BY DAVID AGREN
The News
Pedro Fletes, a Mexico City teacher and father of six, was pulled from his 1994 Ford Escort by five kidnappers as he passed through the Colonia Roma on a winter morning seven years ago.
His abductors brought him to a "safe house," blindfolded him and kept him confined to a closet for nearly two months. A chain was attached to his leg every night.
Feletes subsisted on a diet of tea and pastries, but was also extended a surprising number of courtesies, including packs of Raleigh cigarettes, his preferred brand.
"If I had been an addict, they would have found me drugs," Fletes said, explaining that his captors treated him like "merchandise" that required care and attention. "The most important thing for them was taking care of me."
Yet in the high-stakes crime of kidnapping, the same captors who brought him his favorite cigarettes might just as easily have cut off an appendage, or even killed him, had the deal for his ransom gone wrong.
Instead, his ordeal ended with him being dumped - penniless and wearing the same clothes he had on when he was grabbed 59 days earlier - at an unfamiliar street corner in a working-class neighborhood near the airport. His family had paid the ransom, the sum of which he declined to disclose, except to say that it was a mere fraction of the millions of dollars demanded by kidnappers involved in high-profile abductions.
Fletes' kidnappers nabbed him for purely economic reasons - even though his salary from his job at a private high school pays him only a middle-class salary. But his abduction came during the early years of a trend in Mexico's lucrative kidnapping industry that has seen the middle and working classes become targets as well as the rich.
"In the '90s and early 2000s, a lot of these kidnappings were done by professionals, groups that were very sophisticated," said Ana María Salazar, a Mexico City political analyst and security expert. "They would plan ahead: who they would kidnap and how much money they were going to get.
"Now people are basically getting kidnapped if they have a nice car or they're wearing a watch, or for some reason there's a perception that they have cash available," she said.
Security experts and the leaders of public security advocacy groups say that the problem for the middle and working classes has only become worse since Fletes was apprehended in 2001. Kidnapping is now so widespread that even impoverished rural villages are feeling its impact.
"There are kidnappings for just 5,000 pesos," said Joaquín Quintana, leader of the anti-crime civic group Convivencia sin Violencia, of the situation in rural areas.
"There are kidnappings where they take a family's child . and ask for a cow and two pigs."
MEDIA ATTENTION
Kidnappings are up 9.1 percent this year in Mexico, averaging 65 per month nationwide, according to the Attorney General's Office. Citizens' groups, however, say that most crimes go unreported, and the real kidnapping rate is likely more than 500 per month.
It's a crime that affects people of all socioeconomic groups. Yet the trend of middle- and working-class kidnappings has been given scant attention by the national media, which this month has focused heavily on the plights of two wealthy families, whose children fell into the hands of kidnapping gangs.
Fernando Martí, whose father Alejandro Martí founded a sporting goods retail empire, was found dead in the truck of an abandoned car July 31. His parents had reportedly paid a $5 million ransom, but it failed to save their 14-year-old son.
The mother of Silvia Vargas made an emotional plea for her daughter's return last week along with offering a reward and posting a billboard to flush out information on the kidnapped 19-year-old, whose father previously ran the National Sports Commission.
The plights of both teenagers made the front-page headlines.
"What happens is that when it's someone from the upper class, and it's a well-known person, it appears in the press," Quintana said.
In the Martí case, the extensive press coverage fomented immense public outrage. A massive march against kidnapping is now planned for Saturday evening in downtown Mexico City.
The coverage also prompted political action - and public displays of support from the country's most prominent politicians. President Felipe Calderón attended the funeral Mass for the 14-year-old kidnapping victim. The president, all 31 governors and the mayor of Mexico City also convened a security summit last week, where the leaders agreed to a 74-point action plan after receiving a public tongue-lashing from Alejandro Martí.
In an apparent reference to the Martí case, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora acknowledged that "perhaps it takes emblematic events to make us realize that the government is far from living up to its obligations."
But some have suggested that class interests are what drive the government's and public's concern for kidnapping. Back in 2004, then-Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a self-styled champion of the poor and working classes, branded the backers of an anti-kidnapping protest as "spoiled rich kids."
