AMLO wonders aloud where fentanyl comes from. The DOJ responds: Sinaloa
Mexico's populist president insists fentanyl is not produced in Mexico. US justice says otherwise and indicts El Chapo's sons
AMLO fired off a gushy letter to Xi Jinping recently asking the Chinese leader for assistance on halting fentanyl trafficking. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson subsequently said no such trafficking between China and Mexico occurrs – prompting AMLO to credulously wonder aloud:
“We have to know where fentanyl is produced. If it’s not produced in China, where’s it produced? What’s known is that it’s utilized and causes enormous damage in the United States. But the first thing … is to know where it’s produced.”
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) offered an answer less than a week later: Sinaloa – home state of the eponymous cartel. It’s a state AMLO has listed frequently throughout his presidency – especially its downtrodden sierra, where, on an infamous 2020 visit, he broke pandemic protocols to greet El Chapo’s mother.
DOJ unveiled indictments against three sons of imprisoned Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán – known as Los Chapitos – for trafficking enormous quantities of fentanyl. According to a New York Times story on the charges:
“Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said at a news conference in Washington that in addition to the four sons — collectively known as Los Chapitos — federal indictments in Manhattan, Chicago and Washington had charged more than two dozen other people in what he described as a global fentanyl manufacturing and distribution operation run by the Sinaloa drug cartel.
“The charges also gave a flavor of the violence and terror that has ravaged Mexico for years and supported the Sinaloa cartel’s fentanyl business. The indictments said that assassins working for Mr. Guzmán’s sons murdered law enforcement officers, tortured rivals with electrocution, stuffed chiles into the wounds of some of their victims and even fed others — both dead and alive — to their pet tigers.”
DEA Infiltration
According to DEA administrator Anne Milgram, the charges were the product of DEA infiltration of Los Chapitos network, which “obtained unprecedented access to the organization’s highest levels, and followed them across the world.”
A senior administration official, speaking on background, told the media last Friday:
“I would just say, you know, two things. One, I was in Mexico two weeks ago, and the Mexican military was really generous in showing me around Sinaloa and actually taking me to two production facilities – I think we should stop calling them labs because, you know, they're not laboratories – in Sinaloa. And it is – it was clear from both of those trips that they know production, synthesizing is going on in Mexico.”
AMLO’s predictable reaction
AMLO has insisted in his morning news conference that fentanyl is not produced in Mexico – contradicting journalistic investigations from Sinaloa and statements from the National Defence Secretariat (SEDENA). The army said in a Feb. 15 statement that its personnel had “seized a fentanyl pill manufacturing centre and the laboratory with largest methamphetamine production capacity in the municipality of Culiacán, Sinaloa.” It also seized 128.03 kg of fentanyl powder and 629,138 fentanyl pills.
The president has also insisted fentanyl is uniquely a U.S. problem – demonstrably false for anyone Googling: Tijuana fentanyl – with the crisis there a product of “a luck of love, of brotherhood, of hugs and embraces.” (Recall AMLO’s stated security policy of “hugs, not bullets.”) He later suggested banning medical fentanyl – drawing indignation from medical professionals.
But AMLO especially objected to the DEA operation in Mexico – which followed a period in which the president has actively thwarted security cooperation (such as passing a law in December 2020 forcing foreign officials operating in the country to share intelligence with their Mexican counterparts. In a rant at his April 17 morning press conference, he said:
“We are going to continue cooperating with the United States government, with a pertinent clarification. We first have to guarantee public security in our country. … And, secondly, help, cooperating with the United States government so that we can, as good neighbours, confront the grave problem of drug consumption in the Untied States – in particular, attending to the problem of fentanyl consumption.”
AMLO spared Los Chapitos, but said of the DEA operation:
“(It’s) abusive interference, arrogance, which must not be accepted for any reason. How are they going to be spying? They didn’t even down a balloon from China already in the United States. … Acts of espionage cannot be used …. to find out what our security institutions are doing. And, with the arrogance of leaking to the Washington Post.” (A reference to the Discord leaks.)
DISCORD LEAKS CONFIRM DISTRUST IN SEDENA
Documents in the Discord leaks largely confirmed what was already believed about U.S. distrust of the National Defence Secretariat (SEDENA) and its preference for working with the Navy (SEMAR), which U.S. agencies as the DEA have come to view as a much more trustworthy security partner.
Buried at the bottom of a Washington Post story – after revelations from the leaks that U.S. intelligence had been eavesdropping on the cartel gunmen responsible for the attack on four Americans crossing into Matamoros for a tummytuck – were a summary of Mexico turning over its civil aviation sector to the military. (Aviation is but one of the multitude of tasks AMLO has assigned to the military.)
