FOURTH INTERNATIONAL DEFENDS MEXICAN WITCH-HUNT VICTIMS
On the eve of the opening of the Latin American Solidarity Conference in Havana 13 persons (11 Mexican citizens and two foreign residents) were seized by secret police agents and subjected to a week of unspeakable brutality and torture.
Threatened with death they were forced to sign prepared "confessions" about a conspiracy to overthrow the Diaz Ordaz government. Finally brought to a preliminary court hearing they repudiated these "confessions" and gave statements and evidence on the torture used against then.
In the Mexican press accounts, the prisoners are identified as coming from various political tendencies including the pro-Maoist and Trotskyist.
Others are linked by the press to Cuban connections of a somewhat vague nature, and even a "Russian automobile" owned by one of the defendants is cited in the press so the reader may draw his own conclusions.
The sensational press coverage, the dramatic press conferences of the police and attorney general's office testify to a "plot" of a different order and a consequent grave threat to the 13 victims selected by the police.
Two of the defendants are described in the press as Trotskyist. One Ad4n Nieto Castillo is said to be a former member of the Mexican Communist party who "today wears the Trotskyist ribbons."
The other, Daniel Camejo Guanche, was referred to by the assistant attorney general as "a prominent Trotskyist" and again as "a Venezuelan, a Trotskyist, who promised aid, medicine and propaganda" for the conspiracy. Peking's contribution is said to have been $1,600 a month.
The principal evidence as displayed by the press and the police is described variously as 12, 17 or 20 tons of printed literature seized in a pro- Maoist bookshop together with photographs of Mao, Marx, Lenin and Stalin; and two 16-mnm. cinema films on Vietnam and Venezuela with English soundtracks taken from Camejo's apartment.
These films have been widely shown in the United States and Europe as well as the University of Mexico. They are similar to much that has appeared on television in those countries.
Also some of the defendants are
linked by the police to an incident ina
small town on Mexico's west coast. Seven
persons were said to have attempted un-
successfully to dynamite a troop trans-
port vehicle on the open highway.
The timing of this "police sensa-
tion," the brutal extraction of "confes-
sions," the tailored construction of the
case itself, the careful inclusion of men
purporting to adhere to all the various
tendencies on the far left and not least
of all the public posturing of the assis-
tant attorney general himself gives the
whole business a bad stench even at a
distance.
We can understand the eagerness of
the Mexican prosecutor's office and the
police to demonstrate their zeal to the
Johnson administration in this time of
trouble for the latter. But do they real-
ly expect to bamboozle Mexican and world
public opinion about the real nature of
their witch-hunting?
We call upon all workers organiza-
tions and to all concerned with civil
liberties to express their solidarity
with the victims in Mexico City and their
contempt for the reactionary organizers
of this McCarthyite frame-up. Cable pro-
tests to:
Lic. Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, President
de la Repiblica, Palacio Nacional, México
D.F., México; or Lic. Jesus Paron Vascon-
celos, Juez Segundo de Distrito en Mater-
ial Pena, Bucareli 22, México 1, D.F.,
México.
Names of prisoners (listed by the
assistant attorney general in the follow-
ing order):
Ad4n Nieto Castillo, José luis
Calva Téllez, Pablo Alvarado Barrera,
Hugo David Uriarte y Bonilla, Silvestre
Enrique Marenco Martinez, Rail Contreras
Alc&éntara, Miguel Angel Flores Bernal,
Eduardo Fuentes de la Fuente, César Cata-
14n Sanchez, Enrique Escudero Mastache,
Manuel Méndez Prado, Adridn Campos Dfaz,
Daniel Camejo Guanche. Date of prelimin-
ary hearing: July 21. Bail denied.
United Secretariat
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
Send copies of all protests to:
1,
Pierre Frank, 64 rue de Richelieu, Paris 2,
France.