Collapse of Dignity

by Napoleon Gomez

  I graduated from UNAM and continued working in the job Flores de la Peña had hired me for, but after a couple of years I found myself growing restless. The late sixties was a time of social upheaval. At universities in the United States, France, England, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and many other parts of the world, student movements were erupting against colonial wars, inequality, repression, and racial discrimination throughout the world. A few of my friends at UNAM left the country for the United States or France, and I was thrilled by the idea of going abroad at such an exciting and tumultuous time in history.

  I started looking for opportunities to study abroad in the United States, England, and France, where most of my friends were headed. Flores de la Peña, after hearing about my interest in traveling abroad, called me to his office. In his paternal manner, he began making suggestions. “If you prefer to continue your studies in economics,” he told me, “your first choice should be the L’Ecole des Hautes Études in Paris. As a second choice, you could go to England, to the London School of Economics or Oxford University. If you want to continue to learn more about economics go to England, but if you really want to consolidate your professional training and your studies, go to Oxford, where they study economic theory as well as development, public policy, and planning, subjects in which you have great interest. All the alternatives are very good, but the decision is yours alone.”

  I left his office with a spring in my step. On the trip back to my house I reviewed my conversation with this respected economist. How could I not follow his advice?

  As soon as I got home to the small house I lived in by myself, I called up my girlfriend, Oralia, who was still finishing up art school back in Monterrey and I said, “We’re going to get married and move to Oxford. Start looking for courses you can take!” I knew she’d want to study too—probably art or history—and could likely get a grant to do so.

  Fortunately, Oralia was on board with the idea. I applied for a grant to continue my studies at Oxford, and the British Council awarded it soon thereafter. Oralia and I were married in Monterrey, our home town, and we were soon on our way across the Atlantic.

  The first two years I lived in Oxford with my wife and life companion Oralia were among the greatest experiences of my life—academic and otherwise. In the first year I earned a diploma in Economic Development, and this course of study taught me much about how economics could transform countries, societies, and individuals. Once I’d finished that degree, I started working toward my master’s in economics while Oralia studied for Oxford’s three-year degree in drawing and fine arts. Upon our arrival in England, she had applied to Oxford’s Ruskin School of Drawing and of Fine Arts, been accepted, and then received a grant from the Mexican Department of Education.

  In 1970, we returned to Mexico, my grant from the British Council having expired after two years. We settled back in Mexico City, and I began work in the Faculty of Economics of UNAM as a full-time professor and coordinator of the Department of Seminars. During this time, our first son, Alejandro, was born. I crossed the Atlantic once again in 1972, when I was invited to a month-long seminar at the University of Economic Sciences in Berlin. On the way back, I stopped back in Oxford. Oralia and I had decided to see if we could continue our studies there, and on the visit I confirmed that we had received new grants and that I was enrolled to continue my doctorate studies beginning in the fall of 1972. UNAM, the Department of Public Education, and several other organizations had generously offered their support in the form of grants and supplementary payments to Oxford.

  Our second stint at Oxford was just as fulfilling, and this time we had another major personal development. Already with little Alejandro in tow, we soon welcomed our second son, Ernesto, to whom Oralia gave birth in Oxford. With a toddler and a newborn, it was quite a task to care for the children and attend school, but we traded off duties so we both had time for our studies.

  At the end of 1974, we decided to return to Mexico. My grant had run out before I was able to finish my thesis for a doctorate in economics. I wanted to stay in the academic world, and I hoped to teach full-time in the economics department of UNAM, wanting to pay back the university for all the financial support it had offered me. They didn’t put me in the economics department, though; instead, I was offered a job in the government’s Department of National Heritage, which was headed by my old mentor Horacio Flores de la Peña.

  In December of 1976, José López Portillo began his term as Mexican president, and the new administration offered me the position of Assistant Director for Planning in the Department of Planning and Budget. I worked that job until July of 1978, when I was offered the role of Director of Planning and Development in a new public agency called Sidermex, a group that combined the three largest steelworking companies in Mexico—Altos Hornos de México, Fundidora Monterrey, and the Lázaro Cárdenas-Las Truchas (currently ArcelorMittal) Steelworks—and ninety-eight of these companies’ subsidiaries.

  I was now moving from macroeconomics into microeconomics, with an enormous interest in closing the circle and bringing my cumulative knowledge down to earth and putting theories of national economic activity into concrete practice at the company level. Both sides of this equation gave me a solid base for the position of union leadership I’d find myself in decades later.

  In 1979, I got a call from David Ibarra Muñoz, Secretary of the Treasury and Public Credit. He explained that there was big trouble at Casa de Moneda de Mexico—the Mexican Mint. The previous director had allowed union and operations problems to get out of control, and they needed someone to help right the ship. (The previous director’s inefficiency would later be rewarded with an appointment as undersecretary for tax inspection in the Department of the Treasury, and later with election as governor of the State of Veracruz. Sadly, that’s how politics often work in Mexico.)

