"A glance around the fourteen tables at the 1989 dinner showed that pains were taken to arrange them so that no one appeared more important than the others. There was a smattering of celebrities -- Anthony Quinn, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Barbara Walters and Larry King. Bush's son Jeb and his Mexican wife Columba joined the soiree, too.
The Mexican president had spent a long day with President Bush signing trade pacts, the precursors of NAFTA. Salinas brought his so-called Dream Team: his commerce secretary, finance minister, and his personal Machiavelli, Jose CÃ rdoba. It would later be astounding to see, as the decade unfolded, how many of that administration's proud men and women fell shamefully from grace -- some exiled, some imprisoned and some assassinated" (ibid).
Also present at the festivity were loyal "Bushfellas", old friends of the family: present was then Commerce Secretary for W's cabinet, Robert Mosbacher Sr., General Colin Powell, and George Bush Senior's ever-present friend and consigliore, Secretary of State James Baker. Also on hand was Gary Jacobs, whose Texas bank was about to be bought by the son of Mexico's billionaire-politico Carlos Hank Gonzà lez. Gonzalez was also a guest. Tony Garza was there also. Then a young judge, he went on to become a Bush cabinet contender. George W. Bush appointed him Secretary of State (the Katherine Harris job), and the Bushes then ran him for state Railroad Commissioner, wherein he became the first Hispanic to win statewide office in Texas. George W. Bush then named him ambassador to Mexico (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3038635).
Graza went on to
marry Mara Asuncià n Aramburuzabala, who inherited the Modelo Brewery Beer fortune (Mexico's biggest brewery and maker of Corona Beer, enjoyed by millions of
Americans). Since then she has taken big stakes in Televisa, the world's biggest Spanish-language broadcaster, and
Telemex, the telecommunications giant. Forbes and Fortune reckoned her wealth at
about $1.5 billion, making her Mexico's richest woman.
But the scoop is that criminal defense lawyer Roy Barrera Jr. and car dealer Ernesto Ancira Jr. were present at the gala as well and the ties Barrera and Ancira had to drug cartels would, as El Andar reported, remain unnoticed for another decade.
The Barreras, father and son, were at one time among Texas's best narco-lawyers. Roy earned a large portion of his income from drug pushers' bosses, and he's done a suitable job of keeping them out of prison.
As to Ancira, his family in Mexico has been part of the power elite for years. The Ancira name is prominent in the city of Monterrey. The northern commercial center's most elegant long-standing hotel bears the name of Hotel Ancira.
As he developed business and political contacts with the Bushes and others in the US, Ernesto Ancira cultivated friendships with men connected to Mexican drug cartels. One of the first was financier Guillermo à vila. They palled around San Antonio, Texas, together until à vila and his partners were busted for drug-money laundering.
à vila was eventually found guilty of conspiracy to launder money for his drug-trafficking friends. Yet, incredibly, he served a little over a year in prison. His boss, Rafael Muà oz Talavera, was gunned down on a Juarez street in 1998 (ibid).
As the article from El Andar notes:
"Ernie and Roy Barrera campaigned for President Bush in 1992, and they celebrated what looked like an easy re-election with George 'W' at a 'Super Tuesday' rally for the Texas primary. Ancira also thought he was a shoo-in in his run for the state senate, especially when both Bushes came out to campaign for him. George W. optimistically greeted Ernie as 'Mr. Senator' well before the election took place" (ibid).
Carlos Salinas, the former president of Mexico, is self-exiled in Ireland for corruption and theft of Mexican funds. He led Mexico, as president, from 1988 to 1994. He is widely reviled for the economic collapse he set in motion at the end of his term.
One of his brothers, Enrique Salinas, was an engineer who never entered politics but became wealthy during his brother's term. He was found dead on December 6th of 2004 inside a car he had borrowed from his companion, Hilda Deneken. He had been beaten and was black-bagged. The cause of death was asphyxiation.
Raul Salinas, the drug-dealing brother of Carlos and Enrique, is serving life in a federal prison in the US.
The BBC reported in 1998:
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