The leaders of Madrazo’s party claim they already have. For the last 70 years, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has governed Mexico through a combination of presidential decree, a mighty patron-client political machine and, when necessary, blatant electoral fraud. Over the last decade, two opposition parties have broken the PRI’s monopoly on power and–with the help of the 1994 economic crisis and the scandals that swirled around the presidency of Carlos Salinas–forced it to start reforming itself. A big step came last spring when President Ernesto Zedillo officially relinquished his traditional duty of selecting the party’s next presidential candidate. Instead, a historic primary election, open to all voters, is scheduled for Sunday. Whoever places first in the greatest number of Mexico’s 300 voting districts will stand in the general election next July. The exercise has the look of democracy: for the first time ever, Mexicans can watch PRI titans clash on televised debates and slam each other on talk shows. But the party’s dirty history, the power of its vote-getting machine and the political culture it embedded are still strong forces in Mexico. They virtually guarantee the triumph of the man widely seen as the president’s choice.
That man is 57-year-old Francisco Labastida Ochoa. If the polls can be believed, he will beat his three party rivals–a former party president, Humberto Roque, and two ex-governors, Manuel Bartlett and Madrazo–and go on to defeat the opposition next year. Labastida, an ex-governor himself, is a wooden campaigner. But as a trained economist and a pol, he is seen as someone who can carry on Zedillo’s economic policies without further alienating the party’s old-style populists. Madrazo has tapped into widespread discontent with the technocrats, as the new generation of U.S.-trained leaders is known. More important, he has called the system’s bluff by branding Labastida “the official candidate” and successfully portraying himself as an agent of change. But in one of the great ironies of party reform, he, too, is a product of the system.
In fact, a slogan that better reflects his motivation would be “Screw Zedillo.” After Madrazo was elected governor of the gulf-coast state of Tabasco in 1994, the federal attorney general found that Madrazo had spent $37.6 million–10 times the legal limit–on his election bid. Most of the money was recorded in anonymous cash donations, so it was difficult to know its true source. Under pressure from the opposition, Zedillo, who had just taken power, tried to oust Madrazo from office. But the governor refused to quit, his supporters took to the streets in protest and Zedillo backed down. The attorney general passed the campaign-finance investigation to Tabasco state prosecutors, and it quickly died.
To his supporters, Madrazo is a straight-talking rebel. “He is a person who speaks the truth. And he doesn’t have a line to the president,” says Jose Reyna, 66, standing in the crowd at a recent Madrazo rally in the town of Jojutla. Madrazo, who had to plow his way through a sea of people in the town’s central plaza, is onstage, preaching against all of the country’s evils: crime, unemployment, poverty, discrimination against women. He shouts into the microphone, waves his hands in the air, hugs children who are delivered into his arms and invokes the memory of his father, a reform-minded PRI president whose death in a 1969 plane crash is a favorite subject of conspiracy theorists. The crowd cheers over the din of a ragtag brass band. “We will multiply our presence on Nov. 7,” Madrazo says. “We will go from house to house talking of the national project of nation change.”
One secret to Madrazo’s campaign has been television spots. They started last year when he was governor, paid for with public money and disguised as promotions for the state of Tabasco. They made Madrazo a nationally recognized figure. Then came the prime-time attacks on Labastida. The latest ad, which airs this week, features a ventriloquist working a Labastida dummy. “Hello. I am little Paco,” the puppet says. “My economic program is very long-range. Within 40 years we will be a little better… it’s the truth, boss.” The ventriloquist is an actor made to look like Carlos Salinas.
Both Madrazo and Labastida have tried to link each other to the former president. Once hailed internationally for his free-market reforms, Salinas became the pariah of Mexico after the peso crashed in 1994, evidence emerged suggesting massive corruption in his family and his brother was convicted on charges of murdering a political rival. But though both candidates have attacked Salinas-style “neoliberalism”–Madrazo urges more social spending and Labastida talks of a “people-oriented” third way–neither proposes an undoing of major economic reforms.
Labastida often seems more interested in party unity than in his own candidacy. Billboards throughout Mexico advertise the ruling party’s attempt to reinvent itself: THE NEW PRI–CLOSER TO YOU. And nearly every day the party leaders reassure voters that President Zedillo doesn’t have an official candidate, and that deep down the PRI is one big happy family and that the internal spats will disappear after the primary. Labastida is the only candidate who has defended the fairness of the process; all three of his opponents–in protest of the advantage he enjoys–have demanded that he be disqualified from the race. One of Zedillo’s closest allies, Esteban Moctezuma, quit his cabinet post to run the Labastida campaign. And Labastida has repeatedly refused to criticize the president. In an interview with NEWSWEEK, Labastida said that Zedillo “has spurred on democracy in the country and in the party, and lifted the country out of an economic crisis like it had never seen before. I believe these are successes of Zedillo, some of which could have been done differently, but I don’t want to provoke a division in the party right now.”
