Drug Dealers and Dignity

There is understandable satisfaction in Washington that Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, the notorious drug baron, is behind bars in the United States. For once, a kingpin in the international drug cartel, not just a minor player, was captured. And there now is the prospect that he will face trial on charges of a role in the torture death of a U.S. drug agent in Mexico.

U.S. marshals have taken credit for the extraordinary venture through which they persuaded the Honduras government to force Matta on a plane bound for the Dominican Republic, where he was transferred to a U.S.-bound plane and arrested. It was a plot worthy of the most ingenious authors of intrigue fiction.

There may have been only one shortcoming in the plan. Those who contrived it apparently were ignorant of the potential for reaction by the people of Honduras. The U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa was stunned and shocked, we are told, that the people should resent such an adventure in extending the long arm of U.S. justice, even if it did violate a specific element of the Honduran constitution. And when a mob of more than a thousand stormed the U.S. Consulate and critically damage the structure, U.S. diplomats could only bitterly complain that police were slow in answering their call for help.

Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, on a tour of Latin America to further the war on illicit drugs, had a ready explanation. The mob had been triggered by drug lords, he said. Perhaps. But experienced newspaper correspondents in Honduras found that the protest included people of all political interests, right to left. And they found almost universal opposition to President Jose Azcona Hoya’s compliance in the conspiracy to kidnap Matta. Hondurans are offended that their constitution was not respected. Their anger reflects also a built-up sense of frustration with the U.S. role that converted Honduras into a major base for the Contras at war with neighboring Nicaragua, and into permanent bases for hundreds of U.S. troops.

For all of Latin America, there was inevitably something ludicrous about the attorney general prowling remote coca leaf patches amid revelations that the Reagan Administration had tolerated the drug business, both in Panama and Honduras, so long as it facilitated the crusade against communism.

History will judge whether Reagan served the national interest with his willingness to compromise his own campaign against drugs to fight those perceived to be ideological enemies. Only time will measure the extent of corruption as principle has yielded to expediency. Now, in the pursuit of Matta, as before in the dogged sponsorship of the Contras, the White House has been willing to say that the end has justified almost any means. The people of Honduras are not the first in Latin America to disagree.