López Obrador promises to open a judicial investigation into Cienfuegos in Mexico

Lopez Obrador, along with Defense and Navy Secretaries HENRY ROMERO / Reuters

Since the arrest on Thursday of former Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos, each intervention by the president marks a little more distance from the other recent US coup against a senior Mexican official, former Secretary of Security Genaro García Luna.

Both are accused of having worked for organized crime, inviting drug trafficking to corrode Mexican institutions from within.

However, while the fall of Felipe Calderón's strongman was for Andrés Manuel López Obrador a serious indication that "there was no independent government, but a narco-state," he now considers that "the secretary Cienfuegos is not the same as an institution." .

If there are already at least 18 dismissed officials in the current Secretary of Security, López Obrador has ruled out a "clean" within the Armed Forces.

If before the investigations of the United States had to be respected, now it is time to demand that the DEA be investigated and that it share information to open a judicial investigation in Mexico.

For López Obrador, the two cases are fundamentally different because the detention of Cienfuegos, beyond further eroding the six-year term and the figure of Enrique Peña Nieto, means a torpedo on the waterline of the Mexican Army, converted into what goes from its mandate in one of its fundamental pillars, expanding its power and influence as never before.

"I'm going to be on the lookout and I have told General Sandoval to try not to testify on this issue," he announced this Monday during his morning conference.

Since the day after the arrest of Cienfuegos, the president has endeavored to defend his Secretary of Defense, who despite not being among the recommendations of Cienfuegos to López Obrador to succeed him in the Sedena, worked under the orders of the general today detained and he was promoted and decorated.

The protection of the president now reaches the extreme of removing Sandoval from the spotlight so that it is exclusively he who responds about the scandal: “as supreme commander I am going to be the spokesperson, because it is a very delicate matter and I want to follow up and report so that it does not lend itself to an unfair strike against the institution ”.

López Obrador insisted on Monday that he was informed about two weeks ago of the existence of an open investigation into Cienfuegos through the Mexican ambassador to the United States, but not from the US authorities themselves.

In the same vein as his intervention this weekend during his tour of Chiapas, the president also charged against the DEA, accusing them of “linking to institutions in Mexico, obtaining information and resolving without informing the Government of Mexico what they are investigating ”.

Spurring one of his favorite mantras, national sovereignty, the president also promised to initiate a judicial investigation in Mexico through the Attorney General's Office, something that has not yet happened in relation to the García Luna case, which is progressing only in the courts of New York, the same ones that tried Chapo Guzmán.

On this occasion, however, it seems that if Mexican justice will come into play: "I am going to ask for all the information on this issue because it is an institution of institutions, it is a pillar of the Mexican State."

Gone are the long years in opposition to López Obrador and his fierce criticisms of the militarization of police work, a strategy initiated by Calderón and prolonged by Peña Nieto.

The influence of the Armed Forces in Mexican civil life has been increasing since Morena came to power, with an increasingly clear policy of reaching out to the military.

The delivery of public security to the Army has not only been protected by a law until the end of the six-year term, but one of the star measures of the six-year term has been to eliminate the federal police and create a new body of military spirit.

More than 100,000 members of the National Guard are already deployed throughout the country with the task of tackling organized crime.

The increase in military power during López Obrador's term has not been limited only to the sphere of security.

During the last two years, the military have taken on tasks as diverse as the distribution of medicines, the surveillance of pipelines and fuels of Pemex, the distribution of textbooks, the fight against sargassum or the transfer of money from social programs.

The largest concession so far has been the confirmation last March that the construction and operation of the new Mexico City airport would fall into military hands.

The Army will not only build the terminal, but will operate civil and commercial operations through a company whose management will be occupied by the military.

The Army will also help to build two sections of the Mayan Train, the flagship public work of the six-year term next to the airport.

Criticisms from civil society organizations that have been following the evolution of events in the Army with concern have intensified after the arrest of Cienfuegos. The Security without War Platform, which brings together academics and human rights activists, demanded a thorough investigation within the Armed Forces.