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.