Mexico Runs Away From the Truth

New York Times: In December 2014, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico traveled to the state of Guerrero, where months earlier 43 college students who were headed to a protest in Mexico City had vanished under murky circumstances and were presumed to have been massacred.

“Let’s overcome this phase and take a step forward,” Mr. Peña Nieto said then. He must have been deluded in thinking that he could turn the page on a human rights atrocity that outraged the nation when the government had no answers about who committed the crime and why. Read more.

Federal investigators move on ex-governor

WSJ: There was another development in the investigation into the affairs of the former governor of Sonora Saturday when the federal Attorney General secured the offices of the family’s businesses.

Three hour later, they were seen leaving the building, located in the Pitic neighborhood in the state capital of Hermosillo, carrying computer hard drives and accounting records of the brothers’ business holdings.Investigators made their move on the offices of ex-governor Guillermo Padrés Elías and his brother Miguel about 10:00pm Saturday.

Just 24 hours earlier, police arrested a veterinarian employed by one of the companies when they found him in possession of 3.5 million pesos (US $207.000). He was driving a luxury vehicle in Hermosillo when stopped by state police, who found the money in a cooler in the trunk.

Declining Ratings for Mexico’s Peña Nieto

Pew Research Center: Three years after being elected president, Mexico’s Enrique Peña Nieto is increasingly unpopular. Following a year plagued by scandal and controversy, his ratings have fallen, and Mexicans have grown disappointed with key elements of his ambitious agenda.

A new Pew Research Center survey of Mexico finds 44% of the public expressing a favorable view of Peña Nieto, down from 51% in 2014. Read more.

Deals Flow to Contractor Tied to Mexican President

NYTimes: Armando García has filed lawsuits, joined protests and gotten arrested trying to stop a highway from slicing through his hilly backyard in a nature reserve.

But even with a court order on his side, bright green pines have been stripped away and tree stumps dot the hillside. Parts of protected forest have been slashed, exposing the path of a 20-mile highway to the new airport in Mexico City that is demolishing swaths of Mr. García’s indigenous community in its wake. Read more. 

El Bronco: Blunt, Frequently Vulgar, and Aiming to Run Nuevo León

NYTimes: He goes by the nickname El Bronco, and he aims to buck the political system in Mexico.

For the first time since a constitutional change in 2012 allowing independent candidates, one is making a serious run for governor in Mexico. And the political world is eager to see if he upsets the entrenched order, not just in his state but also in a nation increasingly frustrated and exhausted by the status quo.

It also helps that the insurgent comes in the form of Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, 57, a cursing former mayor and rancher in cowboy hat and boots who wants to run Nuevo León, a large state along the Texas border that is a hub for big business as well as organized crime. Read more.

Nepotism in Mexico: 88 families dominate

Mexico News Daily: Just 88 families have held control over 455 federal legislative positions during the last 81 years, a period in which when reelection to the legislature has been prohibited, according to an investigation by El Universal.

The 230 legislators belonging to the 88 families that have dominated Congress since 1934 have passed reforms and formed new parties that have served to extend their stay in office. Many of those families have candidates in the current election, and some already have the seats belonging to their clan assured. Read more. 

Final round: Cartel twins vs. cop-backed kidnapper

The Sun Times: To Pedro Flores, the two men who pulled him over had looked like cops.

But moments later, face down in the back of a windowless van, his hands and feet zip-tied, Flores realized he’d been duped.

At 22, he had been quietly working with his twin brother, Margarito, to create the most successful drug-dealing partnership in Chicago’s history. Read more. 

DEA's Leonhart Doomed? Committee Declares 'No Confidence' Amid Sex Party Scandal

U.S. News: Nearly two dozen lawmakers serving on the House oversight committee say it’s time for leadership change at the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The current DEA administrator, Michele Leonhart, infuriated committee members Tuesday with her testimony about agents who repeatedly attended sex parties with prostitutes that were funded by drug cartel members. Read more. 

Mexico Water Commission chief resigns over helicopter flap

AP: The director of Mexico's National Water Commission resigned Thursday following an uproar over his family's use of an agency helicopter to reach Mexico City's airport.

