Costos y beneficios a largo plazo del Quinazo
Long-term costs and benefits of the arrest of La Quina
George Baker
January 10, 1995, marks the sixth anniversary of the imprisonment
of labor union leader Joaqumn Hernandez Galicia (AKA La Quina), a
forty-year veteran of the state oil monopoly, who is now in his
mid-seventies. The occasion calls for a moment of self-reflection and
analysis by all white Mexicans (that is, those politically conscious
classes who followed the events of the national elections of 1988 and the
aftermath) as well as by admirers and detractors abroad of Mexico's unique
system of government. The present discussion argues that the Quinazo had
long-term social costs, as well as benefits, and that, on balance, it is
increasingly doubtful that benefits outweigh costs.
The passage of six years of the presidential administration of
Carlos Salinas de Gortari, which, in real terms, began on January 10, 1989,
now gives a better view of the stunning seizure and imprisonment of the top
echelon of the labor union that, previously, had been considered the most
powerful, not only in Mexico, but in all of Latin America.
The dramatic events of January 10 were hailed throughout Mexico
(excepting most of the unionized ranks of the state oil company, who feared
for their jobs) and the Western world as a bold step by President Salinas
to free his country of the curse of old-time union bossism and corruption
and, in effect, bring Mexico into the second half of the twentieth century.
As one Mexican diplomat, stationed in the United States, commented in
August of 1994: "La Quina was a 'chivo respiratorio,' a scapegoat whose
political death let everyone breathe easier."
What actually happened on January 10, 1989, was known intuitively
by every white Mexican, despite universal press reports that depicted
another state of affairs. The official account --call it the Robin Hood
version--of the events was accepted in the U.S. and European media and
halls of government and academia.
What all white Mexicans intuitively knew was that President Salinas
had accomplished a brilliant stroke of tactical and strategic surprise.
The top leadership of the arrogant, increasingly defiant Oil Union was
seized by police and army units and thrown in jail, thereby signaling
multiple messages at home and abroad. The principal message at home was
that the union leadership paid a just price for having semi-openly
supported the presidential bid of opposition candidate Cuauhtimoc Cardenas
in the controversial elections of July 6, 1988. Another message for
domestic consumption was that the losers of the 1988 elections had best dry
their tears quickly, as a new president had in fact taken command.
The message abroad was of a completely different order: the new
president, in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan, who early in his first term
busted the union of air-traffic controllers, intended to free his economy
of the legacy of corrupt labor unions, thereby making Mexico an
attractive place for direct and portfolio investments. The presidential
touch of Carlos Salinas had a magical effect on domestic inflation,
international investment, and labor discipline at home.
The essential facts of what happened on January 10--facts instantly
known, as if telepathically, to white Mexicans--are these: Army commando
units, with blackened faces, were trucked to La Quina's neighborhood in
Ciudad Madero, a suburb of Tampico, near the northeastern corner of the
U.S.-Mexican border. In a mid-morning raid, after an initial period of
confusion, when soldiers went to the wrong house, La Quina and a dozen
sundry employees and job-seekers were thrown into a military truck, taken
to the Tampico airport, flown to Mexico in a military aircraft and
imprisoned. Meanwhile, union and business associates, including
millionaire Sergio Bolaqos, an alleged name-lender and money launderer of
La Quina, were also taken into custody, but in less dramatic circumstances.
Period. This basic outline of events was known to observers in Mexico
who had followed the elections of July 6 and the menacing threats of the
Oil Union against President-elect Salinas, threats voiced in the Chamber of
Deputies as criminal charges against a former Pemex director, Mario Ramsn
Beteta, a political mentor of Salinas.
Two other facts were also known to the Mexican body politic: One,
the national media coverage, which described the events of Ciudad Madero as
a police action intended to verify a report of illegal weapons possession
by La Quina, was substantially, if not completely, false. (Mexicans were
surprised by the repression of any questioning of the official account:
the popular TV commentator Guillermo Ochoa was summarily fired from his top
job at Televisa because, after the Quinazo, he had aired an interviewed in
which La Quina appeared as a responsible advocate for social justice.)
Two, thinking Mexicans also realized that the criminal justice system, ever
obedient to the will of the Executive in political trials, would inexorably
find La Quina & Associates guilty as charged.
Let us consider the long-term benefits of these actions and
attitudes, where "long-term" means benefits that extend to a second
presidential term and that, therefore, are not just benefits that accrue to
a single set of office-holders. Mexican society benefited from this
paramilitary action in numerous ways: Mexicans in general felt that
Salinas bravely had removed a decayed tooth that had caused pain for
decades. The diplomat's comment, therefore, was right: the political
classes in Mexico could breathe easier, with less embarrassment that they
lived in a country in which it was still possible for the leaders of a
private political party, one disguised as a labor union, to live a lavish,
corrupt lifestyle paid for by public funds.
A benefit to the management of Pemex, the state petroleum monopoly,
was that, having converted the Oil Union into a company union (a white
union, as Mexicans call it), sharp cut-backs in staffing, pay and benefits
could be easily enacted. La Quina, who threatened severe reprisals if the
government took steps of "even one millimeter" to privatize petrochemical
investments, would have caused Pemex managers to suffer unbearable
institutional and personal pressure if he had continued in power. As a
result of breaking the Oil Union, Pemex closed an inefficient refinery on
March 18, 1990, reorganized into four business units in 1992 and, during
1989-93, cut roughly 100,000 padded jobs cut from Pemex's payroll.
