Imprisoned Reformer

Monica Serrano’s Aug. 4 commentary on the challenges confronting the Mexican army effectively outlines why reform of the military is vital as Mexico proceeds with its peaceful democratic revolution. That daunting resistance to such reforms remains is clearly illustrated by the case of Brig. Gen. Jose Francisco Gallardo Rodriguez.

Gallardo has been in a military prison in Mexico City since November 1993, apparently for advocating just the kind of civilian oversight and accountability Serrano identifies as necessary. A month before he was detained, Gallardo had published an excerpt of his master’s thesis, in which he argues for the creation of an independent human rights ombudsman to oversee the armed forces. Since then he has faced a Kafkaesque series of legal proceedings which the OAS’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has concluded amount to a “campaign of persecution, defamation and harassment against” Gallardo.

The Inter-American Commission reviewed Gallardo’s case last year. It issued its ruling first in confidential communications with the Mexican government and then, frustrated when the government did not comply with the commission’s recommendations that Gallardo be released immediately and receive reparations for his imprisonment, in documents made public earlier this year.

Last month, after Proceso published documents connecting nearly three dozen senior officers to drug trafficking, Gallardo renewed his call for military reforms in a phone interview with La Jornada. The army’s response, according to the general’s family and Mexican nongovernmental human rights organizations, was to cut phone lines to the prison and threaten to transfer the general outside the capital.

If this is how the military establishment reacts when one of its own speaks up, what role is it likely to play in Mexico’s great drive toward a true democracy?

LARRY SIEMS, Director

Freedom to Write Program

PEN Center USA West, L.A.