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DISPATCH FROM MEXICO CITY
Scandal? D.C.'s Got Nothing on Mexico
Even for a country used to corruption and impunity, it's been a busy few days.
By Sam Enriquez
Times Staff Writer

February 18, 2006

MEXICO CITY — Illegal eavesdropping. Fake news stories. It's getting harder these days to figure out which side of the border you're on.

Mexico showed twice in recent days that it will not be outdone by its northern neighbor.

Wiretaps? How about listening in on a governor bragging about jailing a writer who exposed a child sex ring?

Bogus news stories planted in Iraqi newspapers? Try reenacting a kidnap rescue for national TV.

Even for a country that has abided election fraud, corruption and impunity through 70 years under one party's rule, this week seemed a bit much.

The leaked telephone recordings, said to be the voice of Puebla state Gov. Mario Marin, suggest he conspired to jail an investigative journalist in retaliation for mentioning his friend, an influential textile manufacturer, in her book about a child sex ring catering to wealthy businessmen.

Marin says it isn't him who's heard being thanked, supposedly by Kamel Nacif Borge, Mexico's bluejeans king, for teaching a lesson to Lydia Cacho. Nacif Borge isn't talking about the recording. The rest of Mexico is.

Cacho, a 43-year-old writer and director of a Cancun women's shelter, was arrested Dec. 16 on charges of failing to respond to a libel and slander summons. She was taken from her home by state police, who drove her 900 miles to Puebla, where she was held for 30 hours.

"Well, yesterday I finally gave a rap on the head to that freaking woman," the voice alleged to be that of the governor says on a tape aired nationwide this week. "She'd better not try to make herself into a victim or take advantage of this for publicity."

Nacif Borge allegedly tells Marin, "You're the hero of this movie, buddy … and to thank you, I have a beautiful bottle of cognac."

Recordings of a dozen obscenities-laced phone conversations were leaked Monday to the newspaper La Jornada and W Radio. The tapes triggered days of national headlines and calls for Marin's resignation.

"The presidency condemns acts by any authority that violate the rule of law and try to limit the freedom of expression, especially the liberty of the press," said Ruben Aguilar, spokesman for President Vicente Fox.

But unlike in the United States, where federal authorities have the power to investigate violations of constitutional rights, Fox is virtually powerless to intervene.

State lawmakers in Puebla, mostly members of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, could ask for federal help.

But nobody's holding their breath, given that Marin is a party leader. Supporters staged a march Friday for him. The party's presidential candidate, Roberto Madrazo, said Marin was innocent. And more than 100 Puebla mayors, also party members, signed a full-page newspaper ad demanding the feds stay out of the case.

If any rights were violated, Marin said, they were his. That is, if it turns out the voice on the tape is his.

Cacho's arrest drew condemnations from such groups as Amnesty International and the Inter-American Press Assn. She is charged with libel, a criminal offense in Mexico, for naming names in her book, "Demons of Eden." The slander charge has since been dropped.

Nacif Borge, who filed the libel complaint against Cacho, is identified in the book as a friend and defender of Jean Succar, a hotel owner who allegedly headed the child sex ring. Succar is in U.S. custody awaiting extradition to Mexico on suspicion of sex crimes.

Cacho said she was never told of the libel charges against her. Nacif Borge allegedly bragged in recordings that he arranged with cooperative prosecutors to skip the legal summons notifying Cacho of the charges.

"They say vengeance is a soup that must be served cool, not warm, gentlemen," he is allegedly heard saying in one recorded conversation.

"Unfortunately, this provokes a negative view of the way things happen in Mexico," Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez said in a radio interview.

Earlier, Atty. Gen. Daniel Cabeza de Vaca admitted that his elite federal police force had staged a re-creation of a kidnap rescue for network TV — returning suspects and hostages to a farmhouse on the outskirts of the city about 24 hours after the actual rescue.

Televisa and TV Azteca aired the phony rescue as breaking news Dec. 9, showing armed police freeing a woman, her young son and a man. The broadcast featured interviews with a suspect, one of four arrested, and two of the victims — all inside the kidnappers' lair.

"All we tried to do was serve you, the media," Cabeza de Vaca said during an embarrassing mea culpa news conference last week. "That, and show the public that there is an institution that is working for them, that has successes and that arrests people."

Televisa and TV Azteca said they weren't told the raid was staged.

Cabeza de Vaca said they were.

Whether to believe Mexico's highest-ranking law enforcement officer, or its largest news outlets, is almost beside the point.

The real story was not prompted by a conscientious whistle-blower in either government or media.

The farcical twist on habeas corpus was revealed by Florence Cassez, a 31-year-old French national accused in the kidnapping. She complained to her family that she was held overnight in a police vehicle, then forced back into the farmhouse for the televised arrests.

"This was a mistake," said Aguilar, the presidential spokesman. "But we must repeat, the most important thing is that we did arrest the kidnappers and we did save the hostages."