Ensenada’s Mayor Stays Cool as Political Pressure Mounts

ENSENADA —  In the small plaza directly in front of City Hall here, demonstrators recently strung huge signs of protest between the stately palms that shade the colonial-style structure.

The high-profile display of discontent was aimed at the building’s principal occupant--Ernesto Ruffo Appel, the mayor of this fast-growing coastal city and the first-ever mayor from the opposition National Action Party in the border state of Baja California.

“Inept,” said one of the huge signs, complete with a portrait of a seemingly bewildered burro. “You only know how to blunder. Get ineptitude out of city government.”

“Ruffo,” said another, “dedicate yourself to fishing . . . It’s the only thing you know how to do.”

Low-Key Entrepreneur

Inside the rambling building, Ruffo accepted the almost daily protests with a kind of tropical calm. Ruffo, a chunky 33-year-old, is a low-key, soft-spoken entrepreneur who favors a short-sleeve, tieless, informal approach, spurning the official aura that often surrounds mayors and other elected officials in Mexico.

Last year, after leaving the general manager’s position at a prosperous fish-processing plant here, he ran for mayor and scored a decisive victory against the colorless ruling party candidate--a significant development in a country where the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish initials as the PRI, is widely believed to have resorted to fraud and other skulduggery to prevent such embarrassing defeats.

Ruffo likes to see his victory as emblematic of the political winds of change blowing in Mexico, noting that his adopted party, known as the PAN, has shown signs of strength, particularly in the traditionally independent states along the northern border.

“There is a new situation in Mexico now,” said Ruffo, who, like many observers, maintains that Mexico’s ongoing economic crisis and other problems have signaled the way for a historic apertura, or opening, in a political system long dominated by the PRI. “We are now seeing serious challenges to the PRI, especially in the north.”

Good-Time Haven

In the United States, Ensenada, about 70 miles south of the border, retains its image as a good-time haven surrounded by spectacular Baja coastline and brimming with friendly cantinas. But in Mexico, much of the recent publicity about Ensenada, a municipality with a population of 320,000, has focused on scandal, budgets and politics.

Although Ruffo has yet to complete the first year of his three-year term, he has been a mayor virtually under siege. Between protests and counterprotests, a fiscal crisis, city service cutbacks and layoffs, a sensational jailbreak, a legislative investigation and calls by critics for his ouster, Ruffo’s embattled administration has constantly been on the defensive.

The mayor, in an analysis supported by several independent observers, sees politics behind many of his problems.

Faced with a fiscal crisis, Ruffo in May ordered the firing of 363 workers--one-third of the city work force. The drastic move sparked vociferous protests from unions representing the fired workers, most of them government bureaucrats loyal to the ruling party and accustomed to their protected status. In response, thousands of other demonstrators took to the streets in favor of Ruffo, who, even his critics acknowledge, is well-liked here.

60 Prisoners Escaped

Amid all the furor, Ruffo suffered another setback: in June, 60 prisoners escaped from the city-run jail here, squirming their way to freedom through a drainage tunnel in broad daylight as prison guards stood nearby, apparently oblivious. Not a single act of violence accompanied the four-hour breakout; among the escapees were convicted murderers, rapists and drug traffickers. Afterwards, an investigation by city and state officials showed that security at the 9-month-old jail was so lax that no one knew for days exactly how many inmates had escaped.

“They couldn’t even tell how many people were being held here,” said an incredulous Roberto Meneses Villareal, a longtime police official who has been appointed interim warden.

After the jailbreak, a state legislative panel descended on Ensenada to investigate the Ruffo administration, focusing on its financial problems.

“I invited them to come here,” said Ruffo, seated at a long wooden table inside an empty meeting room adjacent to his offices during a recent interview. “They came, they analyzed, and they found some anomalies, perhaps because of our lack of experience in public things. After all, we’re not career politicians. But the important thing is that they recognized that we are in a deficit.”

Another Deficit

Ruffo’s background provides another contrast to PRI office-holders, who are typically political veterans who have paid considerable party dues and aren’t likely to veer from the official viewpoint. He said he felt compelled to leave his secure job and run for mayor as an opposition candidate rather than simply sit back and continue complaining about the governing party.

His personal popularity and a widespread discontent with corruption, economic problems and other problems associated with the ruling party were widely credited with securing his victory last year.

For much of the heated campaign, informed political discussion focused on a single point: Would the ruling party allow him to take office or would they resort to fraud?

Ruffo did move into City Hall. Now, despite the besieged image of his administration, Ruffo’s name has been mentioned as a possible opposition candidate in 1989 for the governorship of the wealthy state of Baja California.

New Law

Such a prospect has unnerved the power structure. Ruling party officials were so concerned, observers here say, that they helped orchestrate a well-publicized “nativism” campaign that resulted in a new law requiring that all future Baja California governors be born in Mexico. (Ruffo, like the offspring of many middle-class and wealthy Mexicans in border areas, was born in the United States, although he has lived in Ensenada all his life.)

The political backdrop, said Ruffo and others, is critical to his administration’s problems. While the governor, a member of the ruling party, would have quickly moved to alleviate the fiscal problems of an allied mayor, Ruffo argued, such assistance was slow to arrive in Ensenada.

Because of Mexico’s 100%-plus inflation, the mayor said, the real budget here has shrunk from $7 million to $2.9 million in four years. The massive layoffs, Ruffo said, were made in desperation after state authorities ignored repeated requests for supplemental financial assistance.

