In 1984, while he was American ambassador to Mexico, John Gavin took me to task. Visibly angry, he scolded me because Mexican journalist Manuel Buendia and I had a cordial working relationship. Gavin, who had been a film actor, said I was Buendia’s “disciple,” and suggested I should sever contact with the journalist because “he is anti-American.”
I was never anyone’s disciple. Buendia had badly upset Gavin because he wrote a newspaper column in which he revealed the name of the Mexico City CIA station chief.
Here is an excerpt from my book that recounts my experience with Buendia.
Manuel Buendía, a nationally renowned newspaper columnist, had cultivated close relations with presidents and the National Security Directorate, or DFS, the nation’s shadowy political police responsible for murdering hundreds of leftist activists and snuffing out nascent guerrilla movements. I befriended him, and he often offered insights into the Mexican government. I, in turn, told him what I learned from American officials.
During one of my 1982 reporting trips to Mexico City, Buendía invited me to dinner. We met at his office in the Zona Rosa section of the city. Just before we left for the restaurant, he strapped on a shoulder holster with a .38 caliber pistol. “There are people that want to see me dead,” he said. “I’m not sure I can stop them.” I asked who wanted to kill him, but he waved his hand and said he was not prepared to talk about it.
I did not doubt his word, but I could not imagine who would want him dead. In a May 4, 1984 column, he wrote that the country’s drug traffickers were expanding production and distribution. He added that this would not have been possible without the cooperation of government officials. This was a bombshell. No one had ever publicly suggested there was a connection between the nascent drug mafias and the government. Several days after the publication of his column, he touched on the topic again. A gunman shot Buendía in the back at close range in a Mexico City parking lot on May 30, 1984. He died instantly, and soon, purported gunmen were arrested.
It was evident that the sicarios did not act on their own. Someone had ordered the assassination. Buendía’s family and associates pressed for justice. Finally, in June 1989, police arrested José Antonio Zorrilla Pérez, former head of the DFS. Zorrilla was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but he was released for health reasons in 2013. As for the DFS, it succumbed to its gross corruption, human rights violations, and ties to Mexico’s drug mafias. It was disbanded in 1985. Mexicans had endured DFS abuses for years and faced economic turbulence.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 