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| A long life |
Joaquín Hernández Galicia “La Quina” the, 91-year-old former
Pemex Union leader, has died in a hospital in Tampico, Tamaulipas.
Only last month Hernández Galicia told the Mexican press
that it was thanks to psychopathic killer Caro Quintero, erstwhile leader of
the Guadalajara Cartel, that his life was saved in prison. Caro Quintero was recently
released on a technicality and now has a $5 million US government bounty on his head, with Mexico’s
Supreme Court reversing
the lower court decision that resulted in his release.
“I came out of jail after nine years, and then was exiled
for two and half years, with five attempts on my life,” he said. “And who saved
me from those assassinations? The narcos made sure I wasn’t killed. Caro
Quintero, who is now free, instructed his people to stop others from killing
me, and it’s thanks to him I am still alive.”
Hernández Galicia was interviewed while travelling in a vehicle
with his son, Joaquín Hernández Correa, in Tampico, Tamaulipas. When asked by
the reporter if this meant that he was allied with the drug cartels, the son, a
local politician, interjected with a “No!” before his elderly father could
respond.
But his father then replied: “I am only saying that they
stopped others from killing me. This isn’t foolish talk. It is thanks to them
that the government didn’t get me.”
The ex-union boss had been reaching out to the media to help
him come to an agreement with the governor of Tamaulipas, Egidio Torre Cantú,
in the hopes that he could recover three billion pesos (about $227 million) in
union trust accounts that have been frozen by the banks.
In the 20th century Mexican unions were controlled
by the ruling PRI and its client leftist parties as a Soviet-style system to
ensure political hegemony. The result was rampant corruption, with periodic
efforts by the political class to reign in the excesses of union bosses. This
is what occurred when Hernández Galicia was arrested, and also earlier this year
with the
arrest of the wildly corrupt head of Mexico’s national teachers union, Elba
Esther Gordillo Morales.
La Quina said he wanted access to the funds as there were so
many poor people in Mexico, and he felt a responsibility to help them,
accusing Mexico’s current politicians of being only interested in enriching
themselves.
The ex union boss, whose exile was internal and involved moving
to Mexico City, Cuernavaca, and then back to Ciudad Madero, Tamaulipas, claimed that during his thirty year leadership
there was “no poverty”.
Not surprisingly, he was also critical of president Enrique
Peña Nieto’s proposed energy reforms, which could open foreign participation in
Mexico’s oil and gas industry, which provides about 30% of the country’s
revenue.
(TE Wilson is the author of Mezcalero, a Detective Sánchez novel.)
(TE Wilson is the author of Mezcalero, a Detective Sánchez novel.)
For related see:
After
Gordillo arrest, new union leader embraces reform: but what about the “hundreds
of political gangsters” in Mexico?
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