Mexico’s Biggest Criminal: The Salinas de Gortari Crime Family

By Larry Shea

Don’t leave a loaded gun accessible to either of the Salinas de Gortari brothers, Carlos or Raul, or – for that matter – to any of their friends.

Manuela, a twelve-year old family “maid,” was murdered with a loaded .22 rifle on October 19, 1951 at the Salinas family home. Raul Salinas Lozano, the politically well-connected father of Raul and Carlos Salinas de Gortari (and the padrino [godfather] of the crime family) was an economist who served in several high-level positions in different Mexican presidential administrations.

Mexico City newspapers reported in December of 1951 that the young girl had been executed by one of these three young elite deviants. However, some of the newspapers also reported that it was unclear whether a Raul (age: six years), Carlos (age: four-and-a-half years), or unidentified friend (age: eight years) had executed the young girl. Nevertheless, the newspaper, El Universal, reported that when he was asked, Carlos proudly boasted that “I killed her with one shot; I’m a hero.”

The children said that they had been playing war games and that Manuela had been condemned to die. They told her to get on her knees and that is when the proud little hero, Carlos, confessed that he killed her with one shot.

Si, I know, he was only four-and-a-half years old. However, the boys’ insensitive behavior at the police station was demonstrably carefree and remorseless, as they were allowed to run around the corridors of the police station, during which time Manuela’s grieving mother spent both the day and the night at the same police station exposed to the insensitive behavior of this guilt-free trio of young murderers.

A biographer, friend, and recipient of Carlos Salinas’ largess, later claimed that the eight-year old friend had been “the author of the accident.” In true corrupt, Mexican crime-family fashion none of these elite little deviants were ever held responsible for Manuela’s death. Ultimately, the parents got no more than a stiff scolding for leaving a loaded .22 rifle unsecured and within reach of their two criminals-in-the-making sons and their friend.

Manuela’s execution was ruled an accident, and Raul and Carlos would go on to order the executions of many others throughout their long and checkered careers. Psychopaths have a distinct tendency to behave like psychopaths regardless of their age.

As a direct result of the debt crisis of 1982, President Miguel de la Madrid welcomed the IMF (International Monetary Fund) into Mexico. And, forthwith, a structural agreement was negotiated whereby Mexico agreed “to devalue the peso, slash government subsidies, cut funding for social programs, and privatize hundreds of state-owned enterprises in return for the refinancing of Mexico’s debt.” (How the Mexican Drug Trade thrives on Free Trade, by Christy Thornton and Adam Goodman, Nation, July 15, 2014; online)

According to the memoirs of President Miguel de la Madrid, (published in 2004), the election of Carlos Salinas as the President of the United Mexican States in 1988 was rigged! The Madrid government had been shocked by the beating that PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) was taking at the polls across the country. Therefore, the PRI party decided that it was necessary to concoct an emergency plan, to maintain a hold on their political power. So, they claimed that the computer system tabulating the votes had suddenly crashed. This gave these fraudsters the opportunity to rig the results in the favor of PRI party ticket and in favor of the PRI presidential candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

Three years after the 1988 election, PRI-controlled Mexican legislature ordered the paper ballots of the rigged election to be burned and so the evidence of the fraud went up in smoke. Although de la Madrid maintains that rigging the election was for the good of the country, it allowed PRI to continue its iron-fisted grip over the corruption that came from the millions of dollars in bribes from drug traffickers and drug cartels, in kickbacks from the mass privatization of state-owned companies, as well as from the usual influence peddling, graft, and political favors.

After he came to power in 1988, Carlos Salinas de Gortari accelerated the neo-liberal rape of Mexico’s economy that had been initiated by his predecessor, Miguel de la Madrid, and the IMF: “He [Salinas] amended the constitution to allow for the private sale of communal lands known as ejidos, deregulated the telecom sector, denationalized the banks, and, most importantly, reoriented Mexican industry toward the export sector…” (Thornton and Goodman, Nation, July 15, 2014)

Carlos Salinas’ so-called “biggest accomplishment” for Mexicans was the entrance of Mexico into NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). However, over two decades later, Salinas’ hollow promise that NAFTA would lift Mexicans out of poverty has gone unfulfilled.

