Informant38

Mexican Gen. Jos� Gallardo once seemed an unlikely candidate for human-rights activist. One of the youngest officers to earn the rank of brigadier general in the Mexican army, Gallardo was on the fast track to the highest echelons of power.

But the general's career took a sharp left-turn when he enrolled at Mexico City's National Autonomous University, where he pursued a course of study in political science. During his time at the university, Gallardo concluded the armed forces needed an independent ombudsman to investigate charges of human-rights abuses by military personnel.

Shortly after publishing a magazine article in which he laid out this proposal, Gallardo found himself facing charges of theft and destruction of documents. A military court convicted him in December 1993, but his real crime, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Amnesty International, was to shine a light on the military's unsavory human-rights record.

In response to intense international pressure, Mexican President Vicente Fox freed Gallardo earlier this year after Gallardo had spent nine years in jail. Fox has received praise for his release of a few high-profile political prisoners�including Gallardo�and his authorization of an official inquiry into past human-rights abuses.

But there remain serious human-rights problems in Mexico. Last fall, one of the country�s most prominent human-rights lawyer, 38-year-old Digna Ochoa, was shot dead.
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Ochoa, a former Roman Catholic nun, was famous for taking on high-profile cases, like the defense in May 1999 of Rodolfo Montiel Flores [see �People,� WPR, August 2000] and Teodoro Cabrera�arrested on gun and drug charges�who lead a peasant group opposed to wildcat logging by local political bosses. Ochoa was repeatedly threatened, twice kidnapped, tortured, and nearly killed. Her assassination has raised suspicions of military involvement,