Return of the Dinosaurs - Mexico's Old Guard Go Back to Their One-party Ways

A state governor's harassment of a journalist is broadcast to the nation and all he gets is a flattering nickname. A senator brushes off allegations of links to drug traffickers as old news, with no apparent effect on his presidential prospects. A bungled attempt by a former presidential candidate to cheat in an international sports event gets laughs at home, but shocks no one.

The infamous "dinosaurios" of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) were supposed to fade into oblivion after the party lost control of the presidency in 2000, after 71 uninterrupted years in power. But it just didn't happen.

The party did spend a few uncomfortable years after its electoral debacle debating the need for modernization and resisting the urge to pull itself apart. But eventually the old guard led it back to business almost as usual.

"Its as if the dinosaurs went off into the woods and found a magic plant," said political analyst Lorenzo Meyer, from the prestigious Colegio de Mexico. "Now they seem to think they can go on forever."

Take Mario Marin - the governor of the central state of Puebla, now known as El Gober Precioso ("The Gorgeous Guv"). The soubriquet derives from the governor's now-legendary telephone conversation with a textile manufacturer called Kamel Nacif. "Hiya Kamel," the governor opens. "My gorgeous guv," replies the businessman. "My fucking hero," responds Marin. "No papa," insists Nacif, "You are the real hero of this movie."

Niceties over, the pair go on to discuss the dubious arrest and degrading treatment of journalist Lydia Cacho, whose book exposing a child sex ring in Cancun, while not making any allegations against Nacif, mentions his links to one of those involved. "Yesterday I gave that old bitch a good old slap," Marin says. "She's been going on and on, so lets see whether she gets the message and learns her lesson."

The conversation now etched on the collective political consciousness arrived in an anonymous package at a morning radio news show. Its existence proves that while greater plurality and press freedom is one thing, accountability is another - with the federal government afraid of antagonizing the PRI into blocking the chances of its legislative agenda, the closest Marin has come to any official censure was a non-binding investigation by Mexico's supreme court.

The court last month ruled against giving the governor even that slap on the wrist.

"The pressures for change are there," said political analyst Denise Dresser of the Mexico City based ITAM think tank. "They just aren't strong enough."

In the case of Ulises Ruiz, governor of Oaxaca state, the government did not just turn a blind eye - it went galloping in to save him. Ruiz got into trouble after a violent crackdown on a teachers' strike backfired last Spring. Radicalized and expanded, the movement all-but paralyzed the state capital for six months chanting "Ulises is already finished" - undeterred by drive-by shootings that killed several at the barricades. Ruiz spent most of the time in semi-hiding.

With tension festering, the body count increasing, and the state ungovernable, the government could have legally forced Ruiz to step down. Instead it launched a military-style operation that crushed the protest and escorted the governor back to his office Most analysts lay much of the blame for the return of the dinosaurs on former president Vicente Fox. As a candidate for the National Action Party, Fox overcame the legendary PRI electoral machine with bull-headed determination, but once in power he seemed to shrink before the challenge of dismantling the nuts and bolts of the regime.

"He chickened out," says Denise Dresser. By the time Fox's successor and party colleague Felipe Calderon took office a year ago, the PRI had recovered from the initial shock of losing the imperial presidency and was able to dictate its own deals.

Meanwhile the electorate has proved almost as reluctant as the courts and the government to punish rogue PRI politicians in PRI strongholds. Ruiz won local elections in Oaxaca in October, as did Marin in Puebla in November.

As she pats out tortillas with her hands in the church-spotted colonial city of Cholula in Puebla State, Guillermina Tellez says she voted for the PRI because it promised drainage in her neighborhood. Down the road, painter and decorator Mauricio Tlapa is happy with some free cement. Warming his arthritic ankles in a patch of winter sun, Cecilio Avila oozes gratitude for Governor Marin's monthly food parcels for the elderly.

"It's a legacy of colonialism," explained Meyer. "They have no hope of real changes to the status quo, and small concrete benefits are at least something."

When it comes to the back-room dinosaurs in the party headquarters, the legislature and the old corporatist unions, few beat Elba Esther Gordillo. The steely-eyed leader of the biggest teachers' union they call La Maestra (the Teacher) supposedly controls a million votes. She reportedly "sold" them to Calderon during last year's presidential campaign in exchange for quotas of power in his government.

Gordillo had been expelled from the PRI after clashing with its then leader Roberto Madrazo. Madrazo went on to flounder through a disastrous presidential campaign, abandoned by many a party baron who tagged him as a loser. Quickly forgotten, Madrazo briefly returned to the spotlight when he was caught cheating his way to a prize in the Berlin marathon. A comeback would be difficult for him now due to his failures, not his sins.

But probably the most successful dinosaur of the moment is the Mexican senate leader Manlio Fabio Beltrones, who has carved himself out a role as the arbiter of which government legislative initiatives have any chance of becoming law. Beltrones' record is typical.

There's his association with the old secret police, alleged links to top drug traffickers revealed in a New York Times investigation in 1997 and accusations he helped cover the tracks of whoever murdered a reformist PRI presidential candidate in 1994. Obstacles to his presidential ambitions? Not so far.

Small wonder then that so many Mexican voters cherish few illusions about their country's much heralded transition to democracy. "You can't expect politicians to be clean," says 60-year-old Alejandro Castillo, as he weeds his field. "It's in their nature to be corrupt."

Behind him looms the great Popocatepetl volcano in the state of Puebla - dinosaur territory for the last 78 years. And counting.