`AN INCREDIBLE BUSINESS'
Security experts say the kidnapping industry began taking off in the mid-1990s, a time when the peso collapsed and authoritarian one-party rule came to an end on the national and Mexico City levels. Asked to explain kidnappings of working-class people, experts cite reasons ranging from lax law enforcement and deteriorating economic conditions to efforts by the rich to make themselves more difficult to apprehend by purchasing bulletproof vehicles and hiring private security.
Perhaps most important of all, the kidnapping of the middle and lower classes, especially in volume, can be a highly lucrative activity.
"There are gangs that do a lot of small-time kidnapping, because these types of kidnappings are a good business," Quintana said.
"There are no complaints filed, nobody goes after anybody. It's an incredible business."
A flood of new entrants changed the industry by carrying out both express kidnappings, in which the victims are forced to simply empty their bank accounts, and virtual kidnappings that trick victims via the telephone into thinking that their loved ones have been apprehended.
Traditional kidnappings are also becoming less sophisticated as victims are increasingly being mutilated and killed, according to Quintana.
"What we're seeing now, unlike before, is that there are no longer any ethics," he said.
"Before, if they were professionals, they would kidnap [the victim] and treat them like merchandise - take care of them, feed them well, return them in good condition. What's happening now is that you pay for the rescue and [the victim] is murdered."
Fletes, who now runs a support organization for the families of kidnapping victims, expressed gratitude that his kidnappers were of the professional variety.
But the reason he was ever targeted in the first place still mystifies him.
"I'm not a rich man," he said.
30 August 2008
25 August 2008
The untouchables
Even with energy reform on political agenda, few dare address a core issue: Pemex's union
BY DAVID AGREN
The News
Omar Toledo Aburto normally mans one of the offshore rigs pumping crude from the Campeche Sound. But these days, he's in charge of a protest camp outside the Labor Secretariat, where he sleeps in the cab of a pickup truck parked alongside one of the capital's busiest thoroughfares.
But his current discomfort has nothing on the possible consequences of confronting the powerful oil workers union, which represents more than 90,000 Pemex employees nationwide, and is run by a group that "rules through terrorism," as Toledo Aburto puts it. "If you don't agree with their rules, you'll automatically be fired," he said.
Or, worse, subjected to death threats and harassment.
Mere hours after the 24-year-veteran petroleum worker set up camp in Mexico City on July 28, his wife and children were threatened by "union toughs," he said. But even though he expressed concern for his family's safety, he remains defiant.
"I'm not scared," he said, pointing to a property line marking the limits of the guarded federal land that he's currently occupying.
With the nation's political parties immersed in debates over proposed reforms to the nation's oil industry, Toledo and a band of about a dozen current and former Pemex workers are calling for changes in the oil workers union, an organization that wields enormous influence over the state-owned petroleum concern, Pemex, and dominates the political sphere in many oil-producing parts of the country.
But such is the union's clout that neither the governing National Action Party, or PAN, nor the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has dared propose altering the union's relationship with Pemex in their energy reform proposals. Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño recently said that dealing with the union "is a different discussion," while PRI senators approved a measure last week saying that they would only support an energy reform package that omits union changes. "People pay tremendous prices for fooling with the union," said George Baker, a Houston-based energy consultant and expert on the Mexican oil industry.
Only the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, which plans to unveil its own energy reform initiative on Monday, has dared to challenge the union, which some analysts say is a foe of the left-wing party.
"For the PRD, the oil workers union is a political enemy," said Aldo Muñoz, a union expert at the Universidad Iberoamericana. "The Pemex union supports the PRI and, if it suits them, PAN candidates against the PRD."
PRD Sen. Carlos Navarrete last week warned that the PRD would recommend stripping power from the union in its energy reform proposal.
"In what part of the world does the union have almost half of the [seats on the] board of directors in the most important company in its country?" Navarrete told the newspaper Excélsior. "It's absolutely anachronistic."
Former PRD presidential candidate López Obrador has gone even further, accusing the government and the oil workers of brokering an unseemly, but mutually beneficial, deal.
"There's an agreement between [oil workers union leader] Carlos Romero Deschamps and [President] Felipe Calderón to keep corruption in the union in exchange for supporting the Calderón reform," he said recently.
Some analysts, meanwhile, question whether tackling the union issue - however worthwhile an objective - is appropriate during the early phases of a politically difficult reform process.
