Word: ruiz
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
...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...
...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...
...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...