The NXIVM effect in Mexico is severe. If you are in politics or a public figure and were once a NXIVM [AKA Executive Success Programs], your career can be upended in moments.
Javier Jileta
Javier Jileta resigned as general director of Liaison with Civil Society Organizations in the Ministry of Foreign Relations, after news broke that he was in NXIVM. While there is some dispute as to why he suddenly quit, the scandal of his being a NXIVM member was ferocious in the Mexican Media and the fact is – he resigned at the height of it.
Mario Delgado
The National President of the political party Morena, Mario Delgado, is embattled –though he has not resigned, when it became known that he was a member of NXIVM and the Society of Protectors apparently for about six months. Frank Report originally revealed his membership years ago.
Mario Delgado
The revelation that Delgado had what appears to be a brief fling with NXIVM in Mexico in 2016 [and possibly in Albany for a SOP weekend] and the heavy reporting of it in Mexican media comes during the election season and undoubtedly has been a distraction for a man overseeing scores of campaigns across the country.
I originally published this info. It is Mario Delgado’s payment history to the Society of Protectors in 2016
643 2481 m Mario Delgado Mexico D.F. manuel@manuel.com 2016-02-09 Albany – 2016-01-12 Mario Delgado – 2016-09-09 05:07:00 $50.00 – 5399
Mario Delgado – 2016-08-09 05:07:00 $50.00 – 5399
Mario Delgado – 2016-07-09 05:27:00 $50.00 – 5399
Mario Delgado – 2016-06-09 05:07:00 $50.00 – 5399
Mario Delgado – 2016-05-09 05:07:00 $50.00 – 5399
Mario Delgado – 2016-04-09 05:07:00 $50.00 – 5399
Mario Delgado – 2016-03-09 05:07:00 $50.00 – 5399
Clara Luz Flores
Clara Luz Flores enjoying a convivial conversation with a man she claims she never heard of — Keith Raniere
Then there was Clara Luz Flores. She is running for governor of Nuevo Leon and blundered badly when she denied she ever knew Keith Raniere or heard the name NXIVM.
She might have gotten away with it, had there not been a story in Frank Report showing her with her yellow coach’s sash and a video unleashed by her opponent of her with Keith Raniere in Albany.
Clara Luz Flores, a Nxivm coach, is running for governor in Nuevo Leon. I originally published this picture in 2017 when she was mayor of Escobedo.
She was indisputably in the lead in the gubernatorial race prior to the revelation that she was lying about her NXIVM connection. Had she told the truth and merely said she took courses and became a low-level coach then dropped out after the branding scandal erupted, it would have been a smarter move.
As of today, her opponent, Adrián de la Garza is polling at 27.7 percent. Clara Luz Flores at 23.6 percent, according to pollsters at the Heraldo Media Group.
The difference is comparatively slight and near the so-called margin of error, at 4.1 percentage points, and there are still 61 days before Election Day, but prior to the Raniere- Luz Flores video’s release, in a March survey, she had 30.5 percent, 6.9 percent more than now and was well ahead of her competition.
Arturo Avila Anaya
Yesterday in Excélsior it was reported that Arturo Ávila Anaya, a businessman in the military and aerospace industry, was a member of NXIVM. He took courses about 10 years ago, he said, but left when he saw the cult-like” nature of the organization.
According to LJA they asked the Morena candidate for mayor of Aguascalientes, what he saw in NXIVM and why he decided to leave the organization after only one year (a decade ago).
He gave them a summary of his experience: “Several of us were treated badly.”
He spoke of how they attracted many powerful people in Mexico. The entrepreneur pointed out that the relationship with the NXIVM representatives at the beginning was friendly and the courses were helpful.
“This then gave way to a series of requests that ranged from the bizarre to the irregular, such as having confidential information about the companies of each member.”
About the content of the courses, he points out that at first they seemed harmless, as well as the tools, but later comes the requests to get involved more and more.
“They wanted to get into my business.”
The biggest red flag for Avila was that Keith Raniere, the NXIVM leader who is now in prison, was seen by NXIVM staff and recruiters as a kind of “chosen one.”
Avila Anaya left the courses within a year of joining because NXIVM representatives, he says, wanted to influence even who he would marry.
The Excélsior article states that Ávila Anaya had warned that something was wrong with NXIVM and the cult of Keith Raniere, referring to a previous interview with León Krauze about the dangers of this organization.
This was confirmed by Krauze on Twitter.
Leon Krauze
@LeonKrauze
I remember well that conversation in which Arturo shared with me his memories (and disappointment) with #NXIVM.