"You're trying to get some initial traction [on reform]," Baker said. "Getting traction on the union question probably isn't at the top of the list."
The union, too, has remained silent on the government's energy reform proposals - which would allow increased private sector participation in the exploration and exploitation of oil reserves - a move that Muñoz said was symbolic of just how "pragmatic" the syndicate is.
"It publicly supports the PAN in terms of energy reform, because its interests are never touched," he said.
THE PATH TO POWER
The origin of the oil union's power goes back decades. It initially gained authority after the 1938 expropriation of the petroleum industry, as then-President Lázaro Cárdenas proposed having the government and workers co-manage Pemex. That arrangement established conditions for the union leader to play an important role on the national stage, while his subordinates dominated the affairs of regional petroleum centers, where they funded public works projects, held sway over municipal governments and often ran local businesses.
Even to this day, section leaders control hiring and firing decisions. Nepotism is said to be rife, and positions are reputedly sold for as much as 50,000 pesos. (Pemex could not be reached for comment on these allegations, but has denied them in the past.)
Union leaders often manage side businesses that provide Pemex with employee transportation services, construction crews and basic supplies, according to the dissidents protesting in Mexico City. The union also holds five of the 11 seats on the Pemex board of directors.
Oil workers are now some of the best-paid employees in the country, as the union has consistently won generous wage and benefits packages that include gasoline subsidies, a series of worker-only hospitals and Christmas bonuses worth nearly two-months' pay.
The wealth and influence of the union leaders and members - "the real sheiks" of the oil industry, as Alan Riding called them in his 1985 book on Mexico, "Distant Neighbors" - are far-reaching, too. Successive governments have yielded to the union's hardball negotiating tactics, which have included the trump card of threatening to shut down the entire petroleum sector - the source of 40 percent of the federal budget.
BATTLING ON
Allegations of thuggery - denied by the company - are also common. Toledo said that at least 80 dissident members have disappeared over the past eight years.
The union dissident is calling for Romero Deschamps to be deposed by the Labor Secretariat, arguing that the date of the last internal election was improperly moved ahead.
"He's interested in nothing more than keeping himself in power," Toledo Aburto said. "This man, in every sense of the word, has hijacked the union."
In spite of the threats, the union protesters plan to stay put - partly out of principle, but also due to the potentially uncomfortable situation that awaits some of them upon returning to their hometowns and workplaces.
"I can't go back," Toldeo Aburto said. "They've already stripped me of my job."
BY DAVID AGREN
The News
Omar Toledo Aburto normally mans one of the offshore rigs pumping crude from the Campeche Sound. But these days, he's in charge of a protest camp outside the Labor Secretariat, where he sleeps in the cab of a pickup truck parked alongside one of the capital's busiest thoroughfares.
But his current discomfort has nothing on the possible consequences of confronting the powerful oil workers union, which represents more than 90,000 Pemex employees nationwide, and is run by a group that "rules through terrorism," as Toledo Aburto puts it. "If you don't agree with their rules, you'll automatically be fired," he said.
Or, worse, subjected to death threats and harassment.
Mere hours after the 24-year-veteran petroleum worker set up camp in Mexico City on July 28, his wife and children were threatened by "union toughs," he said. But even though he expressed concern for his family's safety, he remains defiant.
"I'm not scared," he said, pointing to a property line marking the limits of the guarded federal land that he's currently occupying.
With the nation's political parties immersed in debates over proposed reforms to the nation's oil industry, Toledo and a band of about a dozen current and former Pemex workers are calling for changes in the oil workers union, an organization that wields enormous influence over the state-owned petroleum concern, Pemex, and dominates the political sphere in many oil-producing parts of the country.
But such is the union's clout that neither the governing National Action Party, or PAN, nor the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has dared propose altering the union's relationship with Pemex in their energy reform proposals. Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño recently said that dealing with the union "is a different discussion," while PRI senators approved a measure last week saying that they would only support an energy reform package that omits union changes. "People pay tremendous prices for fooling with the union," said George Baker, a Houston-based energy consultant and expert on the Mexican oil industry.
Only the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, which plans to unveil its own energy reform initiative on Monday, has dared to challenge the union, which some analysts say is a foe of the left-wing party.
