CAMPA DENIED PAROLE
{The following statement issued by the Mexican Political Prisoners Defense Committee describes a new incident in the witch-hunt which has gripped Mexico for many months. It gives further illustration of the movement to the right of what has been known as one of the most progressive countries in Latin America.
{The Mexican Political Prisoners Defense Committee was formed in August 1967 by representatives of all the schools of the University of Mexico. Its address is Perspectiva Mundial (Para el Comité), Apartado Postal 27-509, Mexico 7, D.F., Mexico. ]
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VALENTIN CAMPA, one of the hundreds of political prisoners who fill the jails of Mexico City, appealed for the parole to which he is entitled because he has completed two-thirds of his sentence. His case serves to show to what lengths the Mexican government has gone in its policy of repression. Despite the fact that the constitution grants him the right to it, the competent authorities have denied him his parole. For a better understanding of the outrageousness of this refusal, a little background is necessary.
Valentin Campa is a veteran member of the Mexican Communist party, long affiliated with the railroad workers union. After the railway strike of 1959, he fell victim to the wave of repression sweeping the country. He was jailed in May 1960 and sentenced to eleven years and two months in prison, which means that he has already served almost eight. The responsible bureaucrats' answer to Campa's request for parole was dated February 9 and entitled Prior Agreement with the Secre-
tary of the Ministry of the Interior. It
was Signed by the Department of Public
Security chief in charge of the Federal
District penitentiary. Among the reasons
given for denying parole to Valentin
Campa were the following:
"The district judge who sentenced
him to the above-mentioned term and the
Department of Justice attorney assigned
for penal affairs to the Second Judicial
District of the Federal District have ex-
pressed no definitive opinion as to wheth-
er or not benefit of parole should be
granted or denied; they have left it to
the judgment of the Department of Public
Security to decide on the propriety or
impropriety of the parole appealed for
by the prisoner. The director of the
Federal District penitentiary has attest-
ed to the prisoner's good behavior. Re-
sults from the criminological-medical
study of the prisoner show that his think-
ing is rigidly cast according to an in-
transigent ideology insusceptible to
change...that because he is sixty-three
years old, although strong and in good
health and sound from a physical stand-
point, he exhibits a certain rigidity
and difficulty in remolding his aforesaid
way of thinking...we conclude that he has
not repented, nor has repentance been
proved, that imprisonment has not changed
his personality as far as the political
ideology he holds, which was the cause of
his criminally antisocial behavior." There-
fore, "Valentin Campa's request for bene-
fit of parole must be denied and is denied
herewith."
Never has the Mexican bourgeoisie's
repressive apparatus shown such cynicism.
There is no cover-up: It is ideas which
are being punished, the ideology of its
revolutionary opponents is punishable!
The repression is trying to force the political prisoners to become renegades, to betray their ideas, they are not only going to punish them for daring to oppose the "revolutionary government ,"* but are
make them renegades without self-respect.
There has been a furious scandal in the country over the possibility that the Summer Olympics [slated for Mexico] will be wrecked through the participation in these games of racist, fascist South Africa with its monstrous apartheid. This has led the Mexican bourgeoisie to unleash a campaign against Capetown-Pretoria. The Mexican bourgeoisie is afraid of losing the millions of pesos it invested in what seemed a perfectly safe and profitable proposition. The Mexican press is full of descriptions of the inhuman conditions of black people, etc. In addition, a campaign is underway against the "fascist" Avery Brundage, the president of the International Olynpics Committee, who was responsible for South Africa's readmission to the Olympic games.
But what can be said of the method used by the Mexican government for justifying its denial of parole to Valentin Campa? That it is the favored method of open fascists like the “gorilla" butchers of Indonesia, Greece, Brazil, Argentina, and others of the same ilk around this beleaguered earth which is becoming a worldwide prison. Under the protection of the U.S. government's genocidal aggression in Vietnam, most of the world's governments think that they are justified in savagely repressing the people. Can it be that what Hitler failed to achieve can be carried through under the atomic shadow of the Pentagon?
In Mexico, the case of Valentin Campa is an ominous portent of what awaits the hundreds of political prisoners in the Federal District and the other hundreds throughout the republic. It is also a dangerous precedent which may be used against those potential political prisoners in this country, the men and
* The Mexican government represents itself as the heir of the great Mexican revolution of 1911-17. The ruling party is called the Revolutionary Institutional party. -- W.O.
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