Aguirre Mends Fences with the Left; Warns of Election Fraud

(Ahuacuotzingo, JG 10 December) PRD coalition candidate Ángel Aguirre, on the campaign trail in Ahuacuotzingo yesterday, warned citizens to be very watchful of the ballot boxes, as his opponent’s party, the PRI, is “very accustomed to fraud and scams” as a means of perpetuating its political dynasties in Mexico. Such rhetoric is to be expected in the last six weeks of a bitter electoral campaign. What was unusual was the context. Aguirre stood beside Ranferi Hernández Acevedo before a crowd of two thousand supporters, raising his hand and calling him his friend and ally.

This same Ranferi Hernández, as leader of the Leftist Socialist Movement (or MSI), was forced into exile in France twelve years ago because of political persecution by Aguirre, who was then interim governor of Guerrero and a leading firebrand of the conservative PRI. Now, as banner-carrier for Mexico’s left, Aguirre has embraced his former political enemy. Hernández, who is a native of Ahuacuotcingo, had at first sharply rejected the candidate, calling him the “executioner of those who fight for social justice.” The two reconciled prior to this meeting, and then Aguirre publicly apologized to Ranferi Hernández before a cheering crowd. Hernández evidently accepted it.

While Aguirre was interim governor of Guerrero, on June 7, 1998, in a school in “El Charco,” a village in the Ayutla municipality, army troops commanded by General Alfredo Oropeza Garnica massacred indigenous peoples, killing 11 and wounding 5 others. Hernández, a local elected representative at the time, was accused by the governor of being part of the Ejercito Popular Revolucionario (EPR), a Maoist guerrilla group that the authorities, in a curious perversion of logic, named as having “incited” the mass murder by the military. Aguirre’s accusations forced Hernández to flee to France with his wife and five children.