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The US has been irresponsible in arresting Salvador Cienfuegos (Opinion)

2020-10-24T22:59:45.727Z


Arresting a former defense secretary goes far beyond irresponsibility in immigration matters, says Jorge G. Castañeda.


Editor's Note:

Jorge G. Castañeda is a contributor to CNN.

He was Secretary of Foreign Relations of Mexico.

He is currently a professor at New York University and his most recent book is "America Through Foreign Eyes", published by Oxford University Press.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author.

See more opinions at cnne.com/opinion

(CNN Spanish) -

Since 2006, many of us have believed that the war on drugs of the three successive governments of Mexico - Felipe Calderón, Enrique Peña Nieto and Andrés Manuel López Obrador - has been a failure.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths and disappearances, countless human rights violations, a terrifying deterioration of Mexico's image in the world, and rampant corruption have been of no use.

The volume of narcotics entering the United States from Mexico has not decreased, and their prices have risen.

But if any additional evidence is lacking to corroborate this assertion, the arrest in the US by the Donald Trump government of the two main men in charge of that war, accused of drug trafficking and money laundering, is sufficient.

Both characters, Calderón's head of civilian internal security, Genaro García Luna, and Peña Nieto's defense secretary, Salvador Cienfuegos, were leading the war against narco… accused of working for the narco.

García Luna and Cienfuegos have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Now, that does not mean that the arrest - particularly that of General Cienfuegos in Los Angeles a few days ago - was a wise decision by the government of President Donald Trump.

The latter has already acted irresponsibly by forcing the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to do the dirty work of the US on immigration matters in Mexico, forcibly preventing the entry or exit of tens of thousands of Central American migrants.

Their stay in virtual concentration camps on the northern Mexican border seriously threatens the stability of that region, already battered by drug trafficking and organized crime.

But arresting a former defense secretary goes far beyond irresponsibility on immigration matters.

  • MIRA: This is what the former attorney general of Mexico says about the evidence against Cienfuegos that the DEA obtained in Mexican territory

Mexico is one of the few democratic countries in the world without a civil defense minister (another is Guatemala).

They have all been soldiers and for reasons - in my opinion - well known.

One is the search for opacity: without civilian gaze, without supervision external to the military establishment, maintaining the "Chinese wall" between the army and society.

Another is tradition.

This distance allowed the operation of the tacit pact that existed between the armed forces and the civil power since 1946, when the first civilian since 1911 (actually since 1876) became president.

The military would not intervene in politics;

politicians would give them a wide margin of autonomy, personal business, corruption, and self-government.

Over the years, that pact was weakened, but it survived: for the bad of the country per se, but for the good of a certain stability.

Everything indicates that the case of Cienfuegos closes forever the time of said pact.

If, after delving into this reflection, and receiving the opinion of dozens of experts within the Washington government, it was concluded that it was more important to proceed against the highest military authority in Mexico to punish an alleged complicity with drug trafficking , no way.

But I doubt that things happened like this.

Rather, it seems that the so-called “establishment” of foreign policy did not participate in the decision to launch an investigation into Cienfuegos, or to request an arrest warrant against him, much less to arrest him.

On the contrary, appearances suggest that everything was dealt with in the narrow sphere of the DEA, some prosecutors from the Department of Justice, without any interference from the State Department, the National Security Council, the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security.

  • MORE: "Cienfuegos was detained unjustifiably and without presenting evidence," says national security analyst

Although Cienfuegos is not the first Mexican military detained on suspicion of ties to drug trafficking - the anti-drug czar Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo was arrested in 1997 - he is the first of that rank, and the first to be arrested in the United States. first of which the US harbors suspicions of complicity with drug trafficking, although none have been apprehended.

Although he was sentenced to almost 72 years - later reduced - Gutiérrez Rebollo pleaded not guilty to the charges and after his death in 2013, his family began a legal battle to clear his name.

In my view, the reason is obvious: the US foreign policy establishment always believed that the risks to Mexican stability outweighed the benefits of a short-lived victory against corruption.

And he always considered that the primary interest of the United States in Mexico consisted in such stability, not in the integrity or dishonesty of its military.

The establishment is right, and prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York court in Brooklyn are wrong.

Salvador Cienfuegos

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2020-10-24

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