With the year-end holidays approaching, it is only fitting that former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari is being treated like a Christmas piñata by President Claudia Sheinbaum.
During her Wednesday morning press conference, Sheinbaum was asked about a video in which Salinas declared, “My name is Carlos Salinas and I am unemployed.” Then, responding to a question, Salinas adds, “I’m not a pensioner because someone took away our pensions.”
«Me llamo Carlos Salinas de Gortari y soy desempleado… Sí porque “pensionado” ya no, ahora que “alguien” nos quitó las pensiones.» dijo @CarlosGortari_ refiriéndose a que @lopezobrador_ les quitó las remuneraciones al terminar su sexenio. 💰
📹 @nexosmexico @GenuinaMedia pic.twitter.com/DXWr5Af2yy
— PARI TV (@PARI__TV) December 4, 2024
Salinas was referring to the pension granted to ex-presidents, which was rescinded by Sheinbaum’s predecessor and mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
When asked about this by a reporter, Sheinbaum admitted she had not seen the video before, but invited Salinas to “apply for a pension via the Welfare [Ministry].”
During Thursday’s press conference, Salinas’s name was brought up again and Sheinbaum was ready with more put-downs, first insinuating that Salinas did not even qualify as an ex-president.
“I don’t call him president,” Sheinbaum said, referring to the controversial 1988 election “Despite the differences I have with Fox, Fox won the presidency, but Salinas de Gortari arrived via electoral fraud.”
Sheinbaum piled on further. “He’s so unemployed, yes, so unemployed. But nobody’s ever seen him fly commercial,” she said of the ex-president, who lives in Spain.
The story behind the video
During his six-year term which ended on Sept. 30, López Obrador frequently used Salinas as a punching bag. The feud goes back even further, with the former often referring to the latter as “El Innombrable” (“The Unmentionable One”).
In 2004 while López Obrador was mayor of Mexico City, leaked videos showed members of Salinas’inner circle taking bribes to finance the midterm elections. His chief-of-staff, finance minister and a borough president were implicated, and López Obrador accused Salinas of being behind the scheme.
(An added bit of irony: The borough president arrested as a result of the 2004 video scandal was none other than Carlos Imaz, who was married to Sheinbaum at the time.)
Salinas was also a constant thorn in his rival’s side during López Obrador’s first presidential campaigns (2006 and, 2012). A war of words erupted during the 2018 campaign after Salinas penned a critical op-ed in El País, warning the Mexican electorate about the dangers of populism.
Earlier this year, López Obrador claimed Salinas was behind a damning report published in Pro Publica, in which Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Tim Golden cited a U.S. investigation into López Obrador’s links to drug cartels.
So the fact that Salinas is again serving as a punching bag is no big surprise.
However, the video that sparked this latest round of insults is over a year old.
El Universal columnist Salvador García Soto said it was taken from an interview of Salinas conducted by the media group Nexos as part of its series on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The interview was conducted in the context of the 30th anniversary of NAFTA, which Salinas negotiated with former U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Canada’s Brian Mulroney.
Finally, the framing of the video as an abject former president whining about the elimination of his pension is ironic on two levels.
Citing anonymous sources, García Soto reported that Salinas voluntarily canceled his pension in 2001. To be clear, of this there appears to be no prior reporting on the topic; the only former president to publicly decline the pension was Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000).
With reports from El Financiero, Serpientes y Escaleras, Pro Publica, La Jornada and Expansión Política