“Mexican economic growth during the period was among the lowest in Latin America and poverty and inequality levels remain at pre-NAFTA levels.” (Thornton and Goodman, Nation)

As unemployment increased over the decades, more Mexicans were living in poverty in 2012 than in 1994. “Some 4.9 million jobs were lost in the family farm sector due to post-NAFTA declines in commodity prices and reductions in state protections.” (Thornton and Goodman, Nation)

Bush crime family godfather, George H.W. Bush, who was the U.S. President at the time, had already announced his “Enterprise for the Americas” in June of 1990 when he rode a wave of popularity after his Gulf-War victory over Saddam Hussein. Bush had already met with Salinas in his hometown of Aqualeguas prior to the outbreak of the Gulf War and, at that time, the first item on the agenda was Wall Street’s demand for NAFTA.

Then again, when Carlos visited Washington, D.C. in April of 1991, it was another urgent call for NAFTA. However, corrupt Carlos Salinas was more than willing to dissolve Mexico’s national sovereignty and jump on the neo-liberal-free-market gravy train, while creating tens of thousands of one-dollar-an-hour jobs for Mexico’s peons.

NAFTA came into effect on January 1, 1994 after President Bill Clinton, godfather of the Clinton crime family, signed the NAFTA Implementation Act into law on December 8, 1993. Following the signing of this criminal act against the American worker, a giant sucking sound could be heard emanating from Mexico, as thousands of solid middle class and other good-paying American jobs simply disappeared into the maelstrom of low-wage Mexico.

However, NAFTA did nothing to stem the flow of economic migrants across the border into the USA. In fact, NAFTA is directly responsible for the increase in migration from Mexico to the US. NAFTA forced Mexicans to migrate! In 1990, there were 4.5 million Mexicans living illegally within the borders of the USA, while today there are around 12 million Mexicans living undocumented in the USA.

Sectors of the Mexican economy, that were privatized during the structural adjustment of the 1980s remained closed and were protected from competition by NAFTA. These sectors were then monopolized by Mexico’s new billionaires including Carlos Salinas de Gortati’s frontman, Carlos Slim Helu (How NAFTA Helped the Mexican Billionaires’ Club, Carrie Kahn, npr.org: December 31, 2013).

The main result of the creation of NAFTA has been that an elite Mexican oligarchy has thrived, while the most Mexicans have remained no better off economically than they were before NAFTA. Although the poverty rate has remained at 52% over the last two decades, 14.3 million more Mexicans were living in poverty in 2012 than in 1994.

Another result of NAFTA was that the corrupt Mexican government officials, at all levels, encouraged and allowed the drug trade to intensify and the power of the drug cartels to expand.

Then, on May 24, 1993, came the shocking assassination of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo in the parking lot of the Guadalajara International Airport. This cruel and wicked act of state was ordered by Carlos Salinas de Gortari and carried out by a federal police commando unit.

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was forced to take the blame for the public execution of Cardinal Posadas.

A childhood friend of the cardinal later revealed that “Posadas told him he was summoned to President Carlos Salinas’ residence and threatened just weeks before his death.” There have also been allegations that a senior Salinas’ aide had warned Posadas to keep his mouth shut about information that he had uncovered linking senior politicians to the drug trade and prostitution. Another source has alternately alleged that Cardinal Posadas was assassinated “because he was supplying weapons to the guerrillas.”

The January-of-1994 rebellion in Chiapas came about as direct result of the marginalization of its indigenous population which had been caused by the privatization of communal land. This privatization of communal land is one of the major factors for the economic migration of Mexicans into the USA.

On March 06, 1994, presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, made “a controversial but popular speech,” wherein he spoke about the rights of indigenous communities and about the abuses of the Mexican State. A nod of recognition toward the Zapatista rebellion was seen by some as the crucial moment when Colosio made a break between himself and the Salinas’ administration. Although Salinas reassured voters that Colosio was the candidate, Manuel Comacho Solis, who had earlier been passed over as the candidate by Salinas, had begun acting like a candidate.

