Dare to Legalize
The following report was published
in the daily Por Esto!, the third most widely read newspaper
in Mexico, on May 22, 2000, and translated to English by The
Narco News Bulletin.
This report wrapped up a five part
series in Por Esto! based on the presentation at Columbia
University Law School in New York City last march by its editor
Mario Renato Menéndez Rodríguez.
The veteran Mexican journalist was
invited to New York by Columbia Law School at the suggestion
of the publisher of The Narco News Bulletin, who organized
a one-week whirlwind tour by Menéndez and his family in
which he met hundreds of key journalists, academics, activists
and important intellectuals (yes, there are still a few in the
Big Apple). To read the message
of thanks by Mario Menéndez,
one that names those New Yorkers who left a lasting impression
on the veteran journalist, and that was published in Por Esto!
along with this 12-page supplement, see
the May 2000 Drug War Hero of the Month award.
As a result of this visit to New York,
authorities in the US and Mexico now know that any harm to Mario
Menéndez for his courageous journalistic work will bring
the wrath of his hundreds of new friends and allies in the United
States upon them.
The publisher of The Narco News
Bulletin is proud to have brought Menéndez to New
York, and, as he announced in Mérida, Yucatán in
Spanish before hundreds of citizens -- including the presidents
of the seven regional chambers of commerce, high Catholic and
Protestant clergy, Mayan indigenous elders, union leaders, journalists,
and representatives of every political party in Mexico -- during
the 9th anniversary breakfast of Por Esto! on March 21,
2000, and later at a massive public assembly in the Mayan indigenous
region of Tekax, "We, the
working people of New York City, declare Mario Renato Menéndez
Rodríguez our Distinguished Son of New York, and he has
earned our affection, admiration and eternal protection."
United States citizens and other residents
of the "developed" world may find the following report
shocking both for its content and its courageous, bold, audacious,
accusations and challenges to the most powerful forces in Mexico,
including its President and Attorney General. The style of Authentic
Journalism of Menéndez and Por Esto!, so openly
taking the side of the Working People against the ursurpers of
power and democracy, is jarring in its contrast to the bland,
falsely "objective" and poorly-waged reporting on Mexico
by most US media outlets. But Por Esto! does not speak
in a vacuum: it has, in nine years of daily publication, won
the hearts and minds of a majority of Yucatán citizens,
who have made it already the top regional daily -- and the third
most widely read newspaper in all of Mexico.
This is the Mexican reality, as imposed
by US drug policy, as described and denounced by an Authentic
Journalist.
Fifth of five parts
Published in Por Esto! on May 22, 2000
NEW YORK CITY, MAY 2000: "End the hypocrisy, the simulation
and the cynicism and dare to confront the reality of drug trafficking
truthfully. It is necessary to decriminalize, liberate and legalize
the consumption of drugs. It is time for the federal government
of the United States, the land with the greatest number of drug
consumers in the world, to take responsibility for the free distribution
of drugs to addicts and 'casual' users, organized by health centers
in every county of the United States of America. At the same
time, the US federal government will have to establish rehabilitation
centers with the goal of creating a permanent educational process
for prevention, a process that would begin in homes and expand
to day care centers, primary, middle and high schools, universities,
churches, synagogues, lodges and all types of organizations at
the service of the community. It will be a process of material
and spiritual integration, in continuous movement, without interruption
or pause, oriented toward a better age of solidarity in human
relations and backed by reason and law."
This was the proposal of Por Esto! editor Mario Renato Menéndez
Rodríguez at the conclusion of his presentation on "The
fight against drugs" in a conference at the Columbia University
Law School in New York. And it was reiterated in the prestigious
radio station WBAI 99.5 FM, in his interviews with university
professors, in privileged, pro-democratic, New Yorker intellectual
circles and in the journalistic media of the United States, particularly
in the Babel of Iron.
The Yucateco journalist said that if the government of the
United States would assume its historic responsibility in this
process it would substantially reduce the ground available to
this business of hundreds of millions of dollars annually. It
would not only put a stop to the problems caused by addicts,
but also return to the Latin American farm, especially, its fundamental
mission: the production of food, thus guaranteeing the independence
and sovereignty of nations.
