Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 4

4 Section 1 Chicago Tribune. Sunday, September 23, 1979 Accardo rebuffed in hunt for a home Mexico to U.S.: Don't get pushy By John O'Brien i 'I 1 .1 Uv -I 'him laiffifr iy xr 4 i i Tony Accardo It TONY ACCARDO, veteran "chairman of the board" of the Chicago crime syndicate, isn't used to taking no for an answer. But no is the answer Accardo got when he tried to buy a $100,000 condominium in the exclusive Mission Hills Country Club Village outside suburban Northbrook, The Tribune has learned. A lawyer for the housing development confirmed that Accardo had applied to buy a home in Mission Hills last week, but said his application had been rejected on orders of Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance a major financial backer of the project. The lawyer said no reason was given.

Insiders said, "He made us an offer we could refuse." FEDERAL INVESTIGATORS disclosed that Accardo's adult children also had applied to buy condominiums in Mission Hills, near the one their father wanted to buy. They reportedly withdrew their applications when Accardo was rejected. Investigators believe that the 73-year-old Accardo hoped to set up an enclave in Mission Hills, so that all his close neighbors there would be members of his family. Accardo, who spends much of each year living near Palm Springs, Cal recently sold his 18-room house at 1407 Ashland River Forest, for a reported $487,500. Since then he has been looking for a larger home near Palm Springs as well as a new home in the Chicago area.

However, he has run into more snags than faced former President Richard M. Nixon in Nixon's efforts to buy an apartment in New York City. INVESTIGATORS said that so far Accardo's house-hunting efforts in the Palm Springs area have been no more sucessful than in Mission Hills. There have been reports that Accardo intended to live in California. But federal mob watchers said that despite the Chicago crime syndicate's long-standing interest in Las Vegas casinos and its new interest in San Diego rackets, Chicago is still home base.

Accardo could not remain the Chicago syndicate leader without spending part of his time here, they said. Investigators reported that in many ways, the 150-acre Mission Hills development was ideal for Accardo. It is lavish and has a reputation for excellent security. Uniformed guards staff the entrance u'jns iJn3to by Val Mauensa A happy Mexican oil rig worker should be optimistic about his job prospects Mexico is sitting on an estimated 200 million barrels of oil. when Mexico needed U.S.

aid to bail out a faltering economy. Relations between the neighbor countries are entangled in myths and shadowed by history. "Many Americans still believe Mexicans laze around drinking tequila and shooting off guns the bad Mexican movie myth," said newspaper publisher Enrique Ramirez Ramirez. On the other hand, "Many Mexicans think all Americans are gringos who come south for girls, for spying, or for oil," he added. BEYOND THESE stereotypes are historical realties.

"There were two U.S. invasions of Mexico this century, so there is understandably a degree of mistrust and resentment," said U.S. Ambassador Patrick J. Lucey. When Mexicans get exasperated with their giant neighbor, they are fond of quoting President Benito Juarez who said last century, "Poor Mexico, so far from God, so near the United States" President Jose Lopez Portillo was re-mined of the scar tissue last year when, after making a speech about U.S.

energy needs, he saw painted on city walls the slogan, "Santa Ana gave them the land, Lopez Portillo is giving them the oil." Gen. Santa Ana was beaten in a war with Texas last century and consequently lost half of Mexico to the U.S. "I DON'T THINK the historical events are an influence by themselves today," said Manuel Decerra Acosta, also a newspaper publisher. "But they have formed us as a people, it is part of us. The cloudiness of our relationship today comes from current differences." These differences have been intensifying for the last decade, fueled first by the anti-American policies of the previous president, Luis Echeverria.

Vociferous, intensely nationalist elements In the Mexico City press are quick to question U.S. policy, too. Now all political groups seem to have united around the energy issue and the government's determination to sell oil beyond the United States to a wider market. AS JAPAN, SPAIN. West Germany, and others move in for their share, the dream is fading for gasoline-addicted Americans who hoped for vast new supplies from the Mexican fields.

The Carter administration had hoped to forge a new U.S.-Mexican partnership to include access to Mexico's energy resources and a curb on the wave of workers across the border. What Carter got was something else: Public scoldings from senior Mexicans over alleged U.S. indifference to their needs and the near paralysis of several joint working groups formed to solve pressing border problems. CARTER WILL HOLD White House meetings with Lopez Portillo Thursday and Friday, but experienced observers As the White House prepares for Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo's visit to Washington this week, Mexico is demanding equal treatment from the United States, refusing to continue its role as the poor neighbor "south of the border." In this story, Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Ar-nett of the Associated Press examines the issues surrounding U. relations today.