But all of this was just political theater, with Carlos Salinas de Gortari and his crime family directing the extravaganza from behind the scenes. On March 23, 1994, a mere 17 days after his memorable speech, presidential candidate Colosio was gunned down in Tijuana by two assassins.

For a better understanding of this unprecedented political assassination, one should watch the 2012 film, Colosio: El Asesinato. In the months following the assassination, 15 people who were directly linked to the case were murdered including the Secretary General of the PRI Party, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, who happened to be the ex-brother-in-law of Carlos and Raul Salinas de Gortari.

It has been speculated by some that Massieu had learned that the Salinas crime family had been behind the conspiracy to assassinate Colosio. However, according to an official document from the office of the Attorney General of the Republic of Mexico, there was sufficient evidence that, sometime in March of 1993, the brothers, Carlos and Raul, along with their sister Adriana (Massieu’s ex-wife) had held a meeting with their father, Raul Salinas Lozano. At that meeting, it was decided by the Salinas crime family that their ex-in-law Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, aka “Pepe,” must be “physically eliminated.”

The divorce between Adriana and “Pepe” had been like a twisted novela rosa with accusations that Massieu was a homosexual and that Adriana had been cheating on him.

The title of a book that was written by Mexican investigative journalist, Anabel Hernandez, is called Narcoland: The Mexican Drug lords and Their Godfathers (2010), and she chose that title for good reason. It was reported in 1997 that: “In its suit against Mario Ruiz Massieu [who was the brother of the murdered, ex-in-law Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu] the US Department of Justice began to roll out testimony which implicates ex-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, his siblings Adriana and Raul, his father Raul Salinas Lozano, his ex-brother-in-law Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, and even Luis Donaldo Colosio in drug trafficking operations.” [Let that sink in for a moment!]

On February 28, 1995 Raul Salinas de Gortari was arrested (after a classic Mexican standoff) and charged with ordering and financing the murder of their rival, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu. The order to arrest Raul had come directly from President Zedillo. Nonetheless, Raul served less than six years of a fifty-year sentence (he had already served four years during the trial in a “cement-tomb” holding cell). The New York Times reported that Raul Salinas de Gortari had been convicted on January 21, 1999, of ordering the 1994 assassination of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu and sentenced to fifty years in prison. Nevertheless, he was subsequently acquitted of these crimes in June of 2005. Then in 2008 a Swiss judge dropped a ten-year case for money laundering against Raul. What is more, in July of 2013, he was exonerated of the crime of “unjust enrichment” and he had eighteen million dollars and 41 properties that he had purchased with his ill-gotten gains returned to him. Crime pays extremely well for the well-connected crime lords and godfathers of old Mexico.

It was reported in November of 1995 that Paula Castanon, the wife of Raul Salinas de Gortari and her brother, Antonio Castanon, were arrested in Geneva, Switzerland after attempting to withdraw $84 million from an account that Raul kept under an alias. Raul also possessed and used a fraudulent passport under the same alias. Even though his modest annual government salary had never exceeded $190,000, it was discovered that Raul Salinas de Gortai had hundreds of millions of US dollars stashed in banks all over the world.

Then there is the strange case of Mario Ruiz Massieu, the brother of “Pepe” Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu. Bear in mind that Mexico is a mafia state which runs along similar lines to that of Putin’s Russia. This is what happens when one party is institutionalized like the PRI – the letter ‘I’ in their name says it all. As a former deputy attorney general, Mario had led the investigation into his brother’s murder at the insistence of then-president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Since his brother was a relative, it was against Mexican law for him to do so. However, this being Mexico he was obligated to answer the call of his powerful godfather, Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Well, wouldn’t you just know, that in 1995 Mario Ruiz Massieu would be accused of protecting Raul de Gortari Salinas, who ultimately would be convicted of ordering the assassination of Mario’s own brother, “Pepe.” Therefore, Mario suddenly decided to ditch old Mexico for a life in sunny Espana.

