Ferández Menéndez Can Handle the Truth

Jorge Fernández Menéndez has an interesting column expressing dismay about the ambiguity of truth in Mexico, characterized by the tendency to favor outlandish tales instead of evidence in criminal investigations. As he puts it, "justice should be sustained in proof, not in words."

As an example, he offers the case of Victor Garay:

He's been accused of almost everything. Of turning information over to the Beltrán Leyvas, of letting them escape, of robbing money and jewels [from the house of a Colombian associate of the Beltrán Leyvas], of assaulting women. Maybe it's true. The problem lies in the fact that they haven't found any hard proof that supports these accusations made by protected witnesses and ex-police officials, in exchange for a reduction in their sentences. Let's go to the questions: What is the accusation that Garay let Arturo Beltrán Leyva escape based on? It could be true, but what we remember from those events in Cuernavaca es that there was a harsh confrontation with the group that protected Beltrán Leyva, that he escaped and that same night Edgar Millán, the chief of the PFP, was murdered, apparently on the orders of the Sonora cartel. Outside of the testimony of a captured agent seeking to reduce his penalty, is there any hard information about the case? As far as we know, until now none exists.

[Break]

Let's suppose that Víctor Garay in effect let the Beltrán Leyva's escape and he worked for them. Then why would he have acted with so much cruelty against their principal supplier of cocaine, including, as has been published, assaulting his girlfriend. That doesn't seem coherent: you protect or you attack a cartel. You can't do both at the same time, no one would live to tell about it.

It's like nothing is ever really known, even when it is a verifiable fact. I wrote about this tendency last year, and there were a lot of examples of it in the aftermath of the Mouriño plane crash in November. I think that it is mostly a lingering legacy of the PRI era, when decisions affecting the whole country were made behind closed doors. The development of a truly free press, the increased openness of the political system, and the recent establishment of oral, public trials should all help to elevate an objective concept of truth, but it's taking a long time.