Mexican officials debate army's role in drug war

By Tracey Eaton, Mexico City Bureau of The Dallas Morning News

MEXICO CITY As a scandalous drug trial against a top general nears an
end, some lawmakers question whether the Mexican army should take a lead
role in the counternarcotics effort.

Ordering soldiers to fight drug traffickers "is like inviting a
criminal into a casino. He'll rob it," Sen.elect Francisco Molina Ruiz
said.

"I'm not saying the army is full of delinquents." But soldiers earn
only a few hundred dollars a month and so they're vulnerable to drug
bribes, Mr. Molina said.

Lawmakers are expected to tackle the issue of the military's
involvement in the drug fight this month . The debate comes at a time
when many Mexicans are more wary of the military's increasingly visible
role not only in counternarcotics, but fighting crime.

"The army has many strengths, but its duties should be better
regulated," said Mr. Molina, former director of Mexico's top antidrug
agency, the nowdefunct Institute for Combating Drug Trafficking.

Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo began expanding the military's role
in traditionally civilian activities after taking office in December 1994.
Since then, soldiers have been accused of not only protecting traffickers
but torturing suspects, and some Mexican analysts are convinced the army
is out of control.

Human rights activists say soldiers are responsible for at least 35
cases of kidnapping and torture in one small section of Guerrero state
alone. United Nations official Nigel Rodley visited Mexico in August to
investigate that and other allegations.

The case that has been the biggest embarrassment to the Mexican
military is that of Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo. Accused in February of
taking payoffs from the late drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the general
is one of the highestranking Mexican military officials ever to be
arrested on drug charges. Military officials declined to comment for
this story. Defense Secretary Enrique Cervantes Aguirre ordered
subordinates not to talk to reporters on Aug. 6 10 days after Mexico
City's Proceso news magazine wrote about drug corruption in the military.

The Gutierrez case has been particularly damaging to the military's
prestige, analysts say. Even before the general was named head of the
antidrug institute in 1996, replacing Mr. Molina, prosecutors say he had
ties to Mr. Carrillo.

Military officials began investigating Mr. Gutierrez in February after
an anonymous caller later identified as the general's chauffeur, Juan
Galvan Lara said his boss was living in a Mexico City luxury apartment
provided by Mr. Carrillo's top lieutenant, Eduardo Gonzalez Quirarte.

Mr. Gonzalez, who is at large, also gave the general and his
subordinates more than $ 150,000, three firearms, encrypted cellular
phones, a Jeep Cherokee, a Grand Marquis and a Nissan Sentra, all
bulletproof, Mr. Galvan testified.

The general has said he is innocent and had become close to Mr.
Gonzalez to learn more about the Carrillo organization.

His family says Defense Secretary Cervantes targeted Mr. Gutierrez
after they argued about the Arellano cartel of Baja California. The
general wanted to capture the Arellanos, but Mr. Cervantes wouldn't allow
it, the family contends. "My father was going to direct the operation,
capture the Arellanos and turn them over to the Americans at the border,"
said Teresa de Jesus Gutierrez, the general's daughter.

Since speaking out about the case, Miss Gutierrez said she's received
death threats.

"They call on the phone and tell me to shut my mouth or I'll end up
dead or like my father in jail," she said.

Miss Gutierrez also said government agents follow her when she leaves
her home, monitoring her activities and photographing her.

She said her only escape is to think of better days, when her father
used to pamper her.

"When I was a little girl, my father was my only playmate," she said.
"He spoiled me all the time. We didn't have much money in the house, but
there was plenty of love."

Her father is now at the Almoloya de Juarez maximumsecurity prison
outside Mexico City. Family members are allowed to visit from 9 a.m. to 1
p.m. every eight days. His lawyers may also talk to him, but they must
allow the authorities to inspect any notes they take during the visit.

"Sometimes the lawyers are allowed to keep their notes.

Sometimes they're not," Miss Gutierrez said.

Three of the general's lawyers have been detained and questioned since
the case began. They contend that the government is harassing them in an
effort to weaken their defense.

