FLOC: Confession by Alleged Murderer of Organizer ‘Doesn’t Ring True’

by Mike Hall, May 29, 2007

One man has been detained in northern Mexico after allegedly confessing to taking part in the April beating death of Santiago Rafael Cruz, an organizer for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC). Police say they are searching for two others.   

But FLOC officials say the police accounts of a supposed confession don’t ring true. Says FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez:  

This case is far from being solved.  

He also told the Toledo Blade that FLOC attorneys who reviewed the reported confession “didn’t believe a word of the government’s case.”

Cruz was found bound and beaten to death in FLOC’s Monterrey, Mexico, office April 9. The union opened the office in 2005 to help guest workers obtain legal visas to work in North Carolina.

The FLOC office also fights corruption in the recruitment process. Velasquez says union investigations have uncovered widespread corruption among Mexican labor recruiters and that Cruz, who had been on the job in Monterrey for less than a month before he was killed, was helping workers obtain legal visas without paying the exorbitant fees demanded by some recruiters.

Police say the suspect—whom Velasquez says has been convicted of both human and drug trafficking and served time in prison—claims Cruz was killed in a dispute over money he allegedly charged the three suspects for legal visas. Velasquez says that story is

…totally fabricated. There is nothing to substantiate the confession about money.

One of the reasons Cruz, who served four years as FLOC organizer, was given the Monterrey assignment was because, says Velasquez “of his integrity and honesty.”  

Shortly after the murder, Velasquez said:

We think Santiago’s murder was a message to the union to back down, But we have no intention of going away.

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