Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Reactions to and interpretations of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s letter have varied. For now, Sheinbaum has embraced the letter and thanked the former president for his support. She took it to mean that AMLO was giving his unconditional support to her administration.
Some analysts have offered different interpretations of Obrador’s letter. Some assumed that the former president went public to make it clear that he remains the beacon illuminating the path and the course the 4T will take. Others believe he published the text because he perceives the president as showing weakness and confusion in handling the political crisis triggered by the U.S. indictments against Sinaloa’s narco-politics, which directly implicate Morena’s national leadership. Still others believe he came forward to flex his muscles in the face of the surprising and disconcerting appearance of former presidents Fox and Calderón in Chihuahua. He was not going to leave the path open for their return to national politics, which he considers his exclusive prerogative.
Additionally, there are rumors that former President Peña Nieto could return to Mexico to rally the PRI around a plan to promote his return to the power struggle. The truth is that, in the wake of the indictments, the Mexican government’s confusing yet staunch defense of the narco-politicians, and the decline in the polls for the president, Morena, and AMLO himself, the former president likely published his letter to counter the negative effects suffered by his movement.
Even accepting all of the above, there is one element that creates dissonance in his letter’s wording. It is the fact of reviving the case of General Cienfuegos, his arrest in the United States, and his subsequent release following a negotiation between AMLO and Trump. It does not appear to be a gratuitous or incidental reminder.
The former president seems to want to remind “both sides” (a famous phrase by Sheinbaum) that commitments have been made to him, as a former president, and to the Armed Forces as a timeless institution. Commitments, it is understood, regarding a loyalty that goes beyond the constitutional order or even the personal. The Constitution mandates the subordination of the Armed Forces to their Commander-in-Chief, who heads the federal executive branch.
But AMLO’s letter clearly implies that there is an obligatory political loyalty to him personally and to the political movement he leads. All of this stems from the fact that he secured General Cienfuegos’s release, on the one hand, and because, on the other, he allowed the high command of the Armed Forces to dip deeply into the public treasury without having to account to the nation for their use of those funds, under the cover of the National Security Law.
The former president has surely realized that the Armed Forces leadership has reestablished its close relationship with U.S. Northern Command. Joint military exercises between the two countries reinforce the new relationships that bring their military, strategic, and intelligence positions and views closer together. Actions such as the capture and execution of El Mencho reinforce these efforts. And although everyone denies it, the operation that took place in Chihuahua involving U.S. and Mexican security forces is a much more frequent and routine occurrence than is admitted on both sides of the border.
AMLO thought he had built a wall together with the Armed Forces to contain U.S. intervention in Mexico, anticipating future adversarial actions by the Mexican government against Washington. However, two years into Sheinbaum’s administration, he sees that the containment dam—which he assumed was made of steel—is crumbling. It turns out it is made of mud, and it is collapsing under events that, one by one, erode it.
The fact that he has to remind military commanders of the loyalty they owe him suggests that the collapse of the “wall of loyalty” is happening before our eyes, in real time. AMLO’s political project of total, or totalitarian, control is definitely sinking without political control over the Armed Forces.
Constitutional obedience—to which the Armed Forces are bound in their relationship with civilian authority—is one thing; their supposed political obedience to the mandates of the partisan movement that AMLO and Sheinbaum demand of the commanders of the national armed forces is quite another, entirely separate matter.
AMLO perceives that this obedience is no longer being respected and knows that it puts his movement at serious risk and, perhaps, jeopardizes the freedom of the leaders most deeply involved in the relationship with drug trafficking. Himself included.
That is AMLO’s underlying concern.
@rpascoep
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