Series: FRONTLINE
National Airdate: April 1, 1986
Network: PBS
Description: Takes an in-depth look at the country’s complex political system.

Hector Galán: Producer, Director, Writer, Editor

Standoff in Mexico Press Review

‘Frontline’ examines democracy in Mexico
COLUMBUS DISPATCH, April 1, 1986
by David Jones

The faces tell the story. Grimacing with anger, young men pound bricks into palm-size pieces, then hurtle them against government buildings. Their lips distort into threatening curves as they scream insults at their antagonists hidden inside the state-owned monolith.

This isn’t file footage of some ’60s campus demonstration but something more serious. The rioters are Mexicans, just a few miles from the United States border, incensed by what they believe to be a one-party regime in their ostensibly democratic nation.

“Mexico claims to be a democracy,” says El Paso Herald-Post political writer Terrence Poppa. “We wait to see if that’s true.”

Tonight on PBS, Frontline examines the growing belief that regional elections are being fixed by the Revolutionary Party (PRI), the political body that has ruled Mexico for more than 50 years.

Recently, parties such as the National Action Party (PAN), running on a Republican-like “less-government” platform, have been challenging the PRI’s rule. The suspected result has been wide-spread election fraud whenever a PRI candidate is in danger of losing. Standoff in Mexico documents this volatile political situation in a country which shares more than 1,000 miles of border with the United States.

The hour-long program focuses on a series of 1985 elections (gubernatorial, congressional, and mayoral) in the northern states of Sonora and Chihuahua in which PAN candidates challenged the PRI. Because Mexican law prohibits successive terms, PRI candidates are showed preferential treatment including greater radio and television time. The PRI’s candidate for a Juarez congressional seat, Arnoldo Cabada de la O, is a television show host, seen regularly handing out free government medical care to small children. PAN candidate Hector Mejia can only walk the streets and shake hands.

When the election has passed, with unofficial tallies showing Mejia clearly the winner, the PRI-run electoral body refuses to acknowledge its party’s defeat. Even the strengthening Marxist party in the region concedes the PAN’s win. Banned from Mexican radio, Juarez mayor Fransisco Barrios Terrezas, a PAN member, steps over the border to plead his party’s case on an El Paso station.

“My dear citizens, the change continues,” Terrezas says later before a crowd of reporters. “Because it is the will of the people.” The throng cheers wildly.

The PRI could be overthrown by Mexicans should it attempt to smother its opposition with deceit. That’s what happened in similar situations in Iran and the Philippines. Just what type of political climate such a wind could blow in is a fuzzy, long-range forecast. Still it is apparent that Americans would do well to watch the southern skies.

“If trends continue as they are now, and the government wants to at least maintain stability, it’s going to have to open itself up more,” says Poppa. “Because if it closes the avenues of the opposition, the opposition will get radicalized. When you close all the other political doors, people are going to pick up their guns.”

“I disagree,” says Peter Copeland, reporter for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. “Things are going to have to get a lot worse before people ever take up arms in Mexico. They would like to have more say and less corruption in their government but they’re not going to take up arms right now.”

“That’s the key phrase,” replied Poppa. “Right now.”