Landing Garcia clearly suited Washington. He’s accused of making Mexico the main corridor for U.S.-bound cocaine shipments from Colombia; U.S. experts say he nets $2 billion a year. The State Department called the arrest “a triumph for the Mexican government and for close U.S.-Mexican collaboration.” But with 60 members in U.S. jails, Garcia’s cartel had already been supplanted by others. Was toppling him real progress, or mere symbolism? Mexicans also asked why their government delivered up Garcia without questioning him about the massive payoffs that allegedly greased his rise during the administration of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari. And what did the transfer say about President Ernesto Zedillo’s campaign for judicial reform, the linchpin of his administration? “You don’t build a better judicial system by deferring to the American Embassy,” says Raul Plascencia, a Mexico City legal scholar.
Zedillo has a convenient out: a birth certificate for Garcia filed in La Paloma, Texas, just across the border from Matamoros. Its authenticity is questionable–there’s another birth certificate in Mexico–but it allowed Mexico to waive the usual extradition requirements. Washington appears to have cooperated by agreeing not to charge Garcia with a capital crime, always an issue for countries that have no death penalty. Zedillo might argue that Gar-cia can be more severely punished in Houston than in Mexico because that’s where the weightiest charges have been filed. The president is less likely to talk about intense heat from Washington, which last year saved Mexico from financial.collapse with a $20 billion bailout.
What does Mexico get? U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, who put Garcia on the most-wanted list last March, denies that there was any deal to prevent Garcia from talking about Mexican government corruption. Indeed, sources say he, like most U.S. drug defendants, is already talking–an option not available in Mexico. That thrills U.S. lawmen investigating the cocaine cartels. “It could be some of the most fascinating and important information we’ll ever get,” said one source. Mexico seeks the extradition from New Jersey of former Mexican assistant attorney general Mario Ruiz Massieu, who allegedly stashed $13 million in foreign bank accounts. But two U.S. judges have already ruled against the request. Zedillo may simply have decided to simultaneously cool off his critics in Washington and rid himself of a man who could easily have proven too hot for Mexico’s justice system to handle.
