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MEXICO
End of murder investigation
No consensus on who murdered Cardinal Posadas Ocampo
On July 27, the Mexico attorney general’s office officially ended its investigation into the murder of the cardinal-archbishop of Guadalajara in 1993, although it said the case remains open.
Attorney General Jorge Madrazo presented the final report on the murder of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo which took place at the Guadalajara airport in a hail of automatic weapons fire. While official inquiries focused on the theory that the cardinal was caught in the crossfire between rival drug cartels, many observers blamed drug traffickers or political power groups upset with the cardinal’s opposition to their stances.
Madrazo said a special Interinstitutional Commission of the government, the Church, and the western state of Jalisco, set up two years ago to review inconclusive investigations, had ended up with the same two theories that had long topped the list of possibilities. While the attorney general leaned toward the “innocent bystander” theory, the Jalisco government preferred the theory that Cardinal Posadas was murdered by unknown assassins.
Fernando Guzman, the secretary of the Jalisco state government, said the Attorney General’s office (PGR) was flawed in its conclusions, arguing that much of the testimony the PGR used to support its theory of mistaken identity was forced out of witnesses and that other evidence was fake. He said witnesses said the cardinal had fallen out with then-president Carlos Salinas and that “mafia” elements of the Salinas’ PRI party were allegedly behind the plot. Salinas’ brother, Raul, was later arrested and charged with being in league with drug lords.
Even the Church leaders on the commission disagreed among themselves as to the cause. Bishop Luis Reynoso Cervantes of Cuernavaca, said the cardinal probably was killed by accident in a shootout between two drug gangs and asked why anybody would stage such an elaborate, public, and complicated shooting just to kill the cardinal. Cardinal Posadas’ successor, Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez, said evidence is clear he was purposely slain.
The cardinal said, “It was not a shooting between gangs. A third unidentified party, hiding behind a van, shot the cardinal first, then his driver, and then engaged in ten or fifteen minutes of wild shooting to create confusion. Therefore it was pre-meditated. Who ordered the murder?”
Debate over abortion bans
One state tries a stronger ban while others loosen laws
The legislature of Mexico’s northern state of Guanajuato voted in early August to ban abortions in cases of rape, but the governor later vetoed it, and neighboring state and local governments reacted by loosening their own bans. The Guanajuato initiative was the first major vote on the issue in the legislature following the victory of the National Action Party (PAN) to which president-elect Vicente Fox also belongs.
Fox, who takes office December 1 as the first president in 71 years not from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), has said he opposed abortion but did not favor changing the laws.
Critics of the ban claimed the vote shows PAN will be influenced by the Catholic Church, playing on fears that the Church, which has been repressed and persecuted in Mexico for more than 70 years, will gain new power to force Church teachings on the country under PAN-controlled legislatures.
In most of the country’s 31 states, abortion is illegal except in cases of rape or when the life of the mother is in danger. PAN recently came under fire in another state when a 14-year-old rape victim was persuaded out of an abortion by her priest, doctors, and state officials belonging to PAN.
The legislature of Morelos state continued the controversy at the end of August by loosening restrictions on abortion, going even further than a similar law recently passed in Mexico City.
The law, approved by the majority parties in the legislature, the PRI and the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), would allow abortion in cases of rape, birth defects, danger to the life of the mother, when the mother has had an accident, or when she has received unauthorized artificial insemination.
No privilege for Church
Bishops won’t ask Fox for special consideration
Mexico’s bishops have said they have no intention of asking for special privileges after President-elect Vicente Fox takes office in December, after a meeting with Fox.
Archbishop Luis Morales Reyes of San Luis Potosi, president of the Mexican bishops’ conference, said Church leaders urged Fox to respect human dignity and the separation of church and state during his administration. “The Catholic Church wants only to be granted its rights to liberty, but we do not expect concessions or privileged treatment,” the archbishop said.
He said that Fox, too, called for cooperation and reconciliation “so that a unified country might deal with the challenges it faces.”
The victory by Fox’s PAN party in the June election signaled the end of seven decades of rule by the PRI party, which had passed laws restricting the Church. PAN was seen as friendlier to the Church and descends from the pro-Catholic fighters in the Cristero Wars of the 1920s.
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