Accuser Becomes the Accused in a Microcosm of Politics in Mexico

In recent years, Victor Clark Alfaro, a middle-class anthropologist, has worked as a kind of public advocate for Baja California’s impoverished Mixtec Indians. In promoting the Indians’ cause, Clark has never shied from controversy.

When Indian leaders deemed the governor of Baja California to be unresponsive to complaints of state police harassment, Clark publicly presented the governor a copy of the Mexican constitution, which contains guarantees of freedom from official repression. The governor was not happy.

When Indians found the mayor of Tijuana to be equally complacent, Clark publicly presented the mayor with a jar of mole sauce, an Indian condiment, symbolizing official indifference to their plight. The mayor took it badly.

And when Mixtecs leaders learned of charges by Indian women street vendors that a senior Tijuana police officer was extorting bribes from them, Clark went to newspaper offices to publicly condemn the alleged bribery. Shortly thereafter, the police official resigned for “personal” reasons.

Now, Clark once again finds himself in the center of controversy--and on the front pages of Tijuana’s newspapers. Only this time, it is his reputation that is on the line: Clark stands accused of misappropriating $17,450 in U.S. funds destined for the Mixtecs. He is fighting to stay out of jail.

Amid Tijuana’s highly charged political atmosphere, the charges have quickly taken on a strong political cast: Clark has been portrayed alternately as a persecuted champion of the Mixtecs or as a profiteering opportunist. The heated dispute provides a window into Mexico’s often-Byzantine political process, which resembles old-time American ward politics.

Clark and his allies say the funds were indeed allocated for the good of Tijuana’s Mixtec community, which has migrated from impoverished southern Mexico; they point to an independent audit, contracted for by the U.S. foundation that provided the funds, that reached the same conclusion. They charge that the allegations are no more than political retribution for Clark’s activist, anti-government stance, and a thinly veiled effort to bring the Mixtec community under the tricolor banner of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish acronym as PRI.

“It’s a maneuver of the government to do me harm, to reduce my effectiveness,” Clark said.

Others suggest that Clark is a self-serving thief. Raul Mezquita, a columnist for the pro-government El Mexicano, asserted in a newspaper column that Clark is a “common Judas” who used funds destined for the Indians “for personal benefit.”

The controversy continues to split the Mixtec community here and make front page headlines for reasons that go beyond the $17,450 in allegedly misappropriated funds.

Observers say that the dispute touches on issues that go to the heart of the Mexican political system. Clark and his allies, supported by numerous independent observers in both Mexico and the United States, say the case demonstrates how the PRI attempts to assert control over--and, if necessary, co-opt--independent political movements that may ultimately threaten the party’s dominance.

“It’s all a traditional political manipulation,” said J. Jesus Blancornelas, editor of Zeta, the feisty independent weekly in Tijuana, who said he had examined the case and found no fraud. “We have said publicly that the motive was political. The government wants to discredit him, and cause the Mixtecs to vote with the candidates of PRI.”

Clark and others assert that Feliciano Guzman, the Mixtec leader who filed a complaint against Clark, was somehow bought off by the ruling party--a charge vehemently denied by Guzman. They contend that the entire episode represents an all-too-familiar PRI strategy, one frequently employed to crush independent political movements throughout Mexico.

“I have the feeling that the state PRI cannot tolerate a significant group like the Mixtecs . . . operating outside of its auspices,” said Michael Kearney, a professor of anthropology at University of California, Riverside who has followed the case and written a letter to the governor on Clark’s behalf.

Government officials deny the charge, contending that they had nothing to do with the allegations against Clark, whom they accuse of trying to garner self-serving publicity.

“It’s certainly not a case of political persecution,” said Miguel Angel Torres, chief spokesman for Baja California Gov. Xicotencatl Leyva Mortera, who Clark contends is behind the effort against him. “It’s totally an internal problem of the Mixtec community. The governor had nothing to do with it.”

That questions of political persecution would emerge at all reflects the singular political system that has evolved in Mexico, a system in which one party, the PRI, dominates virtually every facet of the political scene while publicly proclaiming its interest in a multi-party, democratic system. To be named a PRI candidate generally ensures election to important posts.

Since its inception in 1929, the PRI has never lost a single governor’s office; independent observers have confirmed various incidents of electoral fraud, most recently in the 1985 governor’s election in the border state of Sonora. In fact, the PRI is currently facing worrisome political challenges in several border states, including Baja California, where there is often a palpable sense of isolation from the ruling party and its fuzzy nationalist proclamations in far-away Mexico City.

To maintain its dominance nationwide, the PRI has developed a system of affiliated unions, workers groups and grass-roots political organizations that are an integral part of its operations. In the Mixtec case here, critics charge that PRI officials looked with mounting chagrin on the emergence of an independent organization of Indians--especially at a time when Mixtec activism is growing and Baja California’s Indian population is quickly rising, swelled with impoverished migrants from the Mixtecs’ home state of Oaxaca.

“For our government, the idea of an organized group independently seeking its rights outside of the PRI is a great challenge, something that is beyond the party’s control,” said Jose Luis Perez Canchola, director of an immigration study center in Tijuana and a mayoral candidate for an opposition party. “It’s something they don’t want to tolerate.”

