Carlos Salinas De Gortari

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.

President-elect Carlos Salinas de Gortari will announce his cabinet on Nov. 30, the day before he takes office, the government newspaper El Nacional said Wednesday.

After vowing to fast until death or until his reputation was cleared, former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari temporarily called off his hunger strike Friday, just hours after he launched it. His suspended protest further tarnished the image of Mexico's ruling elite, bolstered President Ernesto Zedillo's stature, raised more questions about the stability and future of the ruling party and helped to drive the peso to near-record lows.

Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the presidential candidate who is trying to end the dominance of Mexico's ruling party, is not likely to take office, yet he may well hold the future of Mexico in his hands. Normally serene and measured, Cardenas has charged in uncharacteristically strong language that the government is robbing him of the presidency. To defend his election, Cardenas vowed, he will lead the millions of people who voted for him in legal battles, protests and street demonstrations nationwide.

A federal appeals judge has cleared Raul Salinas, the jailed brother of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, of tax fraud charges. Judge Raul Melgoza Figueroa ordered the charges dropped after finding that there was too little evidence to convict Salinas. He remains in a maximum-security prison in Mexico City on a host of other charges, including murder. Salinas was arrested in 1995 on charges that he plotted the 1994 assassination of top ruling party official Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu.

Ex-presidents of Mexico are used to disappearing. Custom has it that they serve their single, six-year term of office and remain out of public view, letting other people rule the country. That, however, is not the case with former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who in recent months has gradually reappeared before a public that largely vilifies him.

The drama surrounding the slaying of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's youngest brother intensified Friday, as authorities said the dead man probably knew his killers. Mexico state's top prosecutor said the investigation was "advancing rapidly," focusing on a "close nucleus" of people associated with 52-year-old businessman Enrique Salinas, who was found strangled Monday in a parked car in an upscale suburb of the capital.

Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Mexico's reviled former president who fled into self-imposed exile in 1995, has moved to Cuba from Ireland, La Jornada newspaper said Friday. Salinas' sister, Adriana, confirmed the move after she returned to Mexico from a visit to Havana with Ana Paula Gerard de Salinas, the ex-president's second wife, the newspaper said. The Cuban government refused to discuss Salinas' whereabouts.

After a five-year exile, disgraced former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari charged back into Mexico's political fray, releasing an encyclopedic memoir Monday and launching a vitriolic attack on his onetime protege, current President Ernesto Zedillo. Salinas' return has raised the specter of political warfare between two fading titans, just as Mexico appears headed for a peaceful, democratic transition from 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Mexico's biggest corruption scandal has engulfed former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari for the first time, with the reported allegation that he is the true owner of a secret fortune siphoned in part from government accounts. The charge was made by a man, reportedly Salinas' older brother, Raul Salinas de Gortari, in a taped telephone conversation broadcast Tuesday night by a Mexican television station.

Ex-presidents of Mexico are used to disappearing. Custom has it that they serve their single, six-year term of office and remain out of public view, letting other people rule the country. That, however, is not the case with former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who in recent months has gradually reappeared before a public that largely vilifies him.

The drama surrounding the slaying of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's youngest brother intensified Friday, as authorities said the dead man probably knew his killers. Mexico state's top prosecutor said the investigation was "advancing rapidly," focusing on a "close nucleus" of people associated with 52-year-old businessman Enrique Salinas, who was found strangled Monday in a parked car in an upscale suburb of the capital.

Mexico's biggest corruption scandal has engulfed former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari for the first time, with the reported allegation that he is the true owner of a secret fortune siphoned in part from government accounts. The charge was made by a man, reportedly Salinas' older brother, Raul Salinas de Gortari, in a taped telephone conversation broadcast Tuesday night by a Mexican television station.

After a five-year exile, disgraced former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari charged back into Mexico's political fray, releasing an encyclopedic memoir Monday and launching a vitriolic attack on his onetime protege, current President Ernesto Zedillo. Salinas' return has raised the specter of political warfare between two fading titans, just as Mexico appears headed for a peaceful, democratic transition from 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Mexico's reviled former president who fled into self-imposed exile in 1995, has moved to Cuba from Ireland, La Jornada newspaper said Friday. Salinas' sister, Adriana, confirmed the move after she returned to Mexico from a visit to Havana with Ana Paula Gerard de Salinas, the ex-president's second wife, the newspaper said. The Cuban government refused to discuss Salinas' whereabouts.

In a move that startled Mexicans, disgraced former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari returned briefly to his homeland Saturday after four years in self-exile but sought to dampen speculation that he will play a role in next year's presidential election. Salinas, who won international acclaim for opening Mexico's economy but was vilified after he left office in 1994, told reporters that he was on a 24-hour "private visit." It was motivated mainly by a desire to see his ailing father, he said.

It was almost like the old days--before the 1995 peso collapse, the shocking assassination charges, the lurid tales of drug corruption. There was Carlos Salinas de Gortari, staring from the front of the Mexican daily Reforma and the local edition of Newsweek. Salinas' recent, rare comments in the two publications have put the former president back at the center of political life. Four years after leaving office, he continues to haunt Mexicans.

Former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari lashed out from his self-imposed seclusion Monday, warning Mexico's top justice officials that they could be implicated in a widening scandal about drug trafficking during his administration. Salinas counterattacked after the leak of a report claiming that his brother Raul virtually ran narcotics traffic in Mexico during the 1988-94 Salinas presidency.

A judge has ordered the arrest of a top aide to former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari on charges that he illegally amassed a fortune while in office, a judicial official said Wednesday. The arrest warrant marked the first time that Justo Ceja, Salinas' private secretary, had been formally accused of a crime. No information was provided on how officials believe that Ceja acquired the money.

A Mexican appeals court Wednesday found Raul Salinas de Gortari, brother of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, not guilty of money-laundering charges, his lawyer said. "Today, a federal appeals court found my client not guilty of the charge of money laundering. This was one of the most important charges against him," the lawyer, Raul Cardenas, said.