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The local mayor, Emilio Gomez, denies the charges of favoritism and says his opponents support the state's Indian rebels, the Zapatistas. "When the guerrillas came here," he says, "these people protected them. They only attack me because they want to take power and share it with the Zapatistas." Priests in the area say much of what the peasants claim is true. "The government gives the municipality all the repressive power of the state," says Father Antonio Garnica Lopez. But, he wonders, if an opposition group were to take power, would it behave very differently? "The wounds are very deep, and at any moment the desire for revenge can burst out like a volcano."
On New Year's Day, when the Zapatista forces, some 2,000 lightly armed Indian and peasant guerrillas, occupied small towns and one city in the Chiapas highlands, the government's response was to mobilize the army to crush them. But as the images of bombings and bloodied civilians flickered across the world's television screens, Salinas changed course. He declared a cease- fire and sent a peace negotiator to talk things over with the guerrillas.
The man Salinas chose as his negotiator was Manuel Camacho Solis, a former mayor of Mexico City who had resigned when he lost out to Colosio in the competition for Salinas' blessing as the presidential nominee. As a consolation, Salinas named Camacho Foreign Minister, then tapped him to represent the government in the peace talks. In that role he stole the limelight from Colosio, and in late February he came up with tentative agreements on improved medical care, housing and other services for impoverished communities, along with proposed reforms intended to make elections harder to rig.
Chiapas, says a diplomat in the capital, "has forced the government to be more responsive and has had a profound effect on the 1994 electoral year." Salinas introduced a package of reforms that would reduce government control of election funding and press coverage and provide for foreign observers. Opposition critics argue that the measures, passed by the legislature last Thursday, still do not curb P.R.I. influence at the local level.
Camacho infuriated much of the P.R.I. by using his position in the peacemaking spotlight to hint that he might make an independent run for the presidency. Uncertainty over his spoiler potential had ruffled the stock market and shaken the peso. Only last Tuesday, the day before Colosio was murdered, did the ex-mayor finally announce he would stick to the peace talks rather than run. But he had already made life difficult for Colosio by focusing attention on the government's failure to provide basic services for the poorest parts of the country and putting pressure on the candidate to promise more.
Camacho repeated what he had said on Tuesday, that he had no intention of seeking the presidency. With Salinas' support, he could still get the nomination, but speculation now centers on Ernesto Zedillo, the murdered candidate's campaign manager, and Fernando Ortiz Arana, the president of P.R.I. There are other potential candidates among the Cabinet ministers, but party rules say the nominee must not have held senior government positions in the six months before the election -- and voting is now closer than that.