A third benefit was that Mexico was able to enter the negotiations
that led to NAFTA from a position of strength. La Quina's continued
presence in Mexican politics and oil policy would have been a liability for
Mexico's Commerce Minister, Jaime Serra Puche.
A benefit that was expected to be long-term was foreign investment
in portfolio and real assets. Some $50 billion dollars came into the
Mexican economy during Salinas's term--but only to leave again in the last
few weeks of his term and the first few weeks of his successor's term.
Now, without pretending to have exhausted the list of benefits,
let's look at long-term costs to Mexico associated with the Quinazo.
Perhaps the most serious cost was associated with the precedent of the
Government using its military power and prerogatives to accomplish
political objectives. The unspoken message was, "In this administration,
guns are a legitimate way to settle political differences." By the end of
the Salinas term, all Mexicans, white or not, would have wished that that
particular message had not been given: the guns that killed a Roman
Catholic cardinal in Guadalajara in 1993, those that began firing in
Chiapas in 1994, those that in 1994 killed the PRI presidential candidate
and PRI secretary general--to say nothing of those that killed several
hundred journalists and opposition political activists--were fired in part
because the Government itself had implicitly condoned their use for
political purposes.
A cost of equal seriousness was the immediate recognition, again by
white Mexicans, that the Quinazo had plunged the society into a double
standard of reality: the one standard was that Mexico was a country that
had achieved substantial gains in economic and financial efficiency,
foreign investment, international recognition; the other reality was one
pointed to by an expression used by alcoholic abuse therapists "More
alcoholics die of 'family pride' than any other cause." This expression
applies to a situation in which "Father got drunk again--and no members of
the family can say anything openly about it." While many analysts in
Mexico and abroad (notably economist Rudi Dornbush at MIT) warned that
there were serious problems with the "sobriety" of the Mexican economy,
very little could be said in public without fear of reprisal by the stern,
fatherly hand of the Executive branch.
A related cost is the loss of credibility of the major public
institutions, starting with the PRI. Everyone in Mexico's political
classes knew that by the real, practical meaning of the "i" in PRI it was
"non-violent." From the beginning of the party in 1929, the core,
inviolable rule was that political factions were to settle their
differences non-violently. As everyone also knew that La Quina's power
never exceeded that which the Government allowed him to exercise, it
followed that it was exclusively to settle matters of political differences
(although many also accused Salinas of wanting to settle personal
grievances) that the force of the military was used against La Quina. The
Quinazo, in other words, broke one of the Ten Commandments of the PRI's
code of political chivalry. As a result, the PRI was at best left as the
PRi.
Other major public institutions whose credibility suffered by their
reaction to the Quinazo included the national press, the opposition
parties, the judicial system--and even academia in Mexico and the United
States. Mexicans and their Mexicanized counterparts abroad realized that
the Commandment of Self-Discipline (another rule in the PRI code) had been
given a deeper meaning: these institutions "disciplined themselves" to
accept an Orwellian version of the truth of Mexico's economic and political
state of development. A corollary was that the Mexican Executive branch,
especially the Commerce and Finance Ministries, came to have a false
self-image of infallibility.
Credibility in the criminal justice system also suffered, as
Mexicans began to have a new appreciation of an old expression, from the
dictator Porfirio Dmaz, who ruled at end of the nineteenth century, "For
my friends, comprehension--but for my enemies, the law." The sense of
living in a country in which power could be exercised arbitrarily, without
expectation of recourse by any formal, written system of justice,
increased. As one senior PRI official explained in June of 1994 in a
discussion with U.S. academics, "La Quina belongs in jail for his crimes
and many other reasons. I would not recommend to President Zedillo that he
be released." This observation apparently means that the enforcement of
Mexico's laws is governed by an unwritten code of criminal justice; this
condition, of course, is one that exists in many countries, including the
United States (as in the famous case in which Mafia leader Al Capone was
imprisoned on mere charges of tax evasion).
Meanwhile, La Quina is still in jail and Guillermo Ochoa is still
out of his job in Televisa. It may be true that La Quina and Ochoa are
guilty of unwritten charges for which imprisonment and loss of employment
are fair penalties. The other possibility is that the Quinazo is a some
kind of a curse of science-fiction proportions that has affected both
political and economic analysis as well as public debate.
Although it's too soon to say, it may also be true that the sum of
the social costs of the Quinazo is what led to the 40% collapse of faith
in the Government's ability to provide leadership to the economy, a
collapse that led to a corresponding devaluation of the Mexican peso
compared to the U.S. dollar.
Doubtless there are other long-term benefits and costs of the
Quinazo, the enumeration and analysis of which would throw light on the
structure and outlook for Mexico's economy and political system--if only
analysts and participant-observers were to feel free to speak out on this
most vorboten of topics.
XX
George Baker directs Mexico Energy Intelligence,
a research and advisory service, in Houston Texas.
g.baker@energia.com
Tel: 713-627-9390 Fax: 713-627-9391
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George Baker