THE PRI AT HOME
Poor, rural voters are the PRI's biggest supporters. What motivates them?

by Hank Sims

Campesinos down on their luck line up early outside Cuetzalan's municipal palace. One man needs bus fare to Puebla, the state capital, where he hopes to sell some vanilla beans. Another can't afford medicine for his ill daughter. When the doors open, the men -- most of them clad in the all-white costume of the Nahua Indian -- file in and make their case to the staff of Joel Soto Velasco, the PRI mayor who has governed this town and the surrounding area since early last year. The grants they are seeking are small (around $5), and almost all are approved.

The petitioners are certainly in need, and there is little doubt that the money will be put to good use. Cuetzalan, perched on the side of a mountain in Puebla's Sierra Oriental, is a coffee town, one that has been hard-hit by the long slump in international coffee prices. Like almost all the world’s coffee-growing regions, the standard of living is exceptionally poor. A 1995 study found that more than half of the homes in the area were without electricity and running water, and that 92 per cent had only one room. Only 14 per cent of the population had any education beyond primary school.

Worse still, the township was devastated by the horrible rainstorms that left much of Mexico’s southeast underwater last October. Hundreds of homes were ruined, thousands were displaced, crops were ruined and the main road into town was washed into a canyon. The latter was a blow to the town’s nascent tourist industry, which the government had been desperately trying to promote.

Soto Velasco, who now runs the town, is the person charged with addressing these ills. Cuetzalan, like Mexico, has been controlled by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional ("el famoso PRI," as one resident put it) for the last 70 years, and Soto looks every inch the party man. A prominent businessman -- with his brothers, he owns the Posada Cuetzalan, the town’s one high-end hotel -- he also takes time out of his schedule to deliver public lectures on the life and legacy of Benito Juarez, the idolized Zapotec Indian who led the republic during its formative years.

Soto’s principal job is to administer the money granted to the township by the federal and state governments. The main reason he was chosen over other contenders for the PRI candidacy, according to many, was that his campaign trumpeted his close friendship with Melquiades Morales, the PRI governor of Puebla. Closer links to the state meant better access to the money the area so desperately needed. But, to everyone's surprise, Soto barely eked out a victory over his rival from the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) in a general election that was later tainted by allegations of PRI vote-buying.

Soto attributes his success to the PRI's long-standing partnerships with civil society groups, saying that his party's inclusion of indigenous and campesino organizations in the Cuetzalan's administration is what allows the party to govern so effectively. And he's right. The arrangement he describes, commonly called "corporatism" by students of Mexican politics, has indeed been successful; writ large, it is what has kept the PRI in control of the country for so long.

And just as the structure of the local party mirrors that of the national party, so too does the scandalous corruption for which the PRI is renown. Citizens of Cuetzalan now accuse Soto's administration of a number of crimes, from election fraud to misappropriation of federal funds. The mayor, say his many critics, is an old-school cacique -- a regional strongman -- of the type that still rules rural Mexico. The cacique, like the Tammany boss, consolidates his power by doling out cash and political favors to key people in exchange for political support.

Very often, this requires overlooking transgressions committed by the people on one’s side. Three years ago, the Cuetzalan municipal police chief and three of his officers gang-raped a 14-year old Nahua girl they had pulled off the street and into the bathroom of the police station, on the bottom floor of the municipal palace -- right downstairs from the mayor’s office. After trying and failing to buy the girl’s parents’ silence, the four men had ample time to flee town the next day. According to Amnesty International, Soto’s predecessor did nothing to bring the policemen to justice.

"To understand the PRI, you have to think of it less as a political party than a way of life," says Raimundo Riva Palacio, editor-in-chief of Milenio, a Mexico City daily. The remark does much to untangle a central paradox of Mexican political life. The PRI finds the bulk of its support among rural, impoverished Mexicans -- the very people who seem to have been hurt most by the kleptocrats who have governed the party and the country since time immemorial.

The men in the dole queue outside the mayor's office understand, without having to be told, that the money they are granted comes with certain obligations. The assistance they seek is only a fraction of that which is given to the Cuetzalan population through economic and disaster relief programs, all of which carry the same implications: the PRI has helped you, you must help the PRI. As the mayor himself says, "The PRI is popular because it has delivered for the people."

"Something has to change," says Fernando Gallindo, a small coffee grower and the regional representative of the Confederación Nacional Campesina (CNC). Gallindo, interrupting an interview with a young man who serves as the PRI’s local secretary for social affairs, has come to issue a warning: if the national PRI doesn't rein in Soto, he and others who work in the local coffee industry break ranks with the party during the upcoming presidential elections.

