The challenge of Mexico

General Salvador Cienfuegos with Enrique Peña Nieto, in 2016. Getty Images

The arrest of former Mexican Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos in Los Angeles is not only the hardest blow that the United States authorities have dealt against an official from the neighboring country;

the arrest of the general, who is charged with five drug trafficking charges, once again questions the extent to which Mexican institutions are permeated by organized crime.

In addition, the fact that there was no open investigation in Mexico against Cienfuegos and that the United States did not notify its southern counterparts of the same shows how little confidence there is in purging responsibilities by the Mexican authorities.

With the arrest of the general at the request of the DEA, the all-powerful US anti-narcotics agency, the Mexican Armed Forces suffer the greatest blow in their history.

Cienfuegos, a military man with enormous prestige among the troops, was in charge of leading the fight against drug trafficking at the head of the Armed Forces during the entire six-year term of Enrique Peña Nieto, prior to the current government.

He was, in a way, in charge of continuing with the evidently failed strategy undertaken by President Felipe Calderón in 2006, whose Secretary of Security, Genaro García Luna, was also arrested in the United States last December.

Both cases are settled in the same New York court where Joaquín

Guzmán, the world's largest drug trafficker,

was sentenced

.

The arrests of García Luna and Cienfuegos highlight the alarming cracks that exist in Mexico's security institutions, through which drug trafficking has permeated in recent governments.

García Luna is accused of collaborating with the Sinaloa Cartel.

The arrest of Cienfuegos is also a blow to the waterline of one of the most controversial bets of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The current president, who in the campaign promised that he would return the military to barracks, has given the Armed Forces almost all-encompassing power after taking office.

López Obrador has assured that he will purge responsibilities of any position that is affected by the process that affects Cienfuegos.

At the time, he has closed ranks with his successor.

The Mexican president should, on the contrary, open a debate on the role of the Army in the public life of Mexico.

The coup by the US justice shows the fragility of the Mexican State.

That two men in charge of security at the highest level have been detained in another country for links to organized crime cannot be cause for full celebration until the Mexican authorities are able to take on a job that, until now, has only been done charge USA