Unfortunately, he got busted for not declaring $46,000 in cash at the Newark International Airport, to whence he had flown to catch his flight to Spain. Long story shortened: The federal authorities in the USA discovered that he had stashed $8 million in bribes from drug cartels in a Houston bank. In 1999, while he was under house arrest in the USA, Mario overdosed on pills rather than being extradited to Mexico. In one of his suicide notes he accused President Ernesto Zedillo of having “a good deal to do” with the death of his brother. Mario would have been facing 20 years if he had been convicted of money-laundering charges in a Houston court.

Things really started to go downhill for Carlos and the Salinas crime family shortly after Carlos had left office on November 30, 1994. Less than a month later, the Mexican peso was devalued against the US dollar (December 20, 1994). Two days later, this devaluation led to a dramatic financial crisis in Mexico, when the Mexican government allowed the peso to float freely from the US dollar. The Mexican government was now faced with an imminent sovereign default. Crime lord “Bubba” Bill Clinton and his gang of White-House disaster capitalists, led by “Wall Street” Bobby Rubin and “World Bank” Larry Summers, coordinated a $50 billion bailout package for Mexico, including $25 billion from the US treasury. Then Mexico experienced a severe recession, with thousands of mortgages going into default and thousands of homes being repossessed. As hyperinflation skyrocketed, real wages plummeted, unemployment nearly doubled, banks with low-quality assets & fraudulent lending practices collapsed, and extreme poverty grew to 37%.

Carlos Salinas de Gortari became the obvious scapegoat and he was quickly and widely blamed for the collapse of the Mexican economy. His response, of course, was to blame the collapse on President Zedillo and on his “December mistake” of devaluing the peso. Then came the arrest of his brother, Raul, and Carlos protested this injustice by going on a ludicrous hunger strike for 36 hours (some ascetics would have called it a brief fast from food). Then, during a meeting with President Zedillo (his handpicked candidate for president), both men decided that it was high time for Carlos, that shiny-headed snake, to skedaddle out of old Mexico. It was reported that Carlos was told by President Zedillo that it would be a good idea for him and his family to go on an extended family odyssey. So, our Mexican Odysseus did just that and later courageously described his long absence from Mexico as self-exile. What a true martyr!

After visiting and leaving the USA, he spent some time in Montreal, and then some time on the island of Cuba before settling, off and on, on the island of the Republic of Ireland (which had no extradition treaty with Mexico) and then back to Cuba and then back to Ireland. However, to the best of my knowledge, this dizzying peripatetic island hopper never got around to visiting the island of Elba. Then suddenly, sometime in 2004 or 2005 (the date is unclear), the shiny-headed snake, who has all the wiles of a coyote, shook himself free from aquiline beak of Mexico’s national symbol, shed his old skin and reappeared in Mexico for his dramatic resurrection into politics. It was almost as if he had never left the United Mexican States.

Carlos Luken wrote in his book, 300 weeks: Mexico’s Turbulent Transition to Democracy, that “…after years of self-imposed exile in Ireland and Cuba… Salinas had returned, and had craftily waded right back into Mexico’s political waters. And at the time, it appeared that he was not just in the middle of things but running them.” [todas artimanas del coyote!]

On December 6, 2004, Carlos’ and Raul’s younger brother, Enrique Salinas de Gortari was found murdered, inside of his Volkswagen Passat just outside of Mexico City. He had been strangled and someone had considerately placed a yellow plastic bag over his head. The murder is still unsolved! It is suspected that either Enrique was bumped off by criminals who were looking for extortion payments. Or perhaps it was perpetrated out of revenge for the deaths of the Massieu brothers. Or maybe little “Ricky” had become a liability and his murder was ordered by members of the Salinas crime family who may have felt that it was better to just physically eliminate little “Ricky.” However, if it were not the Salinas crime family who were behind this murder, then I think that Enrique’s murder would have been solved by now. But who knows? After all, it is Mexico, where mafia-style political factions, powerful drug cartels and deviant oligarchical crime families are constantly vying for influence, power, and the American dollar.

