And nobody knew they were there

They freed the Oaxaca 3 while we were away on a trip. By the time we got back home, Mary Ellen Sanger and John Barbato had left the country, and Joseph Simpson was out of the hospital, his cancer in temporary remission.

To recap the situation for those of you who did not read my Letter in last month’s Pride, a piece of land in the nearby countryside became the object of a property dispute. On one side was a 93-year-old, enfeebled expatriate, Russell Ames, and on the other a greedy cabinet minister in the government of Mexican president Vicente Fox. Three innocent U.S. citizens who happened to be staying on the Ames property at the time were arrested and held prisoner on a trumped-up charge of conspiring to steal the land of another—a felony that carries a jail term of from three to 14 years in prison. Hostages meant to influence Russell to give up his fight and leave his property immediately, in spite of his advanced years and ill health, the three were railroaded with the cooperation of a state judge.

Ripping gringos off is usually a slam-dunk down here. Most of our countrypersons are not trusted by their neighbors (who often regard even people from the next village as foreigners). They have accidentally offended folks through lack of understanding of local cultural values. They are, let’s face it, a lot richer than those among whom they live. They have, in their ignorance, made actionable mistakes. They have attorneys who recognize that gringos come and go but the local folks will be around a long time to exercise their enmity—or gratitude. They think the U.S. government will be able to help them out when they get into trouble: a serious error.

Russell Ames had lived on his land for more than 50 years, and was well-liked—even in some cases revered—by his neighbors. At one point, the people trying to steal his land sent a pair of thugs to sit at the bottom of his driveway to prevent visitors from coming in and to take license numbers of cars: sheer harassment. His neighbors came by, literally picked the thugs’ car up off the ground, carried it down the road, then stoned the thugs until they got in it and drove away.

John and Mary Ellen were respected by the other prisoners. They were friendly, helpful—Mary Ellen taught English, translated documents and transcribed (almost all the prisoners are poor, and among the poor there is a high incidence of illiteracy), and were identified as fellow victims by the prison population: a significant percentage of prisoners in Mexico are there because of land disputes.

Friends in the gringo community organized daily visits, food deliveries and payments for lawyers. Francisco Toledo, millionaire artist and philanthropist, and “infant terrible” of the local arts and culture scene, is said to have gone personally to governor José Murat to complain about the situation. Articles published in the Washington Post and other “papers of record,” as well as the public statements of legislators such as Patrick Leahy and Barbara Lee certainly had some value. The pressure never let up all the time they were in jail.

Judges are even more corrupt down here than they are where you live. A Mexican saying goes, “Why rent a lawyer, when you can buy a judge.” Money, favors, coercion, political and family loyalties: all play a part in it. The judge in this case appears to have been totally in the pocket of the government minister.

According to the Three and their friends, the record abounded with reversible errors by the judge, including refusing to take relevant witness testimony, denying certification to documents establishing their innocence, and refusing to hear pleas based on plain error in the documents that were submitted in order to obtain the arrest warrants in the first place.

Rumors abound about how they got out. As a certified expatriate retiree, baptized and confirmed in the Church of Social Security, I can’t help but get involved in the Zócalo Chowder and Speculation Society game of creative guessing. I have pared down all the third-hand stories to the two most likely.

One rumor has it that noone from the opposition showed up at a scheduled appeal hearing on November 6 before a federal judge, effectively defaulting. It is said that the reason they didn’t show up was that the federal judge would have put his state colleague’s malfeasance on the record. This would mean that an order was issued, and they have been cleared of all charges.

Another rumor has it that, knowing this was going to happen, the state judge ordered them released on her own, without any accompanying paperwork; that one day the prisoners were called to the bars that separate the prisoners’ section from the rest of the prison (the prisoner section is run by the prisoners, and no guard dares enter), and told to get their things and go. This would mean that they could be rearrested at any time, a situation that would explain Mary Ellen’s decision not to return to Mexico. It’s also the rumor I favor, since it tends to show the capriciousness and lack of justice-as-we-conceive-of-it in the Mexican legal system.

Whatever actually happened, things appear to have ended well for the 3. They are out. But wait, there are yet more twists and turns to come. The administration of their township—the same folks who stoned the thugs—are said to be filing a lawsuit of their own, claiming the land in question was illegally sold to Russell in the first place. The land, they say, was ejido land. Ejidos are entities established under revolutionary (1910-1919) law, which redistributed land to landless peasants. Ejidos are collectively owned by the people who reside on them, and according to the law as it was when the land was sold, are indivisible. There have been many such cases brought over the years, and some have been decided for the new landowners, and some not. In every case, however, the litigation took years and was massively expensive. There are three separate parcels which Russell sold off involved, as well as his place, so this is likely to be in the courts for a long time.

So, what is the moral to this story? Darned if I know…