Page 6- The Behrend College Collegian - Thursday, April 9, /99S
`Dinosaurs' clash with technocrats
By John Ward Anderson=(c) 1998
The Washington Post
MEXICO CITY -- It was supposed
to he a small, off-the-record breakfast
meeting of the ruling party faithful
or more precisely, about 50 current
and former lawmakers faithful to one
particular wing of the party, the old-
guard, autocratic faction known as the
dinosaurs
Manuel Bartlett, an urbane, charis
matic state governor and key leader
of the dinosaurs, rose during the en-
chiladas with mole sauce to blast the
direction of the PRI, as his ruling In
stitutional Revolutionary Party is
called. and its leadership— including,
by inference, President Ernesto
Zedillo.
"We are lacing a war, a terrible
battle in which we PRI members must
fight against a deadly trap organized
from above!" Bartlett exclaimed. "We
must react, because we are not going
to commit suicide by walking like
sheep to the slaughter, faithfully fol-
lowing party discipline
It was a call to revolt in a party re
nowned for enforcing seven decades
of absolute obedience to its leaders
and the crowd
secretly observed
by two Mexico City newspaper re-
porters who taped the speech
wild. They hollered for Bartlett to run
for president in two years; they jock
eyed to shake his hand and have their
pictures taken with him; they clam
ored for the firing of the party's presi
dent, Mariano Palacios Alcocer.
The breakfast insurrection was
short-lived. When the newspapers
wrote about it the next day, Bartlett
retreated, claiming his comments
were "taken out of context" and that
he remained loyal to Zedillo. But the
incident cast a rare public spotlight on
the war for the soul of the PRI that is
being waged between the hard-line
defenders of party tradition the
dinosaurs -- and reform-minded,
free-market "technocrats, - who have
run the PRI for almost two decades.
Under their stewardship last year, the
party suffered its greatest election
defeats in history.
"The party has been humiliated by
an imposed silence and blind obedi
ence, so it was obvious that when
Murder, she wrote —and even
men in Russia are reading her
By Daniel Vv'illiams.(e) 1998, The
Washington Post
MOSCOW The villains are
memorable: the scientist who invents
a ray gun that makes Muscovites want
to kill one another, or a wedding pho
tographer who murders brides, or the
greedy mafia thugs who force a writer
to churn out crime hooks for their
profit.
Some readers say they identify
deeply with the plain-spoken, plainly
dressed heroine, a detective who
smokes too much, can't get enough
coffee and has a weakness f o r past
ries, too.
Some like the homey anti-crime
tips offered, or, for that matter, the tips
on how to evade the cops.
One thing is for sure. Enough
people buy Alexandra Marinina's
hooks to make her Russia's most
popular pulp-fiction writer. Thirteen
million copies of her I 8 hooks are in
print, a feat perhaps unknown in Rus
sia until now, and not so common any
place else either. Every other subway
seat seems occupied by someone
reading one of her hooks.
Everyone seems to know who she
The phenomenon is doubly rare
because Marinina is the lone woman
in a male-dominated field. Agatha
Christie may have spawned a long line
of female crime writers in the English
speaking world, but the type had yet
to surface in Russia. Here, women
were supposed to write romances.
Until Marinina.
"I'm surprised. I started writing for
fun in my spare time, on days off and
vacations. I was happy just to be pub
lished," she said in an interview.
Marina Alexeyeva is her real name,
and until her retirement in March she
was a policewoman who researched
the criminal mind and mapped out
trends in LIV, lessnes. To get to knew
Bartlett spoke in such a brave tone,
the audience's reaction was eu
phoric," said Vicente Fuentes Diaz, a
PRI congressman who attended the
breakfast. "He was calling for no
more silent subordination to the
president's will, internal democracy
-- in other words, survival."
More is at stake than simply who
should control the PRI. who will he
the party's presidential candidate in
the July 2000 election, and which
political party ultimately will win the
race although all of that is on the
table. What is being fought over, with
potentially far-reaching implications
for Mexico and the evolution of mul
tiparty democracy here, is what type
of relationship should exist between
the PRI and the state which have
been virtually synonymous for 69
years of one-party rule.
"It is a big battle for the future of
the nation," said political analyst and
columnist Sergio Sarmiento. "Bartlett
and many other traditionalists believe
that (the last three presidents) went
too far in removing the policies of the
past. and that since we have become
a glohalized economy we have lost the
roots of our nation. They want to go
hack to when the government had
control over the economy and there
were restrictions on foreitm invest-
went
ment. -
In a recent interview at his
governor's mansion in Puebla. capi
tal of a state with the same name
southeast of Mexico City, and in a
telephone interview, Bartlett denied
leading a party rebellion.
didn't call for a revolt in the PRI.
because I believe the unity of our
party is a fundamental principle. - he
said. "But maintaining that unity is not
an easy task because our party ... has
many currents in it.-
At the same time, Bartlett acknowl
edged that he is running for the party's
presidential nomination an as
tounding public admission in a coun
try where the PRI candidate is tradi
tionally selected in secret by the sit
ting president, who is limited to a
single, six-year term.
