Violence unsettles Mexican election campaign

By Catherine Bremer

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Street riots, decapitations of
police officers by drug gangs and the worst union conflict in
years have raised tension in Mexico’s presidential race with
the government under fire for its handling of the violence.

Thousands of police swarmed a town near Mexico City this
week to free fellow officers taken hostage in riots that left a
14-year-old boy dead and led to scores of arrests.

The violence, triggered by a dispute with police over
unlicensed flower sellers, came two weeks after two steel
workers were killed during running battles with police sent in
to break a long strike.

The same day, the heads of two policemen decapitated by
presumed drug gang hitmen were found outside government offices
in Acapulco, a symbol of the spiraling drug violence that has
spread from the U.S. border to Pacific coast resorts.

The events are unrelated and localized, and foreign
analysts see little risk of wider instability. But they have
raised the temperature of the election campaign, with one
candidate warning of worse to come.

“Things are going to be violent,” said Roberto Madrazo, who
is running in third place as candidate of the opposition
Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico for 71
years before it was ousted in the last election in 2000.

“We are going to have a very heated climate for the
election.”

He charged the government with being heavy-handed in trying
to break the steel plant strike and said at a campaign rally
that Mexican President Vicente Fox “shook at the knees” when
fighting erupted this week in San Salvador Atenco, near the
capital.

The state governor then accused leftist presidential
hopeful Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s party of fanning the
riot. Lopez Obrador, who is in a tight race with ruling
conservative party candidate Felipe Calderon, denied the
allegation, saying he was a pacifist.

MACHETES

San Salvador Atenco is a combative farming town that has
been under a form of self-rule since machete-wielding peasants
scuttled plans to build a new airport early in Fox’s term.

Both Madrazo and Calderon responded to the latest violence
by insisting they would never be scared off by machetes.

Protesters took several police hostage, dozens of people
were arrested and many others hauled away bleeding.

Fox’s office has played down the riot, saying it involved a
small group of people and was not a sign of shaky governance.

But Subcomandante Marcos, who led a brief Zapatista
uprising of Maya Indians in the southern state of Chiapas in
1994 and has links with the protesters in San Salvador Atenco,
put his rebel army on alert and warned the government to
release all of those jailed “if it doesn’t want problems.”

“We are not looking at a policing problem, but a serious
social and political conflict,” said Joaquin Lopez Doriga, a
well-known TV news presenter, in a newspaper column on Friday.

“The problem is far from being resolved … and there are
only 59 days until July 2,” he wrote.

The ongoing strike by thousands of miners and metal workers
has also caused concern. Workers walked off the job to defend a
union boss the government accuses of graft and insist they will
not negotiate an end to the strike without him.

The government says the strikes are illegal but it was
widely criticized after the violent clashes, which erupted when
it sent troops and police to try and seize the Sicartsa steel
plant in western Mexico.

Still, most Mexicans may be more worried about their
pocketbooks than the violent episodes. Polls show conservative
Calderon overtaking long-time front-runner Lopez Obrador in the
past two weeks, and the race is now too close to call.

“It’s very clear from the polls that people are voting more
based on economic concerns than anything else,” said Pamela
Starr, Latin America analyst at Eurasia Group in Washington.