There would no longer be any excuse to send military advisors
and troops to Our América. It would put a stop to destabilizing
pretexts in countries like México, Colombia, Ecuador,
Perú, Bolívia and Venezuela. It would lessen the
irrational violence in the United States. It would detain the
racist and fascist offensives, and there would no longer by any
coherent legal or constitutional justification for the construction
of more prisons.
The editor of Por Esto! emphasized the challenge that today
means daring to fight to be authentic, to be practical and to
carry a mental attitude that brings us forward not only to end
the integral business end of drug trafficking - he repeated,
it amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars - but also to require
the establishment of a new international economic order, the
reorientation of industries currently stimulated by the movement
of drugs; in finance, the military, agriculture and construction.
Join the fight that in practice is a unifying
work for a revolution of conscience
"This means," said Mario Renato Menéndez
Rodríguez to an attentive audience at the Henry and June
Warren Hall at the New York house of higher education, "that
at present, the fight for the health and dignity of humanity
demands of us to do unifying work, without prejudices, a work
of solidarity that transforms us and reestablishes us as human
beings. It is a work that moves from the impulses of creative
imagination and social sensibility. It brings us immense satisfaction
to participate in the Revolution of Conscience to serve each
other, to feel as our own the pain of each person, to participate
in avoiding problems and being able to solve them. In sum, this
work translates to the fine practice of plain dignity by the
human being."
Change is Defined by the Respect for the
Rights of the Other
"This also means," said the editor of Por Esto!,
"a radical change in political relations, a change that
is defined by respect for the rights of the other. Politics is
the art of making possible that each person participates in the
community according to his abilities, but also receives according
to his needs. Simple and complicated, easy and difficult, that
is the humanizing process.
The Path of Narco-Development in Mexico:
An Alliance Between the Government, Bankers, Industrialists and
Drug Traffickers
Mario Renato Menéndez Rodríguez, guest of the
Columbia Law School, said before professors, students, university
leaders, journalists, clergy, artists and former prisoners of
conscience that the charges and analysis made by Por Esto! about
drug trafficking, made systematically and naming names, together
with documents, testimony, hard and irrefutable evidence, was
iniciated in December 1996.
These conclusions were also reached by the International
Drug Observatory, based in Paris, France, in 1998, which said
among other points:
"The path of 'narco-development'
taken by Mexico thanks to the alliances between governments,
bankers, industry and drug traffickers has had the endorsement
of Washington for more than 15 years (since the administrations
of Mexican presidents Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, Carlos Salinas
de Gortari and Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León) to pave
the way for the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA)."
Nothing Stands in the Way of the Interests
of the US
"Always ready to denounce corruption
and violations of human rights in other parts of the world when
its interests are in play, the government of the United States
prefers to minimize them, and, in the case of its southern neighbor,
to oppose their stimulation. In the past, in exchange for 'A
Mexico free of Communism,' Washington could fix the blame calmly
upon the corruption of the previous regime; its 'rediscovery'
after the election of each new Mexican president...."
"Today, by means of its financial
and military support of Zedillo's government, it is in the name
of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the control that
NAFTA guarantees over its access, over a determined timeline,
to the fertile petroleum reserves of Mexico, and that is why
the US executive branch covers up the detours and errors that
NAFTA generates in Mexico."
A High Price in Violence and Blood
"For the society and federal government
of the United States, the price that will have to be paid threatens
to be much more than in the past.
"First, in terms of the legitimacy
of the neoliberal economic model that Washington tries to impose
upon the world, that provokes, in its very essence, criminal
activities and grave violence.
"Next, the growing integration
of economies serves to legitimize, within the United States,
interests linked to drug trafficking, that under this economic
model are found consolidating themselves. A great number of Mexican
holdings that are currently commercial partners of US firms,
in the audiovisual media, transportation or telecommunications
sectors, for example, have in many cases been privatized thanks
to the embezzlement of public resources, influence trafficking,
and drug money laundering during the 80s and 90s.
