New Questions on Lynching

The Mexican government continues to say the three PFP agents were carrying out an undercover investigation of drug dealing in the village. The left-leaning daily La Jornada had reported that the agents worked with PFP intelligence, not the anti-narcotics unit, and were actually looking for members of a small rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People (FARP), and a professor reportedly linked to Alejandro, Antonio and Héctor Cerezo Contreras, three brothers jailed for alleged participation in a bombing of bank branches in August 2001. In a letter circulated on November 28, a fourth brother, Francisco Cerezo Contreras, revealed that his family had lived in San Juan Ixtayopan two decades earlier, and that his father-Francisco Cerezo Quiroz, a college professor now in hiding and reportedly a leader of the rebel Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR)-was probably the professor the undercover agents were looking for. (Comité Cerezo 11/28/04)

On December 2 the Mexico City daily El Universal reported on the discovery of a notebook the surviving agent, Edgar Moreno Nolasco, had kept from August 5 to November 6. He appeared to have spent much of his time monitoring demonstrations by environmentalists and opponents of privatization and changes to the labor code. He monitored a protest against the construction of a Wal-Mart near the famous ruins at Teotihuacán, kept track of the movements of opposition politicians, and served briefly as a bodyguard for President Vicente Fox Quesada’s cousin, the nun Marchía del Carmen Fuentes Quesada. There is no mention either of drug dealing or of rebel operations. (EU 12/2/04) WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS, 12/3/04.