Now he does it here, on
@Excelsior
Arturo Avila
@arturoavila_mx
–
I share the note published by @Excelsior newspaper. On the matter, no more, no less. I recognize the journalistic work of @LeonKrauze. twitter.com/Excelsior/stat…
***krau
Arturo Avila Anaya has been noted as being one of the most critical politicians against authoritarianism, that creeping disease that is infecting America and the world today, a world that is seemingly ignorant of historic freedom principles, the same ones that brought the always-fragile freedoms to Americans.
Authority always seeks to expand its authority if for nothing more than its convenience. It is up to the people to maintain a spirit of defiance to keep authority in check.
That anti-authority attitude may be what prompted Arturo to leave the very hierarchal-structured NXIVM. Raniere was a master at quenching the spirit of defiance – calling defiance a disintegration and demanding conformity of thought – and obedience to him – from his followers and promotions in the ranks was based on obedience to him.
This he did while promulgating an attitude that he supported independence of thinking.
Ayn Rand wrote for the spirit of defiance but reportedly did not allow it among her followers. She also spoke of being independent of government yet at the end of her life, she went on welfare.
In this he was very much like a woman he admired greatly, the author Ayn Rand, who while writing about the perfectly independent man, demanded from her followers conformity of thought and obedience.
This is in itself an interesting lesson in human nature, and while it is not brainwashing, the demand for conformity of thought – to believe as the leader believes – is not to be ignored when people seek to debate whether a group is a cult or not.
Arturo’s previous denunciation of NXIVM in an interview or conversation [it is perhaps unpublished] with one of Mexico’s leading journalists, Leon Krauze, ensures that Arturo will not likely experience the fallout from his previous attendance of NXIVM courses that the others have gotten.
***
There is an interesting dynamic at play here. It is in some respects not unlike the hunting and burning of witches. If a person is outed as being part of NXIVM, they can lose their job, be denied housing and in Mexico sometimes their children will be denied entry into schools/
There is no doubt a side of NXIVM that Keith Raniere and his top lieutenants concealed from the rank and file students.
Even coaches, [yellow sash] and perhaps some proctors [orange sash] did not know about it. The intentions of people like Jileta, Delgado, Luz Flores and Avila Anaya were not likely sinister. They were probably sold on trying the course by Emiliano Salinas or one of another Mexican elite, of which there were many in NXIVM.
The secret sorority, DOS was not revealed until June 2017, when Frank Report broke the news in its series beginning with Branded Slaves and Master Raniere.
Prior to that, intrepid students might have found items to be concerned about in the 2012, Albany Times Union’s Secrets of Nxivm.
Prior to that one might have looked at NXIVM askance by reading Vanity Fair’s The Heiresses and the Cult, published in 2010.
Or going further back, one could have perused Forbes Magazine’s cover story, dated October 2003, Cult of Personality.
Plenty of information was available that showed a possible dark side. It was primarily published in English. If anyone in Mexico had bothered to look it up online and had doubts, a cadre of respected Mexicans such as Salinas, the Boone brothers, the Garza sisters, Alex Betancourt, Alejandra Anaya Gonzales, Cecilia Salinas, Rosa Laura Junco and others were there to say that the American media was biased and the stories were lies.
It is hard to fault anyone for simply taking a course or even becoming a coach. Absent further evidence of wrongdoing – one should presume innocence – and good intentions for those who were once a part of NXIVM.
As for my own personal experience: I was a consultant for months with them in 2007-08. I did not take the courses. However, I spoke with Raniere almost daily, along with other NXIVM leaders, some of whom were convicted. I lived not in Mexico but in Albany, in either NXIVM or Clare Bronfman-owned housing.
I did not see the dark side of NXIVM then. I saw a group of sincere people and a highly amusing leader. I thought they made some stupid PR blunders which was what I was there to help them with. I came to know Raniere had several women he was in relationships with- but they seemed to be happy with the arrangement. as far as coercion, branding, or sex slavery or brainwashing, I did not see it.
The NXIVM community was peopled with good or apparently good people, led by an often hilarious man who did not seem to have it out for anybody and lived life completely on his own terms.
I do not see how anyone can expect someone from Mexico who had casual or no acquaintance with the leadership in Albany to do better than I did in ascertaining the evil of NXIVM.
In fact, the community was not evil. They presented a way of life for those who chose it. I think they misjudged Raniere’s intentions. But there intentions are what matter. Their intentions for the most part, as I understand it were good.
I think this is probably true of Jileta, Delgado, Luz Flores and Avila Anaya.
It may even be true of Emiliano Salinas, and the other Mexican leaders of NXIVM. For me, the jury is still out.
