Revolutionary Party

MEXICO CITY -- In yet another stunning turnaround, Mexico's ruling party helped elect an opposition-party member as interim governor of Guanajuato, a key central state torn by election fraud.The election by the state legislature late Saturday opens the way for the center-right National Action Party (PAN) to capture the governorship in a special election next year. If the PAN captures the governorship, it would be only the second time an opposition party has occupied a state house since 1929.

Mexico's presidential and congressional elections Sunday will have significant implications in the United States. For U.S. citizens concerned about the flow of immigrants, a win by the leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador may do more to effectively address the conditions of poverty pushing Mexicans over the U.S. border in search of work than a victory by any of the other candidates. The final opinion polls show Mr. Lopez Obrador of the liberal Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) with a 2 percent to 5 percent lead over Felipe Calderon, the candidate of the conservative and incumbent National Action Party (PAN)

"Bordering on Chaos: Guerrillas, Stockbrokers, Politicians and Mexico's Road to Prosperity," by Andres Oppenheimer. Little Brown and Co. 349 pages, $24.95.Mexico remains so terribly misunderstood. Thanks to the likes of Ross Perot, most of America views its neighbor to the south as a dusty backwater where people only live in miserable poverty.About the only time stories from Mexico make it onto the network news it is to show images of desperate people leaping over the barbed wire fences at the border to seek jobs in this country.

AMACUZAC, Mexico -- In his bid to win Sunday's presidential election, leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador can count on a secret weapon: the yellow dune buggy stuffed with campaign fliers that volunteer activist Raul Esquivel drives to the rural hamlets surrounding this town in southern Mexico. The senior citizens of Mexico City are another of Lopez Obrador's secret weapons. They clip out newspaper articles to make campaign fliers and write songs about their hero that they'll sing to anyone who will listen.

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's leading opposition parties accused the government yesterday of widespread vote fraud in Sunday's elections in the populous, industrialized state of Mexico.[Hundreds of demonstrators calling for the end of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) marched through the capital yesterday to protest the alleged fraud, Reuters reported.["Death to the PRI" and "Death to electoral fraud" were among slogans chanted by an estimated 1,500 protesters as they marched on the Interior Ministry, snarling rush-hour traffic, Reuters reported.

Mexico has voted to close out the century still under the control of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that has held uninterrupted power since 1929. Although charges of scattered irregularities have accompanied the victory of Ernesto Zedillo, a 42-year-old Yale-trained technocrat, his triumph is a step forward in Mexico's labored development of a credible democratic system.For the United States, the results virtually insure continuity of economic policies that have opened up Mexico to foreign investment and broken down protectionist barriers through adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Rejection of the Mexican government's peace plan by rebel forces in Chiapas provides a preview of one of the near certainties in the tumultuous national election campaign now unfolding south of the Rio Grande. The results of the Aug. 21 polling will be rejected, too, no matter how great a show of fraud-free voting is displayed by the government.At this stage of the campaign, after rebellion in Chiapas and the assassination of the initial candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)

AS this country's partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement and supplier of immigrants, Mexico has the ability to make U.S. citizens uncomfortable. Its political culture is so alien to ours.The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has ruled for 70 years, each president chosen by his predecessor and possessing enormous powers for six years. PRI rhetoric is revolutionary, but its rule is institutional.So convincingly has President Ernesto Zedillo shaken this culture that an opinion poll on the year 2000 presidential election gave the lead to Guanajuato state Gov. Vicente Fox of the opposition National Action Party (PAN)

ON THE EVE of Vicente Fox's inauguration as president of Mexico, that nation's tomorrow promises hope and new beginnings. He is a breath of fresh air after 71 years of one-party rule. He offers radical possibilities but also new responsibilities. Mr. Fox is a former Coca-Cola executive who crusaded for power leading the National Action Party (PAN), which was in origin the Catholic Church party but is now the party of business. He reached beyond PAN in his Cabinet appointments and promises to improve the life and opportunities of the poor.

GUNMEN who invaded the village of Acteal in southern Mexico and murdered 45 Tzotzil Indians last Monday, wounded the hopes for democracy and rule of law in Mexico. The reform administration of President Ernesto Zedillo is back to Square One in attempts to restore the credibility of Mexican institutions.There has been corruption of police and the army in fighting narco-terrorism, political murders at the highest level, stolen elections, a currency crisis impoverishing millions and now this.

