Tijuana: A controversial candidate with a chance to win
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20040725-9...
Tijuana mayoral hopeful Hank could boost party
By Sandra Dibble
July 25, 2004
TIJUANA ? A small crowd clustered by a 9-foot-wide storm drain, waiting for Jorge Hank Rhon, operator of Tijuana's Agua Caliente Racetrack. The
controversial multimillionaire wants to be Tijuana's next mayor, and he was wooing the voters of this struggling colonia with promises of a better
future and something more tangible: a small concrete bridge.
"It's so simple, just a bridge, in reality nothing at all. But you can't imagine how grateful people are," said Hank, his black ostrich-skin cowboy
boots powdered with dust on this sweltering summer afternoon. For years, Hank stayed out of public life, content to tend his businesses, indulge in
his affinity for exotic animals and throw thrice-yearly parties for thousands of impoverished Tijuana residents.
At 48, he is seeking his first political post as the candidate of Mexico's once-powerful Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
It's no small task. The National Action Party, or PAN, made history in 2000 when Vicente Fox wrested the presidency from the PRI, which had held it
since 1929. The PAN also has won five straight mayoral elections in Tijuana since 1989, and is favored in independent polls to win the Aug. 1
election.
But Hank stands a chance ? and that alone is turning heads across Mexico to this rapidly growing city of 1.5 million residents, some with dread that
Hank might win, others with hope the PRI could recuperate power after years of losses. As the country prepares to select a president in 2006, the
outcome of the Tijuana mayor's race is taking on national proportions.
"It's distant from where the action is, but many eyes will be on Tijuana," said Gast?n Luken, a Tijuana businessman and former counselor to Mexico's
Federal Electoral Institute.
The PAN has suffered both nationally and locally in recent years as it has come to represent the status quo. And while the PAN is working to convince
voters that the party remains the best path to progress in Tijuana, the PRI is pointing to the problems that recent administrations have failed to
solve ? from crime to infrastructure.
Hank is eccentric, rich and politically connected. His father, the late Carlos Hank Gonz?lez, was one of Mexico's most powerful men, and Hank's close
friend is Roberto Madrazo, the PRI's national president. Madrazo is widely said to have hand-picked Hank to run for mayor.
Hank claims 18 children from three wives and a former girlfriend, a private zoo with 20,000 animals and a fortune worth $500 million. Educated as an
industrial engineer, he speaks fluent English, sends his children to Swiss boarding schools and takes ski vacations with his family at a house he owns
in Vail, Colo.
Hank's business holdings include the concession to run Tijuana's Agua Caliente Racetrack; off-track betting businesses throughout Mexico, Latin
America and Europe; as well as properties that include Tijuana's Pueblo Amigo hotel and shopping center.
Despite Hank's wealth and influence, he is seeking out Tijuana's poorest residents as he crosses the city, stopping by factory floors, open-air
markets and graffiti-covered street corners.
"He's a businessman who has money and is willing to share with poor people" said Rafael Cort?s, swatting flies hovering over his fish stall on a
recent Sunday afternoon in the eastern neighborhood of Mariano Matamoros. "All of us may have something bad in our past," said the 50-year-old
merchant and PRI stalwart. "But it needs to be proven."
A cleaned-up public image is part of a strong Hank media campaign orchestrated by his Mexico City publicist, Carlos Alazraki. Hank's beard is gone;
his long brown mane has been cut short. Buildings and billboards across the city are adorned with a clean-shaven candidate flashing a benign smile who
tells them, "Our children will be safe," or "More pavement for more colonias," or simply, "You're going to live better!"
Addressing workers at a furniture factory, Hank vowed that as mayor, he would tackle the drug consumption problem plaguing the city in recent years.
"I will close all drug houses. Drugs will disappear from this city," he said in his smooth, soothing baritone, provoking giggles from the crowd. Asked
why they were laughing, one employee said it was because many were drug users.
Hank seems a natural politician, kissing babies, shaking hands and making speeches in which he promises to rid the city of crime. But as he steps into
the limelight, the candidate hasn't been able to get rid of questions about his past.
The most persistent accusation involves the 1988 killing of H?ctor F?lix Miranda, an editor for the Tijuana weekly Zeta; the newspaper has since
devoted a page in each edition to accusing Hank of being the mastermind.
With last month's assassination of another Zeta editor, Franciso Ort?z Franco, Zeta is again pointing the finger at Hank as a possible suspect, as
Ort?z had been delving into the state's investigation of F?lix Miranda's murder on behalf of the Inter American Press Association.
Hank denies any role in either killing and says he does not believe that two of his bodyguards who were convicted in the F?lix Miranda case were
involved in that assassination. A spokesman for the Baja California attorney general's office said "any political motives that might be linked to
Jorge Hank Rhon have not been ruled out," but Hank has not been called in for questioning.
"Of course not, and I won't be," Hank said in a recent interview.
Hank has not escaped scrutiny across the border in the United States. In 1999, a draft report by the National Drug Intelligence Center, an agency of
the U.S. Justice Department, alleged the Hank family was involved in money laundering and drug trafficking and implied that it was protected because
of its ties to the PRI.
But then-Attorney General Janet Reno disavowed the report and said its findings were not adopted as government policy. According to the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration, there are no indictments against Hank.
"There have been a lot of rumors and versions about his possible links to drug cartels, but there is no clear evidence of that," said Jorge Chabat, a
Mexican analyst who studies the drug trade.
Some allegations against Hank are documented.