"The millions of North Americans
that each year vacation in the tourist paradises of Mexico participate
unknowingly in the legitimacy of multi-millionaire investments
that Mexican drug traffickers have made for more than 15 years
in the tourist sector. There are also strong probabilities that
the great tourist development projects of the Mexican government,
particularly in the Southeast of the country, will permit the
recycling of more millions of narco-dollars.
The Narco-Economy Pollutes and Protects Organized
Crime
"Finally, the North American financial
sector seems particularly permeable to drug money and now, in
an open process of restructuring, even moreso. Through the process
of mergers and acquisitions, Citicorp is at the point of becoming
the major financial group of the United States and one of the
most important in the world, in spite of the role that has been
proven that its principal institution, Citibank, has played in
money laundering scandals, among them that Citibank is implicated
in the case of Raúl Salinas de Gortari."
(Citibank, announced Por Esto!'s editor, not only received
from President Ernesto Zedillo's government the bank named Confia,
which has more than a few of its former Mexican executives in
US prisons accused of money laundering, but also was the instution
that promoted the boss of the Juárez Cartel, Amado Carrillo,
a.k.a. "The Lord of the Skies," to the leadership of
the government of Chile. And, in spite of proven evidence, the
directors of Citibank are not touched "not even with the
petal of a rose." Likewise, in Mexico the Attorney General
of the Republic has not even bothered to bring the Salinas-backed
neo-banker Roberto Hernández Ramírez in for questioning.)
Drug Trafficking Consolidates the Neoliberal
Economic Model
In Mexico, according to the Geopolitical Drug Observatory,
"in spite of the seizures and arrests,
at times spectacular, the bilateral structures of the anti-drug
fight - supported by massive publicity in the mass media by the
governments of the US and Mexico - have proven to be incapable
of reducing the intensity of drug trafficking between the two
countries."
"Three fundamental reasons explain
this failure:
"First, for Mexico and Washington,
but not always for the same motives, consolidating the Free Trade
Agreement and fighting against subversive movements are higher
priorities than the fight against drugs.
"The second reason is directly
related to the first: the interests linked to drug trafficking
acquired considerable weight in the Mexican economic and political
systems since the early 1980s. Its influence over the current
government and, among others, the political party in charge,
the PRI, is considerable. Everything indicates that after having
facilitated the entrance of Mexico into the Free Trade Agreement,
drug traffickers have participated actively in its consolidation.
It fits to remember that Mexico serves as a grand axis in Washington's
project for the Americas in the 21st century: the creation of
a free trade zone based on the NAFTA model... The Summit of the
Americas that occured in April 1998, in Santiago de Chile, confirmed
the central place that NAFTA occupies in the grand 'hemispheric'
strategy of Washington.
An Ineffective Fight Due to its Repressive
Character
"Finally, the fight against drug
trafficking is globally ineffective, because its nature continues
being essentially repressive, and, as such, reactive. Police
and military institutions are asked to make a circle square.
"These institutions have to stand
alone to remedy the multiple perverse effects (disorder, political
and financial corruption, criminality, drug trafficking, clandestine
immigration, and guerrillas) that generate an agreement of Free
Trade between two nations who are opposite in everything: first,
in their levels of development; next, their judicial and political
traditions. Aggravating factors include: the immense corruption
of the Mexican security apparati and that fact that, for the
United States, bilateral cooperation serves mainly to promote
other strategic objectives by Washington for the Americas in
the 21st century, such as the integration of the Mexican armed
forces under the banner of a multilateral anti-drug force under
US command."
Their Vision of Mexico: On Our Knees
How does the Geopolitical Drug Observatory view Mexico?
Let's see:
"Producer, manufacturer and transporter
country of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.
"First provider to the United
States market and grand receiver of drug trafficking capital,
Mexico continues being one of the great world centers of narco-business.
"The capital generated by drug
trafficking and other activities of organized crime constitute
one of the pillars of the nation's economy and have considerable
influence over its political life since the 1980s.
