Jeffrey Max Jones

Jeffrey Max Jones was a Mexican politician. When he was asked to run for office, his reply was, “You’re crazy. I’m white and I’m a Mormon.”[1] Jones was born on April 25, 1958, and grew up in Colonia Dublán, Nuevo Casas Grandes, in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico. Jones is fluent in both English and Spanish.

He served in the Chamber of Deputies from 1997 to 2000, representing Chihuahua's First District. He was then elected as a member of the national Senado de la Republica Senate in the year 2000, representing the State of Chihuahua. He served as president of the Border Affairs committee and member of the Agriculture and Agrarian Reform committees. His six-year term expired in 2006 since there is no immediate re-election for senators in Mexico.

Jones served from 2006 to 2009 as Undersecretary of Agribusiness Development with the SAGARPA (Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganaderia, Desarollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación) and focused on three areas: prospective planning, market development, and finance.

In a feature article on Jones, the Deseret News stated:

The Mexico of today is not the Mexico of Jones's youth. As a result of drug violence, Cuidad Juarez, Chihuahua's biggest city, has been named one of the most dangerous in the world. Jones came face-to-face with the country's corruption in 1998 when two men he believed to be police officers attempted to kidnap him and his brother, ostensibly to drive them from ATM to ATM collecting money. Jones, feeling that it would be better for his family to know he was dead than live through "drawn out kidnapping scenarios in which severed body parts of the victim are sent to family members," fought back and was shot three times.

”I’ve always felt that the position of a Mexican statesman should always be to do anything that needs to be done to retain the country's human capital," he said. "The violence and the economic hardship are driving people away.”[2]

Jones believes there is “a great deal of creativity in Mexico,” but adds that it is difficult to get financed Jones divides his time between Provo, Utah, and Mexico. He lives, by coincidence, in the birth home of George W. Romney, former Governor of Michigan. He is the great-great-great grandson of Daniel Webster Jones, an influential early settler in Utah and the Arizona Territory.

He earned a degree in International Relations from Brigham Young University in 1982. He was a member of the Deseret News Editorial Advisory Board.