What next in Mexico?

National Review, June 29, 1984 by George Byram Lake

It was that eminence, many believe, that led to his fall. The belief was general at the time that he had been chosen to take the rap for someone higher up. Demonstrators at a hearing to strip him of his senatorial immunity carried placards reading: "?Y JoLoPo, cuando?" (and Lopez Portillo, when?). Published reports contend that Diaz Serrano has documents to prove that he bought the ships on direct orders from Alicia Lopez Portillo, sister and private secretary of the president.

The second pal of Lopez Portillo's to be charged is Arturo Durazo Moreno, former chief of police of Mexico City and now a fugitive. Durazo had enjoyed the protection of Lopez Portillo to an unusual degree, and the enormous sums of money he acquired as chief of police are believed to have come from standard police graft carried out on a larger scale and with greater daring than is customary. Official charges filed so far accuse him only of evasion of millions of pesos in taxes, illegal possession of arms, and smuggling, but indications abound that Durazo's exploits resembled those of Al Capone in more ways than one.

Hubris is what bagged Durazo. An underprivileged youth, he chanced to be the schoolmate of two future presidents of Mexico: Luis Echeverria and Jose Lopez Portillo. He was a lowly cop when the latter made him his bodyguard, and subsequently chief of Mexico City's thirty thousand police. In the latter job Durazo suddenly began to spend money in great chunks. He ordered the construction of two enormous country estates, one in the Ajusco mountains between Mexico City and Cuernavaca, and the other at Zihuatanejo on the Pacific coast north of Acapulco. Each of them cost billions of pesos.

Tongues, naturally, began to wag. Here was "inexplicable enrichment" to match that of the president himself, who even then was building his own vast four-mansion compound on the Colina del Perro (Dog Hill) on the outskirts of Mexico City. Rumor says that that site was a gift from Durazo to his friend.

Home Sweet Home

DURAZO'S Ajusco spread consists of a six-bedroom mansion with elaborate gardens, a guest house with enclosed swimming pool, sauna, and gymnasium, a discotheque said to be modeled on Studio 54 in New York City, a Swiss chalet, a greenhouse, a stable housing 19 Thoroughbreds, a dog-racing track built around an artificial lake, a helicopter landing pad, an elaborate shooting stand, a collection of antique cars in a separate structure, servants' quarters, and countless other facilities including two guard houses, all surrounded by a stone fence two yards high topped by three strands of barbed wire. The police chief, who until recently lived in a miserable apartment and drew a salary of $65 a week, seeks only the best.

The federal government is now, very slowly indeed, investigating charges that most workers on the project were on the police-department payroll. It has been reported that an examination of the house disclosed the furniture and fittings to be contraband. Also that a search there turned up an imposing collection of illicit firearms. Disgruntled neighbors complain that they were intimidated into selling land cheaply to Durazo, and that police helicopters delivered men and materials to the site in daily relays.