Camarena, Enrique (1947–1985)

Enrique Camarena (b. 26 July 1947; d. February 1985), a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent who was abducted on 7 February 1985, and then tortured and murdered, while on assignment in Mexico. Camarena's body was discovered one month later on a ranch in Guadalajara. Mexican officials placed blame for the murder on a Guadalajara drug kingpin, Rafael Caro Quintero. The DEA, however, conducted a lengthy and controversial investigation that linked high-ranking Mexican officials to the murder, including Rubén Zuno Arce, a prominent Mexican businessman and brother-in-law of former Mexican President Luis Echeverría. The controversy heightened when Mexican officials refused to allow DEA agents to participate in the investigation or view evidence as it was uncovered. Eventually, the U.S. government claimed that the Camarena case was intimately linked to members of Mexico's political elite, and the DEA charged that some Mexican officials were involved in a cover-up.

The Camarena case strained relations between the United States and Mexico. Frustrated by the slow pace of the case, in February 1985 the U.S. government brought pressure to bear on the Mexican government by ordering detailed inspections of all vehicles entering the United States from Mexico, virtually closing the border and threatening the economies of Mexican border cities and states. The difficulties intensified when DEA agents masterminded the April 1990 kidnapping and forcible extradition of a Guadalajara physician, Humberto Alvarez Machain, who was implicated in the torture of Camarena. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in 1993, that Alvarez Machain's forcible abduction from a foreign country did not prohibit his trial in the United States. The court's decision, while hailed as a victory against terrorism and drug trafficking, was seen as a major threat to national sovereignty by Mexico and other Latin American countries.

At the end of numerous trials in the United States and Mexico, nineteen Mexican citizens, ranging from civilians to police officers and high-ranking persons, were indicted in the kidnapping, torture, and/or murder of DEA agent Camarena. The case produced great resentment in Mexico because of the overbearing attitude of the U.S. officials and violations of Mexican sovereignty; it reinforced images in the United States of corruption and noncooperative attitudes on the part of Mexican officials.

See alsoDrugs and Drug Trade .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andreas Lowenfeld, "Mexico and the United States, an Undiplomatic Murder," in Economist, 30 March 1985.

U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Drug Enforcement Administration Reauthorization for Fiscal Year 1986: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Crime. May 1, 1985 (1986).

Andreas Lowenfeld, "Kidnapping by Government Order: A Follow-Up," in American Journal of International Law 84 (July 1990): 712-716.

William Dirk Raat, Mexico and the United States: Ambivalent Vistas (1992).

Additional Bibliography

Lindau, Juan David. "Percepciones xexicanas de la política exterior de Estados Unidos: El caso Camarena Salazar." Foro Internacional 27 (April-June 1987): 562-575.

                                    Paul Ganster