Monday, April 6, 2009

Forbes: From Misinformation to Disinformation on Mexico

By Patrick Corcoran

I am not a regular reader of Forbes, but based on its 90-year history, chic advertisers, and heavyweight pedigree, I am convinced that it is no mere rag. If nothing else, Bono’s minority stake suggests a certain respectability. But whatever its good qualities, I implore you never to believe a word the magazine has to say about Mexico ever again.

Forbes’ coverage of Mexico has been in the news over the past several weeks because of the placement of drug kingpin Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán on the list of the world’s wealthiest people (at number 701, right alongside his countrymen Emilio Azcárraga and Alfredo Harp), but we’ll come to that later.

First a little background: Forbes’ first dove headlong into Mexico scaremongering just before the end of last year with a cover story titled, “The Next Disaster.” Over the course of more than 3,000 words, the authors described Mexico as a nation led by an ineffectual government, saddled with a declining economy and a catastrophic security problem.

At one point, the authors asked Arturo Sarukhán, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, if the state from which he was drawing a salary had failed. Predictably, he did not take to the question, nor, even more predictably, did he answer in the affirmative:

“Failed state? That is a very irresponsible remark. This is one pig that I can't put lipstick on. The challenge of corruption is being taken on. We are rooting out people who have been infiltrated. Look at the role of the Mexican private sector and civil society. Nowhere can you see signs of anything akin to a failed state.”

Sarukhán didn’t offer many details in denying the authors’ assertion, but a perfunctory familiarity with the most widely accepted failed-state criteria shows that this question is nonsense. Mexicans do not suffer forced migration, nor has there been any erosion of the Mexican government’s legitimate authority to make collective decisions, nor is there an inability to interact with the international community, nor has there been any sharp economic decline. For virtually every other measure of state failure, I’ve got a “nor” waiting for you.

Nonetheless, Forbes succeeded in planting the Mexico=Zimbabwe narrative into the American media. A Pentagon report naming Mexico as one of the two nations most likely to suffer governmental collapse and require American military intervention gave the idea an official veneer. Over the course of the next several months, analysts ranging from Marty Peretz to Newt Gingrich trumpeted the line that Mexico was a failed state headed for chaos. Like the original Forbes piece, most of the American commentators ignored the fact that President Felipe Calderón has enjoyed a 60 percent approval rating for most of his two-plus years in office, and that the government’s response to the financial crisis has been widely (though not universally) praised.

As baseless as the failed-state hypothesis was, in comparison Chapo Guzmán making the Forbes list was worthy of a Pulitzer.

The news about the Sinaloa kingpin's appearance in the rankings first hit the airwaves in Mexico on March 11. In response, Mexicans eagerly attacked the magazine’s laughable accounting. According to Forbes, because Chapo is responsible for a large chunk of the US$18 to $39 billion Mexican drug gangs laundered last year, it was deemed “enough for him to have pocketed $1 billion over his career and earn a spot on the billionaires list for the first time.”

Ignore, if you are able, the triumphal tone, and take a moment to consider the stupidity of this method. Or, if you prefer, imagine its baseball equivalent:

We don’t know how many hits Ryan Howard had last year, but we know that there were a lot of at-bats by Phillies players last year, and he played in a lot of games and he’s damn good, so we will conclude that Howard had 278 hits. Congrats Ryan, you’re a record-holder!

Bill James would maim the man spouting such silliness.

Commenting on Guzmán being included on the list, Forbes’ senior editor Luisa Kroll initially and whimsically told The Times of London: "He is not available for interviews…." Of course, sarcasm didn’t endear the magazine to Mexico. Writing in Excélsior, Leo Zuckermann expressed the prevailing sense of umbrage:

“The only thing that's clear to me is that the journalistic decision of Forbes doesn't help at all to resolve the terrible problem that we have in Mexico: how organized crime is eating away at the state. The editors at Forbes don't understand nor do they care. For them it was more amusing to set off a scandal so as to sell more. What irresponsibility! If that's the type of journalism they want to practice, then they should place a naked woman on the cover of the magazine just like the tabloids that have so much commercial success.”

Following the outcry, Kroll was more earnest in a later explanation, but no more convincing:

"There are people that make it their job to be tracking this money trail and we have a Spanish-speaking reporter who spent a lot of time in Mexico and has a lot of sources whether in the Drug Enforcement Agency and separate consultancies that helped him track and get a handle and find the right people to talk to, to track the drug money but because it is such a huge problem, there are definitely a lot of people that are tracking the money that's flowing through the drugs," Kroll told Reuters.

Parents of teenagers may recognize this tactic of argumentation, i.e. lots of words but without any verifiable information or periods, from the last time they found their offspring sneaking a cigarette in the backyard. Editor-in-chief Steve Forbes was then moved to support Kroll, pointing out that the magazine had previously found space on its list of the wealthy for underworld notables like Pablo Escobar and Meyer Lansky.

However, much as it seemed to justify the inclusion of Guzmán, the parallel situation with Lansky and Escobar is actually damning. How is it that the only two other criminals to have achieved world's-richest status were also figures of immense interest in the American media? (Both men appeared long after achieving notoriety in the States.) That's quite a coincidence. Are there no exceedingly wealthy criminals who do not enjoy great fame in the United States?

To take but one nation's example, the Italian criminal group known as the ‘Ndrangheta is estimated to earn revenues of about 3 percent of Italy's US$1.7 trillion GDP, or about US$51 billion annually. Even if that number is inflated by a factor of two, using the Forbes accounting methods, how is it possible that there are no 'Ndrangheta bosses among the Buffetts and Slims of the world?

There’s no satisfying answer to the previous question, but there is a response: the next time you open up a Forbes and find an article dealing with our southern neighbor, move on to the next piece as quickly as possible.

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Patrick Corcoran is a writer who resides in Torreón, Coahuila.  He blogs at Gancho.