November 5, 2007
Narco Politics, Video
Bombs and Political Spying in Mexico
Frontera NorteSur
Refusing to follow Mexican
presidents before him into quiet retirement, former President Vicente Fox continues to make waves. In the latest controversy
involving the ex-president, Fox claimed during an October 25 California visit that Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)
Senator Manlio Fabio Beltrones had been linked to illegal drug trafficking. The Guanajuato-based Fox Center, an organization
established to promote Fox's conservative brand of politics in Mexico and abroad, issued a statement the following day repeating
the accusation.
"Mr. Manlio Fabio Beltrones should dedicate himself to being a senator and not promoting his current
aspirations to be President of the Republic. Manlio Fabio Beltrones has a record with the DEA connected with drug trafficking,"
the explosive missive claimed.
The accusation followed remarks made last week by Beltrones, who said the sons of Fox's
wife, Martha Sahagun, were connected to a contractor for the national oil company PEMEX that was involved in an October 23
accident in Campeche state which left at least 22 workers dead.
A former governor of Sonora state, Beltrones is a prominent
politician who served as a federal deputy and then as a senator during the Fox administration. Beltrones' alleged involvement
in drug trafficking was not made a public issue by the Fox government during its 2000-2006 administration. Indeed, a recent
article in Proceso magazine recounted how Fox's former presidential secretary and trip coordinator were both suspected of
involvement with organized crime.
In response to Fox's accusation, Beltrones charged that the ex-president was trying
to confuse public opinion with a "smokescreen" designed to "hide corrupt acts of his family." In October, the Mexican Chamber
of Deputies approved a special commission to probe the legality of personal property acquired by Fox during his presidency,
a move Fox blasted as being politically motivated. Beltrones said he would not sue Fox for libel, but suggested that the outspoken
former president needed to visit a psychiatrist.
The Fox-Beltrones flap was just the latest public scandal swirling
around politicians and their alleged ties to drug trafficking. The hoopla comes amid President George W. Bush's unveiling
of a US$1.4 billion drug war economic assistance package for Mexico known as Plan Mexico [or the Merida Initiative]. If the
financial assistance is approved by the US Congress, Mexican senators and congressmen will have a role in deciding how the
money should be spent on the ground.
A likely focal point of Plan Mexico spending is the northern border state of Tamaulipas,
where intense bouts of narco-violence have erupted during the last four years. Tamaulipas is also currently the scene of a
highly charged state election campaign that culminates on November 11. Threats, reported acts of violence and mutual accusations
of lawbreaking between the PRI and Fox's National Action Party (PAN) have characterized the contest so far. At one point,
bomb threats against PRI offices in Matamoros were called in to the local police command and control center.
Recently,
Tamaulipas PAN leader Alejandro Saenz accused political opponents of carrying out acts of physical aggression against PAN
candidates. "In previous days, the PAN mayoral candidate for Reynosa, Gerardo Peņa, was kidnapped by presumed drug traffickers
who ordered him to renounce his candidacy," Saenz said, adding that his party's mayoral candidates for Ciudad Mier and Nueva
Ciudad Guerrero were forced to drop out of the race because of threats from criminals.
Earlier this month, Saenz demanded
that the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) investigate purported ties between drug traffickers and PRI candidates.
Saenz's demand came after a video was publicized that showed a meeting at the Laguna Madre restaurant in which an alleged
drug dealer and the campaign coordinator of the PRI's Reynosa mayoral candidate, Oscar Luebbert, supposedly discussed why
a raid was carried out on a drug stash house.
Luebbert's public image has suffered other blows. An anti-Luebbert book
some journalists suspect of being financed by the PAN has been circulating in Tamaulipas. Authored by Antonio Rosario, the
book implicates Luebbert in shady insurance dealings during the 1990s.
After the Laguna Madre video was released, the
PRI filed legal charges with the state attorney general's office and the PGR. The complaints accuse Saenz, as well as PAN
federal congressmen Omehira Lopez Reyna and Raul Garcia Vivian and former Reynosa Mayor Francisco Javier Garcia Cabeza de
Vaca, of engaging in political spying and waging a "dirty war" against the PRI. "We have been the clear targets of telephone
espionage and this is typified in the law as a crime," the local PRI leadership charged.
Under a glare of negative
publicity, Luebbert announced this past weekend that he had taken a drug test to prove he was as clean as a whistle. Adding
that he couldn't acknowledge if PAN members were working with organized crime, Luebbert nevertheless contended that "suspicions
accompany them."
Meanwhile, another important PRI candidate in Tamaulipas, Arturo Diez Gutierrez Navarro, who is running
for the strategic mayoral position in the state capital of Ciudad Victoria, was recently forced to answer questions about
suspicions of drug money in his campaign.
"We are good people, and we have nothing to do with (drug traffickers),"
Melendez told reporters. Diez's brother-in-law, Alfredo Melendez, was gunned down gangland-style in a restaurant in Mexico
state at the end of 2006.
Until now, no one has been held accountable for the alleged threats and illegal activities
which have tainted the 2007 Tamaulipas electoral process.
In another recent instance of the "n" word sending jolts
through the Mexican political landscape, PRI Governor Humberto Moreira of Coahuila accused PAN members of involvement with
the drug underworld. Delivering his annual state-of-the-state report on October 15, Gov. Moreira turned heads when he accused
Panistas of "being up to their knees in drug trafficking."
In an equally surprising move, Moreira quickly backtracked
from his accusations. The governor then held a meeting with PAN Senator Guillermo Anaya Llamas, one of the politicians implicated
by Moreira in his speech. When asked by a reporter about the sudden turn-around in his posture, Moreira replied that it was
for the public good.
"We talked with Senator Anaya and we came to an agreement to work together for Coahuila," Moreira
said. "In (Coahuila), we have a great deal of public works, of social development, and we have a work dynamic that begins
early and ends very late, so that's why we come to a point of agreement that we must work together for the future."
German
Martinez Cazares, Mexico's former anti-corruption czar who is vying for the presidency of the PAN, called on Moreira as well
as Fox to present concrete proof of their respective accusations.
Mexico's contemporary round of narco-polemics underscores
the persistence of a politically explosive but little-resolved issue. At a Ciudad Juarez forum this month, leaders of the
powerful Coparmex employers' organization insisted that political parties as well as businesses had been infiltrated by narcos.
Rogelio Serna Michelena, vice-president of the public safety commission of the Coparmex, said large sums of money of illegal
origin were being spent on many elections. Although accusations and counter-accusations of narco activity are flying fast
and loose on Mexico's political scene, rarely does such rhetoric ever get translated into actual criminal prosecutions or
other actions like putting greater controls on the private financing of election campaigns.
Sources: Univision, October
27, 2007. El Universal, October 11, 17, 26, 27, 2007. Articles by Lilia Saul, Fernando Pedrero, Jose Luis Ruiz, Ricardo Gomez,
and the Notimex news agency. El Sur/Agencia Reforma, October 27, 2007. Milenio.com, October 27, 2007. Proceso/Apro, October 16, 17 and 23, 2007. Articles by Gabriela
Hernandez, Jose Gil Olmos and Arturo Rodriguez Garcia. Enlineadirecta.info, October 22 and 27, 2007. Articles by Anabel
Rocha Garcia, Hugo Reyna and editorial staff. La Jornada, October 18 and 28, 2007. Articles by Georgina Saldierna. El Diario
de Juarez, October 11 and 22, 2007.
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Frontera
NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
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(Reprinted with authorization from Frontera NorteSur, a free,
on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news source. FNS can be found at http://frontera.nmsu.edu/)
Translation FNS