"For the PRD, the oil workers union is a political enemy," said Aldo Muñoz, a union expert at the Universidad Iberoamericana. "The Pemex union supports the PRI and, if it suits them, PAN candidates against the PRD."
PRD Sen. Carlos Navarrete last week warned that the PRD would recommend stripping power from the union in its energy reform proposal.
"In what part of the world does the union have almost half of the [seats on the] board of directors in the most important company in its country?" Navarrete told the newspaper Excélsior. "It's absolutely anachronistic."
Former PRD presidential candidate López Obrador has gone even further, accusing the government and the oil workers of brokering an unseemly, but mutually beneficial, deal.
"There's an agreement between [oil workers union leader] Carlos Romero Deschamps and [President] Felipe Calderón to keep corruption in the union in exchange for supporting the Calderón reform," he said recently.
Some analysts, meanwhile, question whether tackling the union issue - however worthwhile an objective - is appropriate during the early phases of a politically difficult reform process.
"You're trying to get some initial traction [on reform]," Baker said. "Getting traction on the union question probably isn't at the top of the list."
The union, too, has remained silent on the government's energy reform proposals - which would allow increased private sector participation in the exploration and exploitation of oil reserves - a move that Muñoz said was symbolic of just how "pragmatic" the syndicate is.
"It publicly supports the PAN in terms of energy reform, because its interests are never touched," he said.
THE PATH TO POWER
The origin of the oil union's power goes back decades. It initially gained authority after the 1938 expropriation of the petroleum industry, as then-President Lázaro Cárdenas proposed having the government and workers co-manage Pemex. That arrangement established conditions for the union leader to play an important role on the national stage, while his subordinates dominated the affairs of regional petroleum centers, where they funded public works projects, held sway over municipal governments and often ran local businesses.
Even to this day, section leaders control hiring and firing decisions. Nepotism is said to be rife, and positions are reputedly sold for as much as 50,000 pesos. (Pemex could not be reached for comment on these allegations, but has denied them in the past.)
Union leaders often manage side businesses that provide Pemex with employee transportation services, construction crews and basic supplies, according to the dissidents protesting in Mexico City. The union also holds five of the 11 seats on the Pemex board of directors.
Oil workers are now some of the best-paid employees in the country, as the union has consistently won generous wage and benefits packages that include gasoline subsidies, a series of worker-only hospitals and Christmas bonuses worth nearly two-months' pay.
The wealth and influence of the union leaders and members - "the real sheiks" of the oil industry, as Alan Riding called them in his 1985 book on Mexico, "Distant Neighbors" - are far-reaching, too. Successive governments have yielded to the union's hardball negotiating tactics, which have included the trump card of threatening to shut down the entire petroleum sector - the source of 40 percent of the federal budget.
BATTLING ON
Allegations of thuggery - denied by the company - are also common. Toledo said that at least 80 dissident members have disappeared over the past eight years.
The union dissident is calling for Romero Deschamps to be deposed by the Labor Secretariat, arguing that the date of the last internal election was improperly moved ahead.
"He's interested in nothing more than keeping himself in power," Toledo Aburto said. "This man, in every sense of the word, has hijacked the union."
In spite of the threats, the union protesters plan to stay put - partly out of principle, but also due to the potentially uncomfortable situation that awaits some of them upon returning to their hometowns and workplaces.
"I can't go back," Toldeo Aburto said. "They've already stripped me of my job."
The Untouchables
Even with energy reform on political agenda, few dare address a core issue: Pemex's union
BY DAVID AGREN
The News
Omar Toledo Aburto normally mans one of the offshore rigs pumping crude from the Campeche Sound. But these days, he's in charge of a protest camp outside the Labor Secretariat, where he sleeps in the cab of a pickup truck parked alongside one of the capital's busiest thoroughfares.
But his current discomfort has nothing on the possible consequences of confronting the powerful oil workers union, which represents more than 90,000 Pemex employees nationwide, and is run by a group that "rules through terrorism," as Toledo Aburto puts it. "If you don't agree with their rules, you'll automatically be fired," he said.
Or, worse, subjected to death threats and harassment.
Mere hours after the 24-year-veteran petroleum worker set up camp in Mexico City on July 28, his wife and children were threatened by "union toughs," he said. But even though he expressed concern for his family's safety, he remains defiant.
"I'm not scared," he said, pointing to a property line marking the limits of the guarded federal land that he's currently occupying.