"Nonetheless, important events
affected the development of Mexican drug trafficking in 1997
and early 1998. The "dismantling" of the Juárez
Cartel - its old structures of money laundering in Mexico, the
United States and Latin America - leaves, at present, the path
open for the cartel of Tijuana and its political and military
allies in the current federal government. In the army, the purges
of protectors of the Juárez cartel continue.
"The 'anti-drug' fight, selective
enough, also has to do with an important national political arena,
heating up toward the presidential elections of 2000. Its victims,
who all belong to the PRI, who without a doubt are not inoccent,
yet their primary characteristics are their opposition to the
current regime and the hostility they draw from Washington.
Politics as Business
To demonstrate that the government of the United States acts
and always will act on behalf of its economic interests, that
its political activity is dedicated to that; to understand better
its complicity with drug trafficking, journalist Mario Renato
Menéndez Rodríguez reminded that beyond the criminal
relationship between the internationally powerful Citibank and
"the inconvenient brother" Raúl Salinas de Gortari,
the following examples, that were offered to Por Esto! readers
in its February 14, 1999 edition, the day that President William
Clinton came to Mérida, Yucatán:
-- The connection of Colonel Oliver North with drug trafficking,
behind the backs of the US Congress, to finance armed activities
and terrorism by the "contra" toward the Sandinista
government of Nicaragua. The North American military official
admitted this publicly and 'justified' it as a necessary response
to a "national security" problem. Contrary to what
might be imagined, the conduct of Colonel North was awarded and
characterized as "heroic."
-- General Manuel Antonio Noriega, Panama's chief of state,
collaborated with the CIA and President George Bush, and rewarded
for his services, aware that the Panamanian military chief maintained
connections with Colombian drug traffickers, mainly with Pablo
Escobar Gaviria, boss of the Medellín cartel. Noriega
permitted him to construct a giant laboratory for the processing
of Colombian cocaine in the inhospitable jungle of Darién
province.
-- For the government of the United States it was of special
interest to know and control the commercial movements of the
Colombian drug barons, as well as the Colombian and Peruvian
guerrilla movements, without losing sight of the conflicts between
Ecuadorian and Peruvian military, also stimulated by the US,
among other conflicts.
-- Once the objective was achieved, the same President Bush
ordered Noriega to destroy the laboratory of Pablo Escobar Gaviria
in Darién, a fact that caused an increase in the price
of cocaine in the international market, and that generated a
confrontation between the Panamanian chief of state and the Colombian
capo, and slowed the movements of the guerrillas.
-- Later came the criminal invasion by the United States
of Panama, the capture and consequent trial of Noriega, in Miami,
during which the multiple game of the Panamanian chief of state
was revealed.
-- The conduct of today ex-president Bush was 'justified',
also, as necessary for the interests of US 'security.'
-- In the 1970s, the US government authorized the government
of Turkey to plant thousands of hectares of opium, to commercialize
and control the drug, in exchange for authorizing the maintenance
of US military bases on Turkish soil with nuclear missiles aimed
at the territory of the former Soviet Union.
-- During World War II, the US government offered absolute
immunity to the bosses of the "Cosa Nostra," first
among them Lucky Luciano, with the condition that the organized
crime networks in Europe would serve the forces allied against
the German-Italian-Japanese axis.
Protected Witnesses: Judicial Degeneration
Without Limit
The editor of Por Esto! explained that one of the perverse
weapons that the US government uses to excersize publicity pressure
over the three Mexican branches of government is the US "Witness
Protection Program," that has become a vulgar commercial
practice of buying and selling of police 'personalities' at the
service of organized crime, with the complicity of the Mexican
president.
The Yucatán journalist mentioned the cases of Guillermo
González Calderoni and Oscar López Olivares, connected
with the cartels of Juárez City and the Gulf of Mexico
and now with "protected" residency in Texas, the state
governed precisely by the son of ex-president George Bush.
Jorge Madrazo Cuéllar, the Attorney General whose
servile stance and abjection knows no limit, knows who González
Calderoni is: the ex-director of Air, Land and Sea Interception
of the Attorney General of the Republic, and also the ex-first
commander of the Federal Judicial Police in Juárez City,
Monterrey and Tuxtla Gutiérrez, where just as in San Antonio
Texas, he was the district representative of the Attorney General.
