AMLO Cannot Build a Transformative Political Project Through Mexico’s Military
Andrés Manuel López Obrador has wagered that he needs the support of the military in order to execute his progressive agenda. But the Mexican army is a conservative organization looking after its own interests, and it is no substitute for the mass base that AMLO must mobilize if he is to achieve true transformation.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador looks on during the ceremony of deployment of the new Mexican security force, the “National Guard,” at Campo Marte on June 30, 2019 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Manuel Velasquez / Getty)
On January 14, Mexico announced that it would not be pursuing charges against retired general and former secretary of defense Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda. The announcement capped a vertiginous three months in which Cienfuegos was arrested in Los Angeles in October of 2020 on charges of drug trafficking, only to be released and returned to Mexico a month later in order for the investigation to be continued there. In a pointed communiqué, the attorney general’s office announced that it had found nothing in the documentation provided by the US Justice Department to support the claim that Cienfuegos had ever been in contact with the “criminal organization investigated by American authorities” or had helped protect any of its members.
Faced with criticism from across the political spectrum, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) vigorously defended the decision at his daily press conference the following morning. “We maintain that impunity must end, as well as corruption, but also that there cannot be reprisals or revenge, and that crimes cannot be invented,” he said, before drawing attention to the various questions hanging over the case. “Why was [the arrest made] on the eve of the election? What was the message? From whom? What was the plan? To debilitate the Mexican government? To debilitate the armed forces of Mexico? To provoke a conflict with the current government?” Then, moving his chess pieces as best he could, the president made a surprise decision: the full file of evidence provided by the United States would be made public so that the people could decide for themselves.
Is That All There Is?
The released file was indeed revealing, but likely not in the way the DEA had intended. It consists of 751 pages of BlackBerry screenshots and message transcripts purportedly shared between Cienfuegos and Daniel Isaac Silva Gárate, a drug trafficker known by the nickname “H9,” and between Silva Gárate and his boss, Juan Francisco Patrón Sánchez, the then-leader, known as “H2,” of a cell of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel. The problem, as even the most fervent critics of the current government have been forced to admit, is that the supposed evidence is full of holes.
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