SHINING LIGHT ON SHADOWY LEGAL SYSTEM

Mexico: Journalists here have exposed corrupt relationships between law
enforcement authorities and drug gangs. But they pay a price for their
vigilance.

In late May, when Thomas Constantine announced he was stepping down as
director of the Drug Enforcement Administration on July 1, he pointed his
finger at the largest threat in the continuing drug war: Mexico's drug gangs.

"There has been explosive growth of criminal drug mafias from Mexico," he
said. "We just turned around and they were everywhere: in New York, in
Baltimore, in Atlanta. What is frustrating is that we know who the 20 to 25
top drug dealers in Mexico are, but the Mexican law enforcement is so weak,
it seems unable even to find them, never mind arrest them or extradite them."

Many of the drugs distributed in Baltimore's streets, and the streets of
other U.S. cities, pass through the hands of Mexico's gangs.

In 1998, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy reported
that 59 percent of the cocaine processed in South America was funneled to
the United States through Mexico. Throughout the past decade, as Colombia's
cartels decided to pay Mexico's smugglers with drugs instead of cash, the
power of Mexico's gangs grew.

Law enforcement authorities agree Mexico's gangs also provide the bulk of
heroin and marijuana on America's streets. If that is the sad statistical
picture of Mexico's contribution to the U.S. drug problem, the view from
Mexico is worse.

In Mexico, where a complex set of law enforcement groups exists presumably
to keep order, citizens find themselves wondering which police officers,
prosecutors and judges are on the payroll of the drug gangs. Besides
questioning their legal institutions, Mexicans also turn frequently to the
growing ranks of investigative journalists to uncover the corruption that is
rife throughout their system.

But the drug war is also testing the old adage about the strength of the pen
vs. the sword. Given the example of border town San Luis Rio Colorado, the
sword seems to be a fairly lethal match.

Articles revealing the inner workings of the border drug gangs and their
corrupt connections, inspired by two editors in this small town, are more
than balanced by the assassination of one editor and continuing harassment
of the other.

Conditions in San Luis Rio Colorado are so bad for crusading writers that
New York's Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) sent a letter to Mexico's
President Ernesto Zedillo last month, requesting special protection for
Jesus Barraza, the editor of the weekly Pulso.

Patricio Navia of CPJ called Barraza a courageous editor for maintaining his
publication despite threats "in a town that is a hot spot for drug dealing
on the border." The saga of violence threatening freedom of expression and
the rule of law in this town, not far from Arizona, stretches back more than
two years.

In 1997, Benjamin Flores Gonzalez was the editor leading the charge against
corruption and drugs at the local newspaper La Prensa. In his column, Flores
wrote about drug gangs in the Mexican state of Sonora. He not only linked
the gangs in Sonora to an international network of drug traffickers, but he
also revealed the slime of corruption the gangs trailed through Sonora's
judicial system.

Flores questioned the conduct of a judge who had freed Jaime Gonzalez
Gutierrez, a drug dealer accused of shooting a policeman. Judges in Sonora
were outraged by the revelations. Soon Flores found himself in jail, forced
to spend time behind bars for his blunt columns.

The judges used Mexico's criminal defamation law to pressure the editor and
make him pay for revealing the truth. But Flores managed to use the complex
Mexican judicial system not only to win release from jail, but to obtain a
special writ that prevented his arrest on similar charges. After Flores'
release from jail, he found that he had angered more than the local
judiciary. Eventually, the drug lords came knocking.

Machine-gun attack

On July 15, 1997, Flores was gunned down on the steps of his newspaper
office. The hit men used a machine gun in the attack, but the final shots
were delivered by a pistol pressed against Flores' head. After international
coverage of the killing, police eventually connected at least seven men to
the crime, including Gonzalez and his two brothers, drug dealers featured in
some of Flores' columns. Some of the other men accused of the killing had
originated some of the defamation complaints against the slain editor.

Barraza stepped in to take Flores' place at the helm of La Prensa. He
traveled to Mexico City in the fall of 1997 to speak at a special conference
of Mexican journalists, convened by CPJ, to address the violence meant to
stifle free expression.

"What class of country is this in which impunity is so great that criminals
fear a reporter more than a policeman?" Barraza asked at the conference. "At
moments, it gets frustrating for those of us who practice this profession to
denounce corruption and impunity," he said, adding, "Journalists who do so
are becoming a kind of people's prosecutor, displacing those who are charged
with carrying out justice. In the people's name, we should continue to
denounce prosecutors, police commanders, judges, and magistrates so they all
assume their real responsibility."

Although facing continued threats from drug dealers, Barraza and several
reporters from La Prensa eventually left that publication to pursue more
stories that lived up to his manifesto for journalistic responsibility. The
weekly magazine Pulso is the result. By the spring of this year, the tension
between Barraza and his targets was mounting and threats against the editor
increased. A Mexican organization of journalists asked authorities to
provide protection for Barraza.

In 1998, President Zedillo had extended army protection to poet and
columnist Homero Aridjis after he received death threats for his columns
about media