Guillermo González Calderoni, 52, native of Reynosa,
Tamaulipas, began as an assistant district representative for
the Attorney General in Jalisco and in Quintana Roo. From Cancún,
he facilitated the operations of the Gulf Cartel, presided over
by Juan García Abrego, and those of the Juárez
Cartel, led by Amado Carrillo, "The Lord of the Skies,"
and he represented the interests of the Salinas de Gortari family.
Guillermo González Calderoni, "one of the most
powerful commanders of the Federal Judicial Police," amassed
a fortune that, according to the same Attorney General of the
Republic, surpassed $400 million dollars.
The editor of Por Esto! asked the attentive audience in the
William and June Warren building of Columbia University Law School:
"What police officer in the United States can amass
such a fortune legally? What president of the United States has
arrived at that amount? Bush? Clinton? Who in the United States
could attain a fortune of billions of dollars as rapidly as the
Salinas-backed neo-banker Roberto Hernández Ramírez
achieved in five years?
"No one," was the editor's response.
Guillermo González Calderoni, chief of nothing more
or less than the anti-narcotics division, worked for three Attorneys
General: Sergio García Ramírez, Enrique Alvarez
de Castillo and Ignacio Morales Lechuga, the Yucatán journalist
informed.
And Jorge Madrazo Cuéllar, the present Attorney General,
knows that González Calderoni has been located in the
United States since 1993, because he has access to the reports
of the DEA, the FBI, the CIA, the ATF, the White House anti-drug
office and the US Attorney General. The testimony of González
Calderoni as 'protected witness' was given in McAllen, Texas,
and, there, US federal officials learned the who, where and when
of "the combat against drug trafficking."
Jorge Madrazo Cuéllar was informed by the same people
- it's worth saying, his true bosses in Washington - of who is
Oscar López Olivares, a.k.a. "El Profe," native
of Camargo, Tamaulipas, and what he declared as a "protected
witness."
The today "Attorney of the Nation," as a member
of the National Commission of Human Rights, read on August 5th,
1992, in The Brownsville Herald, and on February 28, 1993, in
El Norte of Monterrey, the grave accusations of "El Profe,"
López Olivares:
"Drug trafficking in Mexico - and this must be understood
- is a matter managed completely by the federal government."
Jorge Madrazo Cuéllar knows this and much more. His
mission is to continue complying with a dog's loyalty the instructions
from Washington.
The complicity is already too evident, punctualized the Yucateco
journalist.
Psychologically Unstable Leaders in the 'Fight
Against Drugs'
The editor of Por Esto! painted a dramatic and pathetic picture
that would be difficult to understand in countries where there
is respect for law and excersize of democracy.
Mario Renato Menéndez Rodríguez said that the
Attorney General of the Republic and the National Information
Center (CISEN, Mexico's domestic spy agency), are coordinated
and directed from the Mexican presidency to defend and protect
the economic interests of President Ernesto Zedillo. They, and
a few remaining members of the neoliberal leadership, between
whom figure with manifest priority Roberto Hernández Ramírez,
move on the Yucatán peninsula and walk with recognized
delinquents, psychologically unstable officials, opportunists
and resentful politicians incapable of seeing "beyond their
own noses." These are the groups that form the "Anti-Yucatán"
band, the "Anti-Quintana Roo" band and the "Anti-Campeche"
band, which is the same as being "Anti-México."
With them, the Attorney General and its anti-drug office (the
FEADS), and the CISEN, fix and stimulate connections not only
that are interrelated, but more worrisome, interdependent.
This explains why, save for some very honorable exceptions,
corruption and depravity are the constant qualities of these
personalities whom, in front of the media, speak of morals, ethics,
law and rights. But their daily activities are marked with insolence,
abuse of power and cynicism. They orchestrate truly criminal
acts against economic and political adversaries of the President
of the Republic. They are also serving the United States empire.
Because these officials of the Attorney General-FEADS-CISEN,
said the Yucatán journalist, are just as much at the service
of drug trafficking and are compensated amply with millionaire
sums of money.