He was arrested in 1995 at the Mexico City airport and charged by the Mexican attorney general's office, accused of trying to slip through customs
with $46,600 worth of goods, including pearl-encrusted vests, ivory carvings and ocelot furs. He argued they were imitations and worth considerably
less.
Hank said he was never punished, as the judge, expert witnesses testifying on behalf of the attorney general's office and his defense "agreed that
they were in fact what I said they were."
In a highly publicized case in San Diego, a white tiger cub belonging to Hank was confiscated by U.S. Customs agents at the border in 1991, and Hank
ended up paying a $25,000 fine for smuggling and possessing an endangered species.
Hank said the cub was born at his zoo and taken without his knowledge to his sister's home in Coronado. It was being driven back to Mexico when
customs agents stopped the car. The tiger, named Blanca, now lives at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.
Hank said he has been stopped "two or three times" by U.S. officials for failing to declare large amounts of currency as he entered the United States.
The first time was in the mid-1970s, he said, when he was carrying $15,000. "I was on my way to buy a giraffe, but ended up buying a couple of
elephants. I know I was at fault, but that first time I didn't know," about the currency rule. Another time, he was returning from Europe, he said,
and was carrying money that he thought he left with his wife for expenses there.
Hank said he never travels without a lot of cash ? say, $8,000 to $9,000.
Allegations or not, Hank once would have been a shoo-in for the mayor's job. For more than six decades, the PRI held vast power in Mexico, controlling
resources and elections that its candidates invariably won.
But the system began crumbling in the 1980s, and Baja California helped lead the way. In 1989, the state was the first with a PAN governor. That same
year, Tijuana voters ended the PRI's grip over their city, voting in a PAN mayor, and the party has held on to the governorship and the Tijuana
mayor's office ever since.
Out of power, the Baja California PRI fell into disarray. But Hank's presence has rekindled hopes that the party could once again occupy City Hall.
"For the first time in 15 years, the PRI has a candidate with economic capacity and the ability to bring together forces within the party," said
V?ctor Clark, a Tijuana human rights activist and observer of the political scene.
Some say Hank's wealth is reassuring: "He won't need to steal," said Lourdes Hardy, a 50-year-old Tijuana native who lives behind the Caliente
Racetrack. She has voted for the PAN in past mayoral races but has been disappointed and said she will vote for Hank. "I'll give him the benefit of
the doubt."
But for others, Hank has had the opposite effect. Engineer Hector Gallegos, 40, has misgivings about recent PAN administrations and is not
enthusiastic about the PAN candidate. Stopping for a taco near the racetrack, he said he reluctantly will back the PAN candidate as the lesser of two
evils. "I was very unhappy they selected Hank as their candidate," Gallegos said of the PRI.
For all the controversy surrounding Hank, the campaigns have generated little open sparring. Hank's main opponent, PANista Jorge Ramos, is a
36-year-old former city councilman and scion of a longstanding PAN family. Ramos has made little mention of Hank's past, and the two men barely
acknowledged each other in the only two public debates where both participated.
Hank himself provoked the biggest outcry of the campaign with his statement to the Mexico City newspaper El Universal that "women are my favorite
animals."
"We were taught in school that the world was made up of three kingdoms, the vegetable, animal and mineral," Hank said recently with a chuckle. "When
they asked me what is your favorite animal, I said, 'woman,' and it's true."
In a poll released last week the Tijuana daily Frontera gave Ramos a six-point lead over Hank, 44 percent to 38 percent, with 9 percent of voters
undecided and the rest planning to vote for candidates of other parties. Another poll, released last week by the Mexican Institute for Marketing and
Opinion, gave the PAN a nine-point lead.
But in its Friday edition, Zeta released results of a July 17 survey showing Hank only one percentage point behind.
To his detractors, Hank represents the worst of the old PRI, signaling a return to corruption and authoritarianism. They say his father made his
fortune while holding a series of public posts, including mayor of Mexico City and secretary of agriculture, as he hired his own companies to perform
public contracts.
"My father is my God; he's always here," said Hank, touching his chest. "He made his fortune through transportation, everything started there."
The race has shed a spotlight not just on Hank, but on Baja California's reputation as a pioneer for democracy in Mexico.
The 1991 federal midterm congressional midterms and the 1994 presidential election drew record turnouts of close to 80 percent. But the levels have
been dropping, and last year's midterm congressional elections drew only a 31 percent turnout, among the lowest in Mexico.
Voters have grown disaffected as political parties become increasingly closed-off from society, said Tonatiuh Guill?n, a political analyst with the
Colegio de la Frontera Norte outside Tijuana. Neither the PRI nor the PAN selected their candidates in open primaries.
"We have a paradox," Guill?n said. "An open electoral system, but a closed selection process."
As an opposition party and through its early years in office, the PAN built ties with the state's residents, but the party has become increasingly cut
off from the average voter after 15 years in power, Guill?n said.
The PAN has suffered both nationally and locally in recent years as it has come to represent the status quo.
The party is working hard to highlight the progress Baja California has made since 1989, much of it in the realm of road construction and public
utilities. Not all voters are buying that message.
Juan Manuel Rodr?guez, 29, a junior high school teacher, voted for Fox in 2000 but is switching to the PRI this year.
"For me, the parties in power haven't represented any change at all," he said. "Hank is a candidate who might pull us out of this hole we're in."
But Chabat, the Mexico City analyst, said Hank's victory would send a disturbing message: "If this guy wins a clean election, then there is obviously
something wrong with democracy."
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