EVEN when Carlos Salinas de Gortari was in power, Mexicans found him strange. He was modern. As Alan Riding of the New York Times noted in the 1988 election campaign that made him president, "people out there think that Salinas is a foreigner".
Now he really is a foreigner to Mexicans. For the past year and a half this clean cut, somewhat grin go figure has led the restless life of a political outcast, sighted in a yacht in the Caribbean, in Cuba, the Bahamas, in New York or Canada. Never in Mexico.
At the age of four, Dr Salinas (now 48) boasted to a newspaper about shooting dead the family maid. He went on to earn a Harvard doctorate, become a minister and politically eclipse his own father to become president. Almost two years ago he ended his term in high standing, at least with the elite. Now he is in disgrace, and in Ireland.
But why Ireland? A close relationship with Albert Reynolds? This was developed when they were both in power, and during the former Taoiseach's official 1994 visit to Mexico.
But Mr Reynolds said this week he had not known about the Salinas family's presence in Ireland since April until about a week ago. He had inquired but had drawn a blank. (The Salinas party includes a new 39 year old wife, her young child, his three older sons and two bodyguards.)
Calls to Mr Tony Ryan, who was for many years Mexico's honorary consul in Ireland before the accomplished Mr Hermilo LopezBassols was appointed resident ambassador in 1992, also proved fruitless.
Although this scholarly technocrat, an advocate of free trade and pork barrel "solidarity schemes to maintain voter loyalty, is facing no criminal charges, he might be if he gobs home. His brother languishes in prison and Dr Salinas may fear a similar fate.
Once known, because of his enormous energy and appearance, as "the atomic ant", Dr Salinas has become a convenient whipping boy for an economic deluge inherited by his successor, Ernesto Zedillo.
The arrest in February 1995 of his older businessman brother, Raul, for suspected implication in the assassination of the ruling PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) president, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, greatly upset Carlos, who had put him in charge of a basic foods programme with a billion dollar turnover. As police worldwide investigated Raul's wealth, 50 "doubtful" accounts were uncovered in Switzerland, worth about $120 million.
Carlos went on a bizarre 17 hour hunger strike in protest at his brother's arrest. "Well, more like missing breakfast," said one observer. That was the last time he was seen publicly in Mexico.
The real reason for Dr Salinas's troubles may lie in his (typically modern) refusal to follow tradition by humbly retiring to the shadows after leaving power. The old guard in the PRI - and this would include Mr Romulo O Farrill, Ireland's honorary consul in Mexico and the owner of the yacht on which Dr Salinas was spotted in the Caribbean - had never thought highly of wholesale privatisation. A role as silent partner in several privatisation schemes, particularly that of Telemex, is said to have made Dr Salinas an extremely rich man.
Tension between the old and the new developed into an open battle, considered damaging to Mexico's image. The sacked Mexican ambassador to Ireland Mr Augustin Gutierrez Canet this week described as mere stupidity a perception of Dr Salinas's secret lunch in Dublin with Dr Jorge Castaneda, a politically well connected Mexican academic, as part of an anti Zedillo plot.
It is more likely that Dr Castaneda's role was as a peace messenger, since all this - and more - is a painful reminder that the traditional US idea of Mexico as so much "chaos on our doorstep" still lingers. This month, the word in financial circles outside the country is that President Zedillo is being pressured to resign, another rumour blamed on the wandering Salinas road show.
As president, Dr Salinas succeeded in his greatest political mission to sell Mexico to the United States and Canada as a First World country eligible to sign the North American Free Trade Agreement. The inauguration of Nafta, a hard nosed trade club with no social cohesion dimension like the EU's, coincided on January 1st, 1994, with a volcanic eruption by have nots in the southern state of Chiapas.
Voters had been alarmed by the prospective auctioning off of the national silver and the death of Emiliano Zapata's aspiration to give peasants (now about 25 million) rights to land, as enshrined in the 1917 constitution.
In December 1994, the Mexican peso began a free fall that lasted well into 1995. Savings of a dwindling middle class were wiped out, and the economy plunged into recession, with few signs of abatement to date. The US contributed to a £50 billion rescue package.
Salinas was blamed for it all. In such an atmosphere President Zedillo is considered to have had no alternative but to arrest Raul and break with Carlos.
Carlos Salinas comes from a political Mexico City family. His father, Raul, is a former education minister. After graduating in economics from the National University, Carlos gained two master's degrees and a Harvard doctorate in political economy and government in 1978. By 1982 he was minister for planning and budget, where he stayed until the presidential race in 1988. As usual the electoral victory was greeted by opposition accusations of fraud. He began under a cloud.
"In Mexico, where things are seldom free or fair, as Dr Castaneda has written, the new president set about creating a better electoral image with some successes. But his presidency was marked by a familiar tale of political assassinations and human rights abuses. About 300 opposition activists were killed during his reign. Already about 100 have been counted in the Zedillo presidency. Plus ca change?
Dr Salinas is extremely sensitive about the infamous childhood memory. He and his two brothers, Raul and Gustavo, were involved in killing their maid, Manuela, with their father's gun. "I killed her with one shot. I am a hero!" little Carlos told the El Universal newspaper. But in Mexico, where 300 families control vast fortunes, such an incident is quickly forgotten.