Rescued at Sea, Now Roasted in the Media

Mexicans Grow Skeptical of Fishermen, Who Deny Speculation About Murder, Drug Dealing

MEXICO CITY, Aug. 22 -- Fame has been tough on Mexico's three lost fishermen.

They started out as national heroes, lauded after their rescue last week for supposedly surviving 9 1/2 months adrift in the Pacific Ocean with only rainwater, raw fish and uncooked seagulls to sustain them. Since then, everything about their story has been questioned. They've even had to fend off widely broadcast and published speculation that they might be killers or cannibals or drug dealers or all three.

Ruben Aguilar, a spokesman for Mexican President Vicente Fox, said Tuesday that all aspects of the saga would be investigated, particularly the deaths of two men who were also aboard the boat. But sources in Fox's administration said Tuesday that there was no evidence the men were drug traffickers and that no investigation into drug-related accusations had been opened.

"Poor guys," a top Fox aide said Tuesday. "They survived all that, now they have to deal with all this."

With each new bit of innuendo, each juicy new detail, Mexico is growing more riveted to the saga. The faces of Salvador Ordóñez, Jesús Eduardo Vidaña and Lucio Rendón flicker across television screens and gleam out from newspaper front pages.

Their journey from anonymity to instant celebrity began inauspiciously. They said they set off in October in a 27-foot boat from San Blas, a small Mexican fishing village north of Puerto Vallarta. Their shark-fishing trip was supposed to last a few days.

They were swept out to sea, they said, and their boat ran out of gas. Months passed without any word. Back home, they were given up for dead.

Their families' prayers were answered Aug. 15, when the crew of another fishing boat spotted their disabled craft. The men were sunburned and thin, but otherwise in remarkable shape after having drifted almost halfway to Australia.

Then the interviews began. Each day, snippets of information made it back to Mexico, first via ship-to-shore radio and later via satellite television from the Marshall Islands, where they awaited a flight home.

They told of singing and dancing to pass the time. They described fashioning engine cables into fishing rigs and slurping rainwater. Their spiritual sustenance came from daily Bible readings, they said.

They were plainspoken, matter-of-fact, almost reluctant celebrities. Sometimes they answered in monosyllables. Their lack of affectation seemed only to add to their appeal.

Then the questions began. They hadn't mentioned anything about other crew members in their first interviews. Then they revealed that two men -- the boat's owner, identified only as Señor Juan, and another man -- had died during their odyssey. They said the men had starved to death. One of them cried and refused to eat, Vidaña told a Mexican television station.

"For Señor Juan, we said seven Our Fathers and seven Hail Marys, then threw him into the ocean," Vidaña told Mexico's Televisa network.

But the explanation has fallen flat. Mexican radio and television have been filled with theories that the men killed their colleagues and ate their flesh. And the men were asked in a Televisa interview about rumors that they were shipping cocaine.

"No," Rendón told Televisa, "that isn't true."