  Ibarra Muñoz explained that they wanted me to take over as director—even if it was just for six months. If I did, I’d be rewarded with an even better position in the public sector. Though I was happy at Sidermex, I was eager to tackle what looked like a temporary—but significant—challenge. Thanks to the incredible work of my colleagues there—the board of directors, the engravers and artists, the securities and facilities agents, and every other worker—we succeeded in transforming Mexico’s Mint into one of the best in the world. The volume of coining went up, the quality of designs improved, the fidelity of the coins’ mineral content was upgraded, and we exported more currency than any time in Mexico’s history, producing the coins of more than twenty countries.

  Despite my initial intention of having only a short tenure at the Mint, I ended up serving as general director for twelve years. I was delighted to bring a third son, Napoleón, into the world in 1987.

  After I’d been at the Mint for nearly ten years, I had my first real brush with politics. I’d been invited to a conference in my home state, at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León (UANL), where I would speak to the crowd about the economic development of Mexico. After the conference, I was invited to a small gathering of students and professors at the home of a law student named Leonardo Limón, who was the president of the students’ association of the Faculty of Law at UANL. I thought it was a social event, but it turned out to be more political in purpose.

  Limón, his girlfriend, and a group of young professors from the university were looking for a fresh face to change up the stagnant political situation in the state of Nuevo Leon. At the gathering in Limón’s home, they proposed a “Napoleón for Nuevo León” project: they wanted me to run for governor in the upcoming election. I would run as a member of the PRI—the center-liberal political party that had held power in Mexico since 1929—and they would form a committee to publicize my track record of democratic change and build support from unions, political groups, and voters.

  They confirmed to me that the people of Nuevo León were disappointed in their leaders, who seemed unable to adequately represent the state and who many suspected were dee
ply corrupt. Opportunities and growth in the state were flagging, and the region seemed to get short shrift from the federal government. I nodded my head as they explained these political realities. I was no stranger to the situation, and I decided that day to accept the offer.

  My commitment to the campaign was strengthened when I met with Luis Donaldo Colosio, president of the PRI party, about two weeks later to ask his opinion of me as governor of Nuevo León. I’d met Colosio before he became head of the PRI; he was a passionate man with a wide smile and big mustache, and he loved Mexico and its people. When I told him about the possibility of running for governor, he encouraged me to go through with the campaign in his encouraging, approachable manner and told me that if I succeeded, I would have established a democratic method of selecting candidates within the PRI—something that would be difficult under President Carlos Salinas, who simulated democracy while closely controlling those who obtained any sort of power in Mexico, including governors.

  The “Napoleón for Nuevo León” group, made up of my colleagues and supporters, helped me schedule a tour of the state and set up many meetings. All of it would happen on weekends, so that I could retain my job at the Mint while campaigning. I would campaign on the importance of promoting investment and employment, and above all I would advocate the opening of new development opportunities that would benefit investors, workers, and the state as a whole.

  Throughout 1990, we toured Nuevo León on weekends, meeting with mayors and campesino leaders as well as prominent agricultural, ranching, industrial, political, and student leaders, hoping to show them that I’d be an honest, fair friend to them if I was voted into the office of governor—unlike past governors who’d largely won elections by means of the president’s influence. Most of these meetings were a success, and I was sure I could see the hope for true democratic change in the eyes of the people I hoped to represent. Through it all, I kept in touch with PRI president Colosio and kept him informed of our progress.

  In the first days of 1991, I met with Pedro Aspe, who was treasury secretary and president of the board of governors of the Mint, to ask for an unpaid two-month leave to focus on my gubernatorial campaign. He said it wouldn’t be a problem, but he added that he needed to check with President Salinas.

  Behind Aspe’s response I felt something deeper than the need to simply clear a leave with his superior. The president had a great interest in who became governor of Nuevo León, and Aspe could be making a huge political misstep by showing his support for me. Making matters worse, the president had a track record of swift punishment in response to such missteps while richly rewarding his unquestioning supporters with top-level government posts or fire-sale prices on the banks and companies that had previously belonged to the people of Mexico.

  I knew full well that Salinas would never get behind my candidacy, but Aspe soon informed me that the president had cleared my leave from the Mint. After nearly a year of campaigning, I met with Salinas in his office at Los Pinos to reaffirm my intention of running. I knew Salinas from my days at UNAM, where he had studied in the economics department. He knew I’d been campaigning, and though it was to be a casual meeting between two acquaintances, I wanted him to formally hear from me that I had fleshed out a governing plan and wanted an opportunity to meet the challenge of serving my state. Salinas greeted me in his simply appointed office, offering me a cup of hot coffee and a seat on his office couch near a huge window that overlooked the gardens of Los Pinos. For about forty-five minutes, we chatted cordially about the general economic and political state of Mexico, and Salinas congratulated me on my work at the Mint. When we at last arrived at the final part of our conversation and I declared my intention of becoming Nuevo León’s governor, Salinas’s tone turned somewhat smug. He told me that I should continue my efforts and that he wouldn’t meddle with the PRI’s selection of its candidate. His speech was hard to listen to, since we both knew his hand controlled most of what happened within the party. He had no problem talking about democracy, but actually respecting it and allowing it to operate was another matter.

