With dead bodies littering Mexico, casualties of the war among Mexican drug cartels and the government of Presidente Felipe Calderon, Mexico might be headed back to the politics of the past in the coming Mexican congressional elections.

What seems clear is that the razor thin victory by Calderon over left-wing idiot Manuel Lopez Obrador and his leftist PRD party in 2006 has driven the PRD into third place among the seven-party Mexican political system. Rising from their far behind third place is the old corrupt PRI party that ruled Mexico with its own Stalinist politics for 70 years.

Recent polls of the congressional race conclude that in national results the PRI is receiving 37 percent support with Calderon’s PAN party just three ticks behind.

The results will be determined by turnout. Certainly no intelligent Mexican voter can cast an honest vote for the PRI, can they? How can those voters who put it all on the line in 2000 when they elected Vicente Fox in 2000 and returned to vote Felipe Calderon into the presidency in 2006 be denied by a resurgent PRI? Is it even possible?

First, there’s the economy. The American recession has hit Mexico harder than expected with car production, for example, falling. With Mexico being the 10th-largest car manufacturer in the world, a drop in auto production is highly significant. But is it the ruling party PAN’s fault?

Secondly, there’s the drop in emigration to the United States and the return of many Mexicans from the USA where employment in their favorite work has been lessened by rising unemployment and lack of economic growth. But is that the ruling party PAN’s fault?

Thirdly, there is the war on drug cartels initiated by President Calderon hours after he took office. He dispatched tens of thousands of army troops and federal police first to his home state of Michoacan, then to Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana. Police were disarmed and individually investigated for activities with the drug criminals of the Gulf, Sinaloa and Tijuana drug cartels. The battle was joined; blood flowed.

Fourthly, the PRI has always been politically in control of rural Mexico. The PRD has control of Mexico City and parts of Indian Mexico and the ruling PAN party controls modern northern Mexico with votes that are demonstrably middle class. Turnout, then, is very important for whichever party does well.

Calderon has sent police to prison. Drug cartel top dogs were hunted down, arrested or killed. They turned on each other with lower-ranked drug smugglers hunting each other in a relentless grab for power and drug smuggling routes to the USA. Bodies by the dozens turned up all along the border and in Sinaloa Mountains and cities like Culiacan.

Recently, the Calderon administration has turned its investigations toward politicians who have enabled drug cartels and been criminally bribed by criminals. A gaggle of mayors of all political parties including some in his own PAN party have been arrested and charged with criminal activities on behalf of drug cartels. Most were of the PRI party.

Blood has flowed everywhere. Decapitated heads turned up in cities miles from their former bodies. Violence like this hasn’t been seen in Mexico since the civil wars between 1910 and 1920.

That, then, is the backdrop to the coming Mexican congressional elections.

The results will hinge on two propositions: Will Mexicans return to power those who brought them to the corrupt drug-infested and ruled state it was after 70 years of pampering by a political party with deep links to drugs, the PRI; or will Mexicans line up to support the death struggle between the PAN government of Felipe Calderon and the PRI enabled “narcotrafficantes?”

Will Mexicans cast their lot with the longtime puppets of the drug peddlers bought and paid for with billions of criminal pesos earned on the streets of America through illicit drug sales to the weakest Americans of all, or will they stand up for the most courageous Mexican since Benito Juarez, the man who declared war on drugs, drug sellers and their puppets in the PRI?

We shall see in a few days. If I were voting in Mexico, I would vote with the PAN to bury the corrupt PRI, for “corruption is the PRI and PRI is corruption” as was put by Vicente Fox when he brought Mexico into the new millennium with his smashing victory in 2000. The PRI hasn’t changed; Mexico has.

(Contreras’ books are available at amazon.com.)