With the nation's political parties immersed in debates over proposed reforms to the nation's oil industry, Toledo and a band of about a dozen current and former Pemex workers are calling for changes in the oil workers union, an organization that wields enormous influence over the state-owned petroleum concern, Pemex, and dominates the political sphere in many oil-producing parts of the country.
But such is the union's clout that neither the governing National Action Party, or PAN, nor the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has dared propose altering the union's relationship with Pemex in their energy reform proposals. Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño recently said that dealing with the union "is a different discussion," while PRI senators approved a measure last week saying that they would only support an energy reform package that omits union changes. "People pay tremendous prices for fooling with the union," said George Baker, a Houston-based energy consultant and expert on the Mexican oil industry.
Only the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, which plans to unveil its own energy reform initiative on Monday, has dared to challenge the union, which some analysts say is a foe of the left-wing party.
"For the PRD, the oil workers union is a political enemy," said Aldo Muñoz, a union expert at the Universidad Iberoamericana. "The Pemex union supports the PRI and, if it suits them, PAN candidates against the PRD."
PRD Sen. Carlos Navarrete last week warned that the PRD would recommend stripping power from the union in its energy reform proposal.
"In what part of the world does the union have almost half of the [seats on the] board of directors in the most important company in its country?" Navarrete told the newspaper Excélsior. "It's absolutely anachronistic."
Former PRD presidential candidate López Obrador has gone even further, accusing the government and the oil workers of brokering an unseemly, but mutually beneficial, deal.
"There's an agreement between [oil workers union leader] Carlos Romero Deschamps and [President] Felipe Calderón to keep corruption in the union in exchange for supporting the Calderón reform," he said recently.
Some analysts, meanwhile, question whether tackling the union issue - however worthwhile an objective - is appropriate during the early phases of a politically difficult reform process.
"You're trying to get some initial traction [on reform]," Baker said. "Getting traction on the union question probably isn't at the top of the list."
The union, too, has remained silent on the government's energy reform proposals - which would allow increased private sector participation in the exploration and exploitation of oil reserves - a move that Muñoz said was symbolic of just how "pragmatic" the syndicate is.
"It publicly supports the PAN in terms of energy reform, because its interests are never touched," he said.
THE PATH TO POWER
The origin of the oil union's power goes back decades. It initially gained authority after the 1938 expropriation of the petroleum industry, as then-President Lázaro Cárdenas proposed having the government and workers co-manage Pemex. That arrangement established conditions for the union leader to play an important role on the national stage, while his subordinates dominated the affairs of regional petroleum centers, where they funded public works projects, held sway over municipal governments and often ran local businesses.
Even to this day, section leaders control hiring and firing decisions. Nepotism is said to be rife, and positions are reputedly sold for as much as 50,000 pesos. (Pemex could not be reached for comment on these allegations, but has denied them in the past.)
Union leaders often manage side businesses that provide Pemex with employee transportation services, construction crews and basic supplies, according to the dissidents protesting in Mexico City. The union also holds five of the 11 seats on the Pemex board of directors.
Oil workers are now some of the best-paid employees in the country, as the union has consistently won generous wage and benefits packages that include gasoline subsidies, a series of worker-only hospitals and Christmas bonuses worth nearly two-months' pay.
The wealth and influence of the union leaders and members - "the real sheiks" of the oil industry, as Alan Riding called them in his 1985 book on Mexico, "Distant Neighbors" - are far-reaching, too. Successive governments have yielded to the union's hardball negotiating tactics, which have included the trump card of threatening to shut down the entire petroleum sector - the source of 40 percent of the federal budget.
BATTLING ON
Allegations of thuggery - denied by the company - are also common. Toledo said that at least 80 dissident members have disappeared over the past eight years.
The union dissident is calling for Romero Deschamps to be deposed by the Labor Secretariat, arguing that the date of the last internal election was improperly moved ahead.
"He's interested in nothing more than keeping himself in power," Toledo Aburto said. "This man, in every sense of the word, has hijacked the union."
In spite of the threats, the union protesters plan to stay put - partly out of principle, but also due to the potentially uncomfortable situation that awaits some of them upon returning to their hometowns and workplaces.
"I can't go back," Toldeo Aburto said. "They've already stripped me of my job."
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