Salvador Cienfuegos: Why does it matter if the Mexican military is prosecuted in the United States?

By Marina E. Franco and Diana Baptista

MEXICO CITY.- The highest ranking military man in a country, who was in charge of the armed forces and all its military defense operations, is now arrested and accused of corruption and drug trafficking ... by the justice of another country.

Mexico faces this situation after the arrest for the first time in the history of a Secretary of Defense, Salvador Cienfuegos, arrested last Thursday in California just months after another high-level Mexican official who was in charge of combating drug traffickers and He is now accused of having collaborated with the Sinaloa Cartel.

Cienfuegos, who was in that position during the mandate of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) but who also had prominent positions in the Army during the previous administration of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), is charged in the United States for participating in activities drug trafficking, promoting drug trafficking groups and even

in exchange for protecting criminals. 

During a hearing on Tuesday, his defense tried to ask for a bond of $ 750.00, but the judge denied it, so he will continue his process in preventive prison with a view to being transferred to New York.

There the accusation was raised before the same court where Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán was tried.

If found guilty at trial,

[A general "godfather" of a cartel: the accusations against Salvador Cienfuegos]

The current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, nicknamed AMLO, emphasized that the cases against Cienfuegos and García Luna are “an unequivocal example” of how “the public function has been degraded” in recent years.

However, he himself is betting a good part of the functions of his Government in the Armed Forces, giving continuity to the security policies of both Calderón and Peña Nieto, which were questioned by, among other things, the resulting record homicide rates. .

General Salvador Cienfuegos (second from left to right) during the celebration of Independence in September 2018, along with (from left to right): the current senator Martí Batres;

the then president Enrique Peña Nieto;

former first lady Angélica Rivera, and Vidal Soberón, former head of the Navy.

It is worrying that AMLO is turning to the military to protect security when it is clear that even

to the point that the apparatus itself deserves to be reviewed, some specialists believe.

In addition, the former Secretary of Defense was not even being investigated in Mexico, according to AMLO:

, as happened with the former minister Genaro García Luna,

The current Mexican government even seemed taken by surprise by the arrest of Cienfuegos, a possible sign that the United States mistrusts the political class after prosecuting several recent corruption cases there.

“The fact that there was not even an open research portfolio in Mexico is incredible.

, how politicized they are, and the

that exist in Mexico, ”says Catalina Pérez Correa, a Mexican political scientist specializing in security.

[The Mexican policeman who turned paradise into 'hell': "I wouldn't be so afraid of the devil himself"]

Mexico in the dark while the DEA watched it on television

The López Obrador government suggested on Monday that the US Attorney's Office would be asked for access to the evidence to also try to build a case in Mexico if there were "complicity operations."

"The surprise of these accusations is not so much what is accused," says Pérez Correa, referring to the suspicions for decades that there is collusion between the Armed Forces and organized crime, "the surprise is that they do arise with a criminal prosecution ”.

In fact, the indictment against Cienfuegos indicates that the

and even so they continued to work alongside him as part of the Mérida Initiative's bilateral counter-narcotics cooperation (the general even received an award from the Department Defense in 2018).

2017 file photo of Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda with then-US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

In 2017, according to the accusations, Cienfuegos was already collaborating with a cartel.

 At some point, according to the documents against Cienfuegos, he allegedly tipped off the H-2 cartel that someone was an informant, and that person was killed, despite the fact that he turned out not to have collaborated with the anti-narcotics authorities.

[The H-2 Cartel: A Group That Has Committed "Creepy Violence"]

The Cienfuegos case is the result of the work of agents of the Drug Control Administration (DEA, in English) who were in search of 'The Godfather', a figure that was mentioned in intercepted conversations, and of the operations of a public prosecutor's office of New York that has been unraveling with tons of evidence the extensive networks of several Mexicans that it has prosecuted.

In an intercepted conversation, the drug traffickers “said: 'Look, The Godfather is on television.'

So the DEA scoured the channels and who was on TV?

