Do you deny that the government and high PEMEX officials are just thugs and looters?
Not at all, but it wasn't always so. In fact, PEMEX had an almost heroic beginning. When Cardenas gave Shell and Standard Oil the boot in 1938, he was left with no technical expertise to run the refineries. Cardenas organized a group of young Mexican chemists and engineers to reinvent the refining process, an undertaking that cost many of them their lives when one of their early attempts lead to a huge explosion. It was also the beginning of the Mexican Polytechnic Institute. Lazaro Cardenas was the only modern Mexican president who didn't enrich himself in office, but (IMHO) it's been downhill ever since.