Testimony in a criminal trial against Mr. Gutierrez is expected to end
sometime this month, but his troubles aren't over. He faces additional
criminal charges and a separate military trial.

Prosecutors allege that Mr. Gutierrez protected Mr. Carrillo while
pursuing the Arellanos. And court documents in the case say that Mr.
Carrillo's lieutenant, Mr. Gonzalez, even financed some of the operations
aimed at capturing the Arellanos, led by brothers Ramon, Benjamin and
Javier.

Mexican authorities said nothing about the general's Feb. 6 arrest
until 12 days later. The government's story is that Mr. Gutierrez nearly
collapsed after being told of the charges he faced and so he was
hospitalized. Doctors then operated on his heart.

Miss Gutierrez said her father had no heart problems and the surgery
was risky.

"I can't come to any conclusion other than that they may have been
trying to find a way to make my father disappear," she said.

While some U.S. law enforcement officials say they are alarmed by
allegations that traffickers had bought off such a highranking official
as Mr. Gutierrez, others won't talk about it.

Raul Delgado, a spokesman for the El Paso Intelligence Center, or EPIC,
jointly run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and other
federal agencies, refused to discuss anything to do with the Mexican
military.

"You can get that information in Mexico," he said.

Guillermo Garduno, a Mexican scholar who studies the military, said he
can't understand the DEA's silence.

Why, he asked, is the agency reluctant to talk about corruption in the
military? And why, he said, didn't the DEA raise any concerns after Mr.
Gutierrez was appointed head of the antidrug institute?

The general had been stationed in one of Mexico's hottest drug towns
Guadalajara for seven years, well past the usual twoyear assignment,
and locals there openly gossiped about his possible ties with traffickers,
Mr. Garduno said.

But the Americans including White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey
had only good things to say about the general.

"I find it incredible that the Americans didn't know that Gutierrez
might have been corrupt," he said. "What has the DEA been doing all this
time?"

The Gutierrez case may have shocked many people, but analysts say it
shouldn't have been a surprise.

The Mexican government has tolerated a certain level of corruption in
the military for decades, according to Roderic Camp, author of Generals in
the Palacio , a book about the Mexican military.

Dictator Porfirio Diaz, who ruled Mexico from 1876 to 1910, "was a
master" at allowing political and military elites to corrupt themselves,
Mr. Camp wrote.

Later, during the Mexican Revolution of 191020, officers sometimes
gave marijuana to civilian recruits, according to the book.

During Prohibition, Mexican generals were key players in the transport
of bootleg liquor to Texas, California and New Mexico, Mr. Garduno said.

"One of the most important generals Abelardo Lujan Rodriguez ran
casinos and brothels," Mr. Garduno said. "That and the liquor business
was very profitable."

In 1984, a huge marijuana plantation Buffalo Ranch was discovered
in the border state of Chihuahua. Authorities soon learned that military
officials in nearby Delicias, Chihuahua, had been protecting the
traffickers who ran the ranch.

In June 1990, Navy Secretary Mauricio Schleske Sanchez resigned citing
family reasons. He and other top officers had actually been fired after
they were accused of possessing "inexplicable wealth" that Mexican
authorities later described as illicit drug profits.

Drug corruption has endured in the military for years and won't be easy
to wipe out, said federal deputy and former presidential candidate Rosario
Ibarra. "It simply isn't possible for drugs to make it past all the
military checkpoints on the highways without the complicity of the
authorities," she said. "The network of corruption is gigantic."

Mr. Zedillo expanded the military's role in counternarcotics because
civilian agencies led by the attorney general's office had become
thoroughly corrupted, analysts say.

"The president had no choice but to turn to the military," Mr. Garduno
said. But there are questions about whether it can do the job, he said.

Worsening matters, some Mexican lawmakers contend that the military's
activities such as setting up permanent roadblocks and patrolling
villages violates constitutional limits on its authority.

"In times of peace," Mrs. Ibarra said, "soldiers should be in their
barracks, not in the streets."