Buendía, Bartlett, and Narco-Politics

Buendía, Bartlett, and Narco-Politics
The gangsterization of the State, in 1984
from Political Indicator: May 30, 2000
by Carlos Ramírez

Connected by political facts from the start of the process of narcotization of the Mexican State, Manuel Bartlett, now one of the principal campaign operators of PRI presidential candidate Francisco Labastida, today will pass his time at peace. Today marks 16 years since the assassination of columnist Manuel Buendía, who was shot in 1984 for revealing the penetration of the narco in the office of the Secretary of Government that was headed by Manuel Bartlett.

When the special prosecutor in the Buendía case, Miguel Angel García Domínguez, ended his investigation under pressure of the entering president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, he delivered his conclusions that exclusively blamed José Antonio Zorrilla Pérez, then director of the Federal Security Agency, the political police corps that answered directly to Manuel Bartlett as Secretary of Government.

But the conclusions of García Domínguez inexplicably left untouched by any judicial subpoena not only Bartlett, but also then-Defense Secretary Juan Arévalo Gardoqui and President Miguel de la Madrid, the three men signaled as responsible for the error -- to say the least -- that permitted the growth of drug trafficking in México. Since 1984, drug trafficking has not only grown here, but has penetrated the structures of State power and the Mexican government.

Buendía was assassinated on May 30, 1984, on a street near the Zona Rosa of México City. The investigation was covered-up by the Federal Security Agency. The last investigations undertaken by Buendía into drug trafficking led him into the rural indigenous areas of the country. Buendía had responded to a newspaper ad by the Catholic bishops in the south of the country where they denounced the penetration of the narco in rural Mexico but also the complicity of the Army and police corps.

Buendía did not finish his investigation. His assassination came almost a year before, in February of 1985, the assassination of US anti-drug agent Enrique Camarena Salazar in Guadalajara had exposed the penetration of drug traffickers in the Mexican police. The two police chiefs that reported directly to the Secretary of Government in 1985 -- in effect, to Manuel Bartlett -- turned out to be directly connected to the principal drug trafficking gangs of Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca and Miguel Félix Gallardo.

Agents of the the Political and Social Investigations Agency and of the Federal Security Agency were discovered as protectors of drug trafficking in México. The Attorney General of the Republic, in the investigation of the assassination of Camarena, found credentials of the Federal Security police in the name of drug traffickers. Caro Quintero escaped to Costa Rica using a credential of the Federal Security Agency with his photo but with another name. The credentials in the Attorney General's file were requested by Bartlett from Attorney General Sergio García Ramírez for "an exhaustive investigation" but were then disappeared by Bartlett. García Ramírez complained to President De la Madrid but didn't succeed at getting any response.

That which Buendía was investigating months before was confirmed by the assassination of Camerena, a DEA agent assigned to the US Consulate in Guadalajara. Did Bartlett know or not that his Political and Social Investigations Agency and Federal Security Agency were protecting drug traffickers? There are testimony transcripts from a collaborator of the accused police chief Zorrilla in the Federal Security Agency, José Luis Esqueda, that directly informed Bartlett that the agency protected drug traffickers. In place of launching a house-cleaning, Bartlett reassigned Esqueda to a municipal support office, until one night when the agent was shot down while using a public telephone.

Thus, Bartlett did know about the activities of his two police forces in favor of drug traffickers but did nothing to correct them. One of the excuses offered by Bartlett was to say that the police chief Zorrilla was recommended by Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios, one of the most important bosses of political-police security in the Mexican government. Zorrilla had come to the Federal Security Agency through Gutiérrez Barrios, but testimonies collected by Jorge G. Castañeda in his book, "The Inheritance" about Mexican presidential succession in 2000 indicate that Zorrilla, in 1985, had already broken with Gutiérrez Barrios and reported directly to Bartlett.

Various of the commanders of the Federal Security Agency and the Political Investigations Agency were the principal protectors of drug traffickers. There have been cases in which the Federal Security commanders guarded trucks of drugs from Chiapas to the US border. In spite of these facts, Bartlett did absolutely nothing to correct these irregularities. But when the Camarena scandal exploded and the facts of police protection of the narco began to become known, Bartlett separated himself from Zorrillo by sending him to Hidalgo as a candidate for Congress and he disappeared the two police agencies to create the National Security and Intelligence Agency.

The investigation of the assassination of Buendía always seemed to bring the presumed guilt of Zorrilla in strange directions. Including that the prosecutor wanted to blame the murder on a crime of pasión. But over time it was proven that the Buendía assassination was a political crime, that initiated the long cycle of instability and destabilization and the first that drew the line of narco-violence. Zorrilla disappeared from the political arena in 1985 and reappeared in 1986. He was questioned various times over the Buendía case but always was left free for a lack of evidence.

In 1989, the special prosecutor García Domínguez presented his conclusions and incriminated Zorrilla as guilty of the assassination. The García Domínguez investigation was deficient, although the prosecutor received a promotion as a prize. The principal fault of García Domínguez was that his investigation went only as far as Zorrilla, the police chief, and did not subpoeana Bartlett, General Arévalo or President de la Madrid, the three men connected in the suspicions of the crime by drug traffickers. But García Domínguez protected Bartlett.

The apprehension of Zorrilla as the guilty assassin of Buendía was a gift made by Carlos Salinas to Mexican journalists because it was announced on June 7, 1989, the National Freedom of the Press Day. Zorrilla was a friend of Buendía until his death. The strange relationship of friendship endured anger and delicate information. In this sense, it is not proven that Zorrilla was the man who killed Buendía. Still, there was testimony that should have focused the investigations toward the Military turf of General Arévalo Gardoqui, because of the facts that Buendía had incriminated officials of the army in the protection of drug traffickers.

Zorrilla was guilty in order to detour the investigation of the assassination to put a distance between the crime and other government officials. Today in prison, Zorrilla has taken care to not speak about the theme but reiterates his innocence. In this sense, and for the irregularities in the investigation in the crime against the columnist, it is important the the investigation be reopened to arrive at the root of the first Mexican assassination linked to drug trafficking.

The urgency of reopening the file on the Buendía assassination is of grave concern to Manuel Bartlett's web of power: first he was on the final list of candidates for the presidency in 1987, next he was Secretary of Education in the Salinas government, he was made governor of Puebla by Joseph-Marie Córdoba Montoya. Today, Francisco Labastida, knowing of the suspicions over the role of Bartlett in the surge of drug trafficking in México and of the judicial subpoena over Bartlett in the United States for the Camarena case, made Bartlett a candidate for federal senate and promotes him as the Senate President of the PRI in the next Congress.

But a number of files regarding Bartlett are still open: That of Buendía is one and that of the narco is another that is also related with the columnist's assassination. Sixteen years after the death of Buendía true justice is still awaited. But Bartlett already counts with the protection of Labastida.