By Sara Burnett
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 19, 2003

Election posters are plastered virtually everywhere in Mexico City.

MEXICO CITY, Mexico - The first indication they had taken a wrong turn down a one-way street was, of course, the sea of honking cars barreling toward them.

The second was the police officer standing at the driver's side window.

He was there to confiscate the car, he said.

So starts one of Luis Pelayo's favorite stories about corruption in Mexico, a country where almost everything and everyone, it seems, can be bought.

And none so easily as the cops.

Pelayo, the director of the Hispanic Council, a human rights center in Bensenville, was in town on business when his friend got lost in Mexico City's maze of busy roads.

Wise to the ways of his native country, Pelayo pulled out a handbook of Mexican laws he carries with him on visits.

He stuck a $20 bill inside, then handed it to the officer.

"Show me," Pelayo said, "where it says you can take our car for making a wrong turn."

The officer immediately called for his supervisor.

They took a few steps away, flipped through the book and whispered feverishly.

Then the officer apologized.

"There has been a mistake," he said.

Within seconds, he and his supervisor halted traffic, helping Pelayo and his colleague turn around.

Just before they drove off, the officer handed back the book.

To no one's surprise, the money was missing.

"Looking for corruption in Mexico is like looking for a McDonald's in the United States," Pelayo says from his smoky office, a Marlboro Light practically a permanent fixture in his hand.

"It's well and alive ... It has become a way of life."

A college graduate and former chemist, Wood Dale resident Pelayo came to the United States on a visitor's visa in 1981 after his brother cut off four of his fingers in an Elk Grove Village factory.

He liked it here and decided to stay. In 1992, he became a legal resident and American citizen.

That same year, he and a group of other DuPage County-area Hispanics officially formed the Hispanic Council.

Pelayo, a slight man who speaks passionately and swears like a sailor, can laugh at the story about the cop and the $20.

But he knows corruption in Mexico isn't always so benign.

It is blamed for everything from Mexico's booming narcotics trade to theft, human rights abuses and murder.

The effects of that climate linger even after Mexicans move to the United States, Pelayo says.

Virtually every day, Pelayo sees immigrants who have been exploited but have done nothing about it.

Sometimes they don't realize what's happening to them is wrong. Other times they believe that, just as in Mexico, trying to do something about it is a waste of time. They might fear losing their job or home if they complain.

"They will come to me and say, ŒMy boss hasn't paid me overtime in 10 years. Is that legal?' " Pelayo says.

Even when Pelayo tells them "no," they are reluctant to take action.

"Here, you can speak out, you can dissent," Pelayo says. "Many Hispanics (living in the United States) do not realize this ... In Mexico, you don't have a choice."

That lack of options has its roots, at least in part, in the longtime control of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, said Len Cavise, a professor of law at DePaul University who specializes in human rights in Latin America.

Known in Spanish as the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), the right-wing party governed Mexico for 71 years, until President Vicente Fox won office in 2000.

Under the one-party system, supporters won jobs as police officers and judges. Business leaders got what they wanted by paying off politicians or police.

PRI officials joined with wealthy landowners - most of them PRI members, too - to take land from indigenous communities. They sent soldiers to occupy the lands and quash revolts.

The result was rebel uprisings and "considerable violence," Cavise said.

Luis Pelayo works in Bensenville helping Chicago-area Mexicans with any legal trouble they might face.

"These people have their ways well-established," he said. "It's very, very difficult to break the back of that power structure."

When Fox, a member of the rival National Action Party (Partido Accion Nacional or PAN), was elected, he promised to root out problems.

But the reforms have not reached deep enough, said Thalia Vega, an attorney with the Miguel Agustin Human Rights Center in Mexico City.

"Little has changed," Vega said. "The discourse has been more for the international community, to create the image of a democratic government."

In May, the United Nations Committee on Torture completed a five-year investigation that found torture in Mexico - generally used to elicit confessions from crime suspects - is "systematic."

Mexico City's Human Rights Commission, a government-run group, received 57 torture complaints in the first nine months of 2002.

At the Miguel Agustin center, at least 16 such cases were reported against 25 victims in 2002. In one case, the governor's bodyguards arrested Jorge Ignacio Guerra after he waded into a public fountain in the state of Querétaro to protest the lack of running water in his house.

According to the human rights center, the guards handcuffed Guerra, covered his face and hit and threatened him with a gun. Then they dumped him in a ditch 18 miles from home.

The governor of Querétaro later told a state human rights commission that Guerra was "really just beat up." No action was taken against the guards.

In another case, police executed three men believed to have killed a police officer.

According to more than 100 witnesses, the men already had turned themselves in when the officers shot one of them. The other two were beaten and thrown into the back of a truck, their dead bodies dumped in the center of town hours later.

The deaths never were investigated.

The cases Pelayo sees in his Bensenville office aren't nearly as severe.

But the fear often runs just as deep.

Before the Hispanic Council was formed, living conditions at The Hamilton apartments in Bensenville, a predominantly Hispanic development, were deteriorating.

Drug dealers were creating problems in the complex. Police were cracking down on public drinking. The buildings themselves were run down.

The community of "good" people living there were afraid they would lose their homes, Pelayo says. In pricey DuPage County, they feared they would have no place else to go. Yet they also feared that speaking up or taking action might provoke violence or retribution by the authorities, as it had in Mexico.

Pelayo's council worked with residents to explain American laws and customs that prohibit public beer drinking in parking lots. They formed "council brigades," a group of about 25 men who confronted drug dealers and told them they weren't welcome.

Council members also helped initiate communication between police and residents and talked with property owners about fixing up units.

In time, the complex became a safe, clean place to live again.

"They just needed some help," Pelayo says.

Since then, the agency has served thousands of Hispanics, offering low-cost legal help for everything from labor issues to immigration and housing discrimination.

Its most successful case was a $375 million legal settlement from wire-transfer giant Western Union in 2000. The class-action case, filed by Pelayo and other Hispanics, accused the company of collecting hidden charges from customers sending money to Mexico.

Pelayo, the council's only full-time employee, has funded much of the work himself, taking out loans when donations dried up.

He doesn't hesitate to throw out a string of expletives when speaking about what he perceives as injustices against Mexicans, both in the United States and in Mexico.

The only way to eradicate the problems in either country, he says, is for the United States to create a "sincere" foreign policy with Mexico that involves economic help. That would give Mexicans a reason to stay in Mexico, he says.

"If you don't want to see Mexicans, invest in Mexico, damn it," Pelayo says.

Cavise, the DePaul University professor, thinks it's unrealistic to believe U.S. economic policy with Mexico ever will change dramatically. Instead, he believes reform will have to come from small communities standing up to the government.

"Old ideas die hard," he said.

Any change in Mexico - slow as it may be - would have a positive impact on Mexicans in the United States, Pelayo says.

If they had faith in government, if they believed police are here to help and that wrongs will be righted, they might be more likely to speak out against abuses.

"Unfortunately, many of the people (living in the United States) do not realize ... that here, the law is for protection," Pelayo says.

"They are a community living in the shadows."