Pubdate: Sat, 07 Apr 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Tim Weiner

MEXICO'S IMAGE IS BUFFED AND TARNISHED WITH MILITARY DRUG ARRESTS

MEXICO CITY, April 6 -- The government of President Vicente Fox has 
made its first important drug arrests since taking power five months 
ago. Unfortunately for Mexican drug enforcement, the three men 
arrested were an Army brigadier general, a captain and a lieutenant.

Brig. Gen. Ricardo Martinez, who commanded the 21st Motorized Cavalry 
Regiment based in Nuevo Laredo, on the Texas border, and his aides, 
Capt. Pedro Maya and Lt. Javier Quevedo, were imprisoned late 
Thursday at a military base in Mexico City. The three officers are 
charged with having provided protection from arrest in return for 
payoffs from cocaine and marijuana traffickers operating along the 
gulf coast. They face sentences of up to 40 years if convicted on 
drugs and weapons charges.

The Mexican government made the army its front-line force in the drug 
war in 1996, after two decades in which drug barons had thoroughly 
corrupted state and federal police forces. But the power of drug 
money over military officers has marred the army's role from the 
start. General Martinez is the sixth Mexican general jailed on 
charges of being in the pay of the drug lords since 1997.

General Martinez and his aides were arrested a week after 21 
suspects, charged with playing roles in what once was a major cocaine 
trafficking organization known as the gulf cartel, were arrested in 
the gulf coast state of Tamaulipas. The office of Mexico's secretary 
of defense said the three officers were accused of providing 
"protection to drug traffickers" from that same group.

In August, Gen. Francisco Quiroz Hermosillo, who had just retired 
from the army, and Brig. Gen. Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro, a 
counterinsurgency expert with a reputation for repression and 
torture, were arrested on charges that they took bribes to protect 
members of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug gang. And in 1997, 
Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, then the chief of all of Mexico's 
antidrug efforts, was arrested and later convicted of protecting drug 
traffickers.

President Fox had promised to withdraw the military from the drug 
war. The Constitution bars the military from any role other than 
national defense. But Mr. Fox changed his mind after taking office.

The drug cartels have delivered telephone death threats in the past 
few months to Mexico's defense minister, Gen. Ricardo Clemente Vega, 
and his family, the general said publicly this week. General Vega 
said he believed that the threats were the result of continuing 
investigations into the links between military officers and some of 
Mexico's largest drug organizations.

Today, President Fox, visiting Colombia and its president, Andres 
Pastrana, said the two nations would join forces against cocaine 
trafficking, and he called the arrests of the military men in Mexico 
a small but significant sign of progress.

"Actions like this one, in which a general was arrested," Mr. Fox 
said, will "generate confidence, and we will continue with them."
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