Breathe
By Adela Navarro
Jorge Hank Rhon, suspected in the intellectual participation of several murders, arrested in 2011 for stockpiling weapons, trafficking of birds and exotic animal fur items, entered into a political negotiation with Morena in Baja California and two of his children were registered in the party founded by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in his aspirations to seek a candidacy for the Senate and a federal congressional seat.
A few days ago, when the registrations for federal and concurrent state candidacies took place, it was reported that two of the sons of Jorge Hank, the landlord, complied with the requirement of Morena's political training courses and registered their aspirations: Juan Carlos Hank -today a councilman for the Encuentro Solidario Party in Tijuana- for the Senate of the Republic; while César Hank -currently the leader of the PES in Baja California- did so for a federal deputy. They were not the only hankistas to register in the official party. Four other pawns of Hank's political game also did so, among them the former state leader of the PRI in State 29.
The national leadership of Morena has hidden the registrations, it is known of those who aspire to achieve a pre-candidacy when the protagonists make it public, but when asking the party leaders for the complete list of registrations, the answer is that these are kept secret, that they are in the national leadership and that they will be released around January 20. No more.
The news of the Hank's registration in Morena was confirmed through one of the hankistas also registered to participate in the official internal election. He explained that it does not necessarily mean that they have left the PES (party that Jorge Hank acquired in 2021), and that not being in the alliance registered before the INE, Morena, PT, PVEM, their registration and aspirations are based on a "de facto alliance" that they have agreed with the party in Baja California.
Jorge Hank Rhon's agreement with Morena is tantamount to his fourth transformation. Born to Professor Carlos Hank Gonzalez, a rural teacher who became a member of the cabinet, once mentioned as presidential candidate when his foreign descent was a constitutional inconvenience, and enriched by the negotiations of political power and the business sector, the junior lived his first years as such. Until 1985, when after controversies, excesses and squandering, his father "obtained" the federal concession of the Agua Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana, on national lands, and sent him to live in the northern border of the country to take him away from his center of political and business operations in the State of Mexico, where he had Atlacomulco as his epicenter.
Hank's first transformation was that stage as an all-powerful junior with a father who was involved in high Mexican politics, part of the then hegemonic Institutional Revolutionary Party.
In Tijuana, Jorge Hank's junior behavior did not change. He found fertile ground for gambling, established new networks of power, and gathered a group of henchmen to continue with a life of debauchery whose legends have been confirmed by himself by publicly showing his excesses, such as tequila infused with donkey penis, or the vest of the same member he usually wears, just to mention some of his many extravagances.
In 1988, three years after he had settled in Tijuana by his father's order, his chief bodyguard, Antonio Vera, and one of his guards, Victoriano Huerta, ambushed and murdered journalist Héctor "el Gato" Félix Miranda, founder of the weekly ZETA along with J.Jesús Blancornelas. The weapons they used to kill the editor and the vehicles in which they did it were found in the Agua Caliente racetrack. However, Jorge Hank, the main suspected mastermind, was not properly investigated. In 2015, when Felix's killers were released after serving the sentence imposed on them for the murder, they returned to their former posts. Vera Palestina, to this day, is Hank's head of security.
Leaving aside the excesses of the following years, such as being arrested at Mexico City's international airport in 1995 for trafficking exotic animal items, Jorge Hank's second transformation was when he entered politics. "Soldier of the PRI" like his father in the last century, the tricolor was his choice and his power. In 2004 he won the mayoralty of Tijuana leading the city to one of its worst times in terms of insecurity and generalized violence. The white commandos emerged and the drug cartels, the Arellano and Sinaloa, began a terrible narco-war.
In 2007, with the PRI ahead of him, he tried for the first time to become governor of Baja California. He did not succeed. He was defeated by PAN candidate José Guadalupe Osuna Millán. In 2009, the U.S. government withdrew his tourist visa to enter that country, due to multiple suspicions of his participation in criminal activities, links with cartels and being the protagonist of the so-called Operation Tiger. The ban persists to date.
During the six-year term of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, with the war on drugs and the military on the streets pursuing and fighting crime, in 2011 Jorge Hank was arrested. Based on the testimony of a protected witness, 89 weapons, thousands of bullets and cartridges were found on him. Due to a due process error, Hank was released, while the investigations resulted in the fact that some of the weapons found in the land next to his residence had been used to murder people in Baja California. The state governments, active at that time and those that have followed, did not continue the investigations and the cases remain in impunity.
In 2021, Jorge Hank lived his third transformation when he stopped being a "soldier of the PRI", left that political institute and acquired the Encuentro Solidario Party in Baja California, after failing to win the candidacy of the Va por México alliance, PRI, PAN and PRD. In his post PRI period, he registered again to run for the governorship of the state, and once again, this time for Morena, he was defeated.
However, he managed to channel the political careers of his sons. One, César, an advocate of marijuana use and other eccentricities, he made him state leader of the PES. Another, Juan Carlos, became a member of the Tijuana City Council.
Marina Avila Olmeda, the Morenista who won the governorship from Hank, quickly stopped considering him a political adversary. Jorge Hank has become an assiduous guest of the state governor at her important events and even in private meetings. He sat him in the front row at her inauguration, and a few days ago, when she presented her second government report, he was one of her special guests at the ceremony, which was also attended by the President of the Republic, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
And so Jorge Hank's fourth transformation takes place, in a de facto alliance with Morena to try to take the power that he did not achieve with the PRI, and to position his children as legislators allied to the official party.
The Hank family is a member of that group that, with contempt and aberration, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called, when he was a candidate, "the mafia of power". Now he already has them in the house of advisors and looking for candidacies hand in hand. At the end of the day, in Mexico it is once again clear that in the search for power there are no ideological differences or separation of politics and crime, when what prevails is to gain positions to serve each other and what matters least is the much defrauded people.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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