Rodrigo Azaola
Impunity Landscapes VI, Open roads
2024
Two-channel HD video with sound. 6’34’’.
This video work examines what may be the largest financial fraud ever committed in Mexico. It traces an intricate path built on more than three years of research through financial and legal sources, court proceedings, and numerous freedom of information requests.
In late 2023, I finally received over 500 pages related to the case from Mexican authorities. Most, if not all, were heavily redacted. The opaqueness of the case was more than literal: it was visual.
I used these involuntary geometric motifs to create a landscape —a kind of animated grid that connects the semi-fictional, testosterone-fueled chats among traders in Mexico City and New York with financial architectures built on opacity, risk, and crime.
From 2006 to 2017, eight global systemically important banks (BBVA, Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan and Santander) manipulated billions of dollars in Mexican government bonds. The scale of the fraud was so massive that neither American nor Mexican courts have been able or willing to even approximate a figure.
In 2017, when an Oklahoma firefighters' pension fund, which held Mexican debt, sued the banks, the fraud became public. Further investigations confirmed that banks continuously and deliberately exploited Mexico´s sovereign debt prices and availability. Thousands of clients and institutions all over the world were systematically overcharged or underpaid. In sum, for more than ten years, Mexican debt was bought low and sold high.
Open Roads is a portrait of the casino capitalism behavior of unchecked financial institutions as they shatter the sovereignty of states and jeopardize the economic future of millions.
This work was exhibited at Casa del Lago, Mexico City, January 2025.
Installation views. Casa del Lago, Mexico City. Photographies by Maya Ortega.