Mexico has a surfeit of “personalities,” who, while under constant media scrutiny, seem to be judged by a different set of standards than other Mexican figures.
Edited by journalist Jorge Zepeda Patterson, who recently took over as editor of Mexico City daily El Universal, “Los intocables” (“The Untouchables”) made its debut at the recent Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL). The polemic tome was among the fair’s top sellers – perhaps not so surprising given that the ten “untouchables” include personalities such as former First Lady Martha Sahagun (and her children), boxer Julio Cesar Chavez, television gossip monger Paty Chapoy, casino czar and political dinosaur Jorge Hank Rhon, Human Rights chief Jose Luis Soberanes, discount medicine entrepreneur Victor Gonzalez Torres (Dr. Simi) and Guadalajara’s own madcap archbishop, Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez.
Presenting the book at the FIL, Zepeda said the collection is not meant to be “a series of essays on impunity,” but rather “flesh and blood biographies” that detail how these people have managed to position themselves above the law and “muddy the justice system.”
Zepeda said he did not want the book to “denigrate or crucify” its targets but to outline the facts, in journalistic fashion, that enabled them to attain their exalted positions in society.
The book, however, is hard hitting, as one would expect under the stewardship of Zepeda, who made his name as editor of Siglo 21, the ground-breaking Guadalajara daily whose investigative reporting in the 1990s set new standards in regional journalism.
Take the chapter by Sanjuana Martinez on Sandoval Iñiguez, a man whose partiality for extravagant living has earned him the moniker “the Cardinal of the Rich.” Talking at the FIL, Martinez referred to the archbishop as a cleric “who likes to practice the seven capital sins.”
By enjoying the privileges his close association to conservative politicians brings, Sandoval has “damaged his own church,” Zepeda concluded.
The book also accuses Sandoval of protecting pedophile priests by hiding them away in the Casa Alberione, a religious retreat in Jalisco operated by the Catholic Church. The charge has been strenuously denied by the Guadalajara archbishopric, which this week reiterated that in 20 years the retreat has only ever had two pedophile priests pass through its doors.
Students of modern Mexico will find the other chapters in the book equally as riveting. The profiles of Chavez and Chapoy show how these two larger-than-life personalities manage to avoid too much legal scrutiny thanks to their fame, popularity and constant public exposure.
Award-winning journalist Lydia Cacho, who has risked her life exposing politicians’ involvement in the sexual abuse of minors, penned the chapter on Mexican ombudsman Jose Luis Soberanes, an enigmatic man who many left-wingers accuse of being in the pocket of the ruling National Action Party (PAN). Said Cacho at the FIL: “I have interviewed corrupt politicians, mafiosos and people from the criminal underworld but I’ve never found so many people who wanted so much to talk about a character but at the same were so frightened of doing so.”
“Los intocables” closes a trilogy by Zepeda that began with “Los suspirantes,” focussing on the 2006 presidential candidates, which was followed up by “Los amos de Mexico,” profiling the country’s most influential business leaders and their relationship with power and impunity.
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