OLD GOVERNOR MISSING AT INAUGURAL IN MEXICO

CHETUMAL, Mexico, April 5The routine inauguration of a new governor in a
southern Mexican state today was transformed into an international political
and legal spectacle with the outgoing governor a no-show after disappearing
10 days ago amid investigations of alleged drug trafficking and money
laundering.

In an embarrassment to a nation struggling to prove that democratic reforms
are stripping corrupt government officials of impunity, the disappearance of
Quintana Roo Gov. Mario Villanueva just days before he was to lose
gubernatorial immunity from prosecution threatens to unravel the credibility
of Mexico's law enforcement agencies and political institutions.

Ten days ago, after delivering his annual state of the state address in a
city plaza and taking a few pot shots at the highly publicized
investigations launched against him, Villanueva dropped out of public
view -- just as law enforcement authorities said they feared he would do.

Officials of Mexican and U.S. police agencies said they have spent more than
a year eavesdropping on Villanueva's telephone calls, tailing his
gubernatorial convoys and probing every aspect of his business and personal
lives in an effort to prove allegations that he was paid millions of dollars
to protect the Juarez cartel, Mexico's most powerful drug mafia. Now, those
same officials say they are clueless as to his whereabouts.

"Where is Villanueva?" headline after headline has asked.

His wife said he was in Mexico City meeting with his attorneys. His
attorneys said they hadn't seen him in days and don't know where he is.
Various accounts have reported him in Cuba, in Panama, and dead -- his body
dumped into the ocean by a helicopter off the coast of his home state.

The investigation and subsequent disappearance of one of Mexico's most
outspoken governors -- and the highest-ranking elected Mexican official to
be targeted formally with allegations of drug trafficking while still in
office -- is a tangled saga of political feuds, the increasing power and
corrupting influence of Mexican drug mafias and the political and legal
obstacles of law enforcement in a country controlled by the same party for
seven decades.

In a view shared by many Mexicans, Mario Vargas Paredes, a political science
professor at Quintana Roo University, said: "The federal government is [an
accomplice]. They let him escape. They're not sincere when they say they
don't know where he is. It's a smoke curtain to protect the PRI," the ruling
Institutional Revolutionary Party.

"If the case of corruption against Villanueva is exposed, it will expose the
corruption throughout the party," Vargas added.

Villanueva has denied the allegations of drug trafficking and money
laundering. Quintana Roo, which includes the luxury resort of Cancun, has
become a primary Mexican gateway for cocaine en route to the United States
from South America.

"The investigation was a political vendetta," said Villanueva's spokesman,
Roberto Andrade. "It's all political. It goes no deeper."

In fact, Villanueva has been a political thorn in the side of President
Ernesto Zedillo, one of the new generation of Mexican politicians who say
the ruling party needs to be reformed to save itself from extinction in the
face of the growing power of opposition parties.

Villanueva has been one of the most staunch defenders of the old guard,
called "dinosaurs," who are trying to preserve the PRI's traditional powers.

In one of his public addresses on the last day he was seen, Villanueva said
he was being persecuted "because heretics must be sent to the stake or drink
the hemlock of the holy office of power to expiate their sins."

But Villanueva has made numerous political enemies in the state he has ruled
for six years like a fiefdom. In addition to charges that he amassed
millions of dollars in payoffs for allowing the Juarez cartel to operate
freely, Villanueva has been criticized for permitting relatives and friends
to profit from the skyrocketing land prices of pristine beachfront on
Quintana Roo's Caribbean coastline.

Meanwhile, the Mexican attorney general's office was scrambling today to
determine its next step in a case already marred by allegations of witness
torturing, illegal telephone taps and other irregularities.

And through it all, the incoming PRI governor, Joaquin Hendricks Diaz --
supposedly the star of tonight's festivities -- has been struggling to get
attention.

Attempting to shrug off the controversy that has engulfed his boss's
inauguration, Hendricks's spokesman Rodolfo Romero Euan said that a
transition without the outgoing governor "is not affecting us."

Even so, as crowds of politicians and residents streamed into a local
baseball stadium outfitted with an ostentatious replica of the state
legislative chambers, more eyes were scanning the stage for Villanueva than
for Hendricks.

The incoming governor made no mention of Villanueva in his inaugural
address, but said, "It should be clear: The criminal narcotrafficking
organizations that have intentions of establishing themselves in Quintana
Roo will be frustrated by our . . . public security programs."