Jorge Castaneda

Why, Jorge Castaneda asks at the start of "Companero," did the Bolivian army wash the bullet-ridden corpse of Che Guevara and pose it, open-eyed, seemingly unmarked and serene? The image, flashed around the world in 1967, became an icon: a revolutionary Deposition from the Cross for the generational insurgencies that were breaking out in such different places as the United States, Paris, Prague and Latin America.

Latin American politics has always swayed with the winds from abroad, but in the late 1980s, these winds took on hurricane force. The spread of the free-market gospel and the fall of Communism have brought to Latin America the discrediting of most Leninist groups, the widespread institution of austerity plans and the election of presidents--Alberto Fujimori in Peru, Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela, Carlos Menem in Argentina--who ran on the left but governed from the right.

No country affects the United States as much as Mexico. No other country is more pervasively influenced by the United States, in turn. Few bilateral relationships in the world are more complex, or more difficult to manage. Millions of persons engage in an intricate web of transactions between Mexico and the United States, most of them legal, but many not. U.S. corporations and banks have invested billions of dollars in Mexico; Mexicans have stashed billions in U.S. bank accounts and real estate; and Mexican workers in the United States send $2 billion a year to relatives at home.

Jorge Castaneda, a former Mexican foreign secretary under President Vicente Fox, allegedly served as an agent for Cuba's intelligence service for at least three years starting in the late 1970s, the Mexico City daily El Universal reported. Documents kept in Mexico's national archive show that Castaneda, then in his mid-20s, was recruited as a spy by the head of Cuba's intelligence operations in Mexico.

Jorge Castaneda sums up many great reasons for ending the war on drugs (Commentary, Sept. 2), but he's wrong in one statement he makes, calling the drug war "this absurd war no one really wants to wage." For the drug kingpins, Latin American politicos, prison construction companies, CIA covert operations funding and the beer and liquor industries this is no absurd war. Keeping the war on drugs alive is an essential business survival strategy. But, let's talk about the moral threat to society.

In response to "Shining Path Brightens in Lima's Slums," Commentary, April 17: Jorge Castaneda's column suggests that the so-called coup in Peru is "denounced" by Peruvians, when in fact over 70% of them support it. Castaneda calls the Shining Path an "ostensible adversary invoked for the necessity of the coup," but those at risk see the threat as very real: More than 25,000 people have died at their hands since 1980. Does our haste in the U.S. to demonize President Alberto Fujimori have anything to do with his surname?

Mexico did not pressure Fidel Castro to leave a U.N. conference early, Mexico's foreign secretary said in a letter to lawmakers in Mexico City, adding that the Cuban leader had planned all along to make his stay short. In a letter released by congress, Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaneda denied allegations that Mexico had bowed to pressure from the United States and asked Castro to leave the conference in Monterrey.

Re "Addition to the Melting Pot Requires a New Recipe Book," Commentary, April 2: Jorge Castaneda writes that "Mexicans ... have a major challenge," and that is to regard "our compatriots in the U.S. as part of a Mexican nation in the cultural and ethnic sense." How about this for a major challenge: Stop having babies that you can't feed and have no jobs for! America is not the dumping ground for the Third World. Mike Burns Bakersfield When Mexico has reversed its immigration to the U.S., as Ireland has reversed its immigration, then a comparison between Irish and Mexican immigration will be valid.

A coroner's spokesman Thursday identified a man killed when his car was struck by a Metrolink commuter train Wednesday afternoon. The man, Jorge Castaneda Gutierrez, 45, of Los Angeles, was apparently trying to drive around a lowered guard gate near San Fernando Road and Van Nuys Boulevard at 6:40 p.m. as a train approached. Gutierrez's car became stuck on the tracks and he was unable to get out before the train smashed into his car, authorities said.