Case of "Mormon mule" Yanira Maldonado is Mexico's latest embarrassment, and EPN's latest headache

MGR's view - No one is immune from the Mexican "bite"

*Updated May 31 - charges dropped against Yanira*
Guadalajara -
Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party president Enrique Peña Nieto is a busy man these days. Only six months into the job, he's had to put out fires on several fronts, each with the potential for further smearing Mexico's reputation abroad. As if it needed further smearing.

In February it was the case of six young Spanish women, robbed and repeatedly raped in their beach house while on vacation in Acapulco. Soon after, Madrid labeled Mexico a "zone of special danger." Such characterizations have a way of torpedoing tourism.

In April it was Guerrero state, which erupted into virtual civil war. A curious alliance of striking school teachers and civilian militias attacked the legislative assembly hall, sacked the headquarters of every major Mexican political party in the capital of Chilpancingo de los Bravo and finished with a lusty raid on the governor's mansion. Those events, closely followed in the international press, did not present the image of a nation where the rule of law is paramount.

Last week, it was Michoacán. Peña Nieto dispatched several thousand federal police and troops to the Pacific coast state, in an effort to recapture it from brutal drug cartels and rag tag citizen police patrols called autodefensas. It was a rerun straight out of Coach Calderón's playbook, 2006 season, and a political embarrassment for just that reason. Nothing ever changes it Mexico, one could argue.

Now, directly or indirectly, the president may have to deal with the case of the Mormon grandmother.

The Maldonados . . . next time they'll probably fly

Yanira Maldonado, a naturalized American citizen, is a 42 year old mother of seven and grandmother of two from Goodyear, Arizona, a Phoenix suburb. A week ago she and husband Gary traveled by bus to Sonora state to attend her aunt's funeral. On their return the bus passed through a retén, a military checkpoint, for the standard search and inspection by soldiers. That's all part of Mexico's drug war.

Officials approached Gary and told him that five and a half kilos (about 12 lbs.) of marijuana had been found under the seat he was occupying. They placed him under arrest. Minutes later they apologized, and said the drugs were actually under Yanira's seat. She was arrested instead.

There the stories slightly depart. A local lawyer who assisted the Maldonados may have suggested a bribe to secure Yanira's release, or the couple may have been told that they would have to post bail. Whichever the case Gary called friends and family members who quickly collected and wired $5,000.

By the time the cash arrived things had gone too far. Yanira was taken to a jail in the border town of Nogales, where a preliminary hearing began Tuesday. Family members expected the dismissal of charges and her immediate release, but that's not how things worked out. The proceeding resumes today, and is being closely monitored by the U.S. press and the Arizona congressional delegation.

Of course, anything is possible. Maybe Yanira was hauling grass across the border. A March report by the Center for Investigative Reporting found that plenty of U.S. citizens do just that (Mexican drug traffickers find ready assistance in mules carrying American passports). But from the information we have so far, it appears improbable. Most will view this case as another disgusting example of the mordida mexicana - the "bite" of those in officialdom which continues to cost this country so dearly.

It's unlikely that this will work out well for Mexico, regardless of how a Sonoran judge rules in Yanira's case. The public relations damage has been done, just as it was in the case of American citizen Jon Hammar last year. He's the former Marine lance corporal who drove across the border with grandpa's old shotgun and tried to register it with Matamoros police, all because somebody on the U.S. side told him there would "be no problem." Hammar was plainly guilty of a technical violation of Mexico's draconian firearms laws, and more guilty of stupidity. But authorities here drastically overreacted to his naivete, holding him in custody for months under harsh conditions until a well-orchestrated media campaign put pressure on the new PRI administration to release him. Better late than never.

This has been an embarrassing year for Mexican justice. In January the Supreme Judicial Court freed a French woman who almost certainly was part of a notorious professional kidnapping gang, and last month it delivered a powerful encore by liberating a Canadian woman who very probably was involved with a plot to smuggle one of the sons of the late Muammar Gaddafi into Mexico in 2011. In both, the judges found that serious due process violations - the failure to follow technical rules - compromised the integrity of the proceedings. In other words, cops and prosecutors themselves disobeyed the law.

Although unlikely, Mexico's Supreme Court someday might have to consider the case of a Mormon grandmother convicted of drug running. But Enrique Peña Nieto hopes not, and so does his minister of tourism.

May 29, 2013 - The judge's ruling in this case will be delayed at least until Friday. In the meantime, an Arizona mom turns to scripture to survive in Mexican jail.

May 31 - A freed Yanira Maldonado not bitter over Mexican drug arrest
Oct. 15, 2011 - Mexican drug cartels recruit Texas school kids, says Department of Public Safety

© MGRR 2013. All rights reserved. This article may be cited or briefly quoted with proper attribution or a hyperlink, but not reproduced without permission.