Federico Reyes Heroles
How long have we known this? At a lunch meeting between a group of journalists and businesspeople with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, presidential candidate in 2012, the Tabasco political leader launched his idea to build ten refineries during his term. But how would he finance them? At that time, the actual cost was around $15 billion. He answered with great confidence: they would be paid for by eliminating “milking,” as it was called. Pemex’s control mechanisms had identified it, and it already amounted to $1 billion a year. Ten refineries would add up to $150 billion, a century and a half to pay for them.
Upon taking office on December 27, 2018, the president immediately announced a plan to combat fuel theft. They already knew. His proposal focused on the gangs that carried out the “milking.” Pemex recorded the leaks. In mid-January 2019, there was a terrible explosion in Tlahuelilpan, Hidalgo. The police immediately appeared to control the situation. The terrifying death toll reached 137. It was a shock, but the movements of the tanker trucks, drums, and other equipment also pointed to local and federal authorities, undeniably. The network was already much broader. During his administration, news about the “picaderos” (fuel theft sites) was like a constant bubbling. But the strategy was unclear. Pemex did not appear on the scene. There was no indication that the so-called “huachicol” (fuel theft) was being contained.
Then the Armed Forces were brought in as a surefire option in the face of civil decay. Of course, this activity was the product of “neoliberalism,” the eternal culprit responsible for everything from the lack of vaccines and medicines to the proliferation of drug trafficking. Rumors of the Armed Forces’ involvement were not long in coming. Within the Armed Forces, it has been and continues to be argued that participation in activities for which they were not trained and which are not part of their essential mission involves serious institutional risks. Until then, confidence in the Armed Forces was very high. They demonstrated outstanding professionalism in the face of disasters and were dedicated to helping the population. But, as Leo Zuckermann has stated in Excélsior: “…the military are also human.” Later, they were involved in other highly sensitive areas, including ports, customs, and airports. In addition to giving them multiple privileges, they were put, as was commonly said, “where there is money to be made.”
Francisco Barnés de Castro, one of our country’s leading energy specialists, has calculated that fuel theft in its various forms—huachicol, fiscal huachicol, and direct fuel theft—generated a loss of around $25 billion for the López Obrador administration in Mexico, or $25 billion multiplied by 19,475, over six years, that amounts to 79.166 billion pesos; over 365 days a year, that amounts to 217 million pesos a day. The INAI, responsible for enforcing a constitutional guarantee for Mexicans—the right to information—was sacrificed for 1 billion pesos, or four days of fuel theft. Mexico would need to invest 30 billion pesos in water infrastructure in 2025, or 138 days of fuel theft, with tens of millions of beneficiaries. Retired ministers, those of the legitimate Court, are being burned at the stake because their annual pensions—their right—amount to just over 27