Prosperity and Crime in Mexico
WTTT, ADDISON DE
QUESTIONS ABOUND Prosperity and Crime in Mexico By Addison De Witt Guadalajara Knowledgeable historians have long rejected the notion that moral decay caused the fall of Rome. At its most...
...and that they've confronted their debt and bankrestructuring problems...
...No more...
...This angered Zedillo even more: "And the rest of us, myself included, you don't think we're competent...
...Both of these events were inevitably followed by a well-orchestrated barrage of media vilification aimed at the victim...
...Was Cardinal Posadas murdered accidentally in a shootout between rival drug gangs, or murdered deliberately because he had obtained a file linking former President Carlos Salinas and his brother Raul to the drug underworld...
...Moreover, it was announced that such outside agencies as Interpol and the United States' FBI and DEA were also after Villanueva...
...In an effort to link Stanley to high-level official corruption, it was reported that the Ministry of Interior had issued credentials permitting him, his son, and a close friend and professional collaborator named Mario Bezares to carry firearms...
...At the same time that international financial analysts, businessmen and investors are discerning a Mexican "Doctor Jekyll," however, others are encountering a "Mister Hyde" in the form of an alarming increase in violence...
...Almost onethird of businesses in the state now spend more than 3 per cent of their income on security measures...
...Within the limits of his precarious position, Villanueva is vigorously fighting back...
...Since 1993, prominent murder victims have included Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas of Guadalajara, presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, and political leader (and former presidential brother-in-law) José Francisco Ruiz Massieu...
...Concluded Villanueva: "The system itself has become criminal...
...For the extra cost they guarantee that the bus will take the toll road (other buses go on a winding mountain road to save tolls) and will make no stops...
...A number of victims have been well-known figures ranging from politicians to church leaders to popular entertainment personalities...
...Was the narco-execution of Stanley instigatedby a drug baron with whom he had a falling out, or was it a maneuver by drug dealers allied with hostile politicians out to embarrass Leftwing Mexico City Mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas...
...The most frightening event was the mysterious death of Miguel Peyriffite Cupido, the state prosecutor during Villanueva's term...
...The taxi and bus robbers need money for drug deals and/or to satisfy their own cravings...
...Considered puerile by intellectuals, Stanley's uninhibited stylemade him a favorite among daytime viewers and his death was deeply mourned...
...El Ejecutivo has seats that recline into beds and service far superior to anything offered by Greyhound or Trailways...
...Sharing the World Bank's optimism is theprestigious Moody's Investors Service, which recently upgraded the investment rating of Mexico's external debt...
...The country's continuing fair-haired status within the international financial community is accompanied by encouraging signs in the domestic sector...
...They make a sudden stop, armed confederates hop in, and the passenger is forced to hand over money, passport, and all jewelry or credit cards...
...On March 27, he was summoned to the Federal Attorney General's Office (PGR...
...Like ancient Rome at its most prosperous, millennial Mexico appears to be in excellent shape while actually beset with crime and corruption...
...Previously, he noted, a rebellious politician was simply "sent to the bench," but the murders of Colosio and Ruiz Massieu demonstrate that more "direct" procedures are now coming into vogue...
...Tourists have been deliberately held prisoner during the time it takes members of the gang to run up astronomical credit card charges, to prevent the theft from being reported...
...The TV personality, Francisco "Paco" Stanley, was the star of a morning show called Una Tras Otra...
...In Jalisco, one of the richest and most commercially active states in the country, a group called the Jalisco Business Center (CEJ) released a report in June disclosing that 64 per cent of businesses in the state have been the victim of robberies or other crimes in the last 12 months...
...The gang member, now in a witness protection program, declared that Stanley visited Carrillo Fuentes at a house in Mexico City's tony Pedregal section...
...Ironically, the theme of one of Stanley's last shows was Vive sin drogasi ("Live Without Drugs...
...According to Villanueva, Hernandez was incensed because he believed the Governor was conducting a press campaign against him and attempting to seize some of his assets...
