Seventeen black, bulletproof Chevrolet Suburbans stretched in a neat, polished row outside the onetime official residence of Mexico’s presidents. Nearby stood a 2007 Lamborghini Murcielago and a 2016 red Ford Shelby pickup truck with a video camera embedded in the front grill and a hand-held radio next to the driver’s seat.
All were put up for auction on Sunday by the Institute to Return the Stolen to the People, the new name for a branch of the Mexican Ministry of Finance that is in charge of selling property seized from purported drug dealers and tax cheats as well as government vehicles and other property that is no longer in use.
Holding the auction outside Los Pinos, a mansion nestled on an edge of the capital’s Chapultepec Park, carried extra significance since Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador turned the once heavily guarded compound into an open cultural center when he took office on Dec. 1 last year.
Photo: EFE
Institute Director Ricardo Rodriguez Vargas said the goal on Sunday was to raise 30 million pesos (US$1.5 million) from the sale of 82 vehicles.
The money is to be sent to two poor communities in the southern state of Oaxaca to improve roads, schools and other infrastructure.
Some of the vehicles for sale had been collecting dust in government warehouses for 10 years.
It was the most heavily attended auction in the history of the ministry, Rodriguez said, with 800 people registering to bid.
For every person sitting in the auction area under the shade of a white tarp there were at least another five outside ogling the vehicles, taking selfies or watching the bidding.
Holding the auction on the grounds of the former presidential mansion was symbolic, said Ricardo Alvarado, a researcher with Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, a watchdog group.
“Using a space that’s characteristic of the luxury of past administrations is without a doubt a symbol of what this government intends to do with austerity,” he said.
The Suburbans, many of which were at least a decade old, drew little interest from bidders, but the competition was fierce for three classic Volkswagen sedans as well as for pristine Audi and BMW hatchbacks with leather bucket seats.
The top seller was the cherry red Shelby pickup, which went for 1.9 million pesos.
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