U.S. Allegations Give Mexican a Boost

In the midst of the worst electoral showing in 68 years by this nation’s long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party last week, Vicente Teran Uribe is a bright spot--a clear winner and possibly a symbol of the future PRI.

The landslide victory of the 41-year-old businessman, who funded his own campaign for mayor of this border town, came despite--and even with the aid of--a recent U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration report that named him as one of Mexico’s 20 top narcotics traffickers.

And therein lies a good illustration of U.S.-Mexican border relations.

Teran’s victory can be seen as a kind of referendum on Mexican feelings about the United States and its escalating drug enforcement effort along the border. It also reflects a strong feeling here that Washington, in its zeal to pressure its southern neighbor to crack down on the multibillion-dollar cross-border drug trade, has gone too far in meddling in Mexican politics.

After he won just over 50% of the vote in the field of four, the mayor-elect underscored the lingering bitterness that he and most townsfolk harbor for the big government just on the other side of the chain-link fence between Douglas, Ariz., and Agua Prieta (population 42,272).

Teran denied the DEA allegations. But he couldn’t help but appreciate the boost they gave him.

“The lies that were spread definitely helped me . . . because people already knew who Vicente Teran really is,” Teran said last week. “Far from alienating people, the allegations angered many and united them more behind Vicente Teran. It strengthened the campaign. And as a result, we see this indisputable and overwhelming triumph.”

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Even without the benefit of the DEA allegations, Teran had an edge over his three rivals in the local mayor’s race. A successful businessman, he went door to door, block to block, offering his hand and the promise, “I’ll work for you.”

Three years ago, the PRI lost control of this strategic spot on the Arizona border to the conservative National Action Party, or PAN. But as the PRI was losing dozens of legislative and mayoral seats nationwide in the July 6 vote, Teran won. So too did about 40 other PRI mayors in Sonora state.

Teran’s victory, during an election in which he could play outsider and criticize the operations of the PAN government here, appeared to prove the theory of Daniel Fierros Noriega. The local PRI president concluded last week: “In order to win, the PRI first has to lose.”

The only outstanding problem with this seemingly rosy picture, then, is the DEA’s lingering drug-trafficking allegations against the man who now controls a key border town in one of the fastest growing and increasingly violent drug-smuggling routes along the southern U.S. border.

It is not as if Agua Prieta voters didn’t know about the DEA allegations. At the peak of Teran’s campaign in May, the accusations were published in a DEA document, “Mexico’s Top Echelon Traffickers,” and in more than a dozen Mexican and U.S. publications in the weeks since.

“Vicente Teran Uribe is identified as a member of a large cocaine distribution organization based in Agua Prieta and Hermosillo, Sonora,” the document said. “Cocaine-laden aircraft that originate in Colombia are reported to land on Mexican airstrips at ranches allegedly owned by Teran Uribe, [who] also is believed to be involved in large-scale money laundering.”

Within days, the allegations against Teran--who asserts that his fortune came not from drugs but from years of hard work selling satellite dishes--showed up in the opinion polls, boosting his lead a full five percentage points.

Javier Corella Valenzuela, Agua Prieta correspondent for the independent Sonora daily El Imparcial, cited the U.S. drug allegations as a decisive factor in Teran’s victory. “The [DEA] allegations were not backed up,” he said. “The profile of him was just incomplete, and everyone interpreted the allegations as an effort to hurt him politically.

“But it should also be said that the accusations and their impact did not completely determine the elections. He also had a very strong campaign. He had a better platform, and he had better contact with people.”

Reaction north of the border to the outcome of last week’s elections further illustrated the dangerous complexities of the relationship between the two neighbors.

The day Teran was proclaimed winner, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution congratulating Mexico for its exercise in democracy. But U.S. officials were concerned about the alleged drug ties of the mayor-elect of Agua Prieta--and also about their impact on future cooperation with him.

“In order to be effective, we have to be able to coordinate and cooperate with the government on the other side of the border,” said John L. Koren Jr., agent in charge of the U.S. Border Patrol in Douglas, Ariz., (population 13,137).

Koren, whose border station this year has been arresting record numbers of illegal immigrants and seizing record quantities of narcotics (10 tons of marijuana between January and June this year, compared with eight tons during the same months in 1996), added that he knows nothing more about Teran than what is contained in the DEA report.

On Wednesday, the sheriff of Cochise County, which includes Douglas and shares 83 miles of border with Mexico, voiced his concerns before some of the same U.S. senators who applauded last week’s elections. He appeared before a Senate subcommittee to testify on the soaring drug problem along his border.

Sheriff Larry A. Dever stopped short of commenting on Teran’s victory. But he said drug traffickers on the Agua Prieta side of the border have become increasingly sophisticated, militarized, brazen and violent.

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Area residents “have lost their sense of security, and law enforcement officers are at continual risk,” Dever told the subcommittee at a hearing entitled, “The Drug Cartels and Narco-Violence: The Threat to the United States.”

“Already this year, there have been 17 reports of armed encounters with drug traffickers [in Cochise County], compared with seven through all of last year,” he said.

Of equal concern is the continuing political resentment that the DEA report has stirred up across the border, where many are now suspicious of all U.S. law enforcement officials and their motives and where cooperation with Agua Prieta’s new local government will be difficult, at best.

In an interview, Teran said he was utterly confounded by the DEA allegations, which he said “have ruined my life. They’ve shattered me and my family. I have five daughters. How do I explain this to them? I can only suspect this was all some terrible mistake.”

Teran says his is a case of mistaken identity; he noted, for example, that the DEA document lists as “unknown” his birth date, nationality, height, weight, and hair and eye color. “If they really want to know, they just have to look right here,” he said, handing over a campaign brochure with a color photograph of himself showing his green eyes, brown hair and cherubic smile.

But officials in Washington say there is no mistake. “We stand by the document,” said Craig Chretien, chief of the DEA intelligence division that prepared the report.

A senior U.S. Justice Department official, though, added that Teran--who faces no criminal charges in the United States--was included in the Top 20 list because of “unsubstantiated allegations from numerous sources.”

At the state level, Sonora PRI officials said they stood by Teran’s integrity. Several officials privately tried to cast the allegations against him as part of a DEA vendetta against the southern border state, whose role as a transit point for illegal drugs and immigrants has grown since U.S. authorities started cracking down on the California and Texas borders.

Sonora Gov. Manlio Fabio Beltrones Rivera, a PRI member who is leaving office, has filed a legal action with Mexican federal prosecutors, asserting that he was defamed earlier this year by a New York Times story that quoted U.S. officials and intelligence as saying he created a haven for drug smugglers in his state.