General Cienfuegos, ”Mike Vigil, former director of international operations for the DEA, told Noticias Telemundo.

They accuse 'El Chapo' Guzmán of handing over Salvador Cienfuegos to the DEA and say there are more involved

Oct. 20, 202001: 50

Everything happened, moreover, without the Mexican government knowing: it

has acknowledged that it was not well aware of the general's indictment in New York, which had been open since the end of 2019, nor of the plans to arrest him, an apparent sign of distrust on the part of American researchers for an issue that in theory is intended to combat with bilateral collaboration.

López Obrador criticized in recent days that the DEA acts with "interference" and that "they extract information" without disclosing it to the Mexican authorities.

“I don't think anyone in the US security apparatus is comfortable with the Mexican penal system, be it federal or state.

And with cases like this, how to blame us? ”Said former DEA agent Michael Braun, now a private consultant.

The abyss: from suspicions to criminal charges

In Mexico, the justice system has been languishing for years due to lack of resources and training, which has aggravated impunity to 98%: that is,

, and 9 of each 10 crimes are not even registered with prosecutors due to mistrust in the authorities, according to Transparency International studies and official statistics.

[The secrets of 33 former Mexican hit men, who say that dying 'is a relief']

So in recent years, most of the investigations against Mexicans who have committed embezzlement, money laundering, other corrupt acts or drug trafficking from positions of political power have been carried out in the United States.

It is in that country where former governors such as Tamaulipas Tomás Yarrington, suspected of laundering money from organized crime, have been or are being prosecuted;

or prosecutors like Edgar Veytia, who worked in Nayarit and was convicted of collaborating with the H-2 cell of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, the same one with which Cienfuegos allegedly worked.

Processes are also open in New York against the former Minister of Public Security Genaro García Luna and two of his collaborators in the Mexican police, Ramón Pequeno and Luis Cárdenas Palomino, who supposedly protected the Sinaloa Cartel.

Not to mention the trials of Mexican drug traffickers such as Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán (who in Mexico managed to escape twice from prison and is now in a super-maximum security cell in Colorado), Édgar 'La Barbie' Valdez or Vicente Zambada Niebla, alias 'Vicentillo'.

This

.

The difference is that the little development of the prosecutors and the police to investigate means that they remain in accusations, not in criminal charges or sentences.

[The secrets of the Sinaloa Cartel bribes, according to his former lieutenant Vicente Zambada]

"It is the problem of having weak law enforcement institutions: the only thing left to us sometimes is suspicion," says analyst Lilian Chapa Koloffon, an expert on public security issues.

"In Mexico we live like this with a very great uncertainty about who is guilty and who is innocent," he adds.

[Enrique Peña Nieto in the sights of Mexican justice for alleged acts of corruption]

Chapa Koloffon regrets that "many things are escaping" the prosecutors due to lack of training and little development of the criminal investigation, such that

" points out.

Chapa Koloffon believes that "all this should set off red lights" on the need to demand changes to the penal system, without which "it will be difficult to speak of a real transformation" like the one that López Obrador promises with the 4T or fourth transformation of the country.

López Obrador asks to respect the judicial process against General Cienfuegos and the former Attorney General García Luna in the United States.

Oct. 18, 202001: 13

 García Luna had already been reported in Mexico without this resulting in a criminal case.

When Cienfuegos led the Armed Forces, the military under his command were involved in serious cases of massacres and forced disappearance, in addition to the fact that for a time his office was investigated because the federal auditing body found contracts and overpriced purchases.

But that did not result in formal charges.

[Who is Salvador Cienfuegos?

The history of military abuses surrounding the general]

Thus, some specialists reproach that

“It is important to point out that [in the United States] they are not going to investigate him due to the multiple human rights violations that were documented here during [Peña Nieto's] six-year term,” Pérez Correa says of Cienfuegos.

"So," he adds, "above all, it seems that massive and serious violations are not taken as relevant and there is absolute impunity" when they occur in Mexican territory.