MEXICO CITY _ Every time Mexico's presidential elections come up, I make a point of chatting with Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes to get his take on events. I did this in 2000, when the country became a truly representative democracy, and now, after the most disputed election in its history.

Inevitably, I come away with a much clearer idea of what the moment holds for the Mexican Republic.

Wearing a blue sweater, open shirt; his eyes attentive, his mustache expressive, his hands emphatic; in control; comfortable in his suntanned skin, Fuentes nonetheless refused to reveal whom he voted for: "The vote is secret," he reminded me.

"Mexico can stand two volcanoes," he replied, when I asked him whether Mexico's young democracy, just six years old, could face such a tight electoral result, as well as the subsequent objections, charges and protests.

"This is a country with a very strong civil society, that has a strong culture and that has evolved practicing democracy in a thousand civic groups," added the author, born in 1928. "A civic culture that developed underground, if you will. This country has a long tradition of democratic practice which, while it has not always been manifested at the institutional level, it has effectively been exercised at the popular cultural level."

But now, suddenly, these last elections in Mexico and the following days of uncertainty _ after the candidate from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, contested the results and rallied his supporters on Saturday _ suggest an electoral crisis, similar to what the United States went through in 2000. But there's more.

The personal attacks, the insults and the negative publicity that characterize any American election, local or federal, flooded the Mexican electoral scenario in a big way this time around. So, has Mexican politics become "Americanized"?

"We are becoming `Frenchisized,' `Italianized,' `Spaniardized,'" answered Fuentes, author of "La Region Mas Transparente" ("Where the Air Is Clear") and "Diana o La Cazadora Solitaria" ("Diana, The Goddess Who Hunts Alone"). "What I mean is that we are engaging in the exercise of democratic normalcy."

Fuentes, former Mexican ambassador to France who later resigned in protest of Mexico's then government of President Jose Lopez Portillo, rejected the suggestion by some PRD members that the 2006 vote was essentially similar to the electoral fraud of 1988 _ when PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari stole the Mexican presidency from PRD candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas.

"Does this smell of fraud to you?"

"There cannot be any fraud!" he answered vigorously. "The institutions, the padlocks _ as we call them here _ do not permit it; because the system is firmly grounded, and the election was perfectly transparent. No, no way! And it is very dangerous to talk about fraud."

Mexico has a long and sad history of the use of violence for resolving its conflicts. We have the Independence (1810), the Revolution (1910), the massacre at Tlatelolco (1968), and the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio (1994), to name a few examples.

Fuentes, however, thinks those examples represent an attitude we have long left behind.

"There's another country with a history of enormous violence, and that is Spain," explained Fuentes, author also of "Terra Nostra" and "El Naranjo" ("The Orange Tree"). "The Spanish Civil War was one of the 20th century's biggest massacres, and Spain has been able to navigate itself in, with and toward democracy. I believe the same has happened in Mexico. The violence of the past is still remembered. I don't believe anybody in Mexico would want to return to that violence, but would rather accept and adopt all the legal and constitutional avenues that have been opened in the last 15 years."

Both the preliminary results _ which were as imprecise as controversial _ and the official vote count gave Calderon, the candidate from the National Action Party (PAN) a slight, but clear, lead over Lopez Obrador. And Fuentes explains these results are, in part, due to the campaign of fear launched against Lopez Obrador as well as Mexican religiosity.

"That, indeed, worked," he said, referring to the fear campaign, "because it intimidated many who (in the end) did not vote for Lopez Obrador. Simply that. But that vote is valid. It was an electoral tactic, just as in the United States, where (George W.) Bush won the (2004 presidential) election based on fear, terrorism and religion."

"Is Catholicism still such an important factor for Mexicans in 2006?"

"I believe the Virgin of Guadalupe is the one who, in the end, decides elections in Mexico," he answered, smiling and leaning back in a comfortable armchair at his home in south Mexico City. "In the midst of all the disasters we've lived through in the last 50 years, she is always the immaculate figure, the untouchable symbol, the symbol that allows us to say `thanks to God, we are atheists.'"

"With so many undecided (voters), do you think many Mexicans voted for the candidate they believed was more Catholic, in this case Felipe Calderon?"

"Possibly," he answered. "I believe a lot of people did vote for Calderon on religious grounds.

"Mexico is and has always been a conservative country," Fuentes continued, and calculated that by adding together votes for the PAN and the PRI (Revolutionary Institutional Party), "we already have a right-wing majority."

The next president of Mexico faces two immediate challenges. The first is governing a country clearly divided in half. Calderon won with 15 million votes but 26 million voted against him.

"The government must be one of conciliation," Fuentes added. "It's a government that will have to negotiate with a Congress divided in three."

The other problem is to create good jobs so that Mexican young people no longer need to go to the United States.

"What is happening now with the Mexican worker cannot be called `migration' anymore," acknowledged the author who, in his book "El Espejo Enterrado" ("The Buried Mirror"), dissects Mexico's relationship with the United States. "It is an exodus. Millions of our people are leaving us ... Out of 120 million, 50 million are unemployed. Poverty forces them to emigrate. These are permanent problems in Mexico that need to be addressed by the next president."

This year, 2006, draws the line in Mexico. Maybe the country can withstand two volcanoes: Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl. But now we shall have to see whether at the same time it can withstand a candidate who won and a second who insists he was robbed of victory.

Fuentes believes it is possible. "We are within a democratic normality, with the appropriate vices and virtues of democracy. As Winston Churchill said, `...democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.'"