08 « May « 2007 « The Mex Files

In and out, and in again … Carlos Ahumada

8 May 2007 · Leave a Comment

(El Universal photo: Valente Rojas)

He’s scum and probably deserves whatever happens to him, but I can’t help thinking that maybe Carlos Ahumada is a patsy for… Carlos Salinas? Vicente Fox? The “establishment”? El Junque (a shadowy pro-clerical far rich right-wing clique)? The FBI or Las Vegas Casino owners? (“Video-gate”, which was the starting point for the Ahumada follies, probably involved the FBI misusing the U.S. PATRIOT Act. How’s that for international intrigue?).

He’s at the center of one too many plots and intrigues to be the power behind the scenes. The guy was way over-extended … besides his construction business, he owned a futbol team, properties in places he shouldn’t have (like National Parks) and had just launched, to great fanfare, a new (and very good) national newspaper.

Not quite all Mexicans dislike rich arrogant assholes (which Ahumada was), but a rich, arrogant, ARGENTINE asshole is unredeemable. Who better for a fall guy?

AP under-reports:

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) — A construction mogul at the center of a bribery scandal that tainted the image of Mexico City’s leftist government was detained immediately upon his release from three years in prison early Tuesday.

Television footage showed Carlos Ahumada leaving a Mexico City prison with his arms around his wife and children, only to be seized by city agents a few feet from the prison’s entrance, thrown into a waiting car and driven away as he and his family screamed in protest.

Ahumada’s lawyer Enrique Ostos said he didn’t know why his client had been detained after being acquitted of charges that had kept him in prison for about three years. Ostos protested the arrest and said Ahumada had signs of being beaten.

“I can’t say whether he is a political prisoner,” he told Televisa network.

City officials were not immediately available for comment.

The Argentine-born Ahumada filmed himself giving suitcases stuffed with dollars to several political allies of then-Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party still controls the Mexican capital.

He alleged the officials were extorting money from him in exchange for city contracts. The videos, shown on national television, brought political disgrace to several of the most prominent activists in Mexico’s main leftist party.

One of them, borough president Carlos Imaz, was later convicted of a campaign finance violation over Ahumada’s funds.

Ahumada’s long-standing personal relationship with former Mayor Rosario Robles — a rival of Lopez Obrador within Democratic Revolution — led to her ouster from the party.

Ahumada is at the center of so many scandals, intrigues and frauds I don’t haven any clue what exactly the changes might be this go around. When the bribery scheme fell apart, he fled to Havana (and stayed in ex-President Carlos Salinas’ villa there), which made Lopez Obradór’s claims that the whole scandal was a set-up all that more believable.

Especially when Ahumada confessed it was true.

He’s claimed “human rights abuses” before — semi-comically when it was about to come out that he’d ratted out Vicente Fox and other anti-Lopez Obradór plotters and he staged an “assassination attempt” against his own wife. Why she puts up with a guy who admitted to boning the fomer DF Jefa, Rosario Robles, for fun and profit (well… profit anyway), is a mystery to me.

What a peach of a guy.

Categories: 2006 Elections · AMLO · Argentina · Ciudad de México · Courts · Crime and Punishment · Diego Hildebrando Zavala · Legal system · Morditas and bribery · Politica (Mexicana) · Prisons · Vicente Fox

Too polite a language?

8 May 2007 · Leave a Comment

(Sombrero tip to Unapologetic Mexican)

Egregious social breeches aside, our worst habit is forgetting to say, “Please” and “Thank you”. The Spaniards – considered the politest people in Europe – were struck by the extreme politeness of the indigenous Mexicans as they raped and pillaged their way to power here. Politeness still matters, even in this big, big, big city. Use ¡Por favor! and ¡Gracias! Even if you completely mangle your Spanish, those phrases are essential if you want service in a store or restaurant.One thing that always gets the English-speaker is the extreme politeness of the Spanish language.

(My 2004 guidebook to living in Mexico City)

Sometimes it’s too DAMN polite. In the national on-line El Diario/La Prensa Gerson Borrero quotes Rafael Olmeda of the National Hispanic Journalists association on LOU DOBBS becoming a life-time member (yup… you read that right!):

“No podemos pretender que la inmigración ilegal no es parte de esa historia. Lou Dobbs, en mi opinión, cuenta esa historia en una manera incompleta, no constructiva. Pero él tiene el derecho a no estar de acuerdo conmigo”, reafirmó por escrito Olmeda luego de una conversación de 36 minutos en la tarde del viernes.

Which, of course, translates as:

“We cannot pretend that illegal immigration is not part of the story. Lou Dobbs, in my opinion, tells this story in an incomplete, not constructive, way. But he has the right to disagree with me,” reaffirmed Olmeda in writing after a 36-minute conversation on Friday afternoon.

Those of you outside the U.S. are probably not familiar with Dobbs. He was a financial reporter for years on public television, who now has a one-hour “news” program on CNN. Dobbs includes a regular feature called “Broken Borders” — dealing with what he continues to call “illegal immigrants,” but his methods, and presentation, are far from news standards.

I pointed out once before that he’s used neo-nazi propaganda without batting an eyelash. Leslie Stahl, a real reporter, took Dobbs apart on CBS’ real news show, “60 Minutes”:

Dobbs’s reports are more than just “incomplete” and “not constructive.” They often contain inaccurate, biased, and misleading information.

