His Brother's Keeper

By Kevin Fedarko

In Mexico, public officials who quit their jobs but value their futures tend to keep the reasons for leaving to themselves. Not Mario Ruiz Massieu. He held a press conference, for which he took out newspaper advertisements offering public invitations. He arrived surrounded by a cordon of rifle-toting federal police and bodyguards. He distributed 3,000 copies, printed in color, of his resignation speech. And after announcing his departure both from his job as Mexico's assistant attorney general and from the political party to which he has belonged for 23 years, Ruiz Massieu slammed the door behind him with enough fury to rattle the windows in Mexico's house of state.

Ruiz Massieu informed a packed crowd at the Attorney General's headquarters in Mexico City that he had left three sealed boxes in the office of the Attorney General. The boxes, he said, contained documents proving his boss and two prominent officials of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or P.R.I., had illegally attempted to block his investigation into the assassination of a leading politician. For a Mexican prosecutor to make a televised appearance is exceptional; to do so in order to call members of the P.R.I. "demons" and accuse them of unsubstantiated crimes is unprecedented. Yet the case that provoked Ruiz Massieu is deeply personal: the crime he has been investigating is the murder of his brother. "One bullet killed two Ruiz Massieus," he declared. "One lost a life, the other the faith that justice can be served in a P.R.I. government."

Before he was gunned down by an illiterate ranch hand on Sept. 28, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu was slated to play a major role as reformer in Mexico's next government. As secretary-general of the P.R.I., a top adviser to Mexico's incoming President and the appointed head of the government's overwhelming majority in the national legislature, he had the political leverage to change the party, which has governed Mexico for the past 65 years. His brother contends the murder probe was thwarted when the evidence began to point toward those who had the most to lose from the reforms: the hard-line "dinosaurs" within the P.R.I.

The sources of this alleged obstruction, Ruiz Massieu announced, were the P.R.I.'s president, Ignacio Pichardo Pagaza, and current secretary-general, Maria de los Angeles Moreno, as well as his own boss, Attorney General Humberto Benitez Trevino. Ruiz Massieu refused to give specifics of the cover- up, saying only that his superiors "were more concerned with trying to defend the criminals than with resolving the issue." He promised the documents would prove his charges.

Six hours after the ex-Assistant Attorney General's press conference, Pichardo and Moreno were holding one of their own to defend themselves. Two days later Pichardo said he was formally suing Ruiz Massieu for defamation and slander. Although the three emphatically declared their innocence, the accusations against them seem destined to widen a web of suspicion that expands with each passing month. By last week, Ruiz Massieu's office had charged 15 people in the planning, execution and cover-up of his brother's death. Several are prominent officials, including a P.R.I. congressman who allegedly masterminded the killing and has since disappeared.

As the list grows, so too does the question of culpability at the highest levels of government. Ruiz Massieu's most incendiary contention is that the killing was ordered by an influential group within the P.R.I., and that this group is linked to one of Mexico's leading drug cartels. But he did not name names and failed to produce the evidence to back up his allegations. Even many of those who applauded Ruiz Massieu's public frankness faulted him for providing more show than substance.

Still, most Mexicans found his claims plausible. Virtually everyone accused of involvement so far has family, business or political ties to the northern state of Tamaulipas, which is the base for a ring of drug traffickers known as the Gulf Cartel. Indeed, it was Ruiz Massieu himself who headed the government's antidrug efforts and led a crackdown against the cartel, publicly targeting its elusive chief, Juan Gracia Abrego. Now Abrego stands accused of having put up the $330,000 allegedly paid for the assassination.

P.R.I. officials were outraged last week not so much by Ruiz Massieu's message as by the grandstand manner in which he delivered it. His move has served to push the issue into the lap of the incoming President, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, who will be inaugurated this week. Although a political cartoon last week depicted Zedillo nervously kicking away a ticking time bomb, it is almost certain that he will have to respond to the accusations against leaders of his party, many of whom were once expected to get top jobs when he took office. Like it or not, Mexico's new President may be forced to clean house even before he moves in.

With reporting by Laura Lopez/Mexico City