Mexico Hook Or Crook

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Throughout its 57-year history, Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.) has never lost a single gubernatorial or presidential election. Indeed, the country's one-party democracy has generally been popular so long as Mexico prospered. At present, however, the country is far from prosperous: its foreign debt will soon top $100 billion, and last winter's plunge in oil prices stripped the government of a third of its projected annual foreign exchange of $24.5 billion. The economic turmoil has put unprecedented pressure on the political system. Thus Mexicans and foreigners alike were paying close attention to last week's elections in Chihuahua, the country's largest state, where the conservative opposition National Action Party (P.A.N.) enjoys a considerable following. At issue: whether the P.R.I. would maintain its stranglehold on power by means fair or foul.

The answer was not long in coming. By 2 p.m. on voting day, Colude, a nonpartisan civic group that monitored the election, reported that P.A.N. poll watchers had been thrown out of 33 polling stations and supplanted by impostors who beat them to the job in 21 others. Observers also said that ballot boxes had been stuffed with P.R.I. votes in 54 districts and stolen in four others. Hardly had the polls closed when the ruling party announced a sweeping victory in all but one of 67 contested municipalities. "What can you say?" said one Reagan Administration official of the blatant fraud. "It was business as usual."

However routine, the surprising landslide enraged many P.A.N. supporters. Stores across the state closed down for a day, and nearly 10,000 people gathered in the city of Chihuahua's main plaza while Francisco Barrio, P.A.N.'s candidate for governor, urged them to block roads and boycott progovernment newspapers.

The questionable election result was a blow to President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado's vaunted campaign of "moral renovation." In 1983, De la Madrid's first year in power, Mexico enjoyed rare fraud-free elections. P.A.N. won mayorships in all of the seven largest cities of Chihuahua. P.R.I. officials privately vowed not to let such a calamity recur. Last year the ruling party resorted to flagrant irregularities while securing victory in elections in two northern states; in December it changed Chihuahua's laws so that the preparation and tallying of votes would be undertaken by P.R.I. agents. Such practices, however, may prove hard to manage. "The events in Chihuahua may pass with no major disturbance," said one P.A.N. official. "But we will have elections for years to come. The government can thwart the popular will two times, three times, even ten times. But sooner or later, the people will explode."