THE
WITCH-HUNT CONTINUES IN MEXICO
By Ricardo Ochoa
Mexico City
The most cynical and outrageous repressive action of the many that have taken place in Mexico in the past two years under the Diaz Ordaz government occurred at the end of 1966 in Poza Rica, the oil city in the state of Veracruz. It involved two doctors, Fausto Davila Solis and Tito Armando Rodriguez Lara and a lawyer Genaro Jongitud. The three were "accused" of belonging to the "Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Trotskista)" [Revolutionary Workers Party (Trotskyist)], the followers in Mexico of J. Posadas. Two students were also arrested.
. All of them were seized without a warrant and taken to the Federal District, more than 400 kilometers away.
At first both local and federal authorities denied knowing the whereabouts of the victims, a maneuver that was thought to indicate they had been marked for execution. However; the reaction was such in Poza Rica itself, that the municipal authorities felt obliged to open the jails for inspection so that the public could see that they were not being held there under suspicion of having sabotaged the city's oil installations.
‘On the same day that the federal authorities admitted holding the victims, the two students were released. On December 10, the two doctors and the lawyer were formally charged with "conspiracy and criminal association." The "criminal" association, of course, referred to their real or alleged membership in the POR.
:. fit first the authorities sought to charge them with "sabotaging" the oil installations.at Poza Rica (where approximately forty percent of Mexico's oil is.produced and refined). But the charge had to be dropped because of its obvious absurdity. The truth is, as the defendants insisted at the police hearings, the management at these installations is guilty of criminal irresponsibility; and you don't need.to live in Poza Rica very long to become aware of the frequent explosions due to carelessness in running the plant. equipment.
In addition the charge was absurd on the face of it inasmuch as the POR advocates the nationalization of all industries and it would run against its principles to damage an industry that has already been nationalized and that only needs a more responsible administration. .
The Poza Rica kidnapping was, in reality, a bald political maneuver the principal objective of which was, on the one hand, to intimidate the working class and make more difficult the defense of the many political prisoners now behind bars; and, on the other hand, to introduce the methods of an inquisition in the vain hope of masking the inability of the present regime to halt the mounting opposition throughout the country.
These two aims stand out clearly if the background is known. In Mexico the words "Poza Rica" bring to mind a rich city controlled by gangsters who run the oil workers union, city hall, business, etc., and who are building bank accounts in various ways -embezzlement, gouging the peasants in the surrounding area, nicking the paychecks of thousands of workers in return:for permission from the trade-union bureaucracy to work at Petréleos Mexicanos [PEMEX], operating the vice centers that exploit both men and women. . s ; To
Eighty percent of Poza Rica's economic life, it is estimated, depends on the refinery. The oil workers have the reputation of being well paid, although what they really have is just the reputation. For many years the workers have sought to convert their union into something capable of advancing their aspirations for an improved standard of living, but the local authorities, controlled by the corrupt union bureaucrats, have always fiercely defended their gangster patrons.
The city officials, who come into office every three years, are just as unpopular as the union heads. This became crystal clear in 1958 during the municipal elections. The official candidate was opposed by an independent candidate who had gained immense popularity as a doctor who took care of endless files of patients and who not only did this but gave them the necessary medicine, all at ridiculously low fees and in many instances without any fee at all. This was a doctor who, in his student days, became a Trotskyist. Upon graduating he devoted himself entirely to his profession but without giving up his revolutionary views in the least.
This doctor entered the 1958 elections due more to the popular appeals than to any personal desire. His name was Fausto DAvila Solis.
Running against such venal opponents, he received an overwhelming majority of votes. But in accordance with Mexico's “directed democracy," the election board declared the official candidate to be the winner.
The dissatisfaction of the voters burst out in demonstrations. These were met with the customary "persuasive" methods of the authorities at all levels, city, state and federal. The police, the army, tanks and jet planes were used to fill the jails and mortuaries. The independent candidate was kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned. His wife and relatives were persecuted along with his partisans and he was finally driven from the area.
Some moths later, the federal and state authorities discovered that the "strongman" of Poza Rica, Jaime J. Merino, general superintendent of PEMEX in the city, who had fought ferociously against the independent candidate was guilty of fraud. In addition to other crimes, he had abstracted 20,000, 000 pesos [one peso = US$. 08]. from PEMEX.
With this change in the situation, Dr. Davila was able to return ‘to Poza Rica and resume his practice.
For some years the wave of repression was followed ‘by political apathy in the city. This lasted until the union gangsters split into two groups. Thereupon, a little more than two years ago, an interbureaucratic conflict broke out over control of the oil workers union. The two groups had to appeal to the ranks, and in 80° > doing began to voice some of their. demands. ’
A new modus vivendi. was reached and the two cliques closed ranks, ‘forgetting their promises and picking up where they had left off in their racketeer practices. One thing had changed, however. The workers had again become preoccupied with their. problems, a change that paralleled a rise in discontent among the ‘peasants in the region.
