Mexico: Oil Union Blues

Bilking workers of millions

Murder, kidnaping, hired guns, fraud, embezzlement, rake-offs, power struggles—sounds like gangland crime, Chicago-style. But according to accounts of a current union scandal, those are also the standard ingredients of the oil business, Mexican-style. The sordid revelations are the latest, and most titillating, evidence of the widespread corruption that flourished under President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado's predecessor, José López Portillo. Last week Senator Ramón Martínez Martín, a former leader of the teachers' union, called for a complete investigation of the allegations of wrongdoing. If proved, he said,...