Mexico: Anger Across the Border

Few things infuriate Mexican officials more than U.S. accusations that government bigwigs are involved in drug trafficking. Last week the Mexicans were angrily denying a report in the San Diego Union charging that Defense Minister General Juan Arevalo Gardoqui was one of 45 law-enforcement and political figures linked to narcotics. President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado took the allegation so seriously that an official was dispatched to Washington to inquire whether the charges reflected U.S. thinking.

The suggestion of high-level Mexican involvement apparently surfaced during the investigation of the February 1985 torture-murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Agent Enrique Camarena Salazar. Last week a Mexican law-enforcement official, Mario Martinez- Herrera, was indicted by a San Diego grand jury looking into the Camarena case. A suspected eyewitness to the murder, Martinez was also, according to the Union, carrying papers detailing a "network of payoffs" that allegedly implicated the Mexican officials. Martinez's lawyer dismissed the report as speculation.