“We just couldn’t afford to pay them (the laid-off workers),” explained Ruffo, a soft-spoken man who has not let the crises overwhelm him. “There was no more money for street lighting, we couldn’t repair the streets, police patrols couldn’t patrol because there was no gasoline . . . The police didn’t even have bullets for their pistols.”

Workers Rehired

In recent weeks, the situation has improved considerably. The governor of Baja California has finally agreed to provide some supplemental financial assistance, enabling the city to rehire almost 200 of the laid-off municipal workers. There are still funding shortages, however, and potholes go unfilled, garbage uncollected and one in three street lights is without functioning bulbs.

So pervasive is talk of politics here that at least one political commentator has suggested that the recent jailbreak may have been orchestrated by the ruling party to embarrass the mayor. As unlikely as that seems, there is no doubt that the mayor’s critics quickly seized the opportunity.

“Ruffo’s a nice guy, but he shouldn’t be in government,” said Alfredo Gonzalez Olvera, a garbage truck driver who lost his job in the layoffs and was outside City Hall protesting on a recent afternoon. “He should have stayed at the fish mill. The situation at the jail shows his inexperience.”

Indeed, Ruffo’s handpicked warden was on duty on the afternoon of June 15 when the 60 prisoners escaped through the drainage tunnel that led outside the prison’s cinder block walls. The warden, along with his deputy, an ex-warden (also a Ruffo appointee) and nine former jailers are back at the facility--this time as prisoners. All are charged with official negligence in connection with the escape, an allegation that prosecutors say can earn them prison sentences of up to 14 years under Mexican law.

Tower Unmanned

Yet officials said they have thus far found no evidence that jail officials were paid off or otherwise actively assisted in the escape--a situation that has left some observers baffled. Curiously, the observation tower directly above the drainage tunnel was left unmanned during the breakout. “It was pure negligence, not a case of corruption,” said Gustavo Romero Meza, who, as commander of the Baja California State Judicial Police here, heads the investigation.

Romero, a massive man dressed in a white guayabera shirt, spoke while seated behind a desk in his drab office near downtown, as supplicants waited at the door for a minute with el comandante.

Next to the rifles and a single machine gun stacked to his right, Romero has equipped his office with a portable color television and videocassette recorder. On the wall directly in front of him, incongruous in this semi-desert area, the entire wall is papered with an alpine scene depicting a snow-covered peak, verdant green meadow and a soothing lake.

At the jail, there are no such uplifting images. Nonetheless, because the 300-prisoner facility is new and not nearly as cramped as many Mexican jails, the overall mood does not appear grim. On a recent afternoon during visiting day, prisoners lolled in the spacious central yard, many talking to relatives, others playing basketball on a cement court.

Disbelief Recounted

Meneses, who had more than 20 years of law-enforcement experience as a police official here before Ruffo put him in charge of the jail after the escape, welcomed a visitor cheerfully and recounted his disbelief about conditions at the jail. (“The escape of the century,” he called the breakout, only half in jest.)

He laughingly described the facility as a sieve that was ill-conceived, badly designed and opened prematurely, probably to secure political credit for the former city administration.

The fiscal crisis has been felt at the jail too--at the time of the escape, fewer than half the needed guards were on duty, a fact that authorities said contributed to the jailbreak. Even now, with staff bolstered, jail officials said, they can only spend the daily equivalent of 30 U.S. cents per prisoner for food--a dilemma that, on visiting days, has resulted in large lines of relatives delivering boxes of food for inmates.

“This place wasn’t ready to take prisoners,” said Meneses, who wears jeans and pointed cowboy boots, as he sits back in his boxy office up a side staircase. “There’s only one alarm. There’s no barbed wire. There aren’t any electrical doors. Plus, it should never have been built in this spot.”

For City Prisoners

Designed primarily for city prisoners such as petty thieves and drunkards, the new jail’s space was quickly utilized by state and federal authorities desperate for somewhere to put their hard-core prisoners. Hence, convicted murderers are housed with pickpockets, narcotics traffickers with check forgers. The situation has prompted the city to ask that state authorities take control of the facility.

The jail itself is situated on a hillside about two miles from downtown, adjoining the city dump, a cemetery and a poor squatter community. The development along the facility’s perimeter, Meneses noted, makes it easy for escapees to get away. After escaping, he says, some of the prisoners picked up flowers at the cemetery and pretended they were visiting the graves of loved ones.

Some press accounts have described the jailbreak as a well-planned, precisely timed maneuver devised by the drug-trafficking mafia. But Meneses and others said it is more likely that several high-profile prisoners may have planned the escape, and that other inmates simply took advantage of an enticing opportunity.

As of last week, 40 of the 60 prisoners had been recaptured, most of them during the massive manhunt that immediately followed the jailbreak.

Little Effort Made

Some convicted narcotics traffickers, perhaps the instigators, may have escaped via a speedboat waiting at a city dock a few miles away, authorities said. But many inmates apparently made very little effort to go beyond some area cantinas, where they were found drunk and arrested. Meneses told the story of one escapee who, after his recapture, was asked why he broke out when he had only a few weeks left on his sentence.

“I just wanted to have a good Chinese meal and a cold beer,” the prisoner told authorities.

Back at City Hall, Mayor Ruffo expressed the hope that state authorities will take the jail off his hands. Meanwhile, he, like other Mexicans, is closely watching the daily drama leading up to the destape, or unveiling, of a new PRI presidential candidate to see whether the likely next president will be a political hard-liner or someone amenable to concrete political reform.

“Mexico is ready for a change,” Ruffo said. “The PRI faces a moment of decision. Will they truly recognize democracy? Or will they go more toward a dictatorship? . . . I just don’t believe that they are going to opt for the hard line of dictatorship.”