The Price of Freedom

The lushly flowered city of Guadalajara has long been considered a prize post by American diplomats: the climate seems like eternal spring, the ambience is relaxed and the U.S. consul general's home is a monument to comfortable living. From now on, though, Foreign Service officers may be a bit apprehensive about the assignment. Two weeks ago, while returning home from a local police exhibition on law enforcement, U.S. Consul General Terrance Leonhardy (a 21-year career man) was kidnaped by four armed men. An hour after he was spirited away, ransom notes turned up, demanding on behalf of the "Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People" that 30 political prisoners be released from prisons across the country and flown to Cuba. Warned the terrorists: "Any delay in fulfilling these demands will result in the execution of the bourgeois who is in our hands."

The revolutionaries had other demands as well. They wanted their Marxist-lining manifesto published on the front pages of leading dailies throughout Mexico. They specified a time for Cuba's representative in Mexico to appear on national television and report the safe arrival in Havana of the 30 companeros. They also warned that there was to be no army or police mobilization in the Guadalajara area while negotiations were going on.

For both the U.S. and Mexican governments, the dilemma was cruel. To give in to the terrorists' demands cut against the grain of President Nixon's no-dealing-with-terrorists policy, enunciated in 1971 in connection with the kidnaping of four U.S. airmen by leftist terrorists in Turkey. To Mexican authorities, the release of 30 imprisoned terrorists to Cuba meant, in all likelihood, that the revolutionaries would soon be back in action in the country.

Although Washington stood firm, Mexican President Luis Echeverria decided to bow to the demands. "Mexico will accede," he said, "because the essential thing is to protect the U.S. consul general's life." (Only six months before, five Mexican guerrillas were released from prison after their comrades hijacked a domestic Mexicana airline flight and demanded that all be allowed to fly to Cuba.) Besides, as a Mexican official put it, "allowing the terrorists to kill the consul general would have been tragic for U.S.-Mexican relations. It would have cost Mexico dearly in American investment and in our $1 billion-a-year U.S. tourist trade."

Demand. The deal was made: the 30 prisoners flown to Havana, the proclamation duly printed, the police leashed. Cuba's charge d'affaires appeared, as specified, on television to report that the freed rebels had safely arrived in Havana. But then Leonhardy's captors made an additional demand for his freedom: $80,000 in ransom money. A day later, the ransom was paid; nine hours afterward, Leonhardy was found, exhausted and unshaven, in a Guadalajara street. He called his 76-hour captivity a "terrible ordeal. I prayed a lot. I didn't know when they might put a bullet through my head."

Leonhardy was quick to praise both President Echeverria and Jalisco State Governor Alberto Orozco Romero "without whose help," he said, "I would not be here today." Ironically, Leonhardy may have to foot all or part of the bill for his own freedom. Since the State Department refused unrelentingly to provide funds for his release in any form, Governor Orozco arranged a bank loan for the ransom money which, he says, the consul general is responsible for paying back.

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