Is This Any Way to Run a Democracy? : Mexico: Rites of Purification

Mexican politics have long resembled Plato’s cave, where shadowy hands holding jewels and daggers flickered on cave walls but the truth remained elusive. But two events are bringing a startling new era of sunshine to the dark recesses of the cave. First, the discovery that the brother of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari held at least $100 million in foreign accounts under false names confirms widespread suspicions about systemic corruption in the upper reaches of power. Second, an epistolary self-defense written by Salinas, which appeared in Mexican newspapers, alludes to a subterranean struggle of titanic proportions with former President Luis Echeverria, revealing the Machiavellian essence of the Mexican political cave.

Brother Raul Salinas was arrested on charges of masterminding the murder of former brother-in-law and ruling-party Secretary General Francisco Ruiz Massieu in February 1995. President Ernesto Zedillo’s opposition National Action Party (PAN) attorney general, Antonio Lozano, and special prosecutor, Pablo Chapa, were staring at a possible acquittal.

The shifty congressman who organized the murder, Manuel Munoz Rocha, had disappeared, leaving prosecutors to build their case on the hearsay testimony of congressional staffer Fernando Rodriguez, a dubious character with a penchant for changing his story. Pressure was building and investigators even dragged out heavy equipment to excavate Raul’s properties to uncover the body of a murdered Munoz Rocha. Investigators finally hit pay dirt when they found Raul Salinas’ false passport, leading to the money trail. Many believe the murder case against Raul Salinas inadequately buttressed, but far fewer find corruption charges far-fetched.

The case is a double-edged sword for Zedillo. The release of Raul Salinas from prison, which would have been an embarrassing political disaster, now has been avoided. And Zedillo’s moral stature, already high, is burnished anew as he makes good on his promise to clean up corruption and make Mexico a country governed by the rule of law. The housecleaning is healthy and necessary if Mexico is to enter the 21st century as a truly modern nation, and Zedillo will get the credit for reforming the judicial system and establishing the principle that no one is above the law. Still, the path from here to the 21st century is strewn with danger, and reform has risks.

Mexico has now embarked on an uncontainable process of purge and purification. The origin of Raul’s wealth may be the thread that, once pulled, will begin unraveling the larger institutional fabric of corruption. Swiss and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration investigators are looking into money laundering, but garden-variety “honest graft” may also be involved, which could drag down well-known names in the business and political communities. “The people are very angry,” said one senior Mexican official. “They have had a taste of blood and will want more thrown to the lions.” No charges have been lodged against former President Salinas, but the mob is calling for his head and even then, the hunger for retribution may not be satiated. Many assume that former presidents Jose Lopez Portillo and Echeverria have just as many Swiss bank accounts and skeletons in their closets.

Where will it end? Many of Mexico’s former leaders deserve a comeuppance, but can the country avoid descending into mob justice that undermines building impartial and reliable institutions?

Should investigative passions spread, will the entrenched interests affected submit to the scrutiny of their affairs without resisting? A new outbreak of political assassination cannot be ruled out if desperate elements try to block investigators. After all, virtually everyone in the ancien regime probably has something to hide. The prospect resembles the Argentine and Chilean democratic transitions, where a brand of amnesty was offered to an entire political class, wiping clean the slate of past sins in an effort to avoid a dangerous backlash.

Cleaning house is a noble act, but it does not help Zedillo’s party in the short run. He is having difficulty capitalizing on the political benefits, leaving leaders of the Institutional Revolutionary Party scrambling, with more than 80 party members calling for the expulsion of the Salinas brothers from the party. A continuing scandal may undo the PRI once and for all, to cheering from opposition parties that wish the stage cleared for a more democratic phase of political life. The conservative PAN, on a roll from this year’s state and local elections, benefits from the PRI’s disgrace and could well make dramatic gains in the 1997 midterm congressional elections. A modest comeback of the left-wing Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) is not unthinkable if the party returns to the mainstream. The PRI’s unraveling would leave a vacuum of uncertain proportions, obliging new institutions and new political forces to mature very rapidly to prevent other, less felicitous forces from stepping in to fill the void. It is both a hopeful and dangerous moment for Mexican democracy.

Finally, Salinas’ inexcusably sloppy family affairs have given the enemies of economic reform a lot of ammunition. Carlos Salinas may or may not have taken part in his brother’s shenanigans, but he should have been his brother’s keeper and set a higher moral standard for conduct in office, if only to defend the historic stature of his own policies. The price of the former president’s negligence is that it has become more difficult for Zedillo, who shares a commitment to sound, open-market policies, to sustain forward momentum. Zedillo’s moves to reform Mexico’s pension system and privatize petrochemicals have run into growing opposition from resurgent populists.

As spectacular as the corruption revelations are Carlos Salinas’ charges that former President Echeverria may have engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate Luis Donaldo Colosio as part of a systematic effort to interrupt the Salinas legacy. Are his charges credible or a smoke screen to cover up his responsibilities?

Few dispute that intrigue has been the modus operandi of PRI politics. The party’s impenetrable cabal was constructured in 1929, when former President Plutarco Elias Calles convened the generals of Mexico’s 1910 Revolution with a relatively simple message--my friends, is it not better to close ranks and share the spoils than to kill one another? Ever since, political competition has been a matter of infighting among factional clans over ideology and spoils.

Few doubt Echeverria and his loyalists advocated a variety of statist economics hostile to Salinas’ economic opening. Salinas froze the populists out and fixed the PRI’s ideological pendulum permanently in favor of a market-oriented view. The pursuit of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the naming of Colosio meant extinction for a certain class of Mexican dinosaur. Is it unreasonable to assume that the exclusion of Echeverristas from the PRI’s banquet of power and privilege led to venomous hatred? Were these motives for revenge and an even more desperate act?

Carlos Salinas asserts that Echeverria and his loyalists made a power play after Colosio’s death, pressuring for a replacement candidate more congenial to their interests and ideology. The attorney general’s office may be wise to avoid wedding itself prematurely to any theory. Salinas also has been accused of the assassination on the basis of alleged tensions with Colosio. The flinging about of charges without empirical evidence will not solve the case and may spark a new round of murderous infighting.

Only one thing is certain as Mexicans make their way out of the darkness of the cave toward the light; the political system will not survive the revelation of its secrets unchanged. Mexico will become a less mysterious and far healthier place.