Banker’s Brutal Death Leaves More Mexicans Feeling Vulnerable to Crime

Alejandro Ortiz’s mind was on music, not murder. The banker was listening to pop star Luis Miguel one recent afternoon, as he idled in his Mercedes-Benz waiting for his wife outside their elegant Mexico City home. Minutes later, Ortiz was dead--gunned down in a case that has sent a tremor through Mexican society.

It’s still unclear whether Ortiz’s killer was a would-be car thief or a professional assassin. But the slaying Saturday has provoked a torrent of outrage from politicians, church leaders and business executives.

They say Ortiz--the brother of powerful Treasury Minister Guillermo Ortiz--has become a symbol of Mexicans’ increasing sense of vulnerability in the face of an explosion in violent crime.

“Without hyperbole, the wave of violence that is punishing our society is putting the future of the country at risk,” said an editorial Monday in the daily Cronica.

Crime skyrocketed after the 1994 peso devaluation plunged Mexico into its most severe recession in 60 years. In the capital, the area hardest hit by the wave of robberies and attacks, reported crimes leaped 36% in 1995 and 14% more in 1996.

The assaults now appear to be leveling off. But Ortiz’s slaying served as a fresh reminder, analysts say, of how violent crime has spilled beyond the city’s slums and now haunts neighborhoods of manicured lawns and white-aproned maids.

“It creates an enormous psychosis of insecurity, of vulnerability,” said political commentator Raymundo Riva Palacio.

“Your reaction is that these people had all the money to have everything, security guards, and they’re victims,” he said.

Much of the rise in insecurity has been blamed on the economic crisis. But as car thefts, bank heists and robberies in the capital’s distinctive Volkswagen Beetle taxis continue at record levels, residents are groping for further explanations.

Norberto Rivera, Mexico City’s Roman Catholic archbishop, declared this week that Ortiz’s killing reflected a decline in social values. Other leaders have blamed police corruption, lack of funding for the justice system, even violence on television.

The Ortiz killing came atop several headline-grabbing brutal attacks. A mid-level bureaucrat was found earlier Saturday stuffed in his car trunk in a middle-class Mexico City neighborhood, beaten to death. Police said revenge could have been the motive.

Days earlier, three young men were gunned down in northern Mexico City by assailants firing AK-47 automatic rifles. That attack apparently involved a drug-trafficking dispute, police said.

Added to Ortiz’s death, the incidents seemed to indicate that violence was spiraling out of control. But experts say that’s not true. Statistics show that crime may level off this year in Mexico City. What continues to rise, they say, is a feeling of helplessness.

They blame a deeply corrupt, poorly trained police force that only managed to arrest suspects in 4% of all reported crimes last year.

“This figure is very important in explaining why people are so desperate,” said Rafael Ruiz Harrell, a crime expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “It’s not because the crime has increased so much but because there’s been no improvement in the protection they receive.”

Police insist that Ortiz was slain by a robber trying to grab his car. But the victim’s wife has said, without elaborating, that he was assassinated. That explanation has been echoed by many Mexicans unnerved by a series of political killings in recent years.

Either way, the Ortiz case has revived calls by opposition parties for tougher measures against crime. Mayor-elect Cuauhtemoc Cardenas vowed this week to purge the police.

In a desperate bid to curb the violence, the general assigned to run Mexico City’s police recently began highly publicized sweeps of crime-ridden neighborhoods. Scores of suspects have been detained. But few have been charged with crimes.

Frustrated, many citizens are taking the law into their own hands. Police say that was exactly what Ortiz did. Since losing his Rolex watch to a robber two months ago, he had carried a pistol, authorities say. When he was accosted Saturday, he lunged for the weapon, hidden under the passenger’s seat, they say.

But, before he could reach it, the assailant pumped two bullets from a semiautomatic pistol into Ortiz.