The elusive Alejandro N… or the privilege of being

In a special collaboration for Astrolabio Diario Digital, the journalist Blakely Morales Cruz, shares in this chronicle with a very personal vision, his impressions of the “atypical” trial against Alejandro N., while outlining the profile of the “out of series” potosino whose accusations have questioned the altruistic vocation of high society.

Blakely Morales-Cruz

The former official of the state DIF accused of aggravated rape, Alejandro N., remains untouchable, elusive. Until the thirteenth hearing of the oral trial against him, as since his arrest on Wednesday, October 23, 2019, he maintains the attitude of the man who, feeling immune for a Special giftrequires differentiated treatment of justice.

Two years and nine months have passed since then, Today is Thursday, September 1, 2022, and half an hour before the start of the hearing with the same time delay, Alejandro N. is led and placed in a second row behind the work table from where we can see him better. Located there he seems weak, relegated, the condition of alleged aggressor who refuses to assume is highlighted in him.

We have chosen this extreme, foreseeing the projection of images during the appearance of a witness for his defense; the distance between us – the press – and him is minimal. Obviously our closeness makes him uncomfortable. Alejandro tries to gain space, and then he pushes the mahogany desk hard to move it a few centimeters.

Just like that time Potosí Sports ClubAlejandro N. struggles today to attend to instructions from the authority represented by an element of the Procedural Police, assigned to the oral trial room.

The element realizes his action, reprimands him with a commanding voice and tells him: “Leave it like that, defendant, you can’t move that table, do you understand? Please don’t move it.”

But Alejandro tries to confront him, explain something to him, he forgets that he is in jail and not in the DIF government meetings where his word was a decree, except in the meetings of the Potosí Council of Civil Associations (Copac)where his voice was sermon and his presence almost divine light.

Here the officer does not even let him speak. Alejandro’s face turns red with embarrassment and anger caused by a simple policeman, dark-haired, 1.68, with a robust complexion and a cursed look, scolding him in front of the press.

His privileged condition prevents him from being a balanced being at the same time: in his head, we all owe him something and he is above good and evil. That simple table betrays his pride.

He hides his face between his shoulders, but under the mask we can still see the teenager who has not ceased to be.

They had to pass twelve hearings to be able to witness the first (and only?) occasion in which Alejandro N. was treated with the intransigence that a suspected criminal should be treated. Not with the deference that Officer Meraz is accustomed to.

lessons for be better person

What the name of Alejandro N. still means outside the La Pila prison is a condition that makes it difficult for some elements of the Procedural Police to find it difficult, almost impossible, to keep their distance from a character like him. Persuasive and seductive according to those who know him, the former official is a professional in detecting the need.

(Need, he says; vulnerability, I say.)

Of the officers, one in particular with the last name Meraz is the one who during the breaks in the first days of the trial he even sits next to him to talk, reflect and listen to him like a therapist; she encourages him with a conversation that revolves around spirituality and invariably leads to the saint benedicts.

The first time the press exchanges a word with officer Meraz, Alejandro’s confidant asks us what media we are from, and if “We shot at the Green” or not. Then, almost after nothing, Meraz tells me emphatically, looking me in the eye: “Here (in prison) you come to be a better person.”

At that moment I cannot avoid perceiving the police officer as a spokesperson for the former official.

For Wednesday, July 13, the day of the seventh hearing, we have already mentioned in the radio programs of MG that during breaks, Alejandro N. and a policeman talk about esoteric issues as if they were in the Republic Market.

The elements of the Procedural may have been reprimanded by their superiors based on that comment, it may not. The truth is that for this Wednesday, the police officers have been rotated for the first time, and for the first time the accused has no one to talk to. Talking to be able to be, to be able to continue being, so as not to uproot his person from the symbolic capital that he still keeps outside of here.

Chiaroscuro

At 9:50 a.m. on Wednesday, July 13, 2022, prior to the seventh day, one hour late and the holidays of the Judiciary just around the corner, the temper of the accused has changed. With no one to talk to he is nervous, impatient and a slight tachycardia attacks his back causing snorts, anxiety.

The tension forces him to stir in his chair, he approaches the desk sitting on the edge, takes the opening order for the next witness, reviews it, and as on other occasions, with a pen he leaves notes at the bottom as clues or signs for their lawyers, like stones to cross the river of justice.

