Pubdate: Sat, 02 Sep 2000 Source: Washington Post (DC) Copyright: 2000 The Washington Post Company Contact: 1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071 Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Author: Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post Foreign Service Noted: Researcher Alejandro Juarez Zepeda contributed to this report. MEXICANS HAIL ARREST OF GENERALS AS SIGN OF CHANGE MEXICO CITY, Sept. 1 - Two top Mexican army generals have been arrested on drug-trafficking charges in a rare acknowledgment of collusion between military officers and drug smugglers, suggesting that Mexico's secretive military may be embracing the political changes sweeping the country. Officials said today that a two-year investigation showed the two, Gen. Francisco Quiroz Hermosillo, 65, who retired in July, and Gen. Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro, 61, met frequently with the late Amado Carrillo Fuentes, a powerful drug lord in the northern border city of Juarez, to arrange plane schedules and other details to help Carrillo Fuentes move his drugs. Both generals are being held in a military jail and face prison terms of up to 50 years each. The military's decision to publicly shame and jail two of its senior officers was hailed here as evidence that the army, like the political system, may be shifting toward more openness and accountability. The most sacrosanct and closed institution in Mexico has been the military, so this highlights the degree of openness that is starting to be the norm, not the exception,' said Roderic A. Camp, a specialist on the Mexican military who teaches at Claremont McKenna College in California. Analysts said the timing of the arrests, which were announced by Defense Ministry prosecutors Thursday evening, suggested that the military may be moving to gain the trust of President-elect Vicente Fox, who will take office Dec. 1 as the first opposition party president elected in more than seven decades. Mexico has been ruled since 1929 by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which has allowed the military to operate as a nearly autonomous organization. It remains unclear how Fox intends to shape his relationship with the military and how he will deal with military drug corruption, which has often strained relations with the United States. Fox has said he is leery of the military's anti-drug role, which has led to the same kind of corruption that has tainted Mexico's police forces. But he has said there is no alternative at the moment. In the meantime, he has pledged to wage a hard fight against corruption. It seems the military is sending a message; it's a consequence of the transition that Mexico is living,' said Sergio Aguayo, a leading human rights activist and frequent critic of the military. They may be saying, "Mr. Fox, here is proof that we are capable of dealing with our own people.'‚' But Gen. Rafael Macedo de la Concha, Mexico's top military prosecutor, said in an interview that the military is simply prosecuting crime. We are not looking for anyone's trust,' he said. 'We have always prosecuted everyone who is outside of the law, and we will continue. This hurts our dignity and the prestige of the army, but we have to overcome it,' he said. The army has given clear signals that we are acting according to the law and that we will energetically punish any act of corruption.' The arrests represent the highest-level military corruption charges since the sensational 1997 arrest and conviction of Mexico's top anti-drug official, Gen. Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, who is serving 71 years in prison…also for protecting Carrillo Fuentes. Gutierrez's case deeply embarrassed officials in Mexico City and Washington who had lavishly praised him as a man of integrity and an emblem of the two nations' resolve to fight drug trafficking. The arrests of Quiroz and Acosta were a joint effort by military and civilian authorities. The investigation was conducted by the attorney general's office, working partially on information supplied by an unnamed U.S. informant, then turned over to military officials for prosecution. Camp said the military's decision to prosecute the two generals and publicly acknowledge their ties to drug lords is a sharp departure from how previous cases were covered up by Mexico's military and political leaders. When Adm. Mauricio Schleske was forced to resign by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1990, for instance, the real reasons were never made public, he said, adding that Mexican media disclosed much later that Schleske had been fired for using naval ships and ports to help smugglers move drugs. In another case, army soldiers and police officers exchanged gunfire in a drug-related dispute. Camp said several army officers were punished, but the military never admitted that the case was related to drug corruption. The Gutierrez case marked the first time a top military official was not afforded the near total impunity that military officials have enjoyed over the years. Human rights activists say the military has been involved in hundreds of cases of killings, massacres and disappearances over the decades, mainly in Mexico's recurring struggles against anti-government guerrillas. Human rights groups said Acosta has been involved in many of the army's most notorious operations in the past 35 years, including the 1968 student uprising in Tlatelolco square, in which hundreds of demonstrators were killed. Activists said. Acosta is also suspected of being involved in the disappearances of more than 500 people during his years working in anti-guerrilla activities in Guerrero state. Aguayo said Quiroz, one of the military's highest ranking officers, was a key leader of the so-called White Brigades, secret military and paramilitary squads that were deployed to strike at guerrillas. Those brigades have been blamed by human rights groups for numerous killings and disappearances. Researcher Alejandro Juarez Zepeda contributed to this report. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D