PERSPECTIVE ON MEXICO : <i> Salinastroika </i> Opens a Hornets’ Nest : The people are fed up with authoritarian abuse of their rights. But can the president clean his own house?

MEXICO CITY —  It is hard to ignore the widely held perception, here and abroad, that the rule of law in Mexico is being drowned in blood. Reports from Americas Watch and the Organization of American States’ human-rights subcommittee have brought into the limelight a sorry civil-rights record accumulated over many years. They are no cause for surprise within Mexico, however. Over the last few months, the Mexican media have been filled with allegations of human-rights violations: corruption, torture and other illegalities committed by police forces; an increasingly dirty war against the drug lords; frequent harassment and even assassination of human-rights advocates, opposition activists, government critics and press members; the use of goon squads by the ruling party’s labor arm to stifle union dissent; a long trail of protest and violence following an equally long trail of fraud at the polls.

Pro-government voices and even Americas Watch stress the traditional nature of such abuses, their fundamental continuity with a past in which abuses were ignored by the press and rarely denounced publicly. But those conditions no longer prevail in today’s Mexico. Thus, hounded by a freer press and pressured by ever more vigilant public opinion, the government at first responded with a largely reactive policy, taking a case-by-case approach. Swamped by a growing number of alleged violations, that strategy has now played itself out. Only a few weeks ago, Salinas announced the creation of a National Commission for Human Rights staffed by distinguished citizens. This development, of course, negates the argument that violence and abuse of power are at there customary levels.

Who’s to blame for this state of affairs?

To begin with, we can discard the rumors, never absent from Mexican politics, that the presidency is directly involved in covert repression. In the case of the Salinas administration, such imputed motives simply don’t square with the liberalizing orientation of its policy in economics and politics. But discarding the possibility of from-the-top directives does not entirely free the administration from blame.

The government bears some responsibility for the prevailing Thomas Beckett syndrome. In the case of death threats against the leftist critic Jorge G. Castaneda, many fingers pointed to the press office of the presidency. While largely dedicated to massaging public opinion and burnishing Salinas’ image, this office has lately engaged in negative campaigns against dissenters and political rivals. But in a country where intemperate remarks and candid opinions from leaders are interpreted by their underlings as veiled orders, a negative campaign orchestrated by presidential staffers is bound to be taken as targeting veritable enemies of the state. The president’s image-handlers must beware of becoming hatchet men.

Another possibility is that violations stem from the resistance marshalled by the conservative old guard in the face of rapid economic and political change that is steadily undermining its power and influence. For the political leadership class now passing from the scene, all creatures of habit instilled by a lifetime of authoritarianism, such resistance is tied to their unwavering loyalty to the old system, including the primacy of the presidency, as much as to their instinct for political survival. If a source of the recent troubles lies within the top ranks of the bureaucracy, the ruling party or its allied interest groups, then Salinas must be rid of it; raps on the knuckles will not suffice.

A more disturbing explanation is that the central government is slowly losing control over its far-flung apparatus. As the decomposition of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) accelerates, and as the lines of command in the security forces short-circuit, rogue elephants may have begun to roam the country engaging in small-scale crime and terror. Against this, the appointment of blue-ribbon committees and presidential declarations in defense of human rights are simply not enough, since bottom-level officials no longer align themselves automatically with dictates from the center. What is needed is constant effort to identify and bring to punishment those who perpetrate crimes cloaked in authority.

Finally, the worst-case scenario is that we are witnessing a rising tide of anarchic lawlessness in the country, raising the prospect that in the not so distant future Mexico will be paired with Colombia, Peru, Guatemala or El Salvador as an example of dead-end violence. Only forthright leadership and stubborn political will from the top can stop this trend and set things right. Yet Carlos Salinas, though rightly praised for his bold leadership on the economic front, has proved to be sluggish on political issues. In his year and a half in office, he has allowed the country to drift, unable to articulate a political vision capable of mobilizing broad support and of drawing the forces of destabilization into institutional channels of pressure politics.

Even worse, Salinas has distanced himself from the political reform process that he pledged when he took office. He has left proposals to reform the electoral system and the ruling party to his lieutenants and allies in Congress, the bureaucracy and the PRI itself. Should the reforms turn out tepid and mincing, the effect on the midterm elections next year will be devastating.

On the issues of civil rights, as difficult as the economic ones he has mastered, Salinas must lead, or Mexico will follow a road going nowhere fast.