The Cowards Are Scared

On Thursday 2 May I wrote, in a public declaration: When it comes to justice, Mexico is a country of chiaroscuros. There are great and brave judges like Jesús Terríquez and Manuel Bárcena, and there are others like Núñez Sandoval who dishonour the legal profession and make spiteful, illegal judgements, as well as climbing through the ranks thanks to friends and favours but also by trampling the rights of those below them. This man, Luis Núñez Sandoval, puts the justice that he should be representing and administrating to shame, shielding himself, it is said, with protection that, he states, comes from an ex-senior legal civil servant.

This quote refers to the fact that while two judges, Jesús Terríquez y Manuel Bárcena, basing their decisions on the spirit and the letter of the respective law, had rightly authorised my protection against the latest false accusation aimed at me in the previously terminated and resolved matter of the mining trust. The other aforementioned judge, Núñez Sandoval, who took over from judge Bárcena, reversed his colleague’s decision, arguing that he is not Bárcena and does not have to think or act like him. This is evidently ridiculous because both acted in the same tribunal, Bárcena in one way, with the correct application of the law, and Núñez Sandoval in the opposite way, contradicting the law.

What the negative Núñez Sandoval said is truly pathetic because it is comparable to the president of the Republic annulling the previous president’s acts with one stroke of his pen and pointing out the fact that he doesn’t think like his predecessor. The institution is the same, with one or with the other, it doesn’t matter who leads it.

In reality, Núñez Sandoval was promoted before the Judiciary Council by one of the offices of the country’s biggest power brokers, at the service of Grupo México, made up of Fernando Gómez Mont, Julio Esponda and Alberto Zínser, as well as lawyers of much lower calibre but who are mercenaries equally lacking in ethical standards such as Agustín Acosta Azcón who uses fake company names such as Veta de Plata. These people also carry the genes of wickedness, perversity, and corruption inherited from their progenitors.

I mention this subject because as my pursuers are running out of possibilities to attack me through legal tribunals – thanks to the sound legal defence that has carried my case forward – so their false accusations get worse. They invent renewed arrest warrants that contradict the verdicts given on 11 occasions by the tribunals exonerating me as union leader, stating that I have acted within the law, honestly and transparently with regard to our organisation. These verdicts frustrate the morbid desires of the enemies of the miners’ union, and they bring forward the date of my return to Mexico. This is what motivates their fear and cowardice. They know that my return to Mexico, with the due guarantees of physical and legal security, means that their seven years of political persecution will have been reduced to nothing, it will have been a sterile effort, and that I will be able to act in favour of democracy and the freedom of association of my mining colleagues and the Mexican working class.

In this way Germán Feliciano Larrea and other businessmen in the mining sector desperately and feverishly use their frontmen or nominees, such as the aforementioned offices, to give the impression that I still have unresolved legal issues regarding the mining trust. They obsessively return time and again to the tired, false idea that up to 55 million dollars were supposedly siphoned out of said trust belonging to the mining union, when from the outset, in 1990, an insolvency judge stated – and Germán Larrea accepted this – that those funds belong to the national miners’ union, and that the union could use them according to its own decisions. Parallel audits showed that not a single cent has been diverted from those amounts, a proportion of which are now frozen by banks following the illegal and unjust ruling by the PAN government, but there they are and, with the union’s exclusive agreement, the rest of said funds have already been handed over to the miners whose right it was to receive a share.

These last few days have been plagued with gossip about my legal situation, and it is patently evident that, faced with my return to Mexico, there is fear or rather panic among the arrogant and immoral businessmen who have pursued me politically and legally with the complicity of the two previous PAN governments – bad experiences that must not be repeated under the current government of Enrique Peña Nieto. Above all there is total cowardice faced with the fact that they are being beaten in their plans to put an end to my leadership and to the national miners’ union, which shows itself to be stronger and more united than ever despite these seven hard years of conflict.

Many lawyers, judges, magistrates and even ministers of the Court have played a positive role in preventing abuses of power and corruption, as well as the legal blasphemy which would find the leaders of the miners’ union guilty.

That is why in the declaration mentioned at the beginning of this article, I noted that: The Federal Justice Council and the Supreme Court of Justice have gone to great lengths to achieve an excellent administration of justice. There still is much to do. One starting point is to thoroughly revise cases such as that of Núñez Sandoval, which do so much damage to the image of Judicial Power, so as to change, to correct and to get to the bottom of things. In this way we would honour all those many noble judges who do their jobs every day with true vocation, impartiality, respect for the law and honesty. This is how it should be.