There, we can understand, said the Por Esto! editor, the
hows and whys of complicit silence, lies and slanders, disinformation
and manipulation of "news;" the "leaks" that
characterize the theme of the trafficking of drugs.
And he added: "This demonstrates the hows and whys of
the unequaled injustices of the "anti-drug" fight,
its destruction of social and individual honor, its offenses
and humiliations to society and its important sectors, a society
that the federal executive branch negates as it tries to limit
its capacity for historic memory."
"The confluence of terror with hatred and perversity,"
Mario Renato Menéndez Rodríguez reiterated, "is
put into practice to try and distract the attention of national
and international Public Opinion from the high-class delinquents,
those 'white collar' criminals, the real responsible culprits
in drug trafficking who are precisely those that order and direct
that operations 'against' drug trafficking - the operatives of
the Attorney General and of the FEADS."
The Por Esto! editor emphasized that what happens in the
Mexican Republic and in the Yucatán Peninsula, in particular,
is an affront to dignity that wounds and shames México,
an attack on the spirit of the great Mexican men of the reform
era.
The federal executive branch lies and corrupts, slanders
and degrades: it is responsible for the decomposition of México,
and for the accelerating disintegration of the Mexican Republic.
It is the major accomplice of drug trafficking and the Working
People know it.
Lies and Complicity of the Attorney General
with Drug Traffickers
The Yucateco journalist explained in New York that there
is no accusation made by Por Esto! about drug trafficking on
the Yucatán Peninsula that is not backed by irrefutable
proofs, testimonies, documents, photos and graphic material:
the same goes for the mental and emotional instability of officials
like the Mexican drug czar Mario Herrán Salvatti, head
of the FEADS or Mexican drug czar, and Froylán Carlos
Cruz López, general director of the Federal Judicial Police
assigned to the Specialized Organized Crime Unit (UEDO in its
Spanish acronym).
He cited extremely grave examples:
On Monday, January 25, 1999, Por Esto! demonstrated and denounced
that:
1. The air interception base of the Attorney General in Chetumal,
the capital of the state of Quintana Roo, acted in complicity
with international drug traffickers in the landing of more than
a ton of cocaine over the Altos de Sevilla-Sinaí highway,
northeast of Chetumal.
2. Mariano Herrán Salvatti (the federal drug czar)
in the Attorney General's office lied while reciting the press
releases related with the facts connected with the movement of
these drugs, beginning at noon, on Sunday, January 24, 1999.
3. If not for the professional and responsable uncovering
of this information by Por Esto! reporters Ramiro Can Chi and
José Angel Muñoz González in Quintana Roo,
the truth of this repugnant story would never have been known.
The objective reality:
-- On Sunday, January 24, 1999, at mid-day, the radar system
of the airports in Chetumal, Cancún and Tuxtla Gutiérrez
detected airplanes, coming from Colombia, with a destination
in the Caribbean.
-- The radio alert was received at 12:48 p.m. at the interception
base of the federal drug czar's office in Chetumal.
-- But there was no immediate response logged on the part
of the officials in charge at the interception airbase.
-- Witnesses from communities to the Northeast of Chetumal
informed that "after mid-day" TWO airplanes landed
on the Altos-de-Sevilla-Sinaí highway.
-- At 4:30 that afternoon of Sunday, January 24, 1999, the
control tower of the Chetumal airport reported to the FEADS base
the irregular flight of an airplane over the shores of the Caribbean.
-- AFTER five p.m., four members of the FEADS, without making
reference to any special operation, boarded in Chetumal a CESSNA
airplane and returned at 6:30 p.m. "without any news."
-- Precisely at the hour that the FEADS agents realized their
"inspection" flight, members of the Public Security
Police of Quintana Roo, fortunately, during their regular vigilance
rounds, surprised various persons who were unloading sacks of
cocaine from an airplane that landed on the highway, 80 kilometers
north of Chetumal.
-- Already, by then, the second airplane had disappeared
after its drug cargo was collected by an "unknown"
helicopter, according to witnesses who spoke to Por Esto!
