The Mexican kidnapping business

Houston Chronicle:

The underworld violence sweeping Mexico only occasionally touches the country's wealthy families, but when it does the outrage gets results.

Demands mount for police cleanups. Anticrime actions become more effective, if only briefly.

That seems to be happening once again in the aftermath of the kidnap and slaying of Fernando Marti, a Mexican magnate's 14-year-old son.

"The death of this boy signals the social decomposition which we've reached," billionaire Alfredo Harp — himself a former kidnap victim and a Marti family friend — said in full-page advertisements placed in the capital's newspapers. "Mexico doesn't deserve this reality, neither do the coming generations.

"Change is urgently needed," he wrote. "Enough already!"

President Felipe Calderon agreed. In a nationally broadcast address Thursday morning, Calderon called on Mexico's Congress to mandate life sentences for kidnappers, especially law enforcement officials.

"This cowardly act demonstrates the urgency of putting a halt to these criminal bands," Calderon said."It's necessary to stop those whose cruelty knows no limits."

The dead youth's family until recently owned a chain of sporting goods stores and health clubs. He was abducted June 4 at a phony police checkpoint while being driven to school. As many as 15 abductors, wearing federal police uniforms and flashing badges, persuaded the boy's driver and bodyguard to get out of the vehicle.

Although his family paid at least $5 million in ransom, and offered more, the boy's body was found in a car trunk last Friday.

"My son crossed paths with soulless men, people for whom there are no words to describe," Alejandro Marti, the boy's father, told mourners who attended a memorial Mass this week.

The body of Marti's driver had been found in another car trunk a day after the kidnapping — a single marigold stuffed into his mouth as a calling card. A bodyguard, at first reported killed as well, now appears to have survived attempts to strangle him and is being protected by the authorities.

Two Mexico City detectives — including a decorated commander whose nickname is "The Terminator" — have been arrested in connection with the killing. Fourteen others have turned themselves in for questioning.

Former or active-duty police officers have often been implicated in kidnappings over the years as well as in narcotics smuggling and other organized crimes.

"The problem is corruption, collusion, the relationship the police have with the kidnappers," said lawyer Jose Antonio Ortega, who heads a Mexico City activist group pushing for improved public security.

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard ordered his police to bring the killers to justice. And Calderon observed that the crime has moved the country. "It has," he said, "filled many families with mourning, because many families live with this problem of kidnapping in Mexico."

Nearly 8,000 abductions have been reported in Mexico, and an untold number of others were not reported since 1994, according to Jose Antonio Ortega, a lawyer who heads a citizens group pushing for judicial reforms.

More than 650 kidnap victims have been killed by their captors in that time, many after a ransom was paid.

Harp was among the victims. A former part-owner of Banamex, Mexico's largest private bank, Harp was kidnapped in 1994 by suspected leftist guerrillas while being driven to work. He was released 100 days later after paying a reported $50 million ransom.

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The embedded corruption of Mexico appears to have taken a step up from mordita, little bites, to big bites for some in the police. The culture of corruption in Mexico is what has made the drug insurgency so pervasive and so difficult to control. Many of the business men who are victimized by the kidnapping business probably pay mordita routinely. It is easier than going through the bureaucratic necessities of the rule of law. Now they see the pricer is higher than they thought.