 Política
y Derechos Humanos
Politique
et droits de la personne
Politics
and Human Rights
Tlahui-Politic No. 2, II/1996
Mario Rojas Alba
Files in the box of the impunity Quebec Committee for Human Rights in Mexico (QCHRM)
This is the first known case of political asylum for a Mexican parliamentarian in the history of Canada. We hope that it will also be the last such case, for our desire is to see both the Mexican and Canadian societies working together in an attempt to discover and eliminate the root causes that have forced a high-level opposition leader to flee from his country. These causes are certainly related to a lack of democracy and free elections in Mexico, as well as to a political culture that is increasingly disrespectful of human rights. Public opinion in Canada and the rest of the world is virtually unaware of this situation, whose seriousness, even when partially revealed, tends to be minimized. The Rojas case is one among hundreds of similar stories about Mexican citizens who are persecuted because of their political opinions. Unfortunately, objective and subjective conditions in Mexican society seem to forecast worsening conditions for the respect of human rights in that country, which is presently Canada's partner is the heavily debated North American Free Trade Agreement. Therefore, Québécois and Canadians interested in promoting human rights in Mexico have formed the Quebec Committee for Human Rights in Mexico (QCHRM). The first document intended to provide a closer look at Mexico's human-rights situation is this summary of the Mario Rojas case and its interrelation with generalized violence against publicly elected officials and other opposition leaders in Mexico. The Mario Rojas Case Mario Rojas was born in the state of Michoacán, Mexico. In 1968, at the age of 14, he began to support the student movement. Between 1970 and 1972 he participated in activities carried out by different student organizations. Most of his companions to join guerrilla groups that were emerging in response to governmental intolerance and repression against students. However, Rojas remained in the peaceful political movement.He took part in the struggles for greater political freedom and reform of 1978. In the state of Morelos, Rojas was a leader of the opposition between 1978 and 1980. On the state level, he sought unity between the left and democratic organizations, while participating in different union and peasant movements, as well as the Frente Pro Derechos y Libertades Democráticas de Morelos (Morelos Front for Democratic Rights and Liberties). In April 1985, the Electoral College of the Morelos Congress officially recognized him as the local plurinominal [1] representative for the PSUM. Only hours later, Rojas resigned from the state Congress in protest against the dishonest relationship that he had discovered between the party in government (PRI) and the principal state leaders of his own party. In 1987 he joined the Corriente Democrática (Democratic Tendency), led by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, and was elected as its state leader in Morelos. Rojas later became a founding member and leader of the Frente Democrático Nacional (National Democratic Front) in Morelos, and, in representation of this political formation, he won a seat in the 1988 elections as a District I (city of Cuernavaca) member of Federal Congress.
Geographical Locations and 1988 Federal Electoral Results
Mexico (republic). Area: 1,900,000 km2. Population: 88,000,000
Official electoral results:
He defended ecological struggles, proposed an alternative national energy program, opposed the introduction of transnational interests in the generation of nuclear-electric projects, and demanded that both the Azcapotzalco refinery and San Juanico gasworks be removed from Mexico City. There was a positive response to some of his initiatives, whereas many others, to the misfortune of the population, were blocked by the PRI's artificial congressional majority. For example, if the federal government had heeded his request for a study of public safety conditions at the country's refineries and gasworks and his recommendation that all those located near sizable concentrations of population be moved out of a dangerous range, the recent disaster in the city of Guadalajara would never have occurred. Mario Rojas was a founding member of the PRD on both the national level and in the state of Morelos. He was a founder and organizer with the Federación Democrática de Transportistas de Morelos (Morelos Democratic Federation of Transport Workers), the Unión de Pequeños Comerciantes Cardenistas de Cuernavaca (Cuernavaca Union of Cardenista Small Business People), the Federación Democrática de Comerciantes de Morelos (Morelos Democratic Federation of Business People), and the Unión Campesina Democrática de Morelos (Morelos Democratic Peasants' Union). In addition, he cooperated with many organizations, including the MUNJP, the Pacto de Grupos Ecológicos (Convention of Ecological Groups), the Consejo Nacional de Medicina Tradicional y Popular (National Council for Traditional and Popular Medicine), and the Alianza Nacional de Contribuyentes (National Taxpayers' Alliance). In 1991, Rojas was a candidate for senator from Morelos on the PRD-PPS ticket. According to the official electoral returns for the state, his ticket finished second in the voting: the PRI was credited with 140,000 votes, and the PRD-PPS with 40,000. However, these national elections were the first trial for what is known in Mexico as the "cybernetic electoral sham..." On one hand, 120,000 citizens in Morelos -- the great majority of whom belonged to the opposition -- were left without voter registration cards. On the other hand, 30,000 citizens (all from the PRI) had more than one card and were registered at more than one polling station in order to vote more than one time. The PRI spent over 8,000 million pesos in public funds on different items and activities related to the elections, whereas the PRD-PPS disbursed only 28 million pesos for the electoral campaign. Despite all this, the PRI considered that it was necessary to go even further in an effort to consolidate its electoral hoax: Electoral officials "secretly" burned thousands of ballots marked PRD-PPS at a dump site in Moyote, Morelos. It is impossible to reconstruct the actual voting results. Nevertheless, in a scenario of respect for the voting process, with the participation of those 120,000 citizens who were removed from the electoral census, without duplicate voter registration cards, and with impartial electoral authorities, the PRD-PPS coalition would have received twice as many votes as the PRI. Though this information applies only to Morelos, the 1991 electoral hoax had similar characteristics