Mexico Mayor Held in City Hall Slaying

The mayor of an affluent Mexico City suburb has been arrested in connection with the assassination of a city council member, a 27-year-old crusader who family members say planned to reveal evidence of municipal corruption and involvement in drug trafficking.

Juan Antonio Dominguez, the mayor of Atizapan, was placed under house arrest Tuesday night following a probe by Mexico state officials into the Sept. 5 mob-style slaying of Maria de los Angeles Tames, an attorney and the daughter of a former federal senator.

Relatives say she had gathered evidence of widespread public works corruption, protection rackets and drug trafficking in the city administration. She was preparing to resign from the council and present the evidence to state authorities, they say.

The state attorney general’s office said in a statement that Dominguez had been taken into custody because of his “presumed involvement in the assassination of the councilwoman, who discovered and denounced various administrative irregularities in the city.”

Tames was a member of a family that is prominent in President Vicente Fox’s National Action Party, known by its Spanish initials, PAN. Her mother, Evangelina Perez Zaragoza, served a year in the Mexican Senate. Her father was a candidate for Atizapan mayor in 1990.

Dominguez also is a PAN member.

Eduardo Arnal, a federal deputy from the party who knew the victim from when both were members of a PAN youth organization, described her as smart, tenacious and well prepared. “Her style was always to be in the trenches without being in the spotlight,” he said.

Investigators said they want to question City Clerk Gerardo Antonio Cortez and Police Chief Antonio Vega de la Garza, neither of whom has reported to work for several days. The investigators also are probing alleged eavesdropping conducted by “high-level city officials” on employees, including Tames.

Also under arrest is the mayor’s former personal secretary, Daniel Garcia, who resigned last year after Tames and other council members complained that city purchasing procedures were rigged.

Tames had been involved in politics since grade school and had won awards for oratory.

“She had very fixed ethical and moral values and did not tolerate lies,” her father, Pedro Tames, said in an interview Wednesday at the Notimex news agency, where he is administrative director. “Her goals were to pursue justice and women’s rights and to someday run for Congress.”

But fellow members of the city council said Tames’ criticism of questionable administrative procedures and land use during open council sessions earned her powerful enemies.

The investigation into her slaying focused for weeks on Dominguez, who has maintained his innocence and last week complained of harassment by investigators. In a statement Tuesday, he said the city government wants to solve the crime.

“We don’t want public opinion and the news media to be misguided. That is why the attorney general’s office must conduct investigations properly, so as to prevent confusion and protect other people’s honor,” Dante Moncada, the mayor’s spokesman, said Wednesday.

Tames took the council job in August 2000 at the urging of the state PAN organization, her father said. Within three months, she was openly critical of the lack of competition for city contracts.

The day she was killed, she told her father she had evidence of a sham $265,000 city cleaning contract and that she would soon turn it over to investigators. She was shot by assailants using high-caliber weapons about 8 p.m. as she returned home.