By Peter Arnett TIJUANA, Mexico API Mexico is sending powerful signals to the United States that times have changed and that it won't be pushed around anymore. From its original decision to burn off the natural gas at its rich Reforma fields rather than sell it on U.S. terms, to its refusal to pay compensation for oil spill damage in Texas, and its search for new foreign markets, Mexico is serving notice that it wants equal treatment in Washington's economic and political councils. The dominant figure for so long, Uncle Sam is not fully aware of Mexico's newly found self-esteem, according to officials, businessmen, and intellectuals interviewed "south of the border." MEXICO IS COUNTING on these de-velopments to gain Washington's full attention: 1 Mexico's massive oil potential makes it a partner worth courting. It is using the revenue to fuel an ambitious development plan that financial experts believe will increase two-way trade with the U.S.

as much as eight-fold to $80 billion in the next decade. That would make Mexico on of the United States' biggest trading partners. Mexico already plays host to the largest U.S. investment community outside the United States, with its lobbying power in Congress escalating as investments are increased, particularly by the Big Three automakers. Intense coun-terpressures probably will be exerted by U.S.

farmers and businessmen, already upset over Mexico's export of fruits, vegetables, and textiles into the U.S. No end to the vast flow of illegal Mexican workers across the border is in sight until the turn of the century. Rioting, violence, drownings, and shootings have accompanied the exodus, and arrests are up to a million a year. Other potentially explosive issues include a chronic dispute over tuna quotas, serious border problems, smuggling and other crime, and pressures on land, crater, and natural resources as Mexicans are drawn more to border cities because of their nearness to the U.S. DIPLOMATS PREDICT MEXICO soon vrill make a renewed bid for the attention of the third and developing world, with oil as the lure.

A similar tilt to the left several years ago shocked the United States, but the bid ended in 1977 own 18-hole golf course. Accardo is an avid golfer, who spends part of almost every day on a golf course either here or in California. Federal agents suspect that he transacts mob business on the links in an effort to avoid eavesdroppers. It was reported that one reason he sold his River Forest home is that he feared that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had planted it with such high-technology bugs that even mob electronics experts couldn't find all of them. IN AN UNUSUAL move, FBI agents carrying a search warrant entered Accardo's house in November, 1978, while he and his wife were in California.

They were looking for evidence linking Accardo to the murder of five burglars suspected of breaking into his house in January, 1978. What they found was a walk-in safe containing $275,000 in cash. The FBI confiscated the cash, but was forced by a court order to return it. Though Accardo is regarded as the Chicago syndicate's elder statesman, while operating control rests with his longtime protege, Jackie Cerone, there are still a number of decisions on which Accardo is consulted, investigators said. ONE OF THEM is believed to be the recent demotion of Joseph Ferriola, 52, who was deposed as the mob's chief enforcer the third ranking member of the syndicate hierarchy.

Investigators said that Ferriola has been pushed aside in favor of Angelo LaPietra, 58. In 1977, The Tribune disclosed that LaPietra celebrated his new role as South Side rackets boss by building a fortress-like mansion at 30th and Princeton streets in the old Italian-American neighborhood where he grew up. doubt that much will come of them. Carter may not be able to put together even the framework for the new partnership he envisaged. One longtime American resident of Mexico City said, "I wish Carter would realize that he doesn't know everything about Mexico just because he speaks Spanish." Observers on both sides of the border agree that neither Washington nor Mexico City can fully control events.

Said Luigi R. Einaudi of the State Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs: "The U.S. and Mexico interact in so many ways on so many matters that the number of decisions has become very large. Many agencies are involved in making decisions. The resulting sum of U.S.-Mexican relations has become increasingly complex, even unique." ONE SITUATION WELL out of control is the continuing flood of illegal workers.

The Mexican government is only now admitting that hundreds of thousands of its citizens are entering the United States, but says most of them return at the end of each growing season. One U.S. official Involved said in exas peration, "The U.S. body politic has yet to make up its mind if the illegals are a problem or not." He said the U.S. government is awaiting the 1981 recommendations of a select commission on immigration, but he complained that the commission was "the rug we sweep our problems under." WHILE BORDER ISSUES and government relations tend to dominate public thinking, there is another world that has a major bearing on the situation.

"What we do as people together is as important as what our governments do," said publisher Gabriel Alacon, and Americans and Mexicans do much together. Around 170 million people cross the border legally each year, making it the busiest boundary in the world. Tens of thousands of Americans live in Mexico permanently. Some of them work for the 1,000 U.S. companies based there, and many others are retired.