  A few days later, Colosio invited me to dine with him at the PRI offices. With a tone of caution in his voice, he explained that the party had instituted a new method of selecting its candidate for governor: for the first time, the party would select its candidate after the five men who were interested in the position—“precandidates,” he called us—completed a month-long campaign in Nuevo León. Each precandidate would get equal opportunity in terms of appearances and media exposure, and at the end of the campaign, the PRI’s members would freely select the person they thought could win.

  It sounded fine on its face. Typically, the party’s gubernatorial candidates were selected by PRI officials, who didn’t bother consulting with anyone about their selection and who took orders from the president. But as the group of five candidates listened to Colosio re-explain the democratic precandidate system in an official meeting the next week, most of us were skeptical. Colosio told us that if the system worked, it would set a the standard for a new, transparent process of selecting elected officials, but many of us cast glances toward one of our fellow precandidates: Socrates Rizzo, mayor of Monterrey. His close relationship with the president was well known, and we also knew how important it was that Salinas have a close ally in Nuevo León. Some of the president’s family was from the state, and more importantly, he had close ties to many Nuevo León businessmen, including Roberto González Barrera, president of Grupo Maseca (a maker of flour and corn tortillas) and soon to be owner of Banorte, the massive Mexican bank. Barrera would make the purchase from the Salinas-led government in 1992. Rizzo seemed to be the man Salinas could rely on to over-see his interests in the state.

  Before the precandidates officially registered, one of us dropped out—a “little bird” had told candidate Ricardo Canavati Tafich that the dice were loaded in favor of Rizzo. I had my doubts about the simulated “new democratic process of selection,” too, especially when Salinas ordered that Canavati be replaced with Napoleón Cantú Serna, secretary general of government in Nuevo León. Now I had to not only overcome the president’s preference for Socrates Rizzo; I also had to distinguish myself as one of two Napoleóns in the race.

  I decided to register as a precandidate anyway. I had an excellent campaign team who truly believed that we could get the people of Nuevo León behind our plan for the state’s development. Plus, Colosio—who I believe was sincere in his encouragement—convinced me that even if I wasn’t selected, it would help me in the future if I used the campaign as a platform to publicize my ideas about the changes that needed to come not just to Nuevo León but to Mexico. Colosio had always been passionate about bringing equality and justice to his country.

  You won’t be surprised by who eventually won the PRI’s nomination. As our precandidate campaigns continued, the hand of Salinas was felt by all of us. The media strongly favored Rizzo, despite the fact that he’d been absent from Nuevo León for more than twenty years. Many were unquestioning in their support of Rizzo, and the mayor’s campaign materials advertised him as “Socrates Rizzo, Friend of Salinas.” It became clear that through a series of privatizations of state-owned companies and banks, Salinas had bought the support of Nuevo León’s businessmen for his friend.

  About two weeks into the campaign, I told Colosio and a journalist that if they did not change the situation of favoring Rizzo I would renounce my position as a precandidate. I told the journalist about the clear bias toward Rizzo, and he printed it in his interview with me. But the only effect was an immediate call from Colosio, who told me not to pull out and that he’d do everything he could to make sure the PRI’s new selection rules were adhered to. I knew his intentions were good, but I also knew that he was restricted by the abundant power wielded by the president. At the end of the campaign, Rizzo was selected as the PRI’s nominee, and he went on to become governor of the state of Nuevo León.

  If it mattered so much to Salinas that Socrates R
izzo become governor, why didn’t he simply use his influence to pressure the PRI to select him, as past presidents did? The answer is that Salinas wanted his will to be imposed but with the appearance of its being the will of the people. The appearance of a democratic election would be maintained even as the president pulled the strings to make sure the PRI did exactly what he and his business partners wanted. It’s a type of deception Salinas is no stranger to. After all, this is the man who habitually greeted citizens of Nuevo León with “Hola, paisano!” as if he were a man of the people, even though we all knew Salinas—born in the Federal District of Mexico City—was far from a humble peasant from our state.

  There’s no doubt that Rizzo needed the president’s support to win the election, and this was shown further when Rizzo abandoned his governorship in 1996, two years before his term was up, a move that followed the end of President Salinas’s term in 1994. Without support from the president’s office in Los Pinos, the businessmen of Nuevo León had no faith in Rizzo’s ability to serve their interests, and they pressured him to resign.

  The experience of this campaign confirmed my suspicions that Salinas pulled the strings and much about how politicians and businessmen behave in Mexico, and this type of collaboration to rack up benefits for the rich and powerful while selling off the property of the Mexican people was something I’d see plenty more of in my career.