Questions arise over Mexican student's presence at FARC base

By Hector Tobar and Cecilia Sanchez

Los Angeles Times

AP/EDUARDO VALENZUELA

The parents of Lucia Morett, Jorge Luis Morett and Maria de Jesus Alvarez, arrive at a military hospital in Quito, Ecuador, on Thursday, where their daughter is recovering from injuries she received in an attack on a rebel base.

MEXICO CITY -- Lucia Morett survived the attack Saturday by the Colombia military on a rebel base in Ecuador, an act that has brought three South American countries to the brink of war.

Since then, many have wondered what the 26-year-old Mexican drama student was doing at a base led by the No. 2 commander of Colombia's largest guerrilla group.

Morett remained in a Quito, Ecuador, hospital, recuperating from wounds received in what she said appeared to be an aerial bombing. Her public statements described the attack but have shed little light on what she was doing at the base.

Meanwhile, Mexico's government said it is investigating whether two of its citizens were killed in the raid.

An Ecuadorean official who was not authorized to give his name said his government has been asked to look for five Mexicans who attended a leftist conference in Quito in February and have not been heard from since.

A Web site operated by a radical student movement at Mexico's National Autonomous University confirmed that two Mexicans at the camp at the time of attack were members of the Mexican FARC Support Group.

Morett's story is being cast in Mexico City as a tale of espionage, involving Mexican students and local support networks sympathetic to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. In media reports, Morett has been called a "Mexican guerrilla" and "drug trafficker." But her friends and relatives say she's an aspiring actress who was in Ecuador working on her bachelor's thesis on Latin American culture.

Jorge Morett, Lucia's father and a professor at the University of Chapingo, said his daughter is an idealist who had traveled to Ecuador to attend a leftist congress. She is not a guerrilla, he said.

Many students at the National Autonomous University's School of Philosophy and Letters said Lucia Morett often gave speeches at school. She was a committed activist who took up a variety of causes, including support for the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, some students said.

The Mexican newspaper El Universal reported Wednesday that Colombian officials believe that FARC rebels have a support network at the university. The paper said it had obtained a confidential Colombian intelligence report that indicated that FARC is trying to recruit Mexicans in Mexico City, Monterrey and other places. Mexican officials have often linked FARC to Mexican drug trafficking groups.

Colombian intelligence officials have sent agents to Mexico to monitor student groups at the university and in other cities, the newspaper reported.

This report includes material from The Associated Press.