Bald Man on a Horse

Carlos Salinas de Gortari was supposed by many of his countrymen to be a weak “interim” president with no real constituency and, given the three-way division of the vote and the usual alquimia electoral of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a highly dubious claim to his office. He is young (41), short, and bald. Not even his best friends would claim that he looks—in a useful Mexican term—“presidenciable.” Nevertheless, little more than a month into his six-year term as president, Salinas stepped boldly forward and decapitated a monster that none of his predecessors in office had dared confront: the 210,000-member Petroleum Workers’ Union.

The Sindicato Revolucionario de Trabajadores Petroleros de la Republica Mexicana (SRTPRM), to use its full pompous title, is the richest and probably the most corrupt union in Latin America, where there are many. Its leaders have blackmailed a succession of Mexican presidents into granting them unconscionable privileges under threat of closing down Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the governmentowned drilling, refining, and marketing monopoly.

GL

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George Byram Lake

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Carlos Salinas de Gortari was supposed by many of his countrymen to be a weak “interim” president with no real constituency and, given the three-way division of the vote and the usual alquimia electoral of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a highly dubious claim to his office. He is young (41), short, and bald. Not even his best friends would claim that he looks—in a useful Mexican term—“presidenciable.” Nevertheless, little more than a month into his six-year term as president, Salinas stepped boldly forward and decapitated a monster that none of his predecessors in office had dared confront: the 210,000-member Petroleum Workers’ Union.

The Sindicato Revolucionario de Trabajadores Petroleros de la Republica Mexicana (SRTPRM), to use its full pompous title, is the richest and probably the most corrupt union in Latin America, where there are many. Its leaders have blackmailed a succession of Mexican presidents into granting them unconscionable privileges under threat of closing down Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the governmentowned drilling, refining, and marketing monopoly.