‘Up to now, no mass movement has developed in Poza Rica but it is clear to even the most superficial observers that a tense political climate exists in the city. Hence the interest among the Mexican authorities in taking preventive measures. No one could think up anything better than to remind the population of the bloody events of 1958. The independent candidate of that year, Dr. Fausto Davila Solis had to. be removed from the scene. The people had to be "warned" so that it would not occur to them to again seek an independent candidate. Thus Dr. D&vila was treated to a repetition of what had been done to him in 1958.
' Upon illegally seizing him and taking him to Mexico City, the police of the socalled Direccién Federal de Seguridad EDFS] threatened to execute him, utilizing the "law of flight." [The prisoner is shot and it is announced that he was killed while trying to flee.]
The doctor had learned what the police were up to and had left a letter saying that if anything happened to him the police were guilty and that he had no intention of committing "suicide.
Later, in Mexico City, the head of the DFS, indicating the interest of the head of Petréleos Mexicanos (whose political importance: in the government is equal to that of a secretary of state) “suggested" to the doctér"that he sign a statement that had been drawn up for him. When this "suggestion" was rejected, the threat was made that the-doctor's wife would be arrested and that she would sign charges suggested by such an important government functionary “in order to gain’ her freedom."
Another of the victims is the lawyer Genaro Jongitud, who has been serving as attorney for previous political prisoners of the Posadista group and Adolfo Gilly.
Since Genaro Jongitud took up the defense of these political prisoners, he has been the target of constant threats. He was even held in jail for two months in Poza Rica when he talked with some foreign journalists about the status of the case involving his defendants.
Practices of this kind reflect the policy of the Mexican government in relation to political prisoners. On the one hand the government seeks to obstruct their defense; on the other hand it tries to create an atmosphere that will assure their being sen~ tenced to heavy penalties, including execution.
There are many examples of this. For instance Demetrio Vallejo, the railway union
leader, has been imprisoned for seven years. On various occasions they have tried to kill him, utilizing criminal elements in the prison itself. Such provocations ended once with a brutal attack that put him in the hospital.
Those who have been imprisoned since then have not been treated any better. The group of political prisoners to which Victor Rico Gal4én belongs have been submitted to similar provocations. Recently a group of criminal "ex-police" were put in their dormitory with the deliberate aim of provoking them. The prisoners have reported that the government, not content with holding them in jail, prevents their families from trying to gain aid. Police agents follow their wives and relatives as they seek help. The prisoners are denied books to translate, blocking them from intellectual work, all that is open to then.
Only one of*the Poza Rica defendants is politically active. This is Dr. Tito Armando Dominguez, who states that he joined the POR eight months ago and that neither Dr. Davila nor the attorney Jongitud belong to the party.
The most ominous aspect of the current case is its inquisitional character and the fact that from all the evidence it may constitute the first step in a new stage of political repression in the country. The police moves in Poza Rica were prepared in systematic fashion by the bourgeois press and -- even more revealingly -~- by publications which had long covered up their mercenary nature with a screen of liberalism.
The magazine Siempre! and the daily El Dia joined the McCarthyite big press, scoring the "mutinous actions" of the "lunatic" left. In general the targets of these attacks have been "Trotskyists," the label pinned on all those who have been victimized by the government.
The Stalinist background of some of those who write for or edit these publications makes them especially fit instruments of the bourgeoisie in this reactionary game. In Siempre!, Lombardo Toledano has become the most expert fingerman in behalf of the bourgeoisie. Few of his weekly articles fail to attack the left, from the Mexican Communist party to the Trotskyists. He accuses the Communist party of having "united with the Trotskyists," formerly its "traditional enemies." His cheap confusionist demagogy serves to keep up the "revolutionary" pretenses of the government, answering any "extremist" who "dares to criticize" the arrests made by the government in violation of the constitution. He has even reached the strange conclusion that the arrests are legal because they are "blows against imperialism."
In the January 11 Siempre!, for instance, he writes: "Pressure... Lagainst « the
government] is also exercised through a series of small groups of provocateurs, who, claiming to belong to the left, in practice coincide with the maneuvers of American imperialism from which they receive sustenance. Adventurers of all kinds -- Trotskyists, anarchists, pro~Chinese, etc. -~ who succeed in taking in a few ignorant, desperate or romantic people, have raised the slogan of armed struggle against the government of the Republic." (Emphasis added. )
At the "New Year's banquet" of what: remains of his Partido Popular Socialista, he offered the following inspiring words, worthy of any anti-Communist: "The PPS is ready to enter into a dialogue with any of the parties and groups except the lunatics because the foreign olice have no right to intervene in the domestic affairs of Mexico." (El Dia, January 8.
’ The "lunatics," naturally, are "“Trotskyists, anarchists, pro-Chinese, etc." They and the "foreign" police are one and the same thing. Ergo, the Mexican state has the right to defend itself against foreign intervention, arresting its agents.
For its part, El Dia, which is edited by the former deputy Enrique Ramirez y Ramirez, has published innumerable attacks against the "lunatics," among them a series of articles ironically entitled, "Every revolution that respects itself, defends itself." The irony comes from the fact that what is being "defended" at the moment is the counterrevolutionary status quo.