-- Elements of the 24th Military Region, under the leadership
of General Javier del Real Magallanes, announced the landing
of the cocaine, as did the members of the State public security
police, in that highway, and together, initiated the prosecution
of the individuals who brought the cocaine from the plane that
stayed on the highway.
-- At about 8 p.m., the Army and the Public Security Police
of the state of Quintana Roo, by themselves, arrested Ofelia
Fonseca Nuñez, daughter of Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, "Don
Neto," the uncle of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, "The Lord
of the Skies," who had been prisoner in the maximum security
facility of Alomoloya de Juárez. They also arrested her
husband, Manuel Padierna Sánchez, and the Colombian pilot
Alberto Londoño.
-- In addition to the airplane, they confiscated 462 kilos
of cocaine, five kilos of opium gum and an AK-47 rifle.
These were the facts that Por Esto! reported to the public.
What the Attorney General and FEADS 'Reported'
On Monday, January 25, 1999, the day after the events, the
Attorney General of the Republic sent out a press release filled
with lies in which he dared to confirm that at mid-day on Sunday,
after "the flight of ONE illicit airplane from South America
was discovered... IMMEDIATELY... operations to intercept it were
launched."
The institution led by Jorge Madrazo Cuéllar, so skilled
at gossip, intrigue, perversity and provocation, demonstrated
once more its lack of responsibility, claiming that the operation
was under the charge of the Attorney General (a claim that shined
precisely for the agency's complicit absence from the interception
effort). The National Defense Secretary, and the State police
of Quintana Roo, were excluded from the announcement, which claimed
that "immediately after the detection, the airplane was
intercepted by helicopters and planes" of Madrazo's PGR.
The fact that the PGR denies, deforms and manipulates the
information to try and hide its complicity, said Mario Renato
Menéndez Rodríguez, does NOT mean that the truth
was presented in all the newspapers, TV and radio media. Not
at all: Por Esto! is accustomed to the closure of the official
media. And it knows how to arrive at the truth by paths less
imagined by the spiritually lacking.
On the night of Monday, January 25, 1999, Mariano Herrán
Salvatti, the Mexican drug czar, repeated the entire press release
of infamy emitted hours earlier by the Attorney General, but
added recognition of the participation by the state police.
Still, the drug czar "enriched" his statements
with more lies, infamies that offended the intelligence of the
citizens in general.
There, without any show of shame, Mariano Herrán Salvatti
invented a video clip of air maneuvers "for the location,
detection, persecution and interception of the airplane."
The psychologically unstable imagination of the drug czar
projected onto the video screen showed "a coordinating command
center of the air operation," that, "also alerted the
various agencies that participate in the 'Sealing of the Peninsula'
plan to collaborate in taking action." And this permitted
the weak mind of Mariano Herrán Salvatti to involve in
the action "those planes and helicopters of the Secretary
of Defense and the Attorney General."
In Whose Hands Is the National Security of
Mexico?
Mario Renato Menéndez Rodríguez warned that
in the hands of these individuals with serious mental instability
and problems there is found an attack upon the National Security
of Mexico.
He added: "It was the journalism of Por Esto! and nobody
else who has the job of informing the public, that exposed the
facts, the lies and the complicity of the Attorney General and
the FEADS."
1. There were TWO, and not one, airplanes with drugs, as
was admitted by the Federal Prosecutor José Luis Mateos
González during his press conference on Tuesday, January
26, 1999.
2. The interception airbase of the FEADS, in the Chetumal
airport terminal, did absolutely nothing to try and stop the
landing and trafficking of the cocaine, in spite of the alert
messages; to the contrary, it showed its complicity with drug
trafficking.
3. They did not engage in any persecution of the plane, nor
air interception.
4. There was no operating conscience, nor, much less, a strategic
plan.
5. After a mere "slap on the wrist", the subdirector
for the Attorney General in Chetumal, Jorge García Zavala,
was transfered to Puebla.
What can be hoped for, then, when the federal executive complicity
in drug trafficking is more than clear?
