[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: A Former President of Mexico Charged With 1971 Killings

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A Former President of Mexico Charged With 1971 Killings

July 24, 2004
 By GINGER THOMPSON and TIM WEINER 



 

MEXICO CITY, July 23 - A special prosecutor filed charges
on Friday against a former president and other officials in
the killings of student protesters 33 years ago, reopening
a dark and divisive episode that was a turning point in
Mexico's struggle for democracy. 

The prosecutor, Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, filed evidence
against former President Luis Echeverría, his top aides and
high-ranking military officials in the killings of at least
25 protesters who were attacked with clubs and chains by
shock troops as they marched peacefully through Mexico City
on June 10, 1971. 

The indictments are the first ever against a former
president here. They present a direct blow to Mr.
Echeverría, 82, the oldest living lion of the authoritarian
government that dominated this country for more than 70
years under the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI,
as well as to the military, still Mexico's most
impenetrable institution. 

The 1971 killings have been an open sore to Mexico, and
President Vicente Fox's victory over the PRI in 2000 freed
his country for the first time to scrutinize past
government abuses and possibly seek justice. In Latin
America, where decades of government atrocities have gone
unpunished, the indictments move Mexico into uncharted
political terrain as promising as it is uncertain. 

In an interview on Friday morning, the prosecutor, Mr.
Carrillo said the indictments sent the message that "there
is no one, and there will be no one, above the law in
Mexico.'' 

But many political analysts said the chances were slim that
Mr. Echeverría would be tried and convicted for killings
that took place 33 years ago. It is already clear that Mr.
Fox will face resistance from the military and the PRI,
which remains the largest party in Congress. The president
has given little backing, political or financial, to the
special prosecutor since creating the post two years ago. 

The analysts also suspect that the evidence will not meet
the standards for the charge filed by Mr. Carrillo -
genocide - defined in the Mexican penal code as "systematic
crimes against the lives of members of any national
group,'' including political dissidents. 

Even former members of President Fox's administration warn
that this first major step in Mexico's reckoning with its
history could be its last. 

"If the case against Echeverría is not sufficiently
substantiated, it will destroy the credibility of the whole
process,'' said Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, a former national
security adviser to President Fox. "Such an extraordinary
and bold move could lead to shattering disappointment,'' he
said. "And the truth will never be known. And it will bring
Mexico's reckoning with the past to a dead end.'' 

Speaking to reporters who had gathered outside his home
after reports that he had fled the country, Mr. Echeverría
put up a defiant front. He told them there had never been
genocide in Mexico. 

"I am at peace,'' he said. "I have no reason to leave the
country.'' 

The PRI, which still holds a plurality in Congress and
controls 17 of the nation's 32 states, has called the
indictments a political witch hunt. Melquíades Morales,
governor of the southern state of Puebla, warned that the
indictments could lead to "a confrontation of unspeakable
consequences.'' 

"How nice that the president cares so much about the
past,'' Mariano Palacios Alcocer, a former president of the
PRI, said in an interview. "Too bad he is not as worried
about the present and the future.'' 

Meanwhile the military, through a rare media campaign by
the defense minister, has called for forgiveness and
amnesty. 

The indictments were handed down four years after Mr. Fox
was elected on promises to make a clean break from the rule
of the PRI, establish rule of law and deliver truth and
justice to the victims of past government abuses. 

The effort was begun with a groundbreaking report in 2001
by the National Human Rights Commission, which named at
least 74 government officials involved in a campaign of
torture and disappearances against suspected leftists
during the so-called Dirty War from the late 1960's into
the early 1980's. The commission documented the
disappearances of at least 275 people in that era. 

But the indictments on Friday were Mexico's biggest step in
the pursuit of justice. Mr. Carrillo said that in addition
to Mr. Echeverría, who was president from 1970 to 1976, he
will seek the arrest and trial of several former government
officials and military officers. Those accused include a
former internal security minister, Mario Moya, and a former
attorney general, Julio Sánchez Vargas. Three former army
generals may also face charges in the case. 

International human rights activists, including Daniel
Wilkinson of Human Rights Watch, applauded the indictments
as "achieving the unthinkable.'' Some Mexicans, however,
expressed resentment and reservations. 

Relatives of those killed in the 1971 attacks, including
Jesús Martín del Campo, called the indictments "a small,
but important step.'' 

Mr. Martín del Campo, whose brother was killed, said, "So
many governments had told us this case was closed. At least
now, we are a little closer to justice.'' 

President Echeverría took office in December 1970. Before,
as interior minister - the nation's internal security chief
- he oversaw the violent suppression of student protesters
in the late 1960's. 

On his watch, government forces killed scores of people.
The most notorious killings - the Tlatelolco massacre,
named for the neighborhood in which it happened - took
place just before the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. As
president, Mr. Echeverría appointed Fernando Gutiérrez
Barrios, who had been chief of Mexico's fearsome secret
police, as deputy interior minister. Mr. Gutiérrez Barrios,
who died in 2000, was adept at recruiting undergraduates to
infiltrate left-wing groups, paying their tuition in
exchange for information. 

His campus recruits were usually the children of PRI
stalwarts. They formed the ranks of a government strike
force created to counter the student movement in September
1968, days before the Tlatelolco killings. It was called
the Falcons - Halcones, in Spanish. 

In May 1971, the student movement began to stir again. In
Mexico City, thousands began to plan a demonstration, set
for June 10. Contemporary evidence, including cables from
the United States Embassy in Mexico City after the attacks,
established that President Echeverría supported the Falcons
and their attacks. 

The United States Embassy in Mexico City was well aware of
the group. On Jan. 6, 1971, it sent a cable to Washington
saying a prominent Mexican Army colonel, Daz Escobar, had
come to the embassy seeking training for a group of young
army officers and university students. The cable described
the students as likely government infiltrators of campus
organizations. Washington granted the request, though no
American-trained Falcons took part in the killings on June
10, 1971. 

A subsequent cable from the American Embassy noted, "It is
well established that the Halcones are an officially
financed, organized, trained and armed repressive group,
the main purpose of which since its founding in September
1968 has been the control of leftist and anti-government
students.'' 

"Its existence and function were well known to all top
government of Mexico law enforcement and political
officials,'' the cable continued. 

It concluded: "It stretches the imagination to believe that
Echeverría was not aware of plans to severely repress the
June 10 demonstration.'' 

A week after the killings, the United States State
Department's intelligence and research bureau reported that
the Falcons were "recruited from university-age students
who are sons of people friendly with PRI officials enjoying
the personal confidence of President Echeverría.'' 

The president "was supporting the Halcones as a counterfoil
to the activist left-wing,'' and "may well have given his
blessing to the use of the group'' against the
demonstrators, the State Department said in its report on
June 17, 1971. 

That same day, the United States Embassy gloomily concluded
that "many responsible Mexicans'' now believed "that
repressive force will be an inevitable part of the Mexican
political system for some time to come.'' 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/international/americas/24mexi.html?ex=1091687834&ei=1&en=de5c85913c97ce7d


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