Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
“Any kind of dialogue with criminal organizations is a mirage. It always goes wrong,” said Omar García Harfuch. This occurred last Friday in a plenary session with Morena deputies in the Chamber of Deputies, accompanied by Ricardo Monreal.
It contradicts the document Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent to Morena senators in December through Adán Augusto López, in which he points out that abandoning his six-year term policy of hugs, not bullets, threatens to break “the alliance between government and people” and opens the possibility of a citizen insurrection against the government led by himself.
The two radically different policies on how to deal with drug trafficking foreshadow a rupture between one presidential term and the next. The policy proposed by García Harfuch of confrontation and containment of drug trafficking breaks with the philosophy of “hugs, not bullets”.
In his document to the Senate, López Obrador anticipated his rejection of García Harfuch’s activities and policies. The apex of the conceptual conflict over what to do about drug trafficking is in Culiacán, Sinaloa, the result of the poisoned dart that Biden threw at López Obrador with the clandestine operation to “extract” Mayo Zambada from Mexico. From that moment on, the policy of “hugs, not bullets” went into a downward spiral because the Mexican government lost control of events and the phenomenon of drug trafficking in general.
Not only is there a high-intensity war in that area of the country, but there is also public exposure of the true complicity of Morena’s top brass with the Sinaloa cartel, even in its two main branches (Chapitos and Mayo Zambada). Governor Rocha is apparently the focal point of that relationship; therefore, many others will fall with him if he falls. Logically speaking, and for obvious reasons of internal security, Morena has no way of getting rid of Rocha without exposing itself. The President has already said it is not up to her to depose governors.
In addition to the dispute within Morena over the strategy to follow in the face of organized crime, there is the demand of the new Republican government in the United States to attack the drug cartels in Mexico directly. Declaring the Mexican cartels “terrorist” implies the possibility of acting on multiple levels against organized crime.
Not only can the capos and their operators be accused of terrorism, but so can their associates, both in the business world and those in political power and national law enforcement agencies, who collaborate with organized crime. Even companies that pay extortion fees to continue operating can be accused of being accomplices to organized crime.
The declaration of terrorists will pave the way for greater collaboration, whether we like it or not, between US security agencies and national security forces. The previous six-year term of government excluded, not to say expelled, the US agencies that operated in collaboration with Mexican forces. First, it did so with the approved changes to the National Security Law, and then, simply de facto, it expelled them by denying visas to agents of the DEA, the FBI, and possibly others.
The current administration is rethinking this exclusion policy, and García Harfuch has been welcomed in Washington. However, any change in security matters clashes with the policy of the previous six-year term. The naked truth is that pushing security policy to the level of confrontation with organized crime inevitably opens a Pandora’s box of activities, compromises, and complicity between the authorities and drug traffickers during the previous six-year term. It opens a collision course between the previous and current administrations.
The United States’ threat of tariffs is not exclusively due to immigration—in fact, I would say it is not mainly due to it. It is fundamentally due to the problems of organized crime in Mexico, a matter of US national security, and the revision of the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC, which aims to achieve full access for US companies to national energy resources and some precious minerals.
The reality is that Mexico is in a situation of significant economic vulnerability. López Obrador’s irresponsible policies left the country at the mercy of its stronger neighbor. Mexico is in a recessive economic dynamic, and the previous six-year term had the worst growth rate in at least the last three decades. Social policies, investment in useless and uneconomical megaprojects, and excessive public indebtedness leave Mexico facing 2025 without growth and on course for destroying its governmental institutions, with the reprehensible election of the Judiciary, which will weaken the country even further.
With this critical national and international scenario, the Mexican government has no room for maneuver. At the mañaneras (the daily press conferences), they inexplicably discuss how tariffs will impact US consumers, avoiding explaining how they will affect Mexicans. Their impact on Mexico is never mentioned.
These omissions in the mañaneras also hide how the Mexican government handles the situation. It is doing what Trump asks regarding immigration, security, and investment. It controls the northern border and accepts non-Mexican deportees. It starts the war against the cartels. It opens up the energy sector to foreign investment. Instead of explaining its policies, it claims to have “a Plan A, B, and C,” equivalent to hiding what it is actually doing.
And Andrés Manuel López Obrador? Crouching, for the time being, waiting for news from the Empire. He is also watching how the government is handling the reversal of the policies of his six-year term. The symbol of this correction in security policy is embodied in the figure of Omar García Harfuch and the disappearance of the policy of “hugs, not bullets”.
García Harfuch said verbatim in his hearing before Morena in the Chamber of Deputies: “Criminal organizations are the ones who corrupt the authorities (sic), who collect protection money, who extort. “Any kind of dialogue with criminal organizations is a mirage. It always goes wrong.” With that phrase from García Harfuch, the “hugs, not bullets” policy was annihilated.
But things will not end there because López Obrador will seek to flex his muscles through his influence in Morena to pressure the government to reverse current policies and adopt his own, those of the “previous six-year term”.
And with it, a deep division in Morena approaches. A schism is to arrive.
@rpascoep
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