...An American who lives in Colima, about 140 miles south of Guadalajara, furnished another perspective to a local English-language paper...
...As Mexico reaches the second millennium, its problem may be less one of improving its economic health than of reconciling the "Jekyll" and "Hyde" sides of its political psyche...
...Yet an upbeat James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, recently declared that "what the Mexican government has shown is that fiscal and monetary order are already in place...
...Rejecting accusations of links with drug lords, Villanueva attributed his predicament to troubling political developments...
...It is not that simple in Mexico...
...In a welter of defamatory statements similar to the ones that followed Stanley's death, PGR announced that Peyriffite had died from an alcoholinduced heart attack and gratuitously added that he was involved with the Ciudad Juarez drug cartel...
...As the campaign escalated, it revealed that, at age 20, Stanley was jailed for leading a youthful band of armed robbers in his native Saltillo...
...Since his disappearance in April of this year, Villanueva has become one of history's most loquacious fugitives fromjustice...
...They are cautioned to limit themselves to vehicles waiting at authorized cab stands or summoned by their hotels...
...Two causes célèbres of the last few months were the execution-style murder of a popular television entertainer and the disappearance of an ex-governor charged with a variety of offenses who believed himself threatened by the government...
...Since January, when the peso stood at 10.65 to the dollar, it has firmed to under 9.5...
...Despite a great many unanswered questions, there is a common denominator to the rising number of murders and the increasing violence amid Mexico's improving economic health: drugs...
...In some cases, victims have been murdered...
...When asked why he gave up so much, he replied that robbers had beaten and pistol whipped passengers who could only produce 15 or 20 pesos...
...Inflation is expected to stay below 1 per cent throughout the summer...
...The other aspect of Mexico's "Hyde" side is an exponential rise in crime and violence affecting businessmen, foreign tourists and ordinary citizens...
...Riding in a car with official markings were a sergeant who was the driver, a lieutenant sitting next to him, and a lieutenant and corporal in the back seat...
...Apparently a difference of opinion existed at the top levels of—what...
...Several publications have openly described Stanley's slaying as a "narcoexecution...
...On June 29, two presidential guards were killed in a payroll robbery that netted about $52,000...
...President William McKinley, a symbol of big business Republicanism, was slain by an anarchist...
...The stockmarket is flirting with record highs and allimportant oil export earnings are improving as big global petroleum producers cut production...
...In addition, the fugitive claimed he had an unpleasant one-on-one confrontation with President Ernesto Zedillo at a meeting in the presidential palace...
...On June 11, the Mexico City daily El Universal printed an interview with a former bodyguard to the late drug king Amado Carrillo Fuentes...
...There is an ongoing advisory to tourists arriving in the capital concerning the selection of cabs...
...On May 28 his body was found in a house in Cuautla, Morelos...
...Bus robberies have become commonplace and are usually perpetrated by persons who either board at departure points or are picked up along the way—with the driver at times an accomplice...
...President Abraham Lincoln was killed because John Wilkes Booth sympathized with the Confederacy...
...Under no circumstances, the advisory stresses, should they board one of the small Volkswagens that continually prowl the city...
...Passenger buses have become dangerous too...
...You're on the side of the hard-liners, right...
...that a medical autopsy discovered cocaine in his system...
...Addison de Witt is the pseudonym of a freelance journalist who lives in Mexico...
...One quarter of the businesses reported that they were hit more than once...
...only five blocks from the presidential palace...
...As a longtime resident of Mexico, I took buses all over the country in the '70s and '80s...
...Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who represented Hapsburg hegemony, died at the hands of a Serbian nationalist...
...The attack tookplace at 10:30 a.m...
...Though Stanley is no longer in any position to defend himself, this is not true of ex-Governor Mario Villanueva of the state of Quintana Roo...
...As much as this may displease moralists, the capers of Nero and Caligula never brought the barbarians one step closer to the Eternal City...
