American Notes The Border

Since Enrique Camarena Salazar, an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, was kidnaped last month in Mexico and subsequently murdered, presumably by narcotics dealers, U.S. officials have suspected the complicity of corrupt Mexican police. Last week John Gavin, the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, announced that at least two of the four kidnapers who hustled Camarena into a car in Guadalajara a month before his body was found were, in fact, policemen of the Mexican state of Jalisco. They had been arrested by Mexican federal authorities and had confessed.

Gavin, who pushed his hosts hard to solve the killing, made a gesture toward soothing U.S.-Mexican tensions aroused by the Camarena case: he complimented the Mexicans for moving "so quickly." But he prodded them further. The other two kidnapers might also be police, he hinted, and noted they had not yet been caught. Also at large is Rafael "El Chapo" (Shorty) Caro Quintero, a drug dealer suspected of ordering Camarena's murder.