1 While its troops tried to stamp out rebels in the south, Mexico's government faced a peaceful challenge Sunday in the heartland, where an opposition party was favored to win control of a major state and the country's second-largest city.
2 Jalisco, an industrial and farming state famed as the home of mariachi music, would be the largest state ever won by a Mexican opposition party.
3 Voters were choosing a governor and mayors of 124 cities, including Guadalajara, as well as a new state congress.
4 Sunday's vote was seen as a test of new President Ernesto Zedillo's pledge of fair elections and of a clear divide between the government and the party that has ruled Mexico for 66 years.
5 'Nobody will believe in anything the officials say, neither inside nor outside the country' if the election is unfair, said Carlos Castillo Peraza, president of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN. He threatened civil disobedience if his party loses by fraud.
6 Several polls give Alberto Cardenas of the PAN a lead of 10 to 20 percentage points over Eugenio Ruiz Orozco of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
7 Ten parties were contending, but the PRI and PAN have dominated the polls.
8 PAN leaders say victory in Jalisco could help them win all three other gubernatorial elections this year, loosening the governing party's hold on power. The PRI admits to losing only two state elections since it was formed in 1929 as an arm of the government.
9 Voting began in generally peaceful conditions Sunday across the state of 5.5 million people in west-central Mexico. The first official returns were not expected until early Monday.
10 The PRI has been hurt by the sudden devaluation of Mexico's currency in December that slashed the buying power of nearly all Mexicans overnight.
11 Many in Guadalajara also are angry about a 1992 sewage explosion blamed on the government that killed more than 200 people, and about a tide of violent crimes including the still-unsolved 1993 murder of the city's Roman Catholic cardinal.
12 'With the government in crisis, with the people angry, that's a perfect combination for a party that's looking for an opportunity,' said Juan Molinar Horcasitas, a political analyst from the College of Mexico in Mexico City.
13 Two attempts to disrupt Sunday's election were reported: --The state electoral commission said a gang robbed ballots from a polling place in rural Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos south of Guadalajara Sunday morning. --An independent observers group from the University of Guadalajara said that six men who arrived in a car with Mexico City license plates attacked some of the observers who were trying to conduct an exit poll in the town of Chapala.
14 The election takes place three days after the government sent thousands of troops into territory held by Indian rebels in southern Mexico, terming it a non-violent police action 'to restore the state of law.'

While its troops tried to stamp out rebels in the south , Mexico ' s government faced a peaceful challenge Sunday in the heartland , where an opposition party was favored to win control of a major state and the country ' s second - largest city .
opposition
What policies does the opposition party support?