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- <text id=90TT1701>
- <title>
- July 02, 1990: World Notes:Mexico
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- July 02, 1990 Nelson Mandela:A Hero In America
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 41
- World Notes
- MEXICO
- Sending a Blunt Message
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> Mariana Rodriguez Villegas' assailants were anything but
- subtle. After stopping her on a Mexico City street two weeks
- ago, the four men held her at gunpoint and gave her a blunt
- message for her employer, writer Jorge Castaneda, one of the
- fiercest critics of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's
- government: Lay off or die. Three days later, after the young
- secretary identified one of her menacers as a former police
- agent, a fifth thug threatened her life as well.
- </p>
- <p> The Rodriguez episode is the latest in a string of abuses
- that have aroused concern over Mexico's human-rights record.
- Salinas, on tour in Tokyo, immediately telephoned Castaneda to
- offer sympathies and sent a letter to the liberal daily La
- Jornada promising to pursue the culprits. But at the same time,
- an editorial in the government newspaper El Nacional suggested
- that Castaneda, an ally of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who ran a close
- second to Salinas in the fraud-tainted 1988 presidential race,
- had caused the threat against himself by consorting with the
- opposition.
- </p>
- <p> The incident has aroused questions about whether the
- government is permitting such abuses--or has lost its
- authority to stop them. Some analysts suggest the threat
- against Castaneda may have come from someone wanting to hurt
- the Salinas administration.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-