Facing the Music in Mexico

It is a sad reflection of the cynicism with which most Mexicans view their nation’s legal and political system that few believed that former Mexico City Police Chief Arturo Durazo would ever be brought back to face criminal charges.

Durazo was a childhood friend of former Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo, and that personal link helped him become head of Mexico City’s large police force during the Lopez Portillo administration. Durazo is now accused of profiting from widespread fraud and extortion during those years. But, because of his ties to a former president, Mexicans assumed that Durazo was too hot to handle. Putting him on trial could embarrass not just Lopez Portillo but also the system that nurtured him and Mexico’s current president, Miguel de la Madrid.

But De la Madrid came into office promising “moral renovation,” and Durazo has become oneof the key targets of that campaign. The former chief’s ostentatious life style, owning several palatial homes and even race horses on a modest police salary, was more than even the most jaded Mexican could ignore. So the De la Madrid government began a three-year effort to find Durazo, who had fled the country, and bring him to trial. That odyssey ended in a Los Angeles courtroom this week, when a federal judge ordered Durazo extradited to Mexico. But now the hard part of the Durazo case begins--the Mexican government’s effort actually to convict an important former official of corruption.

Mexicans have been resigned to public malfeasance for a long time. But as the nation’s economy has declined in recent years, despite the hope created by an oil boom in the 1970s, that cynicism has deepened. It is now a dangerous weakness for a political system that is otherwise remarkably stable and creative. Unless this cynicism is reversed, Mexico may never be able to work its way back to economic productivity, because every Mexican will understandably look out for his own interests rather than for the nation’s.

That is why Durazo is an important symbol, and why De la Madrid must prosecute the former chief as aggressively as possible, no matter how painful or embarrassing the trial proves.