March 27, 2004
You can join the
debate – but it’s in Spanish.
By Patrick Osio,
Jr./HispanicVista.com
Why weren’t any
Mexican presidents on the top ten list of
the most corrupt leaders in the world in
the last two-decades is the subject of an
ongoing debate on Cyber space.
Transparency International based in
Berlin recently published the list –
there were two former Latin American
presidents – Peru’s Alberto
Fujimori reputedly taking $600 million,
and Nicaragua’s Arnoldo Aleman
reputedly taking $100 million. Small
amounts compared to the billions taken by
the top five, but absent from the list
were any Mexican presidents and debaters
are arguing who should be on the list.
One would think the
debate is between the anti-immigrant,
Mexico bashers like Pat Buchanan, Rep.
Tom Tancredo, John “The Puppeteer”
Tanton and their newest member, Harvard
professor Samuel Huntington, but such
thinking would be wrong. They possibly
haven’t entered the melee due to
their linguistic impairment stuck in the
English-only world – the debate is
in Spanish between Mexicans living in the
US and those in Mexico.
Fujimori’s $600
million and Aleman’s $100 million is
peanuts according to some, and limiting
the report to the last twenty-years
leaves out several Mexican presidents who
rightfully should be on the list
according to others.
But most agree that
Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994)
should be on the list. For instance it
was pointed out, Swiss authorities
confiscated over $100-million from his
brother Raul’s Swiss bank accounts.
Did some presidents not make the list
because the funds were channeled through
relatives or friends?
It seems the debate
is as much about the anger Mexicans still
harbor towards Carlos Salinas de Gortari,
who convinced the majority of Mexicans
their country was on the threshold of
first world status. So convincing was he
that Mexicans put their faith on his
shoulders like with no other president in
modern times. They believed him; they
trusted him. He told them he was putting
an end to high-level corruption; that
true democracy was around the corner
– only to find at the end it had all
been lies, and the truth about the
enrichment of relatives and friends
started to leak out. The banking system
fell apart forcing a rescue that will be
paid by Mexicans for generations.
Those who suggest
the record should go back further than
the two-decades are correct. Looking at
the list of the top-ten most corrupt,
most were in power longer than any of the
Mexican presidents who have limited
themselves to one six-year term. The
Mexican dictatorship was not any one
individual, but rather it was an
institutional dictatorship, the political
party PRI, that ruled the country. The
PRI changed rulers every six years –
so the accumulated sacking of the
treasury over the years the PRI was in
power, were it to be calculated, would
far exceed the total combined amounts
credited to the top-ten identified by
Transparency International.
Just in the 2000
presidential campaign the PRI controlled
PEMEX’s (government owned oil
company) labor union illegally funneled
over $200-million to the campaign of its
presidential candidate, most of the
amount reputedly not used for campaign
expenditures. Had the PRI candidate won
the election, the sacking would not have
surfaced.
One has to go back
to 1946, when Miguel Aleman (no
relationship to Nicaragua’s Arnoldo)
became the first non-military general
president after the revolution. As
president he virtually converted Mexico
into a business entity with his cabinet
ministers as part of the board of
directors. Aleman was rich when he
entered the presidency, and came out one
of the richest man in the world.
Thereafter it seemed
that with few exceptions each succeeding
generation of presidential
administrations attempted to outdo the
past one. But, it was not just the
presidents and cabinet members who helped
themselves to public funds, it extended
to governors, mayors, heads of every
conceivable state run agency – it
was first for their pockets and then for
the people.
It escalated so that
in 1982, when President Miguel de la
Madrid took office, the country as in the
a state of bankruptcy. With little money
in the treasury coffers, some at the top
opened the door to the Colombian drug
cartels.
The collapse
of the party dictatorship came about in
2000 when finally the Mexican people were
able to extricate the PRI by electing
Vicente Fox of the PAN party to the
presidency.
This in turn has
unleashed the voices and debates that if
you speak Spanish you can enjoy.
______________________________________
Patrick Osio, Jr. is
Editor of HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com).
Contact at: PosioJr@aol.com
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