"We have lost our dynamism, - he
explained. "We have lost our creative
thinking. The party has become very
bureaucratized. It has just followed,
her, read the books. She makes no ef
fort to conceal the fact that Nastya
Kamenskava. the heroine of most of
her stories. is her alter ego right
down to the disheveled blond hair.
absence of makeup and preference for
jeans and mentholated cigarettes.
"The only difference is, Nastya is a
detective and I was a researcher. -
Marinina said.
Marinina's popularity attests to
Russia's fascination with crime. On
television, documentary-style chase
and-crime shows get big ratings— the
more gore. the merrier. Circulation of
tabloids that trumpet murders out-
strips more-genteel newspapers that
focus on politics. About 40 percent of
all hooks published in Russia are
crime thrillers.
"This is a social phenomenon, not
a literary one," Gennady Kuzitnov,
who edits a weekly hest-seller list,
said of Marinina's popularity.
The appeal of wrongdoing is not
new. Dostoyevsky elevated crime
writing to high art; in "Crime and
Punishment," even the palaces and
fog of St. Petersburg are psychologi
cal accomplices to murder. Soviet-era
crime stories also were hest sellers,
although the plots were generally
clear-cut tales of upright cops and
anti-social bad guys. Marinina is in
the Gothic tradition: Any Dr. Jekyll
can become Mr. Hyde.
"The first thing that hits you in the
eye when you read Marinina is the
expanded criminal front." said Irma
Vishnevskaya, a critic for the news
paper Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "The
law may be broken by (people in)
corporations, academies, hospitals,
scientific institutions; by police, law
yers, prosecutors, ministers. The
boundaries between those assumed
guilty and potentially honest are un
clear."
Marinina's hybrid of respecOnlity
and Ann: conics
World and Nation
without any discussion whatsoever,
the lines of the government, and it
should he the other way around. The
government should follow the lines
of the party."
Political moderates and liberals
here say they are concerned that
Bartlett, who is enormously popular
with the PRI rank and file, would re
turn Mexico to an era of autocracy
cronyism and corruption, noting that
he was accused of rigging the 198 g
presidential election victory of the
Plas Carlos Salinas de Gonad, who
many believe actually lost to leftist
Democratic Revolution Party candi
date C'uauhtemoc Cardenas, now
mayor of Mexico City. Also, U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration
informants connected Bartlett to the
brutal 1985 murder of DEA agent
Enrique Camarena while
Bartlett was Mexico's interior minis-
ter, considered the most powerful po-
sition in the country after the presi
dent.
Bartlett has history against him
said Jose Chavez Jaimes, a political
columnist for El Universal newspa
per in Mexico City. "His background
is probably his worst enemy. He'll
make a great dictator.
Bartlett, 62, said the allegations
about Camarcna and vote-fixing are
"absolutely false. - Asked why he at
tracts such controversies, he said the
stories were ginned-up by political
enemies. "They are afraid I will suc
ceed,- he said, pausing for dramatic
effect. "And they should be."
Bartlett's headline-grabbing break
fast and presidential aspirations have
crystalized the clash between the
PRl's two camps, which historians
date to the early 19605. Their differ
ences deepened with the launch of
economic reforms in the early 1980 s
and have widened ever since.
At the heart of the conflict is the
dinosaurs' strong nationalist senti
ment and their belief that the PRl's
symbiotic relationship with the state
has been the principal force behind
Mexico's development as a modern
nation. So entwined are the nation and
party that the PRI is the only political
group allowed to use the national col
ors on its campaign banners.
The unity of party and state was
interviewing and profiling criminals
she says.
"Contact with criminals taught me
that few of them are the embodiment
of evil. Most have traits we consider
normal, something for which they
gain love and respect. They can he
good to their wives, kids, kind and
tender, generous with friends. It de
pends on the face they turn to us," she
said.
She lounged on a leather couch in
her new apartment, both fruits of her
recent prosperity. Her books have
been bought by publishers in Ger
many, France and Italy. The foreign
contracts may make her far wealthier,
given Russia's low royalties. Her
hardcovers sell for about $2 each.
Marinina left the police force after 20
years because she qualified for a pen
sion and because she needed time to
write and deal with publishers.
She began by writing a crime-bust
ers advice column in a police maga
zine. The column, "School for Self-
Defense," recounted fictional visits by
an old, tired detective to a female
friend. She feeds him, and they chat
about how to avoid things like purse
snatching and rape.
Marinina began writing novels for
fun in 1991. In 1995, the magazine
recommended her to a publisher look
ing for new writers.