David Korenfeld announced his resignation to reporters more than a week after social media filled with photographs, apparently taken by a neighbor on March 29, showing people walking with suitcases to a helicopter marked with the agency's name. Read more. 

Mexican Political Family Has Close Ties to Ruling Party, and Homes in the U.S.

NY Times: In the fall of 2013, one of Mexico’s top housing officials posted an item on Twitter about an advertising campaign promoting mortgages for low-income Mexicans. The campaign’s message was simple: “The most important thing in life is in your house.”

It carried the tag line, “Homes with value.” Read more. 

The Mexican morass

Note: This editorial by The Economist has caused waves in Mexico. It's a very strong condemnation of the Peña Nieto administration, combining the deteriorating security situation, especially the case of Ayotzinapa, and the corruption scandals  of conflict of interest. Here in Mexico, Peña nieto gained few points with his commitment to be investigated by a hand-picked investigator.

The Economist: In a new year message Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, promised to work to “liberate” his country from crime, corruption and impunity. His cabinet has duly set these as its priorities. The message is the right one. But unfortunately for Mr Peña, Mexicans are increasingly cynical about the messenger.

Mexico is still seething over the government’s leaden response to the kidnap in September of 43 students by municipal police in the south-western state of Guerrero and their apparent murder by drug traffickers. The investigation of the case seems to have stalled. Mr Peña’s main policy response to the massacre is a proposed constitutional amendment to abolish municipal police forces. But Congress may not approve it, not least because some are less rotten than the state forces, which would take their place. Read more. 

Mexico’s Pena Nieto Bought Home From Government Contractor: WSJ

NOTE: The Wall Street Journal digs up another Peña Nieto conflict of interest case, concerning another residence linked to a favored contractor. This makes four now that are in some way under investigation, including Videgaray's. In Mexico we know that these cases are almost certainly a very small part of the corruption (remember that his mentor, Carlos Salinas de Gotari managed a $1,350 million- pesos discretionary fund and his brother Raúl bought 41 properties as a government employee in his brother's adminisitration. Here is a good summary of the accusations).

I find it interesting that the Wall Street Journal is doing this kind of investigative reporting in Mexico. Several weeks ago I spoke with Rubén Luengas of the excellent Univisión radio show "Hablando Claro" about this. It seems that there is a powerful part of the U.S. international business class that would like to see Peña Nieto out of the way during the implementation of the reforms that he got passed in the country. The WSJ, Bloomberg (below), Forbes and others have been openly picking up the Ayotzinapa movement's calls for Peñá's resignation. That's some strange bedfellows that can't help but make one wonder what is afoot. It's possible that transnational companies are afraid that the traditional and ever more evident corruption of the PRI is bad for business. 

They seem to take the implicit position that corruption is fine when applied to the Mexican people through vote-buying and election-rigging. And it's fine when major companies like Walmart use bribes as a business lubricant. But the possibility that the government will syphon off some of the potential earnings of the long-awaited exploitation of Mexico's natural resource is more than they can handle. 

Bloomberg: Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in 2005 bought a property from a developer whose construction firm went on to win almost $150 million in public works contracts during his time in public office, the Wall Street Journal reported.


Pena Nieto, 48, bought the weekend home in an exclusive golf club in Ixtapan de la Sal, a resort town in the State of Mexico, from Roberto San Roman weeks after taking office, the newspaper reported, citing documents. A company San Roman started then won $107 million in business from the state when Pena Nieto was governor from 2005 to 2011, the Journal said. Read more. 

Mexico Finance Minister: Crisis & corruption

CNBC Videos: Mexico's Finance Minister admits the country is in "crisis," reports CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Caruso. See video. 

Mexico Among The World's Most Corrupt Nations In 2014, New Report Says

Forbes: With allegations of corruption in government, politics, business and banking emerging throughout the year, corruption was one of the most pervasive issues in Mexico in 2014. It came as no surprise, therefore, that the country scored worse than previously in the year-end corruption perceptions report by Transparency International released December 3rd.

