FOR MANY, ESCAPING MEXICO IS A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH

When Mexico's President Ernesto Zedillo acknowledged recently the
extent of poverty in his proud nation, it seemed like a first step
toward solving a problem many Americans also want addressed. For
Americans, the mention of Mexico conjures one stereotypical image: a
flood of desperate, unemployed people illegally crossing our border.

The reasoning on this side of the border seems to be that if Mexico's
economy gets better, Mexicans will have less need to come here. Of
course, that reasoning looks at immigration as if it were simply
caused by a lack of jobs in Mexico. That simple-minded approach
ignores other catalysts for immigration, and refuses to look at the
entire Mexican sociopolitical climate.

Take a closer look at Mexico and you'll see the secrets Mexico's
president isn't discussing. Those not-so-well-kept secrets are
contained in a growing number of human rights reports which show the
country's record for torture and extrajudicial killings grew worse in
the past decade. Abusive police and military groups, guerrilla
insurgencies and a climate where basic human rights are often absent
might seem more like Kosovo than Mexico. That dark political climate
also could be pushing Mexicans north.

Consider the case of Jose Tomas Capistran Rios. Two years ago, an
immigration judge in Chicago granted Capistran legal asylum in the
United States. In Mexico, Capistran had reported about abuses by the
Mexican army fighting guerrilla groups. For this type of critical
reporting, Capistran was kidnapped, tortured and charged with being a
rebel sympathizer, aiding terrorists. Freed before his trial,
Capistran decided it would be safer for him and his family if he fled
north.

But the ugly human rights reports coming out of Mexico show that for
every case like Capistran's, there are many others in which people
never make it out. In a report last fall, the Organization of American
States, or OAS, criticized Mexico for its record on summary executions
by police and the military without trial. The report also noted the
rising rate of forced disappearances and illegal detention by Mexican
authorities. Last year, Amnesty International issued a report with
similar criticisms. The extent of the problem is hard to quantify.
Statistics for such human rights abuses are inexact and vary widely.
The Amnesty International report notes a figure of more than 100
forced disappearances in 1997 in the state of Chihuahua. The OAS
report documents 65 such cases in 1997 for the country.

At a recent conference about human rights in Mexico at DePaul
University in Chicago, several experts pointed to a familiar culprit
behind the human rights abuses and the breakdown of the rule of law.
They blamed drugs and the corruption that drug trafficking breeds as a
cause of Mexico's problems

The Inter-American Press Association lists Colombia and Mexico as the
two nations where the most journalists have been killed or attacked in
this hemisphere during the past decade. In Mexico, reporters are often
like the coal miner's canary: violence against journalists is often a
sample of what will come on a larger scale later.

An example is the case of J. Jesus Blancornelas, editor of the Tijuana
weekly, Zeta. In fall 1997, Mexico's notorious Tijuana cartel attacked
Blancornelas in daylight on his way to work. Gang members fired
submachine guns and assault rifles, spraying Blancornelas' vehicle
with more than 70 bullets on a city street. Blancornelas was seriously
wounded, but survived. His bodyguard was killed as was the leader of
the ambush, David Barrsn Carona. Days earlier, Blancornelas had
written about Barrsn's connection to the killing of Mexican army
officials and his criminal activities in the United States.

After his recovery, the editor, also a renowned investigative
reporter, said he felt the attack was retaliation for his reporting.
Blancornelas and his staff have investigated ties between the Tijuana
cartel and powerful politicians in Baja California.

A year later, Blancornelas still walked with a limp after surgeons
removed three bullets, one lodged near his spine. After the ambush,
Zedillo committed army troops to guard the editor. Since the order,
other prominent journalists and writers, who have received threats
from drug lords, have been given similar protection.

Before the attack on Blancornelas, law enforcement authorities in Baja
California had been the targets of assassinations. But after the
attack, the floodgates opened. A series of killings of midlevel drug
dealers occurred in Tijuana. Almost a year after the attack on
Blancornelas, one of the leaders of the rival Juarez cartel, Rafael
Munoz Talavera, was killed. Mexican authorities pinned the blame on
the leaders of the Tijuana cartel, the Arellano Felix brothers.
Mexican authorities have pursued the four brothers who control the
Tijuana cartel since 1993, when the gang was tied to a bloody hit at
Guadalajara's airport, in which Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo and
six other people were killed.

Last fall, this frenzied killing spree seemed to peak with the
massacre of 19 people in El Sauzal, near the resort city of Ensenada,
barely 60 miles from the U.S. border. Reporters who saw the grisly
aftermath said one victim was a 1-year-old baby; another, a pregnant
teen-ager. Mexican authorities said the leaders of the Tijuana cartel
wanted to kill Fermin Castro, a small-time marijuana distributor who
competed with elements of the Tijuana cartel. They killed his family
and friends as a way of sending a message: Those who cross drug lords
can expect extreme vengeance and innocents will be killed without a
second thought.

What these violent episodes underscore is the erosion of personal
security and human rights in Mexico, as narcotics gangs gain the upper
hand. Because Mexico's judges, prosecutors and police are often
suspected of being the cartels' paid accomplices, Mexico's army is
increasingly deployed to stop drug gangs. But as the reporting of
Blancornelas and other Mexican reporters has revealed, that role has
made the army targets of drug hits and corruption, the same devices
used to cow other Mexican institutions.

At the DePaul University conference, some experts openly connected the
reports of human rights abuses by the Mexican army to the war on
drugs. The reports of extrajudicial executions and disappearances
blamed on the military could be seen as an overreaction to the drug
war, a way of answering vengeance with more vengeance. The message
back to drug lords: The military will use every means possible to
defend itself.

The real victims in this escalating atmosphere of violence are
Mexico's citizens. Not connected to the drug gangs, the guerrillas or
the corrupt bureaucracy, hard-working Mexicans just want somewhere
safe to raise a family. Is there really any reason to blame someone
who wants to get out of the confluence of grinding poverty, violence
and human rights abuses that we call modern Mexico?

In the United States, if we want to be a good neighbor, we need to
look beyond the symptoms -- like immigration -- of Mexico's problems
and join Mexico's people in a hunt for the causes of the culture of
violence that affects both sides of the border.