Her first books were successes, but
one editor suggested she change her
pen name to a man's. Although most
hook buyers in Russia are women,
pulp customers are mostly male; the
fear was that macho readers would not
buy a thriller written by a woman.
Marinina refused, but she did turn out
a story with a male lead. The publisher
was horrified and told her to return to
Nastya because the heroine was sell
ing big and to forget the name
change.
Marinina does not call herself a
feminist. She regards her writing ca-
achieved by the PRl's careful nurtur
ing of political cells in virtually ev
ery public and private institution and
endeavor. In the aftermath of the
1910-20 Mexican Revolution, the sys-
tern helped promote social stability
and development, but it also facili-
tated a complex web of patronage and
corruption that has guaranteed the
PRl's monopoly on power. It never
lost a significant election until the
mid-1980s and today is the longest
continually ruling party in the world.
Dinosaurs trace the party's declin-
ing fortunes in the last decade to the
rise of elitist, U.S.-educated techno
crats who have never run for elective
office and who they believe are out
of touch with the party's rank and file.
The technocrats have implemented
reforms the privatization of state
run industries; trade liberalization that
has opened Mexican markets; elec-
toral law changes that have made
multiparty elections freer— that have
struck hard at the PRl's core constitu-
encies and steered the party and the
country away from their socialist
roots. Under those reforms, the PRI
has suffered an almost inevitable de-
cline in power.
The old guard believes that the cul-
urination of the technocrats' rule came
last summer, when the PRI made its
poorest election showing ever, losing
the race for Mexico City mayor
considered the second-most powerful
elected office in the country and
its majority in the lower house of
Congress for the first time since the
party was founded in 1929.
While the PRI is expected to do
well in a series of state elections this
year, many analysts believe the 2000
presidential race will be the most
competitive in modern Mexican his
tory.
Political analysts are bracing for a
battle royal over who the PRI will
select as its candidate. Traditionally.
Mexican presidents have selected the
PRl's nominee. Because of the party's
unbroken reign of power, the practice
has been tantamount to a president
appointing his successor. Early in his
term. Zedillo pledged to end the prac
tice and to leave the nominating de
cision to the party, which has encour
aged a more airing of internal dissent.
reer as a product of increasingly lib
eral attitudes toward women and the
collapse of Communist rule.
"Ten years ago, I could never have
been published. In totalitarian times I
would have had to join the party, join
the Writers Union. Now, if you catch
someone's eye, you can get published.
This is a time for adventurers," she
said.
Nastya is not your shoot-'em-up
kind of detective. She thinks a lot
about crime, but also about food. She
gives advice: If you need to make a
phone call but are afraid it will be
traced, do it from Moscow's Garden
Ring road even if the police are on
to you, it takes them an hour to reach
the spot because there's always heavy
traffic.
Mostly, Nastya seems ill at ease
with her looks, or unaware of them.
In "Death and a Little Love," the one
about the murdered brides, she is sur
prised when a photographer describes
her as beautiful.
She suffers from claustrophobia
and shortness of breath and is afraid
to walk down dark alleyways; she's
the pursued, as well as pursuer.
"The novels of Marinina in essence
are not about solving crimes but about
the survival of the heroine," said Anna
Karinskaya, a writer for Ekspert
magazine.
After 15 years of courtship, Nastya
marries Chistyakov, a physicist, who
finally won her heart with the gift of
a computer. Married life doesn't keep
her eyes from straying, in particular
toward Gen. Zatochny, a military man
whom she periodically meets in a park
for chats.
Marinina says the general is based
on her own husband, Sergei Zatochny,
a policeman. She describes him as a
man with a "sunny smile that forgives
all."
`Angel of Death' bringing
his case to television
By T. Christian Miller and Scott
Glover=(c) 1998, Los Angeles Times
GLENDALE, Calif. The hospi
tal worker who allegedly told police
he killed 40 to 50 people will take his
case to a nationwide television audi
ence later this week.
Officials with both ABC's "20/20"
and the syndicated news magazine
"EXTRA" said Monday they will
broadcast taped interviews with Efren
Saldivar, the 28-year-old respiratory
therapist who purportedly confessed
to killing terminally ill patients at
Glendale Adventist Medical Center.
Representatives of both shows said
they offered no money for the inter
views, the first since Saldivar's al
leged confession was released March
27. They declined to give details.
"EXTRA" will air its interview
Thursday. The "20/20" segment will
he shown Friday .
Eddie Saldivar, Efren's brother and
the family spokesman, has said in the
past that Efren wants to tell his side
of the story to the public. An indepen
dent story broker. who helps arrange
network television interviews with
elusive newsmakers, said he set up
Saldivar's appearances. The broker,
who asked not to he identified, also
said no money changed hands hut
declined further comment.
