LATIN AMERICA : Victims See Impunity at Heart of Mexico’s National Insecurity

A month after Mexican federal police lost, sold or overlooked an air shipment on the Baja peninsula that U.S. officials said contained more than $200 million worth of pure South American cocaine destined for the United States, at least 29 of the officers have been transferred--but none has been punished.

Nine months after Mexicana Airlines pilot Eduardo Torres Garcicrespo was shot between the eyes by a Mexico City police officer in the driveway of his father’s home, the chief suspect remains free; three other officers arrested in the case are still on trial.

And more than six months after Mexican customs officers jailed Jorge Hank Rhon--son of one Mexico’s most powerful politicians--and charged him with failing to declare ivory, ocelot furs and gem-encrusted statues that agents found in his luggage, the flamboyant Tijuana millionaire is a free man; he paid a small fine and was released a few days later.

The three cases stand out as tests of President Ernesto Zedillo’s promise of a new rule of law in Mexico, a nation long plagued by police corruption and political arrogance.

None of the cases has attracted as much attention as the Feb. 28 arrest of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s elder brother on murder charges and continuing investigations into Raul Salinas de Gortari’s Swiss bank accounts--a case that has become the centerpiece of Zedillo’s revolutionary policy that no Mexican is above the law.

But, as the three other cases illustrate, the lack of accountability that Zedillo has labeled “impunity” still flourishes in Mexican society and government. As Mexican Atty. Gen. Antonio Lozano stated in testimony before Congress on Wednesday night, “Impunity is the greatest producer of illegality.”

And, as social activists and relatives of victims like Torres say, it also lies at the heart of Mexico’s deep sense of national insecurity.

“I have contacts--I know the mayor--and I have economic resources, but the government is still covering up for a low-level policeman,” said Mayra Perez Sandi Cuen, a sister-in-law of the Mexicana pilot killed by police in March who has been seeking justice in the case.

“Imagine what happens to the people who don’t have anything--or the case of a political assassination,” she said. “They’ll never be resolved. If they’re covering up a case as simple as ours . . . how can the president talk about the end of impunity?”

Zedillo and his aides have done so based partly on a new attitude, partly on new statistics and partly on patience--the new ethic will take time to trickle down, they say. Already, in federal departments, Cabinet secretaries have put employees on notice: If they are caught committing a crime, they will be punished--or fired.

As a result, the government’s comptroller announced before Congress on Wednesday, 7,096 civilian employees in a work force of more than 2 million have been cited for violations since Zedillo took office a year ago. Of those, 1,224 were suspended, 923 were fired and 559 were fined.

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But prosecutions of corrupt police have been far fewer--even at the federal level. Lozano’s internal auditor said the most recent statistics show that, as of August, 202 of 4,350 officers in the federal judicial force had been fired or forced to resign for crimes and other irregularities since Zedillo’s term began Dec. 1, 1994.

Even Lozano, though, has acknowledged that corruption is rampant in the department and that key members of the force are linked to Mexico’s drug cartels.

In speeches since his appointment to the nation’s top law-enforcement job, Lozano--a member of Mexico’s political opposition--has said it will take a long time to root out corruption and impunity in a nation ruled for the past 66 years by a single political party.

“In reality, the professionalization of the federal judicial police, as with the entire attorney general’s office, seems to us a process that must be seen over the long term,” he told reporters when announcing a total restructuring of his department in September.