Never before has the link between the Mexican authorities and drug trafficking been so clearly evident.
Genaro García Luna, the face of the Mexican drug war, was convicted in the United States of all charges against him.
The verdict of the Court of the Eastern District of New York buried the myth of the former chief of the Federal Police, one of the closest and most influential men in the Cabinet of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and a reliable partner of the White House, and unmasked him as a close collaborator of the Sinaloa Cartel in exchange for million-dollar bribes.
The Latin American country is still processing the implications of a historic ruling: the fall of the highest-ranking Mexican official to have stepped foot in a US court for drug trafficking and organized crime.
Confidant of former President Calderón, architect of the hunt against drug lords, ambitious and feared official.
Much of what was known about the early years of the drug war in Mexico was gleaned from journalistic works, books, series, and movies.
This time, however, it was the protagonists of the conflict who told everything without intermediaries: the drug traffickers exposed how they paid millions of dollars in bribes to authorities at all levels, how they disguised themselves as policemen to capture their rivals and how they had agreements on the distribution of profits from drug trafficking.
The trial was a testimonial from the drug trafficker, the sequel to the trial against Joaquín
El Chapo
Guzmán in 2018, in the same court and before the same judge.
The chain of complicity was adorned with the eccentricities of the criminals, such as when the Colombian Harold Poveda
El Conejo
cried on the stage when he remembered his collection of exotic animals or when Tirso Martínez
El Futbolista
He explained that he earned that nickname because he owned four professional soccer clubs.
But it wasn't just criminals who pointed the finger at García Luna, so did former police officers punished for refusing to collaborate with the cartels, corrupt former officials and US agents who recounted in frustration how trust in their Mexican counterparts had eroded.
García Luna and Calderón, in a file image.
ALFREDO ESTRELLA (AFP)
The defense presented photographs of the defendant with figures of the caliber of former President Barack Obama or former presidential candidates such as Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
But it was not enough.
On the other side of the coin, the Prosecutor's Office was able to prove the accusations without delving into García Luna's passage through Cisen, the main civilian espionage agency in Mexico for more than a decade;
not to mention when he simulated the arrest of a gang of kidnappers so that it could be broadcast live on television, without presenting to the jury the real estate empire he had built in Miami since 2013, on suspicion of diversion of public funds.
The Mexican government wants that money back and filed a civil lawsuit in Florida in October 2021 for the embezzlement of more than 700 million dollars.
The former official who monopolizes all the reflectors in Mexico had his first important position in 2001, when he became director of the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI), created in the Government of Vicente Fox (2000-2006).
He was in the immediate circle surrounding the Cabinet in that Administration, but he was shy, had a stutter and hardly spoke in meetings with the president.
Behind the scenes, he received monthly bribes of more than a million dollars from the Sinaloa Cartel.
García Luna was a faithful ally: he gave them uniforms, vehicles, and official credentials so that they could carry weapons for the exclusive use of the authorities.
He leaked sensitive information to them so they wouldn't be arrested.
He collected the suitcases of money himself after sitting down to talk for hours with the capos.
At the end of 2006, with Calderón coming to power, García Luna was appointed -to the surprise of his own and strangers- Secretary of Public Security.
His assignment was to build the Federal Police, a corporation that in six years of management multiplied its power of force by five times, to close to 40,000 troops.
There was no Administration that collaborated more with the White House on security issues.
Decorated and praised by the United States, the defendant no longer went in person for bribes, but was in constant communication with the criminals.
He came to charge three million dollars for 15-minute meetings, according to the testimonies of Óscar Nava Valencia
El Lobo
and Jesús
El Rey
Zambada, two of the most feared drug traffickers at that time.
Federal agents helped drug traffickers offload drug packages from planes, helped them hide, and then pretended to search for them.
Criminal bosses had access to the highest echelons of politics.
Like García Luna, they had them on the payroll: judges, leaders, journalists, authorities at all levels.
Cartels grew like never before.
“It would have been impossible without the help of the government,” said Sergio Villarreal
El Grande
, a former lieutenant.
"The resolution is being used to attack me," said Calderón, who obtained a residence permit in Spain last October after learning of the ruling.
The Prosecutor's Office opted to build the case on the testimonies and with little physical evidence.
The issue still ignites debates on the other side of the border, 3,000 kilometers from where the fate of García Luna was decided.
The judge is expected to issue a sentence at the end of next June.
The former official faces a sentence of 20 years to life in prison.
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