Mexico Vote Is Tarnished by Violence

President Vicente Fox’s party lost ground to the former ruling party in high-profile elections Sunday in Mexico’s most populous state, exit polls showed. The voting was marked by violence that included the shooting deaths of two policemen and the destruction of polling places by machete-wielding protesters.

An exit poll conducted by the independent Consulta Mitofsky showed the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in alliance with the tiny Green Party, winning 36% of the vote for the legislature in the state of Mexico. That compared with a projected 29% for Fox’s National Action Party, or PAN, followed by 26.5% for the Democratic Revolution Party.

At stake Sunday were 124 mayor’s posts and 45 state legislative seats, but the balloting was being watched closely as a barometer of voter sentiment ahead of national elections for Congress this summer.

If the results hold up, the vote could give a boost to the PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years before losing the presidency to Fox in 2000, in the upcoming national election. The July 6 congressional showdown will determine whether Fox will face a friendly or hostile national legislature in the latter half of his six-year term.

While Sunday’s vote was for local positions, concern about public opinion ahead of the voting may have been a complicating factor in Mexico’s foreign policy in recent weeks. The nation currently holds a rotating seat on the U.N. Security Council, which is likely to face a high-pressure vote this week on whether to support a U.S.-backed resolution giving Iraq a March 17 deadline to comply with demands that it disarm.

With opinion polls showing an overwhelming majority of Mexicans opposed to a U.S.-led war against Baghdad, Fox in recent weeks has tried to stake out a neutral position. But Mexico’s economy is heavily dependent on the United States, which purchases 90% of its exports.

Mexico is no stranger to election-day strife, particularly in areas in the south with heavy concentrations of indigenous peoples. But officials said Sunday’s incidents were unusual for the state of Mexico, a sprawling expanse of suburbs and shantytowns near Mexico City that is home to 13 million people.

“This the first time that we have seen these kind of confrontations here,” said Benjamin Peralta, a spokesman for the state election commission. “Many things occurred that we have never seen in the past. The last elections were peaceful.”

Sunday’s elections capped a political season filled with so much mudslinging that one local newspaper dubbed it the “dirty war.” Last month, an election official was wounded in a stabbing by an unknown assailant. Among the incidents reported Sunday:

* Two policemen were gunned down in the city of Nezahualcoyotl as they were guarding a facility where blank ballots were stored. Authorities investigating the double homicide said they had no suspects.

* In Tultitlan, a candidate for the Democratic Revolution Party was injured in a scuffle with PRI sympathizers who accused him of buying votes, according to radio reports.

* In San Salvador Atenco, a largely rural area northeast of Mexico City, 18 of 36 polling places had to be closed after hundreds of farmers, students and others demolished voting booths and battled authorities. Atenco has been the site of unrest since last year, when the government unsuccessfully tried to appropriate farmland for a new airport. There were no reports of serious injuries.

Elections went smoothly and quietly in much of the rest of the state, where the PRI and Fox’s party had waged vigorous campaigns to woo voters. The PRI’s all-out push was evident in the state capital, Toluca, where the party’s billboards dotted the highway leading into the industrial city of nearly 700,000.

The PRI mounted an aggressive media campaign mocking Fox’s election promises while touting the PRI’s decades of experience running the country.

The pitch appeared to work with Leticia Mendoza Hernandez, a small-business woman in a straw hat who said she had cast her ballot for the PRI. Hernandez said that she voted for Fox in the last presidential election but that she regretted her choice.

“From the PAN we have received nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing,” said Hernandez, 33. “We’re going backward.”