Crackdown in Mexico

The arrest of a man said to be Mexico’s narcotics kingpin is one more indication that President Carlos Salinas de Gortari is serious about eliminating corruption in the Mexican legal and political system.

Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, who was arrested by Mexican federal agents this week in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, is considered that nation’s top trafficker in cocaine, heroin and marijuana, not just by Mexican officials but by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. U.S. officials are so overjoyed at the seizure of a man they suspect ordered the brutal murder of DEA Agent Enrique Camarena in 1985 that a DEA spokesman called the arrest a “landmark” in the history of cooperation between Mexican and U.S. law enforcement.

But if Felix Gallardo is convicted of the myriad of charges filed against him, his downfall could be an even more important landmark for Mexico. For officials in Salinas’ government have admitted that Felix Gallardo could not have been so successful in his illicit enterprises without protection from corrupt Mexican police, the first time high-level Mexican officials have publicly conceded the existence of police corruption.

One indication of the scope of Felix Gallardo’s influence is that six top Mexican lawmen were arrested in the wake of the suspected drug kingpin’s detention and accused of providing him with weapons, radio equipment and information about drug investigations. Even more sobering is the fact that, when federal agents moved against Felix Gallardo, they used Mexican army troops to detain the entire police force in the city where he lived, Culiacan, until he was in custody.

The pervasiveness of corruption linked to Felix Gallardo is breathtaking. Yet it jibes with the cynical feeling that many Mexicans have about their system--that anyone with enough money and gall can have his way, no matter what the law says. One great challenge facing the new generation of young Mexican political leaders epitomized by Salinas is to find a way to restore the peoples’ confidence in the nation’s legal and political system. That is why the new president moved so forcefully in his first few months in office to arrest the man widely regarded as Mexico’s most corrupt union leader, Joaquin Hernandez Gailicia, and to prosecute a leading businessman, Eduardo Lagoretta, for illegal activities on Mexico’s stock market. Now, Salinas is out to prove that even the underworld is not beyond the reach of his reformist government.

For the moment, most Mexicans seem to approve of Salinas’ actions and are impressed with their new president’s resolve. Given the terrible effect illegal drugs have in this country and the fact that a third of the cocaine entering the United States is shipped through Mexico, people in this country should be pulling for Salinas to succeed, too.