Last Updated: August 18, 2000
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A note from the president
Fruitful trip to Mexico shows value of ASNE
By Richard A. Oppel
GUADALAJARA, Mexico
On Dec. 4, 1998, Philip True came to the tragic end of a long trek through
the mountains where he'd been searching for an understanding of the culture
and lives of the remote Huichol Indians - and maybe for a good story.
The 50-year-old correspondent for the San Antonio Express-News lay dead
on a bed of loose limestone and shale in a mountain canyon, the back of
his head smashed by a fall against the rocks, his neck bruised - garroted
by his own kerchief.
In the next few days, vultures fed on his corpse.
But True was not an ordinary tourist who had wandered off the beaten
path. The little radio stations serving the indigenous people of the mountains
crackled with alerts to look out for the tall white man.
One night, True's killers returned to the scene of the crime. They forced
True's bloated body into his sleeping bag and dragged it off into the dark,
unaware that soft, white down was spilling from a tear in the bag.
An extensive search effort assisted by the Mexican army focused on an
area around the Huichol village of Colotlán. Aboard one search helicopter
was a party led by Robert Rivard, executive editor of the Express-News.
On Dec. 16, Rivard's party picked up the downy trail and followed it to
a suspicious hump on a sandy river bank.
It is a chapter of this story that Rivard himself does not tell, but
there along the river, Rivard and a friend of True's clawed at the sand.
Eventually their fingers raked the remains of Philip True.
Rivard has made four trips to Mexico in an elusive search for justice,
a journey marked by reports of arrests, contradictory autopsies, confessions,
denials, promises, unanswered phone calls and a crash course in Mexico's
justice system.
Arrested early were Juan Chivárra de la Cruz, a troublemaker
cast out from Huichol society, and his younger brother-in-law, Miguel Hernandez
de la Cruz. True's camera and binoculars were found in their homes. Both
now dwell Colotlán's jail.
President Ernesto Zedillo promised justice a year ago. But the following
months saw a turnover of attorneys general in Guadalajara, the state capital.
In Latin America, 223 journalists have been killed since 1988. They
include state-sponsored executions in Colombia, the hemisphere's deadliest
nation for journalists. But Mexico is high in the next tier of nations
considered dangerous for the press.
On May 30, four ASNE members came here to press for action. They included
Tony Pedersen, executive editor of the Houston Chronicle, and also president
of the 1,300-member Inter American Press Association, Marcia McQuern, editor
and publisher of The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., Rivard and
me.
We met with Gerardo Octavio Solis Gomez, installed as Jalisco's attorney
general five days before. He had brought in the Colotlán prosecutor,
Leon Beltron.
"The word has come down from the governor," he assured us. "The case
will go to trial in three to five weeks. You should be reasonably assured,
based on the evidence, that (the suspects) will be sentenced for homicide
and aggravated battery."
A verdict would be rendered by August, he promised. The suspects could
be sentenced to 15 to 30 years.
It is unsettling to an American editor to have one's objective - justice
- quickly converge with a legal official's promise that a conviction will
occur. But then again Solis would not be the first prosecutor to promise
a guilty conviction. A judge will have his say.
Mexico's judiciary differs from our own. Here, charges are brought,
a file is opened, evidence is entered and ultimately studied by a judge,
who then makes a determination and holds a public trial as a brief formality.
There is no jury.
There are lessons in this. The persistence of one man, Rivard in this
case, often prevails. Secondly, we should not underestimate the strength
of the values of the U.S. press in influencing other nations - values that
include fighting for the protection of journalists.
Thirdly, ASNE's presence is important. No better example was our trip
to Mexico.
The Guadalajara episode was an excursion by participants during a trip
of the International Committee, this year headed by Rick Rodriguez of The
Sacramento (Calif.) Bee. More than a dozen editors went on the June 1-2
visit to Mexico City.
We met with President Ernesto Zedillo; the two major candidates in the
July 2 presidential election, Francisco Labastida Ochoa and Vicente Fox;
two Cabinet secretaries, Rosario Green of Foreign Affairs and Jose Gurria
of Finance; and Mayor Rosario Robles of Mexico City.
We spoke for a murdered journalist, to the prosecutors and to the most
powerful political figures in Mexico. We demonstrated our interest in free
and fair elections in Mexico.
Not bad for a week's work.
If you've never gone on an International Committee trip, you've missed
an opportunity to broaden your knowledge as an editor, to be a leader,
and by example to help extend our precious freedoms to other lands.
Oppel, ASNE president, is editor of the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman.
