MEXICO: WHERE 'LA MORDIDA' IS KING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504810001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: August 12, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504810001-6
NEWSWEEK
12 August 1985
INTERNATIONAL
Mexico: Where
King
Mordida'
Corruption and bribery on a massive scale frustrate
de la Madrid's campaign for `moral renovation.'
The pressures within Mexico have led to
a rise in political unrest, mostly along
the border. Matamoros is one of those bor-
der towns the ruling
Institutional Revolution-
ary Party (PR!) has lost
to opposition parties. al-
though recently it won
hack the municipal gov-
ernment-with the usual
allegations of electoral
fraud. Worried by the
earlier defeat, the PRI
has tried to make !he
town a model of good
government.
I went to Matamoros
looking for the new may-
or, but first I found a man
reputed by U.S. police to
he a mobster-by his
own account, merely a
restaurateur. At a fiesta
by the river outside town
was Juan N. Guerra, or
just "Juan N." to locals
who seem to cringe at the
name. Not long before,
the town's other alleged gang boss, Casimiro
(El Cacho) Espinosa, was wounded by a
would-be assassin and hospitalized. Then a
dozen or so gunmen pulled up in front of the
hospital in an armored car and with auto-
matic rifles and grenades tore through the
hospital, killing seven, including El Cacho
and his sister. Juan N. was blase about the
incident. "El Cacho earned fame by dying,"
the silver-haired old man said smoothly as a
gaggle of his pistoleros crowded around. "He
talked a lot but he paid with his life."
Juan N.'s nephew Jesus Roberto Gue-
rra-the mayor of Matamoros-was at the
fiesta. The mayor explained how the PRI
had been stung by its earlier electoral defeat
in his town and had decided to pick a dark-
horse reformer like himself. "It was difficult
for the party to choose me," he said, "but
they needed somebody who didn't have to
steal. I'm already rich."
Could the opposition do any better? The
National Action Party (PAN) has made its
reputation campaigning against corrup-
tion in government. PAN's Ruben Ru-
biano in Matamoros says corruption in
Mexico will end the day voters turn PRI
out and put PAN in. But Rubiano was
seriously embarrassed by his opponents,
who point out that he is ineligible for office
because he actually lives in Brownsville,
Texas. He is hard put to deny what every-
one in town knows to be true. "This is like
having a drunk calling someone else a
drunk," he says. "Many PRI officials have
property in the United States."
Despite predictions that the PRI might
for the first time lose the governorships of
Sonora and Nuevo Leon states, they
claimed landslide victories last month.
Their PAN opponents said the size of the
vote margins could only have come
through fraud. One PRI official an-
nounced his party's victory before the polls
even closed. "The PRI is afraid that if they
allow any opposition victory, the whole
edifice will crack," said PAN official Nor-
berto Corella in Hermosillo, capital of So-
nora state.
in 30 years the population will double.
"That means in another 30 years we will
have to create another Mexico," says Adrial
Ayuz of MexFam, a family-planning group.
Already the country needs another 1 mil-
lion jobs for people who are coming of age
every year.
It doesn't have them, and as a result, a
thousand people, mostly poor peasants, ar-
rive in Mexico City each day. The city now
contains nearly a quarter of all Mexicans,
and its 17 million population is growing so
fast that soon it will surpass Tokyo as the
world's largest city. Former President Lo-
pez Portillo called his capital "the most
absurd thing that ever happened." The cur-
rent police chief, General Mota, refers to it
as a "decomposing society."
Such enormous problems leave many out-
siders less sanguine about Mexico's stability
than its leaders. `I don't think it'll happen
right away, "said one Western ambassador,
"but one of these days... the bubble's going
to burstand !can't help thinking that in 1 Sor
20 years there could be [a revolution]. "
The question of whether another revolu.
tion is possible in Mexico drew me to the
A controversial CIA study called Mex- town of Cuautla in Morelos state. It's a
ieo- the ea np onp-term oreign-po icy vintage Mexican place: streets that run like a
concern of the_ Unit _tates tom.,,,, of the dusty argument between facing white ma-
!'k 1'h
d
e t oo
of widespread social turmoil.
President de la Madrid bristles at such
suggestions. `Mexico's stability has been
proven for marry years-for more than six
decades," he said Even its current `pro-
found economic crisis" is actually proof
that the country "has been able to react
to its problems and ... overcome its
difficulties. "
Those difficulties are indeed profound.
The National Nutrition Institute says at
least 40 percent of Mexicans are malnour-
ished and 100,000 of the 2 million children
born every year die from diseases associated
with hunger. One million will have physical
and mental defects from poor diet. Not long
ago, Mexico actually exported food. Now it
is no longer able even to produce enough
corn and beans for its own needs. Part of the
problem is a galloping population growth
rate of 2.3 percent a year, which means that
sonry walls guarding houses with hidden
gardens. This was a stronghold of Emiliano
Zapata, the peasant leader and land-reform
advocate of the Mexican revolution. Zapa-
ta's ideals are kept alive by a group of elderly
followers who meet once in a while at a hall
here, wearing ragged baggy pants, widesom-
breros and long mustaches. Only youth, and
crossed gun belts, seem to be missing.
Fortino Cardenas Romero, 84, fought as
a second captain with Zapata. He was a
landless peasant then; now he is a landed
peasant, but just as poor. "The revolution
was converted into a revolution for4he rich
and not for the poor," he said. Will there be
another revolution in Mexico? "Many
young people ask me that," said Cardenas.
"I say, we would need another Zapata, but
there are no leaders like this in Mexico
today. They are all out for themselves."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504810001-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504810001-6
Z
The border with the United States is
one of the main social and economic out-
lets open to Mexico. Last year U.S. immigra-
tion officers expelled 1.2 million Mexicans.
Hundreds of thousands of others migrate
back and forth across the border for season-
al work without being caught. "The border
certainly is a safety valve, " said Am-
bassador Gavin. `A lot of the best labor
goes up there, the hard drivers who really
want to work "And, he conceded, the ones
who without the border option would be most
likely to stir up trouble at home. Legally or
illegally some 10 million Mexicans now live
north of the border.
It is evening near Tijuana's Colonia Li-
bertad neighborhood, the single biggest
crossing point for illegal immigrants to the
United States. Labyrinthine paths criss-
cross the hills and gullies, and U.S. helicop-
ters patrol in plain view. This evening there
are a thousand men about to sneak across
the border, just in this one place. Typically,
half will make it. Many make this trip reluc-
tantly. But Angel, a peasant who was ex-
pelled the day before after three years in the
States, is determined to go back north.
"There are no frontiers for hunger," he tells
me"'You have the right to look for oppor-
tunity wherever you can."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504810001-6