LOS ANGELES -- Mexican President Vicente Fox has fans on both sides of the border. Jose GonzM-alez isn't one of them. While Mr. Fox was flying to Los Angeles to wrap up a three-state swing through Utah, Washington and California, the 39-year-old San Diego resident was also headed to the City of Angels aboard a train. A human rights activist who champions the cause of Mexico's beleaguered indigenous population, Mr. GonzM-alez wasn't intending to meet with Mr. Fox. For Mr. GonzM-alez, who came to the United States from Mexico illegally 25 years ago and went through the process to become a legal resident and then a U.S. citizen, the Fox presidency is a letdown.

SINCE HIS first term, President Bush has promised to craft an immigration agreement with Mexico that would provide U.S. employers with a steady stream of Mexican workers willing to fill low-wage jobs. Mexican President Vicente Fox supports the idea because it would provide Mexico's economy with much-needed remittances sent home by compatriots working stateside. Mr. Fox is still waiting for the agreement, and the delay has cost him politically. Having touted his good relationship with Mr. Bush, Mr. Fox now appears unable to deliver jobs to Mexicans eager to work in the United States without risk of arrest or deportation.

THE LAWLESSNESS infecting Mexico's criminal justice system can be summed up in two words: Ciudad Juarez. That's the city on the U.S.-Mexico border infamous for the unsolved murders of nearly 400 women, a third of whom had been sexually assaulted. But the deeper crime in these and other cases is the alleged complicity of law enforcement in the city's violence. Suspects have been tortured to confess. Police have been implicated in the drug trade. A lawyer was gunned down after accusing police of framing his client in the rape-murders.

Mexico City - Politics seemed to be the last thing on the minds of the motley crew of punks, tattoo artists and graffiti writers swigging beer at an outdoor festival in a poor Mexico City suburb. However, the political nature of the event suddenly became apparent with the arrival of the party's host: Ruben Mendoza, congressional candidate for the conservative National Action Party (PAN) of Mexican President Vicente Fox. Surrounded by an entourage of campaign workers, Mendoza marched into the festival and began exchanging high-fives with the young men in baseball caps and leather jackets, and earnestly studying the graffiti writers' colorful murals.

MEXICO CITY - A year ago, Antonio Tetzpa reveled in his job security. Tetzpa was the official hair stylist for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the party that had ruled Mexico for 71 years. The party had always been indistinguishable from the government; this included the use of the public treasury for party needs. So the party had money enough to pay Tetzpa a salary to cut its members' hair for free during last year's presidential campaign. The party was having to fight as never before in this campaign, but it had never lost a presidential election.

ON THE EVE of Vicente Fox's inauguration as president of Mexico, that nation's tomorrow promises hope and new beginnings. He is a breath of fresh air after 71 years of one-party rule. He offers radical possibilities but also new responsibilities. Mr. Fox is a former Coca-Cola executive who crusaded for power leading the National Action Party (PAN), which was in origin the Catholic Church party but is now the party of business. He reached beyond PAN in his Cabinet appointments and promises to improve the life and opportunities of the poor.

Ernesto Zedillo is an unlikely man of destiny. The stiff, scholarly, 42-year-old economist from humble origins becomes president of Mexico today in a time of great opportunity and greater trauma. Mexico can become either more stable, democratic and prosperous for its poor multitudes or more dictatorial, erratic and dangerous for the hemisphere. The status quo is not an option.His Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), having ruled for 65 years, is in disarray, its leadership accused en masse of criminal conspiracy.

SINCE HIS first term, President Bush has promised to craft an immigration agreement with Mexico that would provide U.S. employers with a steady stream of Mexican workers willing to fill low-wage jobs. Mexican President Vicente Fox supports the idea because it would provide Mexico's economy with much-needed remittances sent home by compatriots working stateside. Mr. Fox is still waiting for the agreement, and the delay has cost him politically. Having touted his good relationship with Mr. Bush, Mr. Fox now appears unable to deliver jobs to Mexicans eager to work in the United States without risk of arrest or deportation.

MEXICO CITY - Luis Garcia couldn't bear to watch the news as the politically unthinkable unfolded here. A longtime opponent of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has ruled the country for 71 years, Garcia was so used to losing, he couldn't watch the election results. But at 8 p.m. Sunday he turned back to the news, and what he saw both stunned and thrilled him. The PRI was going down to defeat, trailing Vicente Fox, presidential candidate of the center-right National Action Party (PAN)

CHANGE comes slowly to Mexico, the country with the world's longest-serving ruling party. Ever since the bloodletting of the 1910-1917 revolution led to the emergence in the 1920s of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), power in Mexico has changed hands through backroom deals in which the incumbent president has chosen his successor -- whose subsequent electoral victory was a formality, achieved when necessary by fraud. No longer. That makes Mexico's presidential election today a historic event.