In an article, which appears on the website Telesur (DEA: ‘Yes’ Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim is Linked to Drugs, December 10, 2015), Olivier Acuna reveals that in 1995 the writer and filmmaker, Diego Enrique Osorno, asked the Dow Jones CEO, Roger May, why Carlos Salinas de Gortari had received an appointment as one of the vice presidents of the board of directors for Dow Jones. He maintains that the answer was “because he has invested over $10 billion in Dow Jones stocks and components. All persons who have over that amount invested are automatically named members of the board,” May said.

On August 24, 2012, Wikileaks published the following email from Stratfor, which is a company that provides private intelligence services to US government agencies and to US intelligence entities, as well as to large US corporations and major US defense contractors:

“From burton@stratfor.com to alpha@strafor.com: [alpha] DEA on Carlos Slim**protect sourcing** – ** From DEA SAIC [Special Agent in Charge] responsible for MX – Billy is the MX billionaire Carlos Slim linked to narcos? – Regarding your question, The MX telecommunications billionaire is……” The original Stratfor email was dated April 20, 2011. [Underlining and boldness were added for emphasis.]

The telesur article cited above, also stated that “many suspect that he [Slim] is a Frontman for former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, while a Mexican researcher said that even former presidents are scared of talking about him.” The researcher, Diego Enrique Osorno, is the author of several books including the book, Slim: Biografia Politica del Mexicano Mas Rico del Mundo(available only in Spanish). Osorno has written that Slim is “allegedly” one of the richest men in the world “because most of the fortune that is attributed to Slim actually belongs to one of Mexico’s biggest thieves, former president, Carlos Salinas.”

Investigative Reporter, Daniel Hopsicker, of the online Madcow Morning News website, points out in an article entitled, NSA Links to St Petersburg FL Drug Ring, that Carlos Slim Helu was worth no more than $7.2 billion in 1999. Nonetheless, by 2007 Slim is listed by Fortune Magazine as the richest man in the world with a whopping fortune of $59 billion. The conclusion is that the narcotics trade has been very profitable for the Slim hombre (See, Carlos Slim the Richest Man in the World, by Stephanie Mehta, Fortune senior writer; August 20, 2007). So, how did Slim make over $50 billion in just eight years?

According to Professor George W. Grayson of William & Mary College: “He made his billions because of an extremely close relationship with the Salinas government.” It was Grayson “who coined the term ‘Slimlandia’ to describe how entrenched the Slim family’s companies are in the daily life of Mexicans.”

In his book, Bordering on Chaos: Mexico’s Roller-Coaster Journey Towards Prosperity, Andres Oppenheimer described a 1993 dinner party that Carlos Salinas de Gortari held for 30 wealthy Mexican businessmen, whereat he solicited $25 million contributions from each of them. Some might call these donations the price of doing business in Mexico, while others might call it an unsubtle shakedown racket; I prefer to think of it as a going away party for President Carlos Salinas, a little something to help him and his family to scrape by in retirement. For several more articles in Spanish on Carlos Slim Helu simply google, Slim Helu, Carlos [Red Voltaire] and click on – Translate this page – for English.

The rise of the drug cartels and the expansion of their power came about as a direct result of widespread corruption within the Mexican government and its impunity for drug traffickers.

The driving force for this rise and expansion of crime and corruption was the already huge and ever-growing market for illicit drugs in the USA, which is estimated to be at well-over a $100 billion. Heroin, methamphetamines, cocaine, and marijuana are among the major exports from Mexico into the US. Along with the neoliberal restructuring of Mexico in the 1980s came political destabilization. During the 1990s, as other parties began to win governorships and seats in the national legislature, the PRI began to lose its grip on power.

During the 1970s, a system had been instituted for controlling the drug trade, “whereby a PRI boss maintained political control over a local precinct known as a plaza and distributed the rights to a particular narco boss to move drugs through the plaza via a kind of franchise license. In return, the state officials were rewarded not only with votes but also with payments from the drug profits.” (Thornton and Goodman, Nation)

Under the near absolute power of the PRI’s iron-fisted rule, a system of “pax mafiosa” was initiated and institutionalized. This led directly to unchecked political corruption, which, in turn, allowed the drug trade to thrive because of the guaranteed complicity of law enforcement and the local business community. As the PRI’s power and control began to unravel so did its pax mafiosa. However, after the arrest of the notorious El Padrino Gallardo, who had controlled most of the drug trafficking in Mexico, a series power struggles between rival drug gangs and cartels ensued.

