American tourists, Mexican justice
The young couple and their 9-year-old son were detained by police on the evening of Oct. 7 after having crossed the U.S.-Mexico border earlier that day. Two officers walked the husband and the son to an ATM machine, relieving the husband of the cash they forced him to withdraw.
Meanwhile, two other officers escorted the wife to a police station. She was ordered to take off her clothes — the better to strip-search her. Then one officer raped her as the other kept watch.
Had this crime occurred in San Diego, Calif., had the young couple and their son been Mexican nationals, it would have touched off a firestorm. There would have been demands for justice by a rightfully angry Mexican community. There would have been marches and demonstrations organized by activist groups. There would have been declarations by politicians — like California state Senate Democrat leader John Burton, who suggested last week that anyone opposing driver’s licenses for illegal aliens is “racist” — that the police are hateful toward brown-skinned people.
But there have been no demands for justice in this case. No marches or demonstrations in support of the victims. No blanket condemnations of the cops by politicians. That’s because the crime took place in Tijuana. And the victims were Americans. So the husband and the wife, a 32-year-old with an Iowa driver’s license, are left to the tender mercies of the Mexican judicial system.
After filing a criminal complaint with the Baja California attorney general’s office, four Tijuana municipal police officers were charged with crimes against the American touristas. The most serious charges, including rape, extortion and abuse of authority, were made against officer Hector M. Arias Campos. He’s a supervisor on the Tijuana police force working in a unit assigned to assist tourists.
Talk about the fox guarding the hen house.
Baja California’s top state law-enforcement official promises to throw the book at Arias Campos and his three subordinates if they are found guilty. “In this case,” said Attorney General Antonio Martinez Luna, “the punishment has to be more severe. Police officers are the first ones who should obey the law.”
Yet Mexican officials have been anything but severe with Tijuana police officers who prey upon the border city’s 26 million yearly visitors. Earlier this year, in fact, the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana beseeched city officials to follow up on complaints from American tourists who said they had been shaken down by the Mexican city’s crooked cops.
Indeed, the leniency with which San Diego’s Mexican neighbor deals with its corrupt cops explains why, as a spokeswoman for Martinez Luna’s office acknowledged, “Police extortion is common among tourists.”
Let us consider again if the situation were reversed: If Mexican nationals were shaken down by cops in San Diego or Nogales, Ariz. or Columbus, N.M., or El Paso, Texas, you can bet your last peso those police officers would not get off with a mere 30 unpaid days away from the force. They’d be fired. They’d be thrown in jail. They’d be vilified as racist, xenophobic cops on the evening news, on the front page.
Yet there hasn’t been even the slightest suggestion in any quarter that the Tijuana police officers who raped an American women, who shook down her husband, were either racist or xenophobic. That’s because, under the liberal orthodoxy, only white folks can be racist. Only Americans can be xenophobic. Well there’s at least one young American couple that knows better. They’ve learned first hand, from the Tijuana police, just how hostile brown folks can be against non-browns, how contemptuous Mexicans can be toward Americans.
(Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and can be reached at [email protected].)