With a score of 35 on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean), Mexico ranked 103 among 175 countries in the group’s Corruption Perceptions Index, which ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be. The best-ranked country is Denmark and the worst is Somalia. Among the 31 countries of the Americas addressed in the survey, ten ranked lower than Mexico: Argentina, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Haiti and Venezuela. Canada ranked highest and Venezuela lowest. Mexico is also ranked the most corrupt among the OECD countries.  Read more. 

Mexico does poorly on corruption index

Mexico News Daily:  Denmark, New Zealand and Finland are the least corrupt countries in the world, according to perceptions gathered in Transparency International’s (TI) annual Corruption Perceptions Index.

The index is based on how corrupt a country’s public sector is perceived to be, on a scale of 0 to 100, 0 being highly corrupt and 100 being very clean. Read more. 

What If Peña Nieto Resigns? Scenarios for Government Change in Mexico

Huffington Post: Since the resignation of Pascual Ortiz Rubio in 1932, Mexico has enjoyed uninterrupted presidential continuity, a streak that is unmatched by any major political system in the Western Hemisphere (and possibly among the longest in the world). Over the course of these 82 years, no presidential term has been cut short due to death, assassination, resignation, coup d'état or any other sort political upheaval and as a result, it has become difficult to imagine an interruption to this orderly succession that most Mexicans have taken for granted. However, the outbreak of social unrest from the Ayotzinapa crisis combined with the streak of scandals that have engulfed the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto over the past two months have perhaps made the unthinkable slightly less so. For those of us in the business of analyzing political and economic risk, the last few years have demonstrated that highly improbable events do in fact take place and therefore deserve a more nuanced look. Read more. 

Same firm, new house: Mexico leader's conflict-of-interest storm grows

Reuters: Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto faced fresh questions on Wednesday about his dealings with a company at the center of a conflict-of-interest scandal, after it emerged that he enjoyed rent-free use of a house belonging to the firm as a campaign office.

Already under pressure over the government's handling of the presumed massacre of 43 students abducted by corrupt police in southwestern Mexico in September, Pena Nieto is facing his most difficult period since taking office two years ago. Read more. 

As Mexicans Lose Faith In President, Peña Nieto Proposes Changes To Justice System Amid Civil Unrest

International Business Times: The Mexican government said it will propose sweeping changes to the country's justice system this week, as students in the street protest widespread corruption and outrage grows over continued violence and political impunity under President Enrique Peña Nieto's administration. "You have to fix what's not working," Secretary of the Interior Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong said in a Monday radio interview about the proposal, which will be unveiled Thursday.

When Peña Nieto took office nearly two years ago, he promised to stem the bloodshed and instability that plagued his predecessor, Felipe Calderón. During his 2012 campaign, the then-governor of the state of Mexico pledged to "undertake a more effective security policy to reduce violence: no more homicides, no more kidnappings, no more extortions." He gave the speech in Tamaulipas state, where two former governors are accused of aiding drug cartels.  Read more. 

Few believe Mexico’s first lady made enough as TV star to pay for mansion

McClatchyDC: Mexico’s first lady, soap opera star Angelica Rivera, is back in the spotlight. But rather than receiving public adulation, she’s the subject of ridicule.

A poll released over the weekend found that three-quarters of Mexicans think Rivera isn’t telling the truth about how much she earned during her television career and how she paid for a $7 million mansion that’s at the heart of a political scandal enveloping her husband, President Enrique Pena Nieto.  Read more. 

Report: Mexico president's home built, owned by affiliate of high-speed rail contractor

Brandon Sun: The private home of President Enrique Pena Nieto was built and is registered under the name of a company connected to a controversial high-speed rail contract that he abruptly cancelled last week, according to a report by a leading Mexican journalist.

The $7 million, 13,000-square-foot home in Mexico City's most exclusive neighbourhood was built and is owned by Ingenieria Inmobiliaria del Centro, a company belonging to Grupo Higa, according the report published Sunday by Aristegui Noticias, website of journalist Carmen Aristegui. Read more.