When Vicente Fox assumed Mexico's presidency in December 2000 ending the seven-decade rule of the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI) observers around the world announced a new era for Mexico. A year later it appears to many disenchanted voters that the change was simply cosmetic. In many areas, especially in the rural south, there hasn't even been the appearance of change...

Santiago Amoltepec is a small farming town in the Sierra Madre del Sur of Mexico's Oaxaca state. It lies in a rugged region known as the Mixteca Alta (High Mixteca) named for the Mixtecs, the largest ethnic group in this area straddling the Oaxaca/Guerrero border.

Amoltepec is statistically the third poorest municipality in all of Mexico. Access to the outside world is over a narrow dirt road. Visitors are rare and the town is usually ignored in the important business of the state legislature. Suddenly it is a front burner issue and an all too typical example of politics in Mexico's southeast.

Amoltepec conducts its municipal elections through usos y costumbres a traditional form of electing leaders common in Mexico's indigenous communities. Elections are conducted in open community meetings and the process is meant to strengthen community control over local affairs. Often it doesn't work out that way when outside and/or armed interference derails a community's desires in favor of some powerful interest.

This is what happened in the latest elections in Amoltepec according to the Democratic Union of Campesinos (UCD). After two preliminary assemblies in April and August of 2001 a third meeting was held in October. Following this meeting Antonio Roque Cruz, the candidate representing the PRI was declared Municipal President (i.e., mayor). According to the UCD, which is aligned with the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the election was a complete fraud. They blame their local legislative representative, Carlos Aragon and the head of the state legislature Juan Diaz Pimentel of conspiring to maintain the fraud. Both these men are members of the PRI, which dominates Oaxaca's state government and controls the legislature.

In protest of perceived procedural shenanigans during that October meeting, 800 of the 1900 participants walked out, which should have, according to usos y costumbres halted the proceedings. Attempting to maintain a quorum the then mayor (from the PRI) requested local elements of the state police to detain the departing citizens on the premises. Later, their names were fraudulently added to the official tally of votes, which declared Roque Cruz the winner.

In January members of the UCD took control of the Municipal Palace in the Mexican equivalent of a sit-in to prevent the illegitimately elected mayor from assuming office. Meanwhile, a delegation of 200 campesinos traveled to Oaxaca city to demand the state government intervene to derail the electoral fraud. The campesinos set up camp in front of the Governor's palace and at times blocked streets to call attention to their demands.

On February 2, armed men under the direction of Roque Cruz dislodged the protest in Almotepec in an assault resulting in two deaths and a number of wounded. Election observers from the Catholic Church and other organizations insist the violence was readily foreseeable and could have been prevented with state government intervention.

The 200 campesinos encamped in Oaxaca city marched on the state legislature calling for immediate action to dissolve the government of Roque Cruz and demand that he be arrested for his role in the killings in Amoltepec. They are also calling for Pimentel to be held accountable for abetting the deaths by stonewalling legislative action against the electoral fraud.

Perversely, the gun-slinging mayor Roque Cruz was released from prison in 1999 after serving 13 years for his role in a 1986 ambush which left 28 men dead in a land dispute. Roque Cruz's rapid rise from ex-convict to municipal president is standard procedure in this part of the world where powerful men often find armed thugs to be useful political proxies.

The answer as to why this poverty stricken region is of such deadly interest to corrupt politicians is, according to a UCD spokesman, precisely its poverty. Rather, federal anti-poverty aid to be precise, which at 33 million pesos per year ($3.7 million US) is a lucrative source revenue for those who, like the local authorities, control the purse strings. Skimming of government funds for personal enrichment is a common sideline of Mexican politicians and at times seems to be the prime motivation for entering politics.

According to the campesinos currently encamped in front of Oaxaca's legislative building, that federal aid might as well be disappearing into a black hole. The aid is meant to build things like schools, water systems, and other infrastructure, instead it builds big houses and buys expensive SUVs.

While no one has suggested that Pimentel himself is stealing money from the citizens of Almotepec, the campesinos consider him the "intellectual author" of the stolen election. In a state like Oaxaca, the slightest party advantage is apparently enough to inspire or at least abet transparent fraud and if necessary, murder.

The new Mexico, from any angle, continues to look a lot like the old one.