Reporter Nick Miroff wrote of the assessment:
“The top-secret briefing predicts that López Obrador is likely to continue assigning more responsibilities and oversight roles to the country’s armed forces — especially the Mexican army — but ‘without commensurate increases in resources.’ Such an imbalance is typically viewed as a recipe for corruption.
“According to the U.S. military assessment, the secretary of Mexico’s navy was so frustrated by the possibility that the Mexican army would take control of all Mexican airspace that he ‘instructed navy officials to limit cooperation with SEDENA [Mexico’s army] in response.’
“The briefing notes the potential for worsening tensions among Mexico’s armed forces, ‘a dispute that will likely exacerbate their existing rivalry and further detract from their ability to conduct joint operations.’”
AMLO defends Cienfuegos – again
The revelations of the Discord leaks followed AMLO relitigatting the case of former defence secretary Salvador Cienfuegos – again – who was arrested in late 2019 upon landing at LAX and charged with drug crimes. Mexico’s military revolted after the arrest, prompting AMLO to lobby for Cienfuegos’ release. The DOJ complied – only to have its Mexican counterparts promptly clear Cienfuegos of any wrongdoing. He used his April 10 press conference to accuse U.S. agencies of going rogue, which prompted him to “defend Gen. Cienfuegos because I perceived that there was an injustice.”
The fiasco reinforced perceptions of AMLO’s dependence on SEDENA for carrying out his so-called “Fourth Transformation” as he’s tapped the army and (to a lesser degree) navy for tasks ranging from building and operating airports and running the customs service and sea ports. An especially irritated AMLO ranted of past security cooperation at his April 10 press conference:
“They all meddled in the country. The DEA meddled. The CIA meddled as if it were their own home. … Mexico’s sovereignty wasn’t respected. And not only that: they came to dominate the Navy Secretariat, which was a secretariat prior to [Felipe] Calderón focused on maintaining ports, the coasts, and other activities. And suddenly it was turned into a secretariat whose main purpose was acting as an elite force for confronting the narcotics trafficking headed for the United States.
“I have another hypothesis that they wanted to do the same with the army and couldn’t because the army has another trajectory. We don’t forget that the army emerged from the Revolution, that it’s a nationalist army. And since they couldn’t [the U.S.], they were upset.”
‘THE ELECTRICITY IS OURS!’ AMLO NATIONALIZES POWER-GENERATION ASSETS, BUT AT WHAT COST?
AMLO’s obsession with restoring a state-run energy sector continued in early April as he announced the $6 billion purchase of 13 power plants from Iberdrola – the Spanish-owned utilities firm for which the president has showed a deep antipathy and accused of acting like latter-day conquistadores.
AMLO, as the president is known, announced the deal April 4 in a social media post video, in which he spoke of a “new nationalization” of Mexico’s energy industry.
1938 Reloaded?
The Iberdrola purchase (done by an asset manager known as Mexico Infrastructure Projects) comes as Mexico engages in dispute resolution talks under the USCMA trade deal – with the United States and Canada alleging Mexico undermined clean energy investors. Iberdrola will remain in Mexico with some clean energy assets – producing a form of electricity AMLO has scorned in favour of fossil fuels.
It also followed AMLO rallying partisans March 18 with a speech in the Zócolo square, where he recalled the 1938 oil expropriation under then-president Lázaro Cárdenas, but also the 1960 electricity industry expropriation of then-president Adolfo López Mateos. The expropriations have come to symbolize sovereignty and self-respect for many Mexicans – singular events still mythologized by AMLO.
The idea of state-run oil and electricity industries also feed the idea that Mexicans should receive what analyst George Baker has described as a “shareholder benefit” in the form of lower prices for gasoline and electricity – another myth AMLO promotes as he claimed the Iberdrola purchase would result in cheaper electricity bills.
Bad deal?
The purchase puts 55% of Mexico’s electricity industry assets under control of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) – up from 38% – the monopoly operator AMLO has championed. Thirteen of the facilities purchased by the CFE were gas plants with operated under a scheme known as Independent Energy Producers (PIE) – through which the CFE buys the plants’ entire energy output.
Analysts questioned if the Mexican government got hosed. Many observed that the purchase fails at add even one megawatt of electricity generation. Writing in the newspaper El Economista, consultant Jorge Andrés Castañeda noted:
“The big problem is the opportunity cost. It’s the worst use of the state’s indebtedness capability since the country’s generation remains the same. The $6 billion … should be used for investments in urgently needed transmission and distribution or new generation capacity.”
The Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a think-tank linked to the private sector, said of the CFE taking over the PIES operated by Iberdrola: “It opens the door to the state company expanding its collective contract to the workers of the new plants, and risks their profitability in the medium and long-term give the conditions established since the conditions established in the 2020 [collective contract] negotiations reduced the [CFE] retirement age by 10 years.”
In the newspaper El Universal, Mario Maldonado wrote:
“The only company that seems to have won here is Iberdrola, which will practically leave Mexico with its money, its profits and the tranquility … its assets won’t be expropriated.”
History of hyperbole
AMLO has a long history of attacking Iberdrola – especially its decision to add former president Felipe Calderón to its board of directors. Regulators fined Iberdrola $466 million pesos in 2022, but it was successfully overturned upon appeal. AMLO promptly attacked the judge. He once said of Iberdrola:
“If defending Iberdrola isn’t treason, what is? I don’t want people to call me a traitor when, consciously or unconsciously, I helped a foreign companies that tried to destroy a public company, the CFE, and damage millions of Mexican consumers.”
Criticism of Texas
López Obrador also left clear his distain for private players in the electricity sector – along with private electricity grids. He pointed to a familiar target: Texas, which the president has been bashing increased regularity. AMLO said in a recent press conference:
“The country which have suffered most are where the energy sector was privatized, including the United States. "With the deep freeze some time ago in Texas, since the electric system is privatized, it doesn’t have a national network and couldn’t bring in energy from other states because its split up by companies.”
EBRARD PUSHES FOR THE PRESIDENCY
Foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard – along with the Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and interior minister Adán Augusto López – continues jockeying for the 2024 presidential nomination of the ruling MORENA party. AMLO has insisted the nominee will be chosen through a poll, with the most popular candidate security the nomination – though many observers suspect the the president’s preference will ultimately be reflected in the survey. Such presidential influence would continue the PRI tradition of the “dedazo,” in which the president picks his successor and the party rallies around the choice.
Both Ebrard and Sheinbaum have been campaigning, even though campaigns for the July 2024 election don’t officially start for another 11 months. They’re also courting the foreign press – with Ebrard sitting down with the Associated Press:
“In an interview with the AP, [foreign minister Marcelo] Ebrard described himself as a nationalist and a progressive who promises to maintain López Obrador’s signature social programs ‘to create a society where inequality is shrinking.’ … While some peg Ebrard as a centrist, he points to passage of legalized abortion and same-sex marriage while he was Mexico City mayor a decade ago as evidence of his support for progressive policies.”
Ebrard proved so popular as Mexico City mayor between 2006 and 2012 that his successor won with two-thirds of the vote. He declined to challenge AMLO for the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) president nomination in 2012, however.
Like AMLO, Ebrard drew on a deep well of populism while serving as mayor, inaugurating urban beaches and the world’s biggest skating rink in the Zócalo square, and closing the Paseo de la Reforma boulevard for Sunday cycling.
He also portrayed himself as progressive and angered the Catholic Church by successfully promoting laws in the capital decriminalizing abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and legalizing same-sex marriage. (A former archdiocese of Mexico City spokesman has said then-Cardinal Norberto Rivera got along well with AMLO, who squashed any attempts at proceeding with laws on hot-button social issues.)
Interestingly, Ebrard and the Catholic hierarchy appear to be burying the hatchet. Ebrard met with the Mexican bishops’ conference at its biannual planning meetings this week, where the bishops’ said afterward that they spoke on migration matters – a topic the Mexican church has been outspoken on in recent years after remaining somewhat mum during the previous administration of president Enrique Peña Nieto. (The Mexican church has a somewhat strained relationship with AMLO, who has lashed out at the bishops for suggesting he revise his “hugs, not bullets” security strategy.)
Sheinbaum draws most left-leaning voters
Despite Ebrard’s past promotion of progressive politics, Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has assumed the “progressive” mantle – at least she’s used it to describe herself and her vision for the capital. Mexico City voters seem unimpressed, however: MORENA lost half of Mexico City’s 16 boroughs in the 2021 midterms after holding a hammerlock on the capital.
Still, pollster Alejandro Moreno wrote in the newspaper El Financiero:
“Those who prefer Claudia Sheinbaum as MORENA candidate are the segment of the electorate most to the left and most in favour of the 4T (AMLO’s political movement.)”
Ebrard (ME on the chart below) seems to be collecting support from centre-left voters, who are mildly in favour of the 4T.