throughout the entire country. Following the 1991 elections, institutionalized repression and criminality, which had remained at a steady level since 1988, became more pronounced. By this time, 18 robberies had taken place at the home and office of Mario Rojas. An attempt on his life had occurred on the highway between Cuernavaca and Mexico City. He had been the victim of physical aggression at the hands of PRI government members on three separate occasions. He and his family had received numerous threats in person and by telephone. Many different tactics had been used to spy on his activities, including infiltration by government agents into his team of collaborators. In every instance, Rojas lodged complaints before the appropriate authorities, registered official documents, and filed the corresponding lawsuits. In return, governmental authorities unfailingly provided impunity and outright protection for those responsible. During the second half of 1991, the government accentuated its repression, particularly against Rojas' main collaborators. The unconstitutional police force, Grupo Reacción (Reaction Group), known as Los Negros because of their black uniforms, beat the union leader of the Zacatepec sugar-mill workers, Alberto Salgado Cuevas, and violently attacked his union. Salgado Cuevas was an advisor for Mario Rojas on union-related affairs. Even the army cooperated in these cases of repression. Right in the middle of Cuernavaca, the police brutally attacked Local Section 5 of the Federación Democrática de Comerciantes, leaving dozens of people injured and missing. Without a warrant or any explanation, the police and Los Negros carried out a joint break-in at the Federation's office in Cuernavaca. They stripped those present of their belongings and destroyed their office. The head of transportation for the state of Morelos, PRI member René Sánchez Beltrán, personally threatened and beat René Jiménez Aquino, who had collaborated with Rojas in the social movement and was the president of the Federación Democrática de Transportistas. In October 1991, again in the downtown section of Cuernavaca, Genovevo de la O was killed by gunshots in the back. He was the grandson of the famous Zapatista general of the same name. He was also a leader of colonos [2] and peasants, as well as the general coordinator for Mario Rojas' senatorial campaign and one of his principal advisors. Because of his involvement in the struggles of different colonos' and peasants' organizations in the northern Morelos communities, he had acquired widespread renown for his courage and honesty. The policeman who murdered him, Porfirio Hernández Calva, was later promoted and is presently the assistant head of preventive police work for the state of Morelos. In January 1992, Rojas made contact with three former policemen who were jailed at the Cuernavaca penitentiary and had said that they possessed information concerning the case of missing political figure José Ramón García. After comparing their information with data in his own files, Rojas concluded that the new information was a valuable contribution toward shedding light on this case. All the information gathered on this case seemed to indicate that José Ramón García had been abducted by the GIP (Grupo de Investigaciones Políticas/Political Investigation Group), under the direction of Apolo Bernabé Ríos. In turn, the latter appeared to have acted in response to orders from the Secretary of Government and from Governor Antonio Riva Palacio. According to the informers, the GIP had kidnapped García, forced him into a vehicle, and taken him to an only partially described house. There he was tortured and finally killed three day after his abduction. Rojas and the ex-policemen were going to reveal this information on Saturday, January 25. However, on the evening of Friday, January 24, two men assaulted Rojas with a machete and a pistol, trying to push him into an unlicensed vehicle. Despite machete wounds, Rojas managed to escape and present charges the following day in Morelos and later before the Attorney General of the Republic. Before Attorney General Morales Lechuga and Rojas himself, the former policemen confirmed their previous information and provided additional evidence implicating the GIP and the Governor of Morelos. The Attorney General offered to make changes in the entire security system in Morelos and to imprison the police officers responsible for killing García in exchange for a promise not to demand justice or take any action against the instigators of the crime, i.e. the Governor and his Secretary of Government. Rojas rejected this offer, demanding that the investigation be continued and that the real instigators of the abduction and presumed murder be brought to justice. This meant that, in strict compliance with the law, the State Congress or, in its default, the National Congress would have to remove Governor Riva Palacio from office. Following this, the judicial authorities would have to arrest him and his Secretary of Government, Alfredo de la Torre y Martínez, charging them with instigating the abduction, torture, and murder of José Ramón García. The judicial authorities would then have 72 hours to justify their presumption, and, if they succeeded in doing so, the accused would be formally jailed while they awaited their trial. This was truly too much to ask in a country where the authorities enjoy impunity, even in the case of murder. On Tuesday, January 28, following a considerable struggle and a march for democracy carried out by the people of Tabasco, Salinas de Gortari forced the Governor of that state to resign. This was the fifth Governor to resign since Salinas was inaugurated in 1988. Enforcement of the law in Morelos would have required a sixth resignation immediately after the fifth one and would have constituted a severe political blow to the Salinas regime. This is one of the major reasons why Salinas chose to protect the Governor of Morelos, while forcing the Governor of Tabasco to resign. In this new situation, both threats and danger for Rojas and his family intensified, leaving them no alternative but to escape from the country and seek exile. ____________________________________________________________
[1]. The Mexican electoral system allows for the direct election of the candidate with the highest number of votes, just as in Canada. However, it also provides for a degree of proportional representation, the mechanism by which Mario Rojas was designated to occupy a seat in the state legislature. [2]. Colonos are people in economic difficulty who organize collectively in order to create and inhabit new neighborhoods, usually along the outskirts of large cities.
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VIOLENCE AGAINST ELECTED OFFICIALS AND