...Only one thing is certain: Somebody Up There liked Stanley—but Somebody Else Up There obviously didn't...
...By contrast, when Rome fell to the Germanic King Odoacer, it was a relatively puritanical Christian community...
...Peyriffite was taken into custody by PGR agents and allegedly put under house arrest in Puebla...
...Sometimes such cases, particularly those involving heads of state, are easy to explain...
...The two played billiards and Carrillo Fuentes allegedly gave Stanley a plastic bag of cocaine before he left...
...In the September 1998 gubernatorial election, he said, the local hierarchy of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) wanted to impose as its candidate Addy Joaquin Coldwell, sister of Pedro Joaquin Coldwell, Mexico's ambassador to Cuba...
...Sinister, high-level violence that cannot be satisfactorily explained has become prevalent over the past decade...
...Yet that did not prevent a media blitz of personal defamation that began almost the moment after he was fatally shot...
...He comes to Guadalajara frequently and there is no Ejecutivo service between the cities...
...Villanueva's four-year term was due to expire April 7. Instead of obeying the summons, he vanished and the governor-elect, Joaquin Hendricks Diaz, took over...
...The CEJ further declared that crime has cut into business revenues not only in terms of product losses but also through increased security expenses...
...he snapped...
...Interest rates have shrunk from 34 to around 20 per cent, and the government is now prodding banks to step up loans to small- and medium-sized businesses...
...At its most decadent, during the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the empire was also at its height...
...Particularly alarming is the fact that criminals have become so bold...
...Narcotics are also a factor in lower level crime...
...On April 8 Villanueva was officially declared a fugitive by PGR, who charged him with 28 counts of narcotics violations and accused him of links with the Ciudad Juarez cartel...
...Why would a "protected" person like Stanley be the victim of what amounted to a public execution...
...The Mexicans, said Wolfensohn, "are acting sensibly, and...
...There were six robbers, operating out of two cars that blocked off the official vehicle...
...Finally, the study showed that while most businesses file formal crime reports with the authorities, 82 per cent of the cases remain unsolved...
...This, believes Villanueva, was the genesis of undying enmity on the part of the President, The ex-Governor's fall was followed by the arrest of 14 close associates, including police, state officials and businessmen...
...Resentful over her defeat, Joaquin Coldwell complained to PRI's electoral committee that she had lost through fraud...
...and that he was given to hitting on women at Television Azteca, where he worked...
...Both front seat occupants were killed and the lieutenant in back was slightly wounded...
...Some say the drug world, some say the government, or neither, or both...
...Villanueva's most interesting comment was on the changing political culture in Mexico...
...Particularly menacing are the taxi robberies in Mexico City...
...He has circulated videos denying the charges against him, but his hardest counterblow came in a mid-June telephone interview with a Mexico City newsweekly...
...Angered by Villanueva's friendship with Manuel Bartlett and Roberto Madrazo, two traditionalist PRI presidential candidates who have rejected economic neoliberalism and are trying to project a populist image, the President came right to the point...
...they'll be able to complete their elections without any financial problems...
...I hide most of my money in a safe place but keep about 300 pesos [S32] on me to give them," he said...
...Villanueva replied that he thought Bartlett and Madrazo were muy completos (literally "complete," but meaning competent and wellqualified...
...Along with an attaché case containing the payroll money, the assailants made off with a 9-millimeter Beretta submachine gun...
...But Villanueva would not play ball and Hendricks became the candidate...
...My wife and I have a time-share in Mazatlân and now the only bus we ever take is El Ejecutivo, a luxury carrier that connects the two cities...
...Villanueva says he also incurred the animosity of Roberto Hernandez, president of the Banamex-Accival banking group...
...The VW cabdrivers are notorious for working in concert with criminals...
...Furthermore, an election year is looming and these are times traditionally associated with instability...
...The danger faced by foreign visitors and residents has risen dramatically as well...
Vol. 82 • August 1999 • No. 9
