U.S. Agent’s Arrest Played Down : Residents of Guadalajara Used to Drug Violence

While the arrest and reported torture by police of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent in Mexico provoked outrage in the United States, the outcry has been, at most, reserved in Guadalajara, scene of the event and a reputed tropical haven for drug traffickers.

The response has been so low-key thus far that heated criticism and protests of the episode by Washington have yet to inspire here the nationalistic emotions that usually arise during U.S.-Mexican controversies.

“This matter is so small that in no way should it be used to damage the relations between the United States and Mexico,” said Gov. Enrique Alvarez of Jalisco state, of which Guadalajara is the capital.

U.S. officials in Washington and Mexico accuse Jalisco state police of jailing DEA agent Victor Cortez Jr. last Wednesday and holding him in unjustified detention for up to eight hours, during which he was beaten and then tortured with a cattle prod during interrogation.

Mayor Eugenio Ruiz of Guadalajara said: “Disagreeable things happen now and then. There’s no reason to make something exceptional out of it.”

In part, the subdued response of local officials and citizens here can be attributed to repeated denials by the Mexican government that anything untoward took place after Cortez, 34, and a Mexican companion, Antonio Garate Bustamante, were arrested.

Mexican officials deny Cortez was tortured. In a report published Saturday, Guadalajara state Atty. Gen. Jaime Ramirez Gil told El Universal, Mexico City’s main newspaper, that Cortez received “privileged” treatment from the state police force, which is directly under Ramirez’s command.

But beyond the details of the case, Guadalajara’s tepid reaction reflects a certain accommodation with an atmosphere of violence and police abuse that, over the years, has accompanied increased narcotics traffic in western Mexico.

Disagreeable Situation

It is as if, in a disagreeable situation, Guadalajara has taken to heart an inscription carved on the portico of its ornate opera house: “May no rumor of discord reach here.”

“Social problems affect all cities,” said Mayor Ruiz. “The bad image for us that might result from a case like this doesn’t come from the facts, but from the publicity.’

On the streets of Guadalajara, the attitude seems equally detached. “Well, this will pass,” said Jorge Carvajal, a bootblack working near city hall. “Worse things have happened here.”

Guadalajara is a city of majestic colonial buildings, of old palaces adorned with carved doors and huge windows protected by wrought iron grillwork.

Mecca for Retirees

The city’s warm climate and casual atmosphere has made it a magnet for American retirees who have flocked by the thousands to live in and near the city.

In recent years, Guadalajara has attracted a different kind of influx: drug traffickers who were driven from other parts of Mexico by occasional anti-narcotics drives and found Guadalajara a hospitable haven for themselves and their money.

“They bought houses in the best neighborhoods; they purchased four and five cars at a time,” said Guillermo Mata, a lawyer and state legislator. “They started businesses to obscure the source of their money.”

The wide-open nature of the drug presence ended with the 1985 torture-murder of another DEA agent, Enrique S. Camarena, and one of the Camarena’s Mexican informants, Alfredo Zavala. Both were kidnaped Feb. 7, 1985, near the U.S. Consulate General here in Guadalajara, where, until then, public shoot-outs had become almost as much a trademark as mariachi music.

Six Others Murdered

Besides Camarena, six other U.S. citizens were murdered in the last two years in Guadalajara, apparently when they were mistaken by drug traffickers for U.S. narcotics investigators.

After the Camarena slaying, police pressure on narcotics dealers and smugglers forced some of the drug crowd to flee the city and others to reduce their visibility in Guadalajara.

“Some gangs moved to Mazatlan or (elsewhere in the state of) Sinaloa,” said a U.S. official familiar with the narcotics activity here. “Some just stopped flaunting their presence here.”

That reduced profile seemed to have satisfied a certain sense of decorum in this elegant city. “We don’t notice the drug traffickers any more. They behave themselves, and we don’t have any problems,” commented legislator Mata.

A Resigned Attitude

That the Cortez case might focus public attention on another reportedly longstanding Guadalajara practice, police torture, is also greeted with a certain resigned attitude.

“It happens everywhere,” said Ruiz, the mayor. “It’s like the films we see here of North American police exceeding their powers and wounding criminals.”

Said Mata, the state legislator: “Many people join the police to make illegal money from payoffs. It’s hard to get capable policemen.”

During the past month, several complaints about police torture or abuse have been aired publicly in Guadalajara. A prisoner, who for unspecified reasons was being interrogated at a spot on a cliff, fell to his death. The state police said that he tried to escape.

Killed Over Payoffs?

A newspaper reported that a local merchant was slain by police agents after refusing to make protection payoffs.

Despite of all this, the local investigation so far in the Cortez case appears to be concentrating more on the activities of the American agent and Garate, the Mexican citizen who was detained with him, than on the U.S. charges that the DEA agent was the victim of police brutality.

Gov. Alvarez said that Cortez and Garate, reported to be a local DEA informant, were armed with submachine guns. Atty. Gen. Ramirez told a newspaper that Garate, who has been released, has a criminal record for extortion.

The Cortez case resurrects a question about whether U.S. drug agents, who work here under a U.S. agreement with Mexico and supposedly with the cooperation of the local police, sometimes find themselves having to work against the police.

Police Corruption Seen

After Camarena was kidnaped and killed, U.S. officials charged that his kidnapers were abetted by Mexican police and that key suspects in the case were allowed to escape by corrupt police officials.

Mexican police officers were accused by Washington of actually abducting Camarena and his informant Zavala and turning them over to reputed drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero. The United States charges that Caro Quintero is one of the masterminds behind the abduction and torture-slaying of the two men.

Caro Quintero is now in prison in Mexico City, charged with bribing a Mexican federal police official fo avoid arrest. That official, Armando Pavon Reyes, was given a four-year prison term last week for accepting the bribe--the first conviction so far in Mexico in any case with links to the Camarena murder.