On paper, the silver-haired Labastida is more qualified than Madrazo to run Mexico. He was governor of the northern state of Sinaloa. At the end of his term, after receiving death threats from drug traffickers who operate in the state, he became the ambassador to Portugal. Zedillo resurrected his career by naming him Agriculture minister and then, last year, Interior minister, which has long been a steppingstone to the presidency. His candidacy is backed by most of the country’s unions and peasant organizations, longtime pillars of PRI support.
Labastida’s campaign has an old-style feel. He arrives at tiny airports, greeted by local party officials. At a recent rally in the town of Ensenada, about 2,000 people crowded into the local dance hall. Banners of unions and peasant organizations hang from the upper level, proclaiming support for Labastida, and a mariachi band cranks out ranchera music. “I’ve been a party member since 1960,” says Jesus Aguila, a 77-year-old pensioner in the audience. “You have to be loyal to the party.” Labastida, onstage in a lineup of local supporters, rattles off the same promises as his opponents: less crime, more jobs, less poverty, more education. At his next stop, in Tijuana, Labastida speaks to businessmen and a few hundred party activists who will take his message back to their neighborhoods. Labastida rolls up his sleeves and tries to look more relaxed. T shirts are passed out, Labastida flags are waving in the crowd, and seven giant posters of his face loom over the room. High-school students passing out fliers say they are there because a teacher offered them extra credit to support Labastida.
For a long time Labastida refused to fight back against Madrazo. Labastida claimed that he wasn’t the “official candidate,” but hardly anybody believed him. Gradually, though, as he eased into Mexico’s new age of the sound bite, the attacks started. His campaign manager captured headlines when he told a group of Mexicans who had attended Harvard: “When I heard an ad in which Madrazo talked about honesty, I imagined Hitler talking of human rights.” Labastida insinuated that Madrazo is crooked by declaring that his own hands are clean. Then Labastida ran television ads criticizing Madrazo of using public funds for his own promotion. On a popular talk show–on which all four candidates have appeared–Labastida left a copy of the book “Pinocchio” as a gift for Madrazo.
A direct confrontation came in September during a televised debate. Madrazo struck first. “The official candidate just wants to continue with the same failed policies we have now. And that’s logical, because he represents everything you and I want to change.” Labastida retaliated: “That’s just another lie, one in a long series of lies you’ve told. Roberto, frankly you have two faces.” To Mexicans, the sight of two ruling-party members irreverently tossing insults at each other was so astonishing that the irony nearly went unnoticed. All four candidates spent most of their time railing against the corruption, crime and poverty that have overtaken the country. And all four candidates are veterans of the party that has ruled Mexico for the last seven decades.
How has the party ruled so long? “This is a society terrified of change,” says Dan Lund, a political analyst. The PRI, above all, has meant continuity. For years, each time an election approached, party officials would come around and offer bags of seeds or local development projects–or make clear that PRI-supporting communities would be allowed to keep their shops up and running and their children in school. Though the machine has lost power over the last decade–10 out of 31 governors and the mayor of Mexico City are from opposition parties–it remains the key for winning a national election. In the past, Mexicans–especially the poor, who still make up the largest part of the population–have always voted for whom they saw as the official choice, which is what many will do on Sunday. “I am for Labastida,” says Sergio Hernandez, a 44-year-old worker in Mexico City’s largest fish market. “I don’t have a reason. Honestly.” Then he adds: “My father always taught me to vote for the PRI.”
Even if voters already know the result, the primary race still provides good entertainment. Every weeknight at 10, more than 9 million Mexicans tune in to “El Candidato,” a popular new soap opera. The main character, who is running for president, faces a dilemma. He is a politician who seems to want real change. But he is a product of the system, beholden to his father-in-law, a powerful ruling-party don who launched his career. The drama often mirrors the real presidential race. And fans can call a hot line or send an e-mail to TV Azteca to offer suggestions for upcoming episodes. Lately there have been pleas to link the party to drug lords. The show’s producer says that the slime will soon get too thick for the candidate to handle. He will bolt from the party.
Could life imitate art? The idea that Madrazo might desert the PRI doesn’t worry party bosses. Neither of the main opposition parties wants to adopt him. And in an interview with NEWSWEEK, Madrazo insisted he wouldn’t split: “The PRI is my home.” The likely scenario, analysts say, is that he will use his take in the primary to negotiate a powerful position inside the party, and the PRI will go on to win the general election next year, continuing its streak as the world’s longest-ruling party–all with the successor of choice at the helm.
That leaves the other parties in sorry shape. The strongest opposition candidate is Vicente Fox, who started his campaign two years ago and recently won the nomination of the pro-business National Action Party in an uncontested primary. But polls show that it is unlikely he could beat Labastida by himself. Nor could Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who easily won the nomination of the Revolutionary Democratic Party. He has already lost the presidency twice–there are credible charges that the PRI stole victory from him in 1988–and now, after two years as Mexico City mayor, his career is at a low point. Many analysts believe the only chance of an opposition victory is an alliance that would field a single opponent. Talks broke down last month when Fox and Cardenas–who have strong ideological differences and equally strong presidential ambitions–could not agree on how to choose a candidate. Their only hope is that the PRI implodes next week during its great foray into democracy. Dream on. As it has the last seven decades, the party has everything under control.