Gallardo had been arrested for the torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena. (For details on agent Camarena’s abduction, torture, and death, see Anabel Hernandez’ Narcoland)

After the US spent billions in the 1990s to eradicate cocaine in Columbia and attempted to cutoff the Caribbean supply routes, Mexican traffickers transformed their business model from that of subcontractors to outright wholesalers. As drug-trafficking profits subsequently went through the roof, “the traffickers became more powerful than the PRI party bosses who were supposed to regulate them, and competition between the groups turned increasingly violent.” (Thornton and Goodman, Nation)

Then, on January 19, 2001, a prison guard rolled “El Chapo” Joaquin Guzman out the front door of a maximum security federal prison in a laundry cart and into freedom. Investigative journalist Anabel Hernandez reported that Guzman’s hilariously staged roll to freedom had cost “El Chapo” a $40 million bribe that was paid directly to the former Coca-Cola executive and sitting president, Vincente Fox, who had provided the top-down protection for Guzman’s escape. The plan was for Guzman, who had been facing extradition to the US, to consolidate his power and enlarge the territory and control of his Sina Loa Cartel.

According to a DEA report El Chapo’s godfather Vinnie Fox continued to provide protection for Shorty over the remaining six years of the Fox presidency. (Narcoland, Anabel Hernandez) As a result, violence between rival cartels again intensified and increased.

Vincente Fox Quesada was the first PAN (National Action Party) presidential candidate to be elected to the office of the presidency. His historical election broke the powerful political grip of PRI, which had held onto power for 71 years. Fox ran as a right-wing populist. PAN’s philosophical roots were founded in conservative Catholic doctrine and Jesuit activism. One of PAN’s founders was Luis Calderon Vega who was the father of Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa, who had become the president of Mexico in 2006.

Calderon, who went on to take a position at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government after his presidential term ended in 2012, left a horrific legacy of murder and forced disappearances. “Since 2006 more than 100,000 people have been killed or disappeared in Mexico, a country where more than 90% of the crimes go unpunished.” [as of July, 2014] (Thornton and Goodman, Nation)

The myth, of course, is that the Mexican state is truly waging “a genuine war” on organized crime. Nothing could be further from the truth!

“Unlike the anos de plomo [years of lead] of Operation Condor in the Southern Cone [of Latin America], the new dirty war in Mexico seems less concerned with subversives than with unleashing the power of the state (in collaboration with organized crime) on the population.” (The Disappeared and Mexico’s New Dirty War, Peter Watt, nacla.org, 11/21/2013)

The repeated involvement of the state authorities in the “worst atrocities presently committed” cannot simply be explained away. In each year of Calderon’s presidency (2006 – 2102), “more people were forcibly disappeared than during the entire duration of Pinochet’s infamous military dictatorship in Chile.” In fact, “over 26,000 were classified ‘disappeared’ during the six-year term of former president Felipe Calderon… Families of these victims are repeatedly told by law enforcement officials and investigators that the only explanation for their forced disappearance or murder is that they were involved in criminal behavior.” (Peter Watt, nacla.org) Of course, this is obviously no explanation at all, since invariably no evidence of their criminal behavior is ever presented to the families by the authorities.

With the reality of Mexico being a de facto mafia state, it should come as no great surprise that it is run like one. The modus operandi for the such a despicable criminal state is to control the population through sheer terror. This atmosphere of terror ensures that the population will exist in a constant state of fear, in a constant state of vulnerability, and in a constant state of disorganization.

In the case of Mexico’s mafia state, the power and might of the state’s military authority is in a coalition with the violent killing power of organized crime. The cartels and gangs which are sanctioned and protected by the state include state actors as both sponsors and members of these criminal organizations. As a direct result of this powerful coalition, drug trafficking, human trafficking, sex-trafficking, and kidnapping have become industrialized and now account for a major part of the Mexican state’s GDP. In 2008 the drug trade was Mexico’s fifth largest employer. I guarantee that it was not a Mexican national who said that “crime does not pay.”

