Opposition Candidate Calls Ruling Mexico Party Fascist

MEXICO CITY — Mexican opposition candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas told 200,000 supporters on Saturday that the country’s ruling party represents a modern version of fascism.

Cardenas, using some of the strongest language of his campaign, said in a speech in Mexico City’s central Zocalo Square that the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) centrist policies promise continued corruption and authoritarianism.

“The modernization of the center is nothing more than a new face of fascism,” said Cardenas, the presidential candidate of the leftist National Democratic Front.

PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari has described his party as representing the “progressive center” of the country’s political spectrum.

But Cardenas said both Salinas and right-wing candidate Manuel J. Clouthier of the National Action Party would bring political and economic stagnation to the country.

Cardenas accused the government of policies that have meant “the handing over of sovereignty to the interests represented by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).”

He has called for a suspension of payments on Mexico’s $105-billion foreign debt pending renegotiation and a cutoff of oil shipments to the U.S. strategic reserve.