Mexican peasant union redefining its political role

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -- A Mexican peasant group long seen as the infantry of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is redefining its role on a new political battlefield, one result of the party's stunning presidential defeat on July 2.

The National Peasant Confederation (CNC), whose banners and busloads of diehard supporters were a longtime staple at PRI political rallies, pledged last month to reassess its mission. While the CNC pledged not to break ranks with the PRI, it called for a fundamental grass-roots revision of the party.

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"In the PRI, political control was exercised from a cupola of power, by caciques (local party bosses) or corrupt leaders," the CNC said at its national congress.

The PRI, founded 71 years ago, had never lost a presidential election until July, when Vicente Fox of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) won decisively and threw the PRI into an identity crisis.

The defeat also left the Mexican Workers Confederation and the huge CNC, which have existed largely to guarantee grass-roots support for the PRI, reexamining their reason for being. "The CNC must respond to the new demands of the times," Secretary General Heladio Ramirez, 61, told Reuters.

The CNC was created in 1938 to unite peasants and form a counterweight to the workers union CTM, formed two years earlier. Since its founding, the peasant union was a loyal subordinate of the official party, although its militancy was not always reflected in benefits for millions of members including small farmers, peasant laborers and Indians.

Some 7.5 million Mexicans make their living in farming, among them 3 million families who subsist on small plots.

Analysts said the CNC turned into a hard-line, monolithic political bloc in an effort to thwart opposition groups that sprang up in the 1960s. Its tactics turned repressive rather than representative, civil organizations and rights groups say.

"At the start of the 1980s, they played the role of strike groups against independent peasant organizations, and the main struggle for land and production became secondary," said Onesimo Hidalgo, an analyst with the economic and political think tank CIEPEC in the southern state of Chiapas, where land and ethnic conflicts have ravaged rural society.

Transformation of the CNC into an organization that truly represents one of Mexico's poorest and most battered sectors will be a long and difficult process, complicated by the PRI's own loss of credibility among those voters, analysts said.

"They are reacting to a reality that has already overtaken them," said Claudio Jones, a researcher with the Center for Development Research (CIDAC). "They are trying to renovate the organization, but who knows if they can do it?"

The CNC also must overcome the negative effects on local producers of international trade pacts such as the North American Free Trade Agreement among Mexico, Canada and the United States, analysts said.

Nearly seven years after NAFTA's implementation, corn, coffee, sorghum and soy producers lack the resources, technology and training to compete with U.S. and Canadian counterparts.

"The blows suffered under NAFTA have caused a change in position (among rural constituents)," Hidalgo said. His words seemed to be borne out on Aug. 20, when opposition candidate Pablo Salazar beat PRI Sen. Sami David in the election for governor of Chiapas, long a PRI bastion, in a race that turned in part on small producers' concerns.

Besides the resounding call for change throughout Mexico after 71 years of single-party rule, the CNC also must contend with a changing demographic base. Rural residents now account for 25.3 percent of a total population of 97.4 million, compared to 71.3 percent in 1900, according to this year's census.

While CNC leaders say internal reforms do not mean the organization will abandon PRI ranks, they pledge to maintain a critical stance before the party hierarchy.

"The PRI must revise all the political instruments used over 70 years that in the end brought us to the loss of power," said Ramirez, former governor of southern Oaxaca state, whose term as federal senator ended last month.

Its intimate relationship with the PRI has historically brought the CNC political perks including legislative seats. The new national Congress that took office on Sept. 1 includes 13 CNC senators among 60 Senate seats held by the PRI, and 75 CNC deputies among 211 PRI seats in that chamber. The Mexican Senate has 128 members and the chamber of deputies 500 seats.

Fox, an ex-governor of Guanajuato who owns a ranch and boasts strong links to agriculture, has pledged to increase resources to producers. But for the CNC and some analysts, a Fox administration is no guarantee of a better future for peasants.

"Fox may be linked to ranchers, small, medium and large landowners, but that does not represent the interests of the peasants suffering most," CIDAC's Jones said.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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