U.S. Aide Links Mexico Governor to Drug Crops : Customs Chief Calls Nation’s Graft So Pervasive That He Presumes Any Official to Be Dishonest

The head of the U.S. Customs Service, making sweeping accusations of massive corruption in Mexico, charged Tuesday that opium poppies and marijuana are being grown under military and police guard on four ranches belonging to the governor of the Mexican state of Sonora.

Commissioner William von Raab, testifying before a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, said such corruption is so widespread that he assumes that any Mexican official is dishonest unless proven otherwise.

Dealer Reported in Home

When asked by subcommittee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) about reports that Gov. Felix Valdez was protecting a notorious Mexican drug dealer in his home, Von Raab said he could not confirm that allegation. However, he added, “we have information he has four ranches, on all four of which marijuana and opium (poppies) are being grown, guarded by police and military.”

Valdez, a member of the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, was elected governor of the northern state last July amid charges of fraud by the opposition National Action Party.

Leonardo Ffrench-Iduarte, minister of press relations and public affairs at the Mexican Embassy here, said after the hearing that he was unaware of such accusations against the Sonora governor and that, if Washington has any such evidence, it should be formally presented to the Mexican government.

He added that Mexican corruption exists only in “isolated cases” and is prosecuted when discovered.

Von Raab, however, said that all his efforts to enlist Mexican cooperation in locating clandestine landing fields used by drug traffickers near the U.S. border have failed because of “ingrained corruption in Mexican law enforcement.”

‘Crisis Proportion’

Von Raab added that the drug trade across the nearly 2,000-mile Mexican border has reached a “crisis proportion” involving billions of dollars. The Administration’s war against drugs “is doomed to failure” without the full cooperation of the Mexican government, he said.

Corruption among Mexican police authorities extends “all the way up and down the ladder,” Von Raab said. “Until it is corrected, we will never solve the problem.”

Von Raab, a frequent critic of Mexican efforts on drug control, said the Customs Service has identified 760 areas along the border where drug trafficking occurs. In addition, he said, the service has located 132 drug warehouses north and south of the border and 472 clandestine air strips used to smuggle drugs into the United States.

Colombian Role Seen

There is increasing evidence that drug dealers from Colombia are extending their activities into Mexico, Von Raab said.

Elliot Abrams, assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, agreed with Von Raab that corruption is widespread but expressed doubt that it extends to the level of President Miguel de la Madrid or his Cabinet. Also, he said, De la Madrid does not have the drug-fighting capabilities that President Reagan has.

“Behind some of the buttons that you would want to push from the presidential palace in Mexico City you will find corruption--the kind of people who do not want to carry out those orders,” Abrams said. “So I think it is going to be tougher for them to succeed.”

Abrams endorsed Helms’ call for a thorough airing of the “guts and feathers” of Mexico’s internal problems but warned that the hearings will provoke anger in Mexico City.

“Our purpose is not to call names or to throw mud,” Abrams said. “The government and people of Mexico need to understand this is a very serious business and that the image, the reputation of Mexico in the United States, can be destroyed by this kind of activity.”

The critical committee testimony was in sharp contrast to comments made by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III after meeting last month with Mexican Atty. Gen. Sergio Garcia Ramirez in Cancun, Mexico.

Meese said that he was “terribly impressed” with Mexico’s anti-narcotics efforts and cited progress “made in the course of the past 13 months.”

Angry Editorial

In Mexico City, anger was already starting to build over the committee hearing. In an editorial the newspaper El Nacional said the Senate hearing was “intolerable for the open neighbor relation of Mexico and the United States.”

Garcia reacted angrily to Von Raab’s comments and was quoted in El Nacional as saying that the drug problem “. . . was a matter of international delinquency that must be fought and faced internationally.”

Abrams said the drug eradication program in Mexico, once considered a “model for the world,” has severely deteriorated. He said the recent increase in the amount of cocaine transported across the Mexican border--one-third of that consumed in the United States last year--may have resulted because of U.S. efforts to block other trafficking routes, mainly through the Caribbean.

Money Laundering

Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska) cautioned that charges of Mexican corruption might be more credible if the federal government could “clean up our act” by stopping money-laundering in the United States by drug traders and closing clandestine airfields north of the border.

In addition to drugs and related corruption, Abrams said that the United States is concerned about Mexico’s economic problems, overshadowed by a $99-billion foreign debt. He promised U.S. support for new moves toward a free-market economy announced by De la Madrid last month, along with Mexico’s intention to join the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

“Efforts to reform Mexico’s economy and turn it into a more efficient, competitive direction are critical to Mexico’s long run stability and to our own interest in a strong, prosperous and stable neighbor,” Abrams said.

“The outcome will affect our trading interests, our banking system, the movement of Mexicans illegally into the United States and even the economic incentives for Mexican farmers to produce illicit drug crops,” he said.