An Inquiry for Two Nations

The initial report was shocking. An FBI informer claimed that as many as 200 victims of the border drug wars were buried on ranches outside Juarez, Mexico, in mass graves, Kosovo-style.

Leaked to the U.S. media, the report created a furor on both sides of the border. By late November nearly 70 FBI forensic experts had joined an army of 600 Mexican narcotics agents and soldiers tearing up the ground on four ranches a few miles south of the frontier.

Reacting to the presence of the FBI agents, left-wing politicians and ultranationalist media alike took Mexico’s attorney general to task, accusing him of selling out territorial integrity by inviting one more U.S. intervention in Mexican affairs.

The informer’s report was buttressed by nongovernmental organizations’ compilation of a long list of Mexican nationals, some 200, who had been reported missing in Juarez. The list also contained the names of 22 U.S. citizens and resident aliens.

Adding to the fears that a huge burial ground would be found were the unrelated 1998 slayings of more than 70 women, most of whom had been working at maquiladora assembly plants in the border area. They had been raped, and their bodies were dumped near Juarez. The report of buried bodies on the ranches turned out to be correct. But only nine sets of remains have been found, not the 200 claimed by the FBI informer. Of course, nine is more than sufficient to continue the investigation.

Antagonism persists in this case on both sides of the border, but there has been one positive result--unprecedented cooperation between Mexico and the United States on issues related to drug trafficking. Whatever happened at these ranches was related to the drug traffic. The Mexicans and the Americans can use this horrifying example of narco-violence to focus on ways to break the back of the drug business. There might be no more than the nine bodies. But where are the 200 missing?

This is not a matter to leave to political passions on either side. South American drugs move through Mexico to the U.S. border for distribution in the States, and American drug kingpins buy all they can get. The guilt extends across national lines, and xenophobes on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border who decry foreign incursion are missing the point. This is not about politics; it’s about murder. The investigations should continue on both sides of the Rio Grande.