Gallindo presents a sharp contrast to young Máximo López Cruz, with whom he shares the PRI's Cuetzalan office. A middle-aged Nahua man with a constant smile that is both humble and brave, Gallindo steadily lays out his case against the mayor. Lopez, a recent college graduate who minutes before had been reciting the boilerplate on the PRI and campesino life, suddenly looks out of his depth.

"For now, we follow the party line" Gallindo says. "But if we don't see some definitive action soon, we will seek other avenues." The threat, issued to the foreign press, unnerves López, who starts to fidget in his seat.

Gallindo's dispute with the mayor concerns the disposition of relief money that the federal government issued to the township in the wake of last year's floods. His claim, supported by many others in town, is that money for the rebuilding of ruined homes was funneled to rich supporters of the mayor.

The task of distributing the relief money was given to municipal Indigenous Affairs Commission, a body comprised of politically prominent Nahua from various settlements outside Cuetzalan proper. Gallindo charges that he commission awarded the money not to people whose small, ramshackle dwellings were swept away by the waters, but to relatives whose relatively luxurious houses suffered minor damage.

"If someone gave you a pot of money, who would you share it with?" he asks. "You'd probably share it with your family, not with every beggar on the street. That's exactly the mentality we're dealing with."

But tellingly, Gallindo's proposed solution is not to overturn the PRI in the July election -- rather he demands that the national PRI reprimand Soto and send more money to replace that which was stolen. Though clearly disgusted by the actions of the mayor's office in this case, Gallindo himself has too much invested in the PRI to break from the party. The CNC, which he represents, is one of the oldest and most powerful PRI-aligned civil society organizations. And as a small coffee grower, his business receives large subsidies from the Alianza para el Campo (AC), a program instituted by President Ernesto Zedillo in 1995.

Rufina Villa Hernández, a local leader of the left-of-center Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) who stood against Soto in last year's election, considers the AC part of the problem. Though she thinks that small coffee growers should be subsidized while world prices are low, the AC, she says, only gives support to those growers who have demonstrated their allegiance to the PRI.

"The PRI is a culture that we all grew up with," says Villa, who manages a women's cooperative for artisans and farmers. "If we want change, we have to first lose our fear of what would happen if the PRI were defeated."

There are signs that some have vanquished this fear. "Cuetzalan -- the city of Cuetzalan -- is 100% for the PAN," says Juán Aco Bonilla, the municipal president of the Partido Acción Nacional. In the mayoral election, the city went to Eduardo Molino Manzano, the PAN candidate. But in the Mexican system, mayors are elected by and govern not only a city but an entire region; campesinos from the surrounding areas also vote in mayoral elections. They, and not the residents of Cuetzalan proper, elected Soto in early 1999.

Most townspeople accept, with resignation and cynicism, that Soto, fearing defeat, bought the election by bribing campesinos the day before voting was to take place. Everyone tells the same story: Soto's staff fanned out over the countryside with loaves of bread, which they presented to people in their homes with the candidate's compliments. Stuffed inside the package was a 50-peso note.

To bribe voters, to channel misappropriated funds to political supporters -- this is the type of corruption that assures one's hold on power. But the cacique doesn't seek power for its own sake: naturally, the larger share of black money will flow into his own accounts.

Soto's ascension into government, for example, has been accompanied by an increase in his own personal fortune. As a hotel owner, he is positioned to capitalize on he abundant aid sent by the federal government to develop the region's tourist industry. Cuetzalan has several points of interest -- waterfalls, a large cave system, a unique pre-Hispanic archaeological site -- but tourism has been hampered by poor roads and a lack of facilities.

But owners of hotels say that the federal funds go to the improvement of Soto's own hotel, which sports a swimming pool, a restaurant and far and away the highest prices in town, or to businesses owned by his brothers. Other planned improvements languish. The road from Puebla, washed out in last year's storms, still has not been repaired, and other planned improvements seem permanently shelved.

"A good road to the waterfalls, lighting for the caves -- all this was set to go," says the owner of a modest hotel, who preferred not to give his name. "It hasn't been done, and it will never be done."

Instead, Soto's Posada Cuetzalan hosts various governmental conventions on rural development and agricultural science -- weekend events that bring plenty of money to Soto-controlled businesses, but little to others. Soto's brother, owner of a construction and building-supplies company, was awarded contracts to repair the town's roads and government buildings. Much of the work was never done.

The rival hotel owner, one of the town's few university graduates, is horrified by the Soto government, which he says has stripped him of all hope in political change. Deeply disillusioned, he says that an "inferiority complex" plagues his people, and that the PRI has long mastered the technique of amplifying and exploiting it.

"The problem is truly one of the Mexican mind," says the hotel owner. "Unless the people can improve themselves, nothing in this country will ever change."