In an interview last week, Eddie
Saldivar told the Los Angeles Times:
"When he comes out, my brother has
to go in front of the cameras. They
have to see his eyes. -
In the first days after the allegations
against Saldivar became public, Eddie
Saldivar strongly denied that his
brother had confessed to police. But
Court denies rights
to father of married
woman's baby
By Maura Dolan=(c) 1998, Los An-
geics Times
SAN FRANCISCO In a defeat
for unwed fathers, the California Su
preme Court ruled Monday that a
man who fathers a child with a
woman who is married to someone
else may he denied all legal parental
rights.
A man who "fathers a child with a
woman married to another man takes
the risk that the child will be raised
within that marriage and that he will
he excluded from participation in the
child's life," Justice Joyce L.
Kennard wrote. Nothing in the Con-
"My son is being lied to
every day of his life about
his genealogy and about
who to call Daddy."
stitution overrules state law favoring
the stability of marriages over a bio
logical father's interests, the justices
said.
With roughly a third of California
children horn to couples who arc not
married to each other, the case was
considered a significant test of the
rights of biological fathers. Lower
courts in California had ruled in fa
vor of the biological father even
though a state law presumes a child
born to a married couple is gener
ally the husband's child, regardless
of biology.
Courts in 20 other states have
granted biological fathers in similar
situations the right to assert their pa
ternity, and some states have
changed their laws to protect the in
terests of unmarried fathers.
Monday's ruling stemmed from a
lawsuit filed by Riverside County
roofer Jerome "Jerry" Krchmar, 41,
who lived with a woman referred to
in the court's opinion as Dawn D. in
1995 while she was separated from
her husband of nearly six years.
Dawn, a teacher, became pregnant a
month after living with Krchmar.
The two had planned that they would
marry when she divorced, and he had
begun building an addition to their
in more recent interviews, his denials
have become more enigmatic
For instance, Eddie Saldivar de
manded that media outlets stop refer
ring to his brother as the "angel of
death," a term Efren Saldivar said
described himself, according to the
alleged confession. However, Eddie
told The Times, " 'Angel of mercy'
would he OK.-
Asked whether the phrase "angel of
mercy - allowed for the possibility that
Efren Saldivar had actually confessed,
Eddie Saldivar said such a revelation
would have to wait for the proper fo-
Eddie Saldivar also declined to re
peat his contention that the confession
was false, instead emphasizing that it
had been manipulated by police.
"How it turned out was how the
police wanted it to sound," Saldivar
said.
They know they didn't have any-
thing."
Hospital officials, meanwhile, are
setting up a task force to deal with the
hundreds of calls they have received
from relatives worried that their loved
ones may have died prematurely.
They have fired four other respira
tory care workers, placed one on sus
pension, and begun restructuring the
leadership of the respiratory care unit.
They declined to give any reason for
the personnel actions.
Police, however, said those fired
were part of the ongoing police inves
tigation. They declined to comment
on whether they had given any infor
mation to the Respiratory Care Board,
the state board that licenses respira
tory therapists. The hoard also de
clined comment.
home, he said in an interview
Instead, however, after living with
Krchmar for almost four months,
Dawn returned to her husband.
Krchmar tried to negotiate child sup
port and visitation rights, took a
parenting class, and filed a lawsuit a
few months before the baby was
horn to assert a parental relationship.
But Dawn and her husband refused
to allow him to see the baby, Sam.
When Krchmar and the couple met
for a blood test, Dawn's husband
punched him, Krchmar's attorney
said.
Krchmar, his voice breaking, said
Monday he was "devastated" by the
ruling and planned to appeal to the
U.S. Supreme Court.
will never give up my son," said
Krchmar, who has a small organic
farm. "My son is being lied to ev
ery day of his life about his geneal
ogy and about who to call Daddy. -
Marjorie Fuller, Krchmar's law
yer, called his fight one of "an amaz
ingly large number" of similar cases.
"It is telling a lot of young men
who are stepping up to the plate, as
they should, and wanting to take re
sponsibility ... 'Forget it. Go away,'
she said.
Jerry Krchmar
But Diane Catran Roth, a lawyer
for the married couple, praised the
ruling for giving Dawn and her hus
band, Frank, a chance to he "normal
and raise their children like normal
people."
"There are a lot of similar cases
going on, not only in our state but
throughout the country," she said.
"We believe it is important that mar
ried couples be protected from law
suits that threaten their rights to raise
their children within their marriage."
Krchmar said he and Dawn had
been excited about the pregnancy
and even discussed names for the
baby. But after he went out of town
for a week on a job, she decided she
no longer wanted to live with him
and moved back with her husband,
he said. Dawn has denied ever prom-
ising to marry him.
When Sam was horn, Krchmar
went to see the baby in the hospital,
he said. "I touched his cheek and I
cried until I was escorted out by
a nurse, - Krchmar said. "I took a pic
ture of him. I have it in my wallet."