Voters in Land of Zapata Embody a New Uprising

The Zapatistas are up in arms.

Not the gun-wielding rebels of Chiapas state, but the quiet, dutiful residents of this farm-and-shop town in Morelos where Emiliano Zapata once rallied peasants to the Mexican Revolution.

Like millions of other Mexicans, the residents, known as Zapatistas, went peacefully to the polls Sunday in midterm elections. And this former bastion of the ruling party experienced a kind of uprising.

“People are opening their eyes,” said Pedro Garcia, a white-haired peasant in a cowboy hat. For the first time in his 60 years, he had just cast his ballot for someone other than a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which has ruled Mexico since 1929.

“The PRI doesn’t convince people anymore,” he said. “Now, the opposition is trying to do something.”

This community of pastel-colored houses and riotous bougainvillea, about two hours south of Mexico City, provides a snapshot of the historic shift in Sunday’s elections.

A vibrant multi-party system is replacing one-party rule in Mexico, thanks to electoral reforms and widespread discontent with the ruling party.

Like Garcia, many people were weighing different political options for the first time Sunday. It seemed a heady experience, reflecting so much that has changed about Mexico: the newly aggressive media, the growing opposition political movement, expanding democratic rights.

“It’s a new era,” exclaimed Adela, a 34-year-old homemaker who had just dropped her ballot into a clear plastic voting box outside a tortilla shop. She had chosen congressional candidates from the center-left Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD; the PRI had broken too many promises, she said.

“We hope the new parties don’t cheat us, that they keep their campaign promises,” she said, declining to give her last name.

Felipe Lara, a 36-year-old factory worker, never used to bother voting. “We knew the PRI would win,” he said. The party was overwhelmingly powerful, intertwined with the Mexican state itself. The government funded the PRI, controlled elections and guaranteed that television would feature the ruling party.

But electoral reforms have changed all that. On Sunday, Lara was out with his wife and small son voting for an opposition party, which he declined to identify.

“The PRI defrauded us,” he said. “It’s time to give other parties a chance.”

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The change among the local Zapatistas became evident in March, when they broke with tradition by choosing an opposition party mayor. He is from the conservative, pro-business National Action Party, or PAN--a striking turnabout for an area where everyone still celebrates Zapata’s fight early this century to seize land for peasants.

“There is a system here that is crumbling,” said Rodolfo Esquivel, the new mayor. It was only last year that his party even set up a branch in the town of 50,000. But residents were ready for a new option.

For years, many had voted for PRI governments. After all, the PRI had presided over rapid economic growth and expanding opportunity in Mexico, building schools and handing out aid to farmers, businesspeople and others.

But as the population exploded and the economy slowed, the government stopped being the good provider. Further irritating citizens have been lurid news accounts about the alleged corruption of the family of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, a PRI member.

“It’s been the PRI, the PRI, the PRI. There was nothing else,” said Yolanda Pedroza, a 21-year-old pharmacy employee. But Sunday, she said, she was planning to vote for the PAN.

Part of the optimism in Sunday’s elections came from the novel measures to eliminate fraud, a traditional practice in Mexico. There were voter identification cards with photos. There were observers from each party at the ballot boxes. There were no more busloads of voters dispatched by the PRI.

“Before, our vote wasn’t taken seriously,” said Aurora Vergara, a tiny 38-year-old shopkeeper in a faded pink dress. But residents have gained confidence. This time, she marveled, her vote would count. Honesty would prevail.

It had better.

“If it’s not like that, the citizens could rise up,” she warned, as she cast her vote in the shadow of a statue of Zapata.