El Cacique

 

El México de Joaquín YouTube Video Part 4

The following first three paragraphs are excerpts from my book.
Though México now had an enlightened president, (Lazaro Cardenas) the corrupt institution of the cacique, derived from the Taino Indian word for chief, continued to exercise control over local politics.


One such cacique from the 1920’s to the 1950’s was Gonzalo N. Santos of San Luís Potosí. Santos was a lifetime member of the PRI, (Revolutionary Institutional Party) and owner of thousands of hectáreas of land in San Luís Potosí. Despite the land redistribution laws of Cárdenas, Santos did not hand over the land intended for the poor. Santos accumulated vast holdings through fraud, intimidation and even murder. My eighteen-year-old father was sent by my grandfather, Don Alberto Durán who was too ill to negotiate with Santos for our land. Fortunatly, our family was able to keep the land.

My grandfather was a close friend of Ruíz Cortines, who served as president of México from 1952 to 1958. On his election campaign, Cortines came to San Luís where Santos had organized a meeting with several cattlemen, including my grandfather and my father who were also ranchers. Santos handed out business cards with a printed message that said, “no molestes al candidato,vete a la chingada,” (don’t bother the candidate, go to the bitch; i.e. go to hell). As he stretched out his arm to give a card to my grandfather, candidate Cortines gently touched the hand of the caciqueand told him that Don Alberto was his friend and would not need a card. In the late 50`s, Santos was finally ousted by Dr. Salvador Nava.  -End of excerpt.-

The buzz nowadays is that Mexico is dangerous and the hysteria among potential travelers to this country can be numbing.  Something to realize is that Mexico has always had an element of danger.  So has Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New Orleans and Seattle.  It depends where you go, what choices you as an individual make.  

Go to www.mexicomike.com  and click on Is Mexico Safe on the left.  I try to take things with a grain of salt.  Do your own research and see if something is "apples and oranges" or illogical in its reasoning.  I think this is a good start.

The video about the Cacique is narrated by my father from a recording I did in the early 1990s.  At age he eighteen had to deal personally with Gonzalo N. Santos who's famous right-hand man a pistolero known as Mano Negra (black hand) terrorized many local ranchers and farmers.  They meant business.  Santos was polite to my father and in the end did not extort my grandfather and allowed my family to keep their land.  Corruption at all government levels has been a part of Mexico for five hundred years now and that's only counting from when Spain conquered Tenochtitlan in the Summer of 1521.

Santos was a priista, meaning a member of the PRI, Revolutionary Institutional Party that lost its power to the PAN the National Action Party when Vicente Fox became president in 2000.  From 1946 to 2000 all presidents were priistas.  In essence a party dictatorship.

The PRI government had long standing relationships with the drug cartels.  Now with the new party and its president fighting the "drug war" the cartels are independent and have become more powerful.  It is interesting some of the changes Mexico has gone through over the years.  One thing for certain is there were bad guys in the 1940s like the man my father had to negotiate with and they still exist today only from different angles and with new names.