the nation since the late 1920s.

“The state party regime in Mexico can no longer rule the country,” Cardenas declared before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.

He spoke a week after Jesus Silva Herzog, Mexico’s ambassador in Washington, presented the council with a decidedly more upbeat picture of a Mexico in cautious but certain recovery.

From Cardenas’ perspective, the administration of President Ernesto Zedillo is a transitional vehicle toward a truly democratic regime. The shift may be involuntary, Cardenas said, but it is inevitable. How exactly the transition will come remains somewhat unclear.

In an interview Thursday, Cardenas described a nation poised at a critical juncture: stability and democracy beckon in one direction, chaos and social tumult lurk in the other. The recent legacy of political assassinations, rebellion, corruption and economic collapse has eroded people’s confidence in the system beyond easy repair, he warned.

“Either there’s a change, or we continue down this toboggan [run] that is taking us toward a disaster in all ways: social, economic, political,” said Cardenas, a civil engineer.

Privately, Mexican officials dismiss Cardenas as a relic leftist clinging to outdated ideals of a protectionist, centralized economy. Cardenas rejects the characterization and proclaims the importance of foreign investment. He seeks a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, with more attention to workers’ rights, environmental matters, immigration and other concerns.

From his perspective, the Mexican government’s economic recovery plans--centered on about $50 billion in U.S.-brokered guarantees--are the same policies that led to the peso’s collapse in December.

His solution? A massive, New Deal-style public works campaign to energize the economy and foster employment and investment in a nation that may lose up to 2 million jobs this year while simultaneously suffering high inflation.

Pressures for illegal immigration will rise so long as economic prospects continue to diminish in Mexico, Cardenas predicts.

“People can cross metal fences from below and above,” he noted, contending that barriers and greater enforcement will not be sufficient to thwart those seeking opportunity lacking in their homeland.

As for his future, Cardenas is vague about a potential presidential run in 2000, the next scheduled national election in Mexico.

“My hope,” Cardenas said, “is that the transition to democracy will be complete before then.”