On the legal front, Jose Luis Hernandez Silerio, who is in charge of the investigation for the state attorney general’s office, said he may make a decision as soon as next week on whether to drop the charges, leave the case open pending further evidence or turn the matter over to a court for prosecution. So far, he said, there are no formal charges or proof of wrongdoing. If ultimately convicted of fraud, the prosecutor said that Clark could face a jail term of 4 to 10 years.

At the center of the dispute is Clark, a 36-year-old anthropologist, college professor, middle-class son of a Mexican businessman and a native of Tijuana. Like most Mexicans, he is a mestizo, the mixed race of Spanish and Indian blood that predominates in Mexico. Clark says he is a political independent, though his Mixtec campaign and frequent denouncements of “exploitation” of Indians have generated considerable support among leftist parties in Baja California.

Even the Mixtec leader Guzman, who filed the complaint in the case, acknowledges that Clark has been an effective proponent of the Indian cause. Clark has used his knowledge of the system and the Mexican media to press issues of concern to the Indians, who are among the poorest of the poor in Tijuana. Clark said he became involved with the Indians in the 1970s, when he noticed the large numbers of poor Indians who were fleeing the poverty of southern Mexico and migrating to Mexico’s northern cities, seeking farm-labor work both in Mexico and the United States.

“As an anthropologist, I naturally became interested in this indigenous community here that no one seemed to know anything about,” recalled Clark, a bearded, bespectacled man who has the look of an academic.

“No one knew where they lived, where they came from. . . . As I began to know more, I wanted to be an active participant in their cause, and not just a cultural observer.”

Traditionally reticent toward outsiders and often more comfortable speaking their native languages, the estimated 30,000 Mixtecs of Baja California live in tight-knit communities with few public services. In Tijuana, the most noticeable Mixtecs are the many women in native dress who hawk crafts and chewing gum to tourists along Tijuana’s business strips.

When, in 1984, Clark learned of charges that a Tijuana police official was extorting bribes from the street vendors, he and a group of Mixtec leaders, including Guzman, went public with the charges. The police official soon resigned, denying the charges. About the same time, the publicity-savvy Clark made his now-famous gifts--the constitution to the governor and the mole sauce to the mayor.

“These were regarded as insults,” Clark recalled. “But no one wanted to listen to our complaints of harassment, so I felt it was necessary to make some symbolic acts.”

Last year, a new association formed by Clark applied for, and was awarded, a one-year grant for $35,900 by the Inter-American Foundation. The U.S. government foundation, created by Congress in 1969 and funded with congressional and other public monies, annually awards millions of dollars in grants to dozens of independent organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The idea is to funnel money to the poor through non-governmental sources.

The new group was to use the funds for a variety of activities to benefit Tijuana’s Mixtecs, including literacy classes, cultural events, and helping the Indians acquire public services.

As part of the grant selection process, the group and its proposal were subjected to a thorough review, including an on-site visit by a foundation official, said Charles M. Berk, general counsel for the foundation in Rosslyn, Va., the Washington suburb where the foundation is based. Berk declined to comment on the problem in Tijuana, beyond saying that foundation officials are aware of the matter and are monitoring developments.

In December, the foundation forwarded the first part of the grant, totaling $17,450, to a bank account in the name of Clark’s association. Since then, Clark said, the funds have been used to pay for Mixtec activities, staff salaries and other costs, including rent for the group’s modest office, a secretary, telephone bills and the $600-a-month salaries for Clark and another full-time staffer.

Clark maintains that the program has been successful, though it has ground to a halt because of the current controversy. He points, for instance, to the adult literacy classes given by Mixtec teachers in the Indian neighborhood; the teachers were paid $6 an hour with grant funds, Clark said. Among other things, he also says that the new association was successful in persuading the government to bring two public telephones to the community, managed to secure land for a new Mixtec kindergarten, and arranged for the donation of a van to the community by an American group.

But Guzman said in an interview that he believes that the money was supposed to go directly to the Mixtecs. (Officials of the Inter-American Foundation, however, confirmed that Clark’s group was legally designated to receive the grant.)

“We, the Mixtecs, never saw any money,” said Guzman, a native of the southern state of Oaxaca who moved to Tijuana 11 years ago and has worked in California fields as an undocumented worker. “People started to wonder where all the money from the other side was going, whether someone was getting rich.”

Guzman maintains that growing rumors and concern about the funds prompted him and other Mixtec leaders to file a complaint with the attorney general’s office last month. Guzman bristled at charges by Clark and others that he had been put up to the action by Alfredo Aaron Juarez, a Tijuana lawyer and PRI loyalist who has been advising the Mixtecs.

Clark asserted that Juarez, using his influence, did some unspecified favors for Guzman in exchange for the cooperation of the Mixtec leader. Juarez has denied that any such deal was cut.

“We weren’t put up to this by anybody,” Guzman said during an interview in Juarez’s office.

Nonetheless, Guzman, who has in the past joined Clark in attacks on government leaders, acknowledged that he has changed his attitude toward the government, although he says he remains an independent.

“If the government is willing to help us, why should we reject it?” Guzman asked.

Because of the split, Clark said his entire Mixtec assistance program is in limbo, with grant money now paying expenses. He said that the dispute has resulted in the cancellation of the literacy classes, the plan for a neighborhood band, the planned cultural center and other projects. The rest of the grant money is now in jeopardy, he said.

“It’s a huge problem for us right now,” Clark said, seated in his cluttered office near downtown Tijuana. “But, ultimately, I think this campaign by the government to discredit me will be counterproductive. I have some enemies, it is true, but I also have a lot of friends.”