Raúl Salinas was the eldest son and one of five children of economist and government official Raúl Salinas Lozano and Margarita de Gortari de Salinas. Salinas's father served as President Adolfo López Mateos's minister of industry and commerce, but was passed over as the PRI's presidential candidate in favor of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz.[3]
On 18 December 1951, when he was five years old, he was playing with his younger brother Carlos, then three, and an eight-year-old friend when they found a loaded rifle, and one of them shot and killed the Salinas family's twelve-year-old maid, Manuela. It was never determined which of the three boys pulled the trigger, and the incident was declared an accident; it was given newspaper coverage in Excelsior and La Prensa at the time. A judge blamed the Salinas parents for leaving a loaded weapon accessible to their small children.[4][5]
Career
Raúl Salinas de Gortari held various positions of the National Company of Popular Subsistence (Conasupo). He served as General Manager of Sistema de Distribuidoras Conasupo, S.A. de C.V. (Diconsa) and Director of Budget Planning and Programming of Conasupo.[citation needed] He worked 10 years as a Deputy General Director of Grupo IUSA, a Mexican high engineering company founded in 1938, since August 2019 he is an Advisor to the Group Presidency.[6]
He is a member of the College of Civil Engineers of Mexico, where he was Director of Planning Studies at the XVI Directing Council and General Director of Profession Analysis. Since 1982 he is a permanent member of the Mexican Academy of Engineering.[8]
He was a victim of espionage by the Dirección Federal de Seguridad, a Mexican intelligence agency, where his personal life was compromised. The Mexican government acknowledged this in 2020.[16]
Legal issues
In February 1995, Raúl Salinas was arrested by order of former President Ernesto Zedillo, admitted in his own statements.[17] He was charged with the murder of his former brother-in-law, José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, who had been married to his sister Adriana.[18] In June 2005, Salinas had his conviction overturned by a judicial panel and he was released from prison.[19]
He had served more than 10 years of a 27.5-year sentence for the 1994 shooting of Ruiz Massieu, a political rival and leading official in Mexico's long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Alleged money laundering
In November 1995, Raúl Salinas's wife, Paulina Castañón, and his brother-in-law, Antonio Castañón, were arrested in Geneva, Switzerland after attempting to withdraw US$84 million from an account owned by Raúl under an alias. A report by the US General Accounting Office indicated that Raúl Salinas transferred over $90 million out of Mexico and into private bank accounts in London and Switzerland, through a complex set of transactions between 1992 and 1994, all with the help of Citibank and its affiliates.[20]
Other funds were returned to third parties, including Mexican billionaire Carlos Peralta Quintero, who had given the funds to Raúl Salinas to set up an investment company. The Salinas family would not receive back any of the frozen funds.[21] However, in July 2013 a court exonerated Salinas of "unjust enrichment" and ordered that 224 million pesos (approximately $18 million) and 41 properties be returned to him. The court said that it could not explain how Salinas accumulated such wealth, but said that "so long as it is not shown that the assets acquired by public employee Raul Salinas de Gortari are proceeds derived from an abuse of his position," that he cannot be convicted of "unjust enrichment."[22]
In popular culture
In the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico (2018), "the Brother" a character based on de Gortari is portrayed by actor Mauricio Isaac. Season 2 episode 6 depicts two young boys playing war and shooting a maid and episodes 7 and 8 depict the 1988 Mexican Presidential election.[23]
Stroke
In August 2022, Salinas had a stroke, but by October, he was reported on the road to recovery.[24]
References
^Ortiz Pinchetti, Francisco (March 6, 1995). "Juntos crecieron, juntos jugaron, juntos viajaron, juntos paladearon la gloria; hoy, Raúl y Carlos Salinas encaran el naufragio". Proceso (in Spanish) (957): 21.
^quoted in Jane Bussey, "Carlos Salinas de Gortari" in Encyclopedia of Mexico, vol. 2, p. 1330.
^Alexander Cockburn, "Beat the Devil: Harvard and Murder: The Case of Carlos Salinas", The Nation 29 May 1995, 747-745. Cockburn builds his article around accounts in the Mexican newspaper Excélsior, especially Alberto R. de Aguilar, "Tres Niñitos 'Fusilaron' a una Sirvienta", Excélsior 18 December 1951, 1.