Last night, CBS’s 60 Minutes caught Dobbs in one of these lies. Following “a report on illegals carrying diseases into the U.S.,” his show reported that there were 7,000 cases of leprosy in the United States in the last three years. CBS found out that there were actually 7,000 cases in the past 30 years, and “nobody knows how many of those cases involve illegal immigrants.” When host Lesley Stahl confronted him on this error, Dobbs simply replied, “If we reported it, it’s a fact.” Watch it:

Hey, it’s nice that Lou has a thousand bucks to blow on his “lifetime membership”, but some of us gabachos who really do cover Latin America and Mexican-American issues could use a little support too –

Categories: Border Issues · Crack-pots · Gringo(landia) · Human Rights · Lou Dobbs · Media · Nativist groups · Right Wing Idiots · Spin doctors

Cultural diversity…

8 May 2007 · Leave a Comment

Burrohall, a couple of damn yankees who post mostly from (and about) Queretero were rather amused to see that the Professional Bull Riding Tour was headed down their way. I’d started out to write a “serious” little piece on a couple of Texas matadors, but what the hey…

Tauromachia, like rodeo, is an acquired taste, but down my way, where we’ve been doing the Tex-Mex Mix forever (at least practicing cultural diversity since Alvar Nuñuz Cabeza de Vaca stopped by for a spell in 1532), this looks like a perfectly normal sporting event to me

NO BULL… Mex Files only survives on cash donations…

Categories: Animals · Bulls · Gringo(landia) · Humor · Provincia · Queretaro · Sports · Tauromachia (Bullfighting) · Texas

Beauty queens and bureaucrats

8 May 2007 · 2 Comments

Bicycles are already a regular part of Mexico City traffic, though it’s still rare to see people commuting to work that way. There was a lot of press about Marcelo Ebrarad’s executive order requring District employees to ride their bikes to work one day a month. I’m sure it sounded like just a PR campaign, but I guess they’re serious.

Think of it as a step towards telecommuting: Monica Archundia reported in El Grafíco that eight percent of District employees (16,000 people!) have already been reassigned to new new job sites to facilitate bike commutes, and that the unions have identified the 65% of city employees willing to be reassigned as part of the program.

HSBC (Mexico’s largest bank) and 15 other businesses are also reassigning employees. The District is investing in everything from bike lanes to racks on buses, and hopes to cut gasoline consumption by 15,000,000 liters per DAY.

Sure, but will it sell in Polanco? Biking bureacrats and executive orders are one thing. This is another:

Mexico City – Miss Universe – Zuleyka Rivera of Puerto Rico – rode a bicycle through the streets of Mexico City on Monday, as part of a campaign by municipal authorities to discourage the use of cars.

Rivera, set to hand over the crown to her successor who is to be chosen May 28 at a ceremony in Mexico City, was accompanied on her tour by municipal Tourism Secretary Alejandra Barrales.

Wonks or Miss Universe? Who would look better on a bicycle?

Categories: Bureaucracy · Ciudad de México · Environment · Marcelo Ebrard · Real Mexico

My brother-in-law is going north

8 May 2007 · 2 Comments

The long-term consequences of the corrupt Ruiz administration in Oaxaca will be felt for years. Who benefits when a civil engineer has to become a house painter?

Original on Lonely Planet Thorn Tree Mexico Message Board

Here is a little bit of what is happening in Mexico every day:My brother in law is a civil engineer, 36 years old and has had his own construction company in Oaxaca for a couple of years. He has done quite a bit of the reconstruction you see around the historic center of Oaxaca, a few projects in rural areas (road building) and has done some private houses.

He has been working very hard over the last years and I know him as a person of integrity. He is family oriented, involved in the church at his barrio, helping out family and friends where he can.

With the last change in administration here in Oaxaca (state and city) his luck changed. The new authorities being even more corrupt than the ones before don’t give him any jobs without him paying a “mordida”. He refuses to be part of the corruption, does not pay the kick-back. So he is out. He is still trying: he is bidding on public projects and putting in a lot of time there. Only to be thrown out on “technical reasons”. He is hoping that friends that are technicians in the city government can help him. But it’s politics that decide – not the opinion of the technician.

Also the city owes him 100.000 pesos on a completed job because some documentation is supposedly not complete. The real reason is of course – again – corruption. He will not pay them their part. So they do the “manana” play.

Private construction is down because of last years conflict.

Now here is my brother in law, with wife and kids and no money. We had to lend him money (what was very painful for him), his telephone got cut, he can hardly pay the rent and electricity.

He has got a Visa to the US that he got in better times. Three years ago he went with his wife to visit family that live in California. In the states he saw that a painter or a construction worker makes good money per hour. So now he is thinking about leaving Oaxaca and to go north to work there illegally for a time.

It just makes me so sad to see a person that could contribute so much to Oaxaca’s development leave. To see that someone who has had his own construction company, someone with a university degree, paint some Gringo’s houses at 5 Dollars/hour. To leave his family.

So next time you see some Latino working in the states think about my brother in law.

Categories: Economy & Business · Emigrant labor/remittances · Evil-doers · Informal economy · Morditas and bribery · Oaxaca · Oaxaca en luche (2006) · Provincia · Real Mexico · Ulises Ruiz Ortiz