Too Many Borges June 2020
Miguel Borge Martin served himself as governor de Estado Quintana Roo from 1987 to 1991. There is no evidence that he committed the crimes of his son, but there rarely is. Self-enrichment is so pervasive among political leaders that a law was written to protect them from prosecution after leaving office. The intent may have been to prevent party reprisals when administrations change, but the result was that presidents could leave office with millions of US dollars in mafia bribes.
However, the law changed in 2016, just as Roberto Borge Angula was completing his 6-year term in his father’s seat. Within a year, more than half of Mexico’s 32 governors were under investigation, and four ended up getting arrested. The four governors were stalwarts of PRI, the ruling party that is currently out of power, thanks to President AMLO and his Morena Party, who ran specifically on an anti-corruption platform. Wack a mole, they call it, or in Spanish, Oaxaca Mol.
Javier Duarte, the former governor of Veracruz, was sentenced to 9 years for corruption in 2018, but he will certainly not serve that long. It could have been worse for him, but the thousands of murdered bodies are still missing, including 17 journalists. During his six years in office, the state went bankrupt, and violence went wild. Veracruz had the highest murder rate in the country. By the time he left office, the military had moved in to secure the streets of the capital city, just as a team of grieving mothers were discovering a debris field containing familiar articles. His conviction for having “criminal associations“ is an obscene euphemism for the fat man’s thuggery. He attributed the coordinated slaughter to warring gangs, but he in fact was the leader of them. Remarked one observer, “He is the worst governor in the history of Veracruz—and we’ve had bad governors.“
Eugenio Hernandez, meanwhile, amassed his illicit fortune on both sides of the border while serving as governor of Tamaulipas from 2005 to 2010. Upon his arrest in 2017 for money laundering, Texas immediately requested extradition. This created an awkward situation for Enrique Peña Nieto, as Eugenio Hernandez was serving in his presidential cabinet. His gubernatorial predecessor, Tomas Yarrington, was discovered the same year hiding in Italy under an alias. Arrested for drug-trafficking, this former PRI head of state was reportedly shocked to learn that Italy deports gangsters.
No one stole more money than Roberto Borge, so much so that the Federales seized all of the safety deposit boxes of a Cancun bank in search of his hidden booty. He may have inherited a corrupt government from his predecessor, but Borge’s ostentatious antics cried out for special attention. After swindling most of the funds designated for Quintana Roo’s largest indoor arena, the monstrosity was left sitting empty, condemned by fire inspectors for having only two exits and inadequate ventilation, and found to be structurally unsound in a sinking swamp. La Bomba, it came to be called.
Then there were the widespread private land grabs along the Caribbean coast, from Tulum to the islands off Cancun and everything in between. In Puerto Morelos, Borge assumed secret ownership of downtown properties later developed as the central shopping center, as well a line of properties along the beach of Punta Brava, in which expats were chased away by capricious tax penalties, phony deeds, and personal threats. He could not have accomplished this without the help of town officials, although their complicity was not fully exposed until Roberto Borge had been out of office for a year. Once Lydia Cacho’s 2017 expose was waved in the face of official justice, the chase was on. Borge was eventually arrested, in Panama, boarding a plane for Paris, his pockets stuffed with cash.
None of this wanton criminality quite matches the craziness of Roberto’s father, Miguel Borge. Before the end of his son’s tenure, Papa secured a lucrative state contract managing the ferry service from Playa del Carmen to Cozumel, and apparently earning a commission from the Zeta Gulf Cartel. However, the narco-world underwent upheaval after El Chapo’s arrest and PRI’s electoral defeats. Zeta was kicked out the Riviera Maya by Jalisco’s New Generation, and Borge’s ferry fleet suddenly found itself literally under attack. Barco Caribe exploded while docked in Playa, injuring enough Americans to warrant an FBI investigation, in which it was discovered that Miguel Borge was on board the ship just before its destruction. He was allegedly recorded boarding with a brief case and debarking without it, but these allegations and their implications went nowhere, as Roberto’s general guilty plea to “irregular practices“ absolved his extended family from prosecution.
The Borge son is expected to be released from prison next year, along with the rest of the former governors, at which time each will resume the lavish lifestyles of the rich and infamous. AMLO may yet promise justice in the name of his reformist hero Benito Juarez, but Mexico still has no legal mechanism for reclaiming the stolen fortunes. Roberto Borge will likely emerge a bigger player than ever, and he intends to see that his favorite protege, Laura Fernandez Peña, learns the lessons of her master: Steal a little and they throw you jail, but steal enough and they make you the king.