The Accusations of an Ex-Governor and the Nature of PRI Support for the Drug Trade

Former Nuevo León governor Sócrates Rizzo said to an audience at the Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila that when the PRI held Los Pinos, the president was actively involved in carving up the country for drug gangs. This predictably upset a lot of priístas, and filled a lot of opposition pols with consternation and (I presume) delight. Manlio Fabio Beltrones said, "Declarations of this type and superficiality a don't help to make an accurate diagnosis regarding the grave problem that we are experiencing today, of crime and drug trafficking." Former Quintana Roo Governor Joaquín Coldwell said that the comments amounted to "a personal opinion that I don't share, I've never seen evidence that something like that happened". Gustavo Madero said that a strong president doesn't pact with the narcos, but rather confronts them. Carlos Navarrete said the content of his remarks were an "open secret".

There's never been a final accounting of exactly what was the nature of the presidential relationship with narcos. Explanations swing between the president being the biggest of the nation's narcos to him just looking the other way. With regard to Rizzo's allegations, it just doesn't make much sense for the president to be the divvying up drug trafficking routes, nor is there any evidence of such intimate involvement, but the demonstrations of executive-branch complicity in the 1980s and 1990s are significant (Raul Salinas, Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, Juan Arévalo Gardoqui, Guillermo González Calderoni). Of course, it's hard to imagine any of the principals settling the issue definitively, what with the possible legal ramifications and all, so it'll probably have to remain as a topic of perennial debate.