“Over 98% of homicides committed [in Mexico] are neither investigated nor solved.” In 2012, “investigators linked police forces working with organized crime in Michoacan to disappearances and the disposal of 18 bodies in a mass grave.” As a matter of fact, “recently declassified internal US government documents show that [US] officials are aware that organized criminal syndicates operate with ’near total impunity’ in the face of compromised local security forces. And yet, both the US and Mexican governments continue to fund what is becoming one of the most vicious and violent assaults on civil society in the world.”  (Peter Watts, nacla.org)

Mexico’s powerful and wealthy elite, with the ruthless Salinas de Gortari crime family poised at the pinnacle of both wealth and political power, are the true sponsors of their government’s war of terror on its own people.

These deviant elite are only too aware that the war on drugs and organized crime is a fiction, because this fiction was created by them and it is also sustained by them. This fiction was created by the deviant elite to protect and maintain their wealth and power by means of their control of the Mexican mafia state. The real tragedy is that “every one of [Mexico’s] security forces engaged with that [fictional] war works in collaboration with the same criminals… Defending the natural functioning of a so-called free market requires some collateral fodder for capitalism’s insatiable demand for expansion of markets and control.” (Watts, ibid.)

Unfortunately, this is the true cost of the monopolistic multinational corporate system for doing business in the neoliberal global economy. Ordinary people, especially the poor, don’t even have the status of being pawns in the game because all of us, except for the deviant elite, are truly expendable – only markets, profits and stock prices matter. It is the same all over the world!

“We don’t think of those banking barons [HSBC, Wachovia, Royal Bank of Scotland, etc.] as the financial service wing of the Sinaloa cartel. The stark truth is that the cartels’ best friends are those people in pin stripes… The notion of any dichotomy between the global criminal economy and the ‘legal’ one is fantasy. Worse it’s a lie! They are seamless, mutually interdependent – one and the same.”  (Global banks are now the financial service wing of the drug cartels, The Guardian July 21, 2012)

In fact, the head of the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime stated that “he has seen evidence that proceeds of organized crime were ‘the only liquid investment capital’ available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. [2008] He said that the majority of $352 billion of drug profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.” (Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor, The Guardian, December 12. 2009)

Furthermore, Dennis Dayle (who was the former chief of an elite DEA unit, Unit-One, and the leading figure in journalist James Mills’ blockbuster book, The Underground Empire: Where Crime and Governments Embrace) stated the following: “In my 30 years in the Drug enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA.”

So, here we have a stark admission of the CIA’s involvement in the international drug trade, which was made by a top-level insider who worked for the DEA. However, to more fully comprehend the CIA’s involvement in the illicit drug trade, it is necessary to understand that the CIA was created by a group of Wall Street lawyers. To learn more about the history of the CIA’s involvement with illegal drug trafficking see the pdf, Deep events and the CIA’s Global Drug Connection – wordpress.com, by Peter Dale Scott.

As Carl A. Trocki, a well-known academic specialist in the field, so poignantly put it in his book Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy: “the accumulation of wealth created by a succession of historic drug trades have been among the primary foundations of global capitalism and the modern nation-state itself. Indeed, it may be argued that the entire rise of the West from 1500 to 1900 depended on a series of drug trades.”

The liquid capital of billions of dollars from drug profits and other organized criminal activities that are laundered through banking and other financial institutions each year are what keep the global economy from becoming insolvent and collapsing. This is the reason why Roger May, the CEO of Dow Jones in 1995, would not question from whence Carlo de Gortari Salinas’ dirty billions had come.

The Salinas crime family is an integral part of the neoliberal global free-trade system. These murderous and parasitical pirates along with their deviant co-conspirators are convinced that they are the real heroes of the global free trade. They consider themselves to be outstanding members of the neoliberal establishment when, in truth, they are the ruthless killers of hope for the rest of humanity. It was that little deviant, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, after all, who aptly exemplified the egregious attitude of all those psychopathic, neoliberal deviant elites when he proudly boasted (back in 1951) that “I killed her with one shot; I’m a hero.”

Sure, you are, Carlos!

Frank Parlato