American tourists pack resort hotels in Acapulco, the Yucatan, and newer playgrounds. Many drive the high-speed Mexican highways to idyllic villages and fabulous pre-Columbian ruins. The days when Americans were victims of banditry seem to have passed. to scrutinize visitors, while additional guards roam the grounds, which also are equipped with extensive electronic surveillance gear. In addition, the development has its IfeilU x.

Marital ills go on even after divorce mm $tom Site Jack 4 1 Mabley lJ Ijj- if If 4, "fir. MOST PEOPLE who get divorced Ihink the decree ends their marital problem. More often than not, it's just the first phase in their court fight. Before the divorce, a man and a woman can fight each other for nothing. After the divorce they have to pay lawyers to do it for them.

This year, about 30,000 couples will file for divorce in Cook County. But 96,000 divorced couples will be back in lourt fighting over their children or alimony payments or some other matter disguising a rage for vengeance. "We get 72,000 blaming screamers 36,000 couples in here this year even though they've already had the big remedy," exclaimed LA. Burch, director of the county's Divorce Conciliation Service. "It's a plague.

And there's an equal number of kids involved. That's 150,000 people!" JUDGE CHARLES J. Fleck pre- liding judge in Divorce Court, said the rate of returning to court after divorce is "ballooning." He's assigning additional judges and hearing cases himself. Burch and his staff of six counselors try to reconcile divorce-bound couples. Kow the postdecree counseling takes 30 to 40 per cent of their time.

We talk with Burch every year or so because he's on the firing line in marital troubles, and he doesn't talk in "You only get a good divorce when ooth admit they are at fault," Burch stated. "Blaming the other person is a fake solution. And you don't get a good iivorce if some legal schmegal says it's just a matter of finance. "They're back in court because the segal remedy didn't solve anything. As 'or this Mickey Mouse thing called no-fault divorce, where the complaints are ust buried, if there's no fault, why split? "People think it's okay to mess wound and jump from sack to sack Kith no commitment.

The postdecree court is where it all hits the fan." BURCH IS CONVINCED after talking with 53,000 married people and witness-jig countless divorces that unless both parties admit they were at fault in the breakup, and share the blame for the failure of the marriage, they're inevita-ity headed back to court at great emotional and financial cost. "People are told to blame the other person when they get a divorce," he laid. "That it's just a matter of who gels the car, as, if it were a financial transaction. I say a divorce won't do my good unless you see your former mate as your victim and not your Vi I --Vl. II' "Divorce is one contract you can't cancel, because the children just won't go away.

Many of the postdecree fights are over child custody and support. A woman gets a new boyfriend who turns out to be a child abuser, or a man finds out his wife is living with a man, so he's back in court because be wants the kids back. "A lot of people go back to court to get even. They have the illusion they're perfect and their ex-spouse is vicious. But they're tied together permanently because of the kids.

"DIVORCE IS A superficial remedy. A fraudulent remedy. It lets us blame others for our unhappiness. During a counseling session, if I ask somebody what their faults are, they'll say they're too generous, too patient, too loyal. "Each person has to understand their private definition of love, relationship, and the unfair demands we put on the other person.

Most people's definition of love is sick. Until I find out what is meant by love, don't give me any more of it." Judge Fleck said the issues in postdecree court "generally are flat-out money or custody. Revenge is the motive in some cases." THE EMERGENCE of the father's demanding custody of the children is a growing factor. In the past, women automatically would get the children. Now men are fighting for them.

This is complicated by Increasing mobility of our society. A lot of women now petition the court to move out of state with the children, particularly to the Sun Belt. "We don't see any requests to go to Pittsburgh or Detroit," the judge commented. These are the toughest decisions because they essentially end the relationship between the children and the parent who stays behind. "Those are the heart-breakers," said Judge Fleck.

Another consideration in the increase in cases may be lawyers. The more they go to court, the more money they make. When a divorced client calls in distress, the lawyer may counsel to cool down and talk things over. Or he may file a motion. 4 rpj 1 3 ieirfUMtfWf 1 f7Wysels r-wsnil-AM A li I I LANE BRNANT CHICAGO: Wabash and Washington PHONE SUNDAY 621.8787 mOW IN lOT0 OMHOOJ RIVE 0MS i oocf e.o jo.iff iiNcoiN moms wmm SUjIHN ST0PES OOES N00S tO i woyi to ttoyt tANE UtAMt Qwgi Cord, VISA ond Mow Cvgj VlI i.