Mexico Democracy Wins a Round

By Guy D. Garcia

Democracy came to Mexico last week -- sort of. In the booming border state of Baja California Norte, Ernesto Ruffo Appel, the candidate of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), was declared the victor over Margarita Ortega Villa, the candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.) in the race for governor. Once officially confirmed this week, Ruffo's victory will mark the first time in the 60-year history of the P.R.I. that the party has conceded defeat in such an election. "It is a decisive event," says political analyst Jorge Castaneda, "the first that will have an authentic historic significance in this administration."

Those words had a hollow ring in the state of Michoacan, where the results of the state legislature's race -- another of the five state elections held last week -- remain hotly contested by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas and his Democratic Revolutionary Party (P.R.D.). The old pattern of fraud and stolen elections seemed to be reasserting itself as the P.R.I. claimed to have won ten of the 18 electoral districts while the P.R.D., alleging widespread irregularity, insisted that it had carried 15 districts. At a press conference on election day, Cardenas accused the P.R.I. of cheating by changing the location of the casillas (voting sites) at the last minute, allowing P.R.I. supporters to cast more than one ballot and barring P.R.D. officials from the casillas.

The Ruffo victory is nevertheless regarded as a crucial turning point for the seven-month-old presidency of Carlos Salinas de Gortari and a watershed in Mexican politics. Salinas, who took office amid charges that he was elected by fraud, vowed that "opposition victories will be respected." He has led a forceful campaign against corruption by arresting powerful drug lords, businessmen and labor leaders. Yet he is still perceived as someone elected by and for the Establishment. The P.R.I.'s acceptance of defeat in Baja is considered a critical test of Salinas' ability -- and desire -- to enforce reform within his own party.

Some analysts contend Salinas purposely allowed PAN, which is philosophically closer to his administration than is Cardenas' radical P.R.D., to win an election to restore the ruling party's lost credibility. Others theorize that Salinas has a vision of Mexico that does not include a monopoly on power by a single party. By forcing the increasingly sclerotic P.R.I. into an opposition role, goes the argument, the defeat in Baja will eventually lead to a more resilient political system. Perhaps. But what no one disputes is that the state of the economy was a major factor behind Salinas' decision to loosen P.R.I. control.

Since 1982, the country has been battered by a financial crisis that has fueled popular resentment, partly by eroding the system of political patronage that has helped keep the P.R.I. in power. In recent months, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have announced new loans and guarantees designed to help Salinas lead the country out of its economic slump. And there were signs last week that Mexico and 15 foreign banks were on the verge of an agreement that would offer the country a 35% discount on the face value of Mexico's $54 billion debt to commercial banks, cutting back the annual repayments that are sapping Mexico's Treasury. According to Susan Kaufman Purcell, vice president for Latin American Affairs at the New York-based Americas Society, Salinas realizes that political reform must accompany desperately needed economic changes. Says Purcell: "Political reforms became a kind of safety valve to allow him to continue the economic restructuring without creating political conflict."

It is also possible that Salinas' form of limited democracy may increase pressure to reform the entire system. The voters, says Jesus Blancornelas, editor of the independent Tijuana daily Zeta, are like "a person who has been jailed and is suddenly let free. They're not going to want to go back to jail."

With reporting by Andrea Dabrowski/Michoacan