After deaths, lawmakers rethink casino legalization in Mexico

Will Weissert

Monday, May 2, 2005 | 9:38 a.m.

MEXICO CITY -- The gruesome lunchtime slaying of three would-be casino developers outside a popular northern Mexican restaurant has delayed a congressional vote to amend a gambling ban and sparked calls for stricter controls on the few places Mexicans are allowed to place bets.

The proposal to legalize casinos, on and off lawmakers' agenda for a decade, is a political hot potato in a country riddled with organized crime but desperately in need of jobs.

The latest measure had been working its way through a congressional committee but stalled in the wake of the drug trafficking-style homicides April 14 in Monterrey.

There, three Mexican developers looking to build gaming establishments met with two investors from Las Vegas to compare notes before heading to lunch at Los Arcos, a seafood eatery.

The Americans then walked to a nearby betting parlor to have a look around. As the Mexicans waited in the Los Arcos parking lot, two assailants who were watching from a nearby hamburger joint moved in and opened fire, said Jorge Cantu, a spokesman for the attorney general's office of Nuevo Leon state, which includes Monterrey.

Lawmakers could still consider the measure during a special House session that may be convened in the coming weeks.

But for the moment, "There was the need to pause for a few minutes and reflect on what happened," said casino supporter Consuelo Muro, a lawmaker from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which controls the largest number of seats in the House.

"We are waiting for a more appropriate moment to proceed."

Julian Angulo, a legislator from President Vicente Fox's National Action Party who opposes casinos, put it more bluntly: "It stopped everything. What happened strengthened the arguments that money laundering and drug trafficking and casinos are related."

Gambling has been illegal in Mexico since 1938, when President Lazaro Cardenas directed Congress to draft a ban amid an outcry that largely U.S.-owned casinos were dens of corruption used to launder drug profits and promote prostitution.

Authorities shuttered casinos that had boomed in border locales, including Tijuana, after Prohibition sent U.S. tourists scurrying south.

Today, gambling is only permitted at horse and dog tracks, as well as offsite betting parlors, though a reform approved by the legislature in September made it easier for businesses to obtain gaming licenses.

William Eadington, director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno, said the Monterrey slayings were "obviously a dampening factor" to the casino movement.

"Even if you had a very well-thought-out bill, the sentiment of the media, the politics, what the interest groups and the church are doing, can have a major impact," Eadington said.

Following the Monterrey slayings, Nuevo Leon Gov. Natividad Gonzalez called on federal officials to suspend the licenses of many gambling establishments operating in his state.

Two of the Los Arcos victims allegedly had links to drugs and the third, Jose Cruz Fuentes, was a former federal highway patrol officer. Police raiding his home found a machine gun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Angulo said the gambling ban needs to be amended, but not to the extent that it allows casinos.

Fox has joined many in Congress in supporting casinos, however. Studies prepared for lawmakers by tourism promoters suggest casinos in beach resorts and Mexico City and along the Mexico-U.S. border would generate more than $1 billion in revenue, and federal, state and local governments would stand to make nearly that much in taxes and licensing fees.