From: CH.DGR@forsythe.stanford.edu (Daniel Ramirez)
Subject: HUMAN RIGHTS IN MEXICO
Organization: Stanford University, California, USA
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 19:37:56 GMT


THE FOLLOWING HUMAN RIGHTS ITEM MAY BE OF INTEREST TO READERS OF
THIS GROUP:

Item: soc.culture.mexican 5404,  Thu, 6 Au,  133 lines.    (133 items left)
From: lazarus@wixer.cactus.org (Michael Lax)
Subject: Mexican Gays accuse police of laxity in slaying investigation

MEXICAN GAYS ACCUSE POLICE OF LAXITY IN PROBING SLAYINGS OF AIDS
ACTIVIST, OTHERS

Los Angeles Times, July 25, 1992

--Crime:  Homosexual, women's and community groups demand a full
investigation and assail the press for sensationalistic coverage
of the killings

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By Marjorie Miller, Times Staff Writer


MEXICO CITY -- The slayings of a prominent AIDS activist and at
least four other homosexuals have drawn protests from the gay
community against a waive of "hate crimes" and charges that
police have failed to investigate the incidents seriously.

Dr. Francisco Estrada Valle, co-founder of Ave de Mexico, an AIDS
education and prevention organization, was discovered bound,
strangled and stabbed last week along with two other men in an
apartment in the southern neighborhood of Coyoacan.

On the same day, July 13, police found the battered bodies of two
more homosexual men across town in the central Anzures
neighborhood.  They also had been bound and strangled.

Excelsior newspaper reported a sixth man found in the central
Juarez neighborhood on July 16 "assassinated by the same methods
used on the other victims," but police have not publicly
confirmed the circumstances of that death.

"These were homophobic hate crimes," said Jesus Calzada, who
founded Ave de Mexico along with Estrada.  "The victims were all
gay.  The homicides were the same."

About 30 gay, women's and community groups published a letter to
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari demanding a full
investigation and assailing the press for it sensationalistic
coverage of the slayings.

Mexico, a conservative, Catholic country, generally is a hostile
environment for gays.  The gay rights movement has had little
influence on public opinion - as an example, tabloids asserted
the men were killed for spreading AIDS.

"We denounce the vulture-like attitude of the tabloid press that
amorally assassinated for the nth time the victims of homophobic
violence," the letter said.

Police are holding two suspects in the triple slaying of Estrada,
Rene de la Torre Gonzalez and Javier Rivero Melendez and say they
are still investigating the other crimes to determine if they are
related.

The suspects, who police and activists have said are gay, are
Arnulfo Loya Carpizo and Rodolfo Brindis Castillo.

Officials fist called the triple killing a passion crime and now
say it was a vendetta for a soured business deal between Loya and
the victim Rivero.  They said witnesses saw the suspects enter
the Coyoacan apartment around the time of the slayings.

The suspects assert that they can prove they were nowhere near
the building.  Ave co-founder Calzada says that the suspects are
"scapegoats" and the police are wrong to look within the gay
community for the killers.  He said they are trying to get rid of
the case because it involves homosexuals.

"They just want to cover their backs and close the case," Calzada
said.

Estrada, 35, made frequent radio and television appearances and
gave seminars on AIDS and AIDS prevention-until recently a taboo
subject in Mexico.  He openly discussed his HIV-positive
condition and treated patients with AIDS.

Calzada said Estrada left the Ave de Mexico offices late Saturday
night, telling friends he felt ill and was going home.  When
Estrada failed to show up for a seminar he was to give Sunday
morning, friends began to worry and notified police.  The bodies
were discovered early Monday morning across town.

Calzada said he does not believe Estrada was necessarily the
target of the triple slaying, which occurred in De la Torre's
apartment.

But he noted that AIDS volunteers have received obscene telephone
calls, including one to a television talk show on which Estrada
appeared from a man identifying himself as belonging to an anti-
homosexual group and vowing "to do away with all of you."

Gay activists did not know the other slaying victims, Calzada
said.

The killings have prompted outraged letters and editorials in
newspapers from actors, friends of Estrada and activists who say
that crimes against gays usually go unsolved in Mexico.

"One of the great lies that the police has always used is that
they can never solve the assassinations of homosexuals," wrote
director Margo Su in the daily newspaper La Jornada.  "They say
that is because the victims belong to a ghetto that is very
closed, hermetic.  They deduce that the crimes are the logical
sequence of orgies where passions are uncontrollable and, anyway,
it's not worth the minimum effort because 'arduous'
investigations lead nowhere."

She noted that eight men, presumed homosexuals and transvestites,
have been killed with high-caliber weapons in the southern state
of Chiapas in the last year.  Other activists say the figure may
be as high as 22.  The cases have not been solved.

"The police always say it was 'a crime between gays,'" said actor
Tito Vasconcelos, a friend of Estrada.  "Then the press says they
were HIV-positive, as if this was an excuse."

Calzada added that there is little public sympathy for AIDS
victims in Mexico.

The government's National Council on the Prevention and Control
of AIDS, CONASIDA, reports 4,699 deaths from AIDS and another
4,477 active cases.  It estimates that another 300,000 people are
infected.  Ave de Mexico estimates the numbers to be much higher.

Calzada said that because of discrimination, many people do not
report AIDS cases and families have death certificates altered to