Suddenly an alarm sounds: it’s his wristwatch, programmed to remind him of we don’t know what, exactly at 10 in the morning. She turns it off.

If it weren’t for his sunburned shoulders or the anti-leisure exercise his arms denote, anyone I would say that Alejandro has never set foot in jaillooks healthy, with good weight and retains the stylized face that was portrayed by the cameras of the pink sections of the socialite.

But something has changed in the color of his eyes. The blue pupils that captivated the ladies of lineage no longer stand out; a certain crystalline or grayish aspect can be guessed in them.

During the hearings, he wears the khaki pants of the prison, but he combines them with gray or white well-kept cotton sweatshirts, plus a gray or orange goose down vest to withstand the cold air conditioning of the rooms he always enters freshly. bathed, with wet hair, and on the feet, red Puma Ferrari sneakers.

In addition to his youthful attire, a silver chain and a scapular around his neck reveal what he tries to project or preserve at 42 years of age, dressing innocently.

Other than that, hardly anything is different about him. Some who saw him then, and who have seen him in recent years, think that Alejandro, physically, is still the adolescent he was in the late nineties, when he began the altruistic career in which he still maintains his personal worth, his meaning in front of the world, and if they have it, their credibility.

In the sight of those of us who witnessed his trial, Alejandro N. maintains arched eyebrows, a serious countenance and a frown, but he has been calm, stable, affable, he has even been seen smiling; However, his mood has been deteriorating as the evidence is overwhelming, his witnesses do not grant certainties, and the hearings become eternal.

He despairs and we realize that on Thursday the first of September. It took him thirteen hearings, knowing the prosecution system for a thousand days from the cruel heart of the jail, to realize that outside of his world of charity dinners, donations and Third World altruismlife has chiaroscuros and in the face of all that his mind runs out.

All or nothing

Until before entering La Pila prison, Alejandro N.’s life had been full and public. The social media magazines preserve the images of his wedding with a young woman ten or fifteen years younger than him, belonging to one of the highest ranking families among the aristocracy of Mexico.

In the images from four years ago, smiling, he, she, their families and friends, were unable to predict the future, although some darkness inhabited and already peeked out from the gaze of the former official.

From the accusations that keep him behind bars, the story of Alejandro N. has become a bottomless barrel that nobody or almost nobody has wanted to peek into. Those who had him close only think of forgetting, waiting for the sentence and in case of conviction, pretending that someone like him never existed.

There are also those who still admire him and trust his innocence, support him; others lament and wonder: How is it possible that we didn’t see it? how come we never noticed?

Going back to Thursday the first of September: Alejandro N. is still recovering from the scolding for having moved the work table, when precisely, Officer Meraz enters the designated room on the thirteenth day.

The policeman with more than twenty years of career finds the defendant, his friend, still bent over, and with a pat on the back he greets him effusively: “That Alex! Cheer up!”.

I refuse to believe that Meraz is a naive man, rather it seems to me that whatever he does, he does not do it for free. Alejandro gets up as if by magic and returns his greeting, his salvation has come.

And indeed, the policeman makes the wait more enjoyable with his dialogue, and Alejandro forgets for a few minutes that he is in jail, he plays at being a social being.

But too much time has passed, so many things have changed inside and outside the La Pila Comprehensive Criminal Justice Center from 2019 to date, and Alejandro N. is no longer able to remain calm as he was in the first days of the oral trial. A judicial decision that he thought he had under control teeters in suspense, mediated by political decisions of another nature.

Desperate, he takes the hint. With a claim he disclaims mixed interests in his favor: “I am the one who is detained, I am the one who wants to leave this place”reproaches the judges of the court claiming to be one more victim, the main interested in the trial against him advancing faster.

But nothing depends on him anymore, nor on his lawyers, nor on the Judiciary, but on another with more power who is not here, for whom today The truth perhaps it is something superfluous, accessory, ornamental.

Meanwhile, among the truths that do persist and from which nothing can take away that quality, is that as the days and weeks go by, Alejandro’s perks run out, including the privilege of being a distinguished citizen, awarding the Merit Plan of San Luis 2012.

In prison he is nobody, and if he gets out, immune or tainted by the crime of rape, it is most likely that he will have to hide for a long time, or leave San Luis Potosí forever.

The elusive Alejandro N… or the privilege of being – Astrolabio