When Club Tijuana won Mexico’s soccer championship on Sunday, a local Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) politician had more reason to celebrate than even the most dedicated fan.
Tijuana claimed successive 2-1 and 2-0 victories over ten-time champions Toluca on Thursday and Sunday to win its first national title, only 18 months after gaining promotion to Mexico’s top professional league, the Liga MX.
This was no mean feat for the club founded just five years ago by controversial gambling magnate and former Tijuana Mayor, Jorge Hank Rhon.
Hank, whose son Jorge Hank Inzunza runs the soccer franchise commonly known as “Xolos” (short for Xoloitzcuintles, Mexican hairless dogs) revealed last week that he will run for the Baja California governorship in next year’s state election. A win for Xolos, he had said, would boost his popularity in the polls.
“Xolos are obviously the team of Baja California, but also the team of the PRI,” Hank said, ahead of the final. “The rise of Xolos … brings votes for the party, and for me in the race for governor.”
The PRI will need any additional support it can muster, having not won the Baja California governorship since the election of National Action Party (PAN) candidate Ernesto Ruffo Appel in 1989. Ruffo was the first opposition-party governor of any state since the Mexican Revolution.
Hank, 56, faces competition from several other local PRI politicians in the state election set for August 4, 2013, but he is by far the best known candidate in the race and the success of Xolos will have further enhanced his profile.The owner of lucrative gambling syndicate Grupo Caliente and the father of 19 children, Hank has a colorful past – to put it mildly.
He was born into a political dynasty, the son of Carlos Hank Gonzalez, a self-made billionaire who served as mayor of Mexico City, and secretary of agriculture and then tourism under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. He was often referred to as the “kingmaker,” such was his influence in the party.
As a young man, Hank showed little interest in politics, using his father’s money to set up Tijuana’s Agua Caliente racetrack complex and an enormous private zoo that once housed some 20,000 animals – five times as many as the famous San Diego Zoo over the border.
Often seen clad in a red crocodile-skin vest and ostrich-skin boots, Hank’s love of exotic beasts gave rise to many colorful myths, such as his supposed penchant for bull’s penis and tiger’s testicles soaked in tequila.
In 1991 he was detained in San Diego for trying to smuggle a white Siberian tiger – a species in danger of extinction – and four years later he was stopped at Mexico City airport in possession of ivory and endangered animal hides, but subsequently acquitted.
Hank first gained notoriety in 1988, when two of his bodyguards were arrested and convicted of the murder of Hector Felix Miranda, co-founder of Zeta, a Tijuana daily that boldly probed the drug trade.
Hank did not face charges, but rumors of his involvement never abated and Zeta ran a full-page spread each week for many years, asking him the same question: “Why did your bodyguards kill Hector Felix?”
Hank first sought the Baja California governorship toward the end of his tenure as Tijuana Mayor from 2004 to 2007, but his bid was undermined by legal action from local PAN politicians and he ended up losing to PAN candidate Jose Osuna by almost 55,000 votes.
Hank most recently made headlines in June 2011, when he was charged with illegal possession of firearms after Mexican military personnel raided his luxury compound, discovering 88 mostly unlicensed weapons (49 of which were high-caliber rifles and handguns designated for the sole use of the Mexican military) and over 9,000 rounds of ammunition.
Hank’s accomplished lawyers had him released, citing an apparent “lack of evidence,” and a federal judge later dismissed the charges, but he was detained again the same day in connection with two murders allegedly committed with guns found at his mansion.
Once again, Hank’s lawyers secured his release within hours, arguing the raid was unconstitutional and had been carried out without the prerequisite legal paperwork.
The case did little to dispel rumors of Hank’s involvement with organized crime, but he will be hoping the glory of Xolos’ triumph will be enough to outweigh such negative publicity in voters’ minds.