The Cancún Case
The Yucateco journalist recognized that the hatred toward
Por Esto! by the traitors of Mexico was sharpened by what is
known as the "Cancún Case," due to the following
facts:
-- The unmasking of the criminal activities, connected with
drug trafficking, and the criminal complaint filed by Por Esto!
against Roberto Hernández Ramírez, chief stockholder
and CEO of BANAMEX-ACCIVAL, who enjoyes a very close relationship
with President Ernesto Zedillo.
-- The political, economic and military explanation given
by Por Esto! of the arrest of Division General Jesús Gutiérrez
Rebollo and the denouncing of the federal government's publicity
offensive against him, that began a simulated fight against drug
corruption. This, to try and detour and destroy the command structures
of the Army where the last bastion of Revolutionary Nationalism
are found in opposition to the neoliberal economic model. (Two
months after having received the highest of praise, in the most
superlative terms, of Presidents Clinton and Zedillo, Generals
Barry McCaffrey and Enrique Cervantes Aguirre, Attorney General
Janet Reno, the chiefs of the DEA, the FBI, and ATF, the Armed
Forces and police agencies of Mexico; 60 days later, Division
General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, commander of three
military regions with 47 years of passionate service to the Armed
Forces, was then labeled "a traitor to his uniform, to the
Army and to Mexico" by the man who most lacks dignity, honor
and patriotism: Attorney General Jorge Madrazo Cuéllar.)
-- The consequent investigative reports by Por Esto! on the
systematic attacks committed by the Attorney General and the
FEADS against the most basic human rights: from kidnapping to
torture, to the disappearance and death of individuals who, before
being executed, were tricked with promises of liberty in exchange
for signing "declarations" against personalities of
wide social sectors - political, business, military and journalistic
- involving them with drug trafficking. In particular, these
abuses were waged against those who opposed, to small or large
degree, the imposition of the neoliberal economic model by Washington
upon Mexico.
Por Esto!'s reporting of the facts of the objectives of the
"Cancún Case", directed by the dangerous, mentally
disturbed and corrupt Froylán Carlos Cruz López,
director of the Federal Judicial Police assigned to the drug
czar's office, not only saved lives. It accomplished something
more important: It avoided the destruction of the command of
the Mexican army.
Fifteen generals were at the point of being publically accused
of drug trafficking and organized crime, and the same kind of
charges used against Division General Jesús Gutiérrez
Rebollo were being prepared against them.
Froylán Carlos Cruz López was also caught trying
to induce testimony against presidential candidate Francisco
Labastida Ochoa. And behind this effort were found the most conspicious
members of Labastida's own campaign staff. The continued silence
over this theme is deafening.
Treason Against Mexico
In New York, Mario Renato Menéndez Rodríguez
denounced at the Columbia Law School, on WBAI 99.5 FM radio,
in diverse interviews and in his encounters with the democratic
intellectuals of New York City, and among many journalists who
he met there, something much more grave than complicity with
drug trafficking.
The editor of Por Esto! accused the federal executive branch
of treason against the nation.
The Yucateco journalist warned of the disintegration of the
Nation, beginning precisely with a simulated war against drugs,
that responds exclusively to the economic interests of Washington,
and at whose service are found unpatriotic leaders protected
by their Mexican "citizenship," dressed up as "democrats,"
whose sole obsession is the imposition of the savage and brutal
neoliberal economic model, that will destroy the dignity, sovereignty
and identity of Mexico.
Por Esto!, Mario Renato Menéndez Rodríguez
demonstrated, does not hide its revolutionary nationalism; one
that is inclusive, open to all ideas and creative currents, but
conscious that the trunk and roots of the nation require a Mexico
that is structurally solid.
"We are proud of our journalism that reflects the objective
reality and with its practiced criteria of telling the truth.
And we can confirm, without the sin of exaggeration, that our
reporting on the war on drugs has helped save lives and avoid
major tragedies," said the Por Esto! editor.
And he concluded his presentation in New York with the warning
that there can be NO true fight against drug abuse until the
first step is taken: the decriminalization, liberation and organized
legalization of the consumption of drugs, to be able to move
forward on the paths of rehabilitation and prevention.