PERSPECTIVE ON MEXICO : Drug Trial Was Not Its Finest Hour

As Judge Roy Bean might have said, it was a strange week for truth and justice in Los Angeles. Whatever else may be said about the trial (and tribulations) of Humberto Alvarez Machain and Ruben Zuno Arce, it has certainly given Mexicans much to talk about. But it has not done much for the cause of due process and stable bilateral relations. Three initial reflections come to mind in the closing chapter of Operation Legend, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s convoluted, obsessive and not quite dignified attempt to avenge the murder of Enrique Camarena.

The 12 jurors who found Zuno Arce guilty of conspiracy and three other counts did so almost conclusively on the basis of the testimony provided by two DEA paid witnesses, former drug-traffickers and hit-men Jorge Godoy Flores and Rene Lopez Romero. They both testified to having heard (and seen) Zuno plotting with others to silence and dispose of Camarena, because of the damage he was inflicting on the Guadalajara cartel’s activities. The jury believed them.

But unfortunately for Mexico and its government, the jury implicitly validated the witnesses’ statements regarding the complicity in the torture and murder of Camarena and the ensuing cover-up, of Manuel Bartlett, former minister of the interior (and current governor-elect of the state of Puebla), Enrique Alvarez del Castillo, former governor of the state of Jalisco (and President Salinas’ attorney general during the first two years of his term and current head of the national public-works bank) and former Minister of Defense Juan Arevalo Gardoqui. During the trial, the two witnesses stated, among other things, that the three officials were in the house where Camarena was tortured while he was being tortured, and that they participated directly in the conspiracy to “eliminate” him.

While most Mexicans are capable--quite rightly--of believing just about anything in relation to their former or present rulers, these accusations seemed a bit far-fetched. They still do, but now the credibility of the witnesses making the charges has been enhanced by the jury’s verdict. The three Mexican officials were not on trial, largely because the Justice Department, at the Bush White House’s bidding, decided not to name them in the indictment. But in peculiar fashion, they were being judged. In the same way Zuno’s acquittal would have absolved them by dismissing the credibility of the witnesses’ accusations, his conviction incriminates them by resting on the witnesses’ statements. Since they will, in all likelihood, never be tried in Mexico, and doubtfully will ever appear before an American judge, this was their only day in court. The jury believed their accusers, if not the accusations against them.

The same jury was not given the chance to make up its mind on the veracity of the same witnesses’ less precise charges regarding the other Mexican on trial, Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain, because the judge dismissed the case against him for lack of evidence. Judge Edward Rafeedie thus underlined the astonishing behavior of the DEA and the criminal division of the Justice Department from the very beginning of the entire affair. That behavior confirmed the Mexican government’s worst suspicions about American motives. The view in Mexico always was that there was no sound case against Alvarez Machain and that his kidnaping was a way of pressuring Mexico and pursuing the Justice Department’s extra-territorial law-enforcement agenda.

The DEA justified its actions tacitly by arguing that it might not have brought Alvarez Machain to court in the most orthodox of ways, but that it had an airtight case against him. It didn’t, and the lack of evidence presented in the Los Angeles trial highlighted the shaky legal ground on which the whole matter rested. The government of the United States kidnaped a foreign national in his own country, contrary to the wishes and stated policy of the government of that nation, without even having sufficient grounds to convict him in an American court. This was not the United States’ finest hour.

Nor was it Mexico’s. During the time since the Guadalajara doctor was kidnaped, and as recently as Dec. 1, according to a Mexican Foreign Ministry official press statement, Mexico had insisted that its authorities--and only its authorities--should try Alvarez Machain. The DEA, and many other proponents of the principle of extra-territoriality in the United States argued that this would never happen. Alvarez Machain knew too much, they thought, to be prosecuted and sentenced in Mexico.

The Salinas government quickly confirmed many of the worst suspicions in the United States. Almost as soon as he set foot on Mexican soil, and certainly after Washington formally requested that Alvarez Machain be arrested and tried in Mexico, the ministry of foreign affairs and the attorney general declared that he would not be judged again. Different arguments were brandished, as documented by the Mexican newsweekly, Proceso, which stated plainly: “In Mexico, Alvarez looks like a hero.”

The doctor was a free man. Neither he nor the other Mexican officials implicated in the case would be brought before a Mexican court. Few things could confirm so many doubts and prejudices about Mexico than the authorities’ comportment in this matter.

Is this the end of the affair? Perhaps not, since a new Administration in Washington can take steps to redress many of the mistakes of its predecessors, and the Salinas regime has proved to be very sensitive to pressure from the North. President-elect Bill Clinton could start things on the right footing by taking two steps. He should acknowledge that the kidnaping of Alvarez Machain was illegal and unforgivable, and agree to ban future acts of this sort through a revision of the two countries’ extradition treaty. He should also demand that Alvarez Machain, as well as the three other officials named in the case, be tried in Mexico on the basis of the evidence presented in the Zuno case. This would provide the incriminated individuals an opportunity to clear their names in a Mexican court, or be convicted for crimes so extreme that they defy the imagination of the Mexican political system’s most intransigent critics.