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 Editorials | Opinions | May 2005 
Mexico Threatened By Wave Of Schadenfreude
 Kenneth Emmond - The Herald Mexico
Though it's not even half over, 2005 is turning out to be an excellent year for political and economic schadenfreude in Mexico.
The concept of schadenfreude (pronounced SHAHD-n-froy-duh) has such negative connotations that neither English nor Spanish even has a word for it; they had to borrow from the lexicon of the more down-to-earth Germans.
It's that twinge of satisfaction one gets when someone else suffers a setback or a tragedy. It blossoms when the victim is passionately disliked.
As with envy and jealousy, no one wants to admit to ever giving in to it, but rare indeed are those who have never experienced it.
Politicians and businessmen of all stripes have experienced reverses, disappointments, and threats to their personal liberty so far this year. There's more than enough potential schadenfreude to go around, regardless of one's political or ethical viewpoint.
The enemies of Roberto Madrazo, leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), may be feeling something less than sorrow with the formation of the party's Anybody-but-Madrazo movement as it moves closer to choosing its 2006 presidential candidate.
A powerful group inside the PRI, led by another presidential aspirant, State of Mexico governor Arturo Montiel, has organized a group called All United Against Madrazo (Tucom) in hopes of defeating the Madrazo juggernaut. Tucom expects to benefit from election losses in the State of Guerrero under Madrazo's watch and embarrassment over the Andrés Manuel López Obrador affair.
Still, their sentiments should be held in abeyance because Madrazo has won most of his battles during a lengthy political career, and this one is far from over.
The other side of the coin is that those battles have won Madrazo an impressive array of enemies. The list of Bronx cheerleaders might run to several pages.
Marta Sahagún, the wife of President Vicente Fox, has gained much popular support during her career as first lady. She has also accumulated a substantial number of enemies both within her National Action Party (PAN) and outside of it.
Those enemies may suffer the temptation to give in to schadenfreude when they read the book, "Cursed Tales from a Devastated Mexico," by Argentine journalist Olga Wornat. Wornat makes some serious allegations about Sahagún's opulent lifestyle and the sudden rise to wealth of her sons.
Now there's a move in Congress to curb what it deems to be her excessive staff of 38 and profligate use of government resources on a scale unheard of for first ladies.
Each week fresh allegations about Sahagún and her sons emerge in the weekly Proceso magazine, which appears to be enjoying an overt hand-clapping version of schadenfreude.
The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has been doing much better thani ts opponents since its front-running presidential hopeful, Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was freed from legal charges that could have stymied his candidacy.
But René Bejarano, López Obrador's former right-hand man in the city legislature, isn't doing so well. He languishes in jail, the premiere political victim of the videoscandals that rocked the party last year.
Despite the emergence of a Citizens' Committee for Truth and Liberty for René Bejarano, it's probable that he has his share of not-so-well-wishers who contemplate his fate with a dash of relish.
On the business front, the current frontrunner in the schadenfreude stakes has to be Ricardo Salinas Pliego. Those who envy the billionaire businessman's meteoric rise to wealth, apparently through shrewd market moves and creative accounting, may be enjoying a certain satisfaction over the legal fallout.
Salinas faces charges of fraud and insider trading in the United States and Mexico. Investigations continue into his companies' operations and his stock market activities, with possible outcomes of multi-million-dollar fines and maybe even prison.
Those who do not own shares in his companies, which include TV Azteca, Elektra, and Iusacell, which has an overdue debt payment on a $350 million dollar debt, may also be tempted to take perverse joy in the precipitous decline of share prices of those companies.
One must not forget the six former insiders in the national oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), who were fined a total of 2.8 billion pesos for their part in Pemexgate, the transfer of more than a billion pesos from Pemex to the failed 2000 presidential election campaign of PRI candidate Francisco Labastida.
The six, led by former general director Rogelio Montemayor, could inspire group schadenfreude from all Mexicans who seek sound governance of the company that manages their precious energy resource.
The others are Juan José Domene, Carlos Fermin Juaristi, Manuel Gómezperalta, Julio Pindter, and José Alberto Gheno.
Two other Pemexgate suspects, PRI Senator Ricardo Aldana and Pemex union leader Carlos Romero Deschamps, were not charged due to their immunity from prosecution as members of Congress. Theirs is a case of arrested schadenfreude.
Schadenfreude is a very negative emotion, but there are times when it's almost impossible to suppress the temptation to indulge in it.
It's worth noting that every one of the situations described in this sampling of schadenfreude opportunities is a direct result of increased transparency since 2000.
That these issues even came to light is powerful evidence that, despite gaps and lapses, accountability among Mexico's politicians and business executives is on the rise.
Kenneth Emmond is a freelance journalist and economist who has lived in Mexico since 1995. Kemmond00@yahoo.com |
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