The fact that these two mercenary writers are now so’ active in applauding the repressive actions, is a certain sign that they are devoting themselves as in former days to preparing for the most reactionary moves. These same two figures, today in the service of the Mexican bourgeoisie, were formerly willing instruments of Stalin and the GPU in preparing the assassination of Leon Trotsky. It was Trotsky himself who cited Enrique Ramirez y Ramirez and Lombardo Toledano as spokesmen of the propaganda that the May 24 machine-gun assault on Trotsky's home had been organized by Trotsky himself. This propaganda, which was advanced in Toledano's "theoretical" magazine Futuro, aimed at diverting the police in uncovering the criminals, who happened to be Lontibardo's friends
and comrades working for the GPU and who did not succeed in their first attempt to assassinate the old Bolshevik.
According to the resolution of the Federal Public Ministry, the full text of which was:published in the December 12 issue of El Dia, the "crimes" committed by the defendants consist of being partisans of Marxism-Leninism-Trotskyism, of advancing their ideas, of meeting in groups to study and apply it to the conditions of the country in order to gain more influence among the populace. Under the witch-hunt, such acts are considered to be "criminal."
The only innovation introduced by the new government is to list political "crimes" under the Penal Code instead of under the category of "Social dissolution," which was aimed at political opponents, particularly revolutionists. Perhaps the reason for this is that the Lépez Mateos regime became widely discredited for utilizing the formula "social dissolution" as a charge against the leaders of the railway workers in 1959. Since then, the category of “social dissolution" has been subjected to sharp criticism.
The strictly political nature of the charges lodged against the Poza Rica defendants can be judged from the following paragraph of the indictment:
"Those detained-are in agreement that the ideology they profess requires a change in the public power by any means possible, including violence, and it is easy to see that in no case do they refer to an electoral process in the terms specified in our Constitution. Violence is to act on persons and on things in such a way as to cause them injury or damage. In other words, to employ violence is to go against the prohibitions laid down by the Penal Code, depriving persons of their lives, affecting their health or damaging their inheritance. These deeds constitute the crimes of homicide, injury, damage to the property of others, etc., and upon being embraced in a group's program of action and its intention of following such conduct, it comes under the provisions of Article 164 of the Penal Code; that is, participating in an association organized for crime, since the proposition of applying violence in order to change public institutions involves in a necessary and inescapable way the commission of the indicated acts."
The reference to the electoral process is particularly out of place since one of those against. whom this charge is directed is Dr. Fausto D4vila.
The most scandalous feature of the charges, of course, is that the defendants are accused of intent to commit acts which the police themselves project in a revolution yet to come.
Revolutionary circles in Mexico were slow in reacting to this new blow. The government caught them by surprise. However the attack was of such nature as to underline the need for joining in a common front despite ideological differences. The enemy is obviously following the tactic of picking off the left, sector by sector, beginning with the most isolated and vulnerable groups.
The editors of Politica appear to have understood this. In No. 159 of this wellknown magazine, they say: “Politica is far-from undertaking an ideological defense of Trotskyism. But this is quite different from remaining silent in face of the increasing number of members of a party who have been made political prisoners solely because the party claims to be under the guidance of the Fourth International, this being distorted to mean sinister ‘international' Communist propositions. This could be applied to the Mexican Communist party or to any citizen who accepts the laws and principles of dialectical and historical materialism, forcing them first into the underground and then into prison, since no one is ignorant of the fact -~ at least those who have a modicum of literacy and culture -- that what is involved is laws of a universal character."
Meanwhile the repressive drive is continuing. On December 16, some days after the kidnapping of Fausto Davila and his friends, other: members of the POR were arrested -- Alfonso Lizarraga, the editor of Voz Obrera, two workers and a student attending the University of Mexico.
In this instance, the pattern was reversed. They were arrested in Mexico City and taken to Veracruz. They have been held incommunicado a much longer time than the previous ones. The dangers they face are much greater also due to the fact that they are less well known and the actual place they are being held has not yet been learned.
it is difficult to ascertain how many political prisoners there are at present in the jails of Mexico. The first group to be seized included the journalist Adolfo Gilly and a-number of members of the POR. The next blow was directed against members of "“Francisco I. Madero" group in Sinaloa. Later it was the turn.of the Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo headed by Victor Rico Gal&4n. Then came the students at the University
of Morelia who were arrested. A little later members of the Mexican Communist party were seized in Tampico. Finally, in December, came the latest incidents involving Dr. Davila in Poza Rica and Alfonso Lizarraga in Mexico City.
In 1965, during the first year of the Diaz Ordaz government, similar blows were struck in Guerrero, Yucatan and Chihuahua (in the latter instance, in September 1965, more than twenty peasants were killed after they took up arms).
Under the previous government there were some spectacular cases beginning with the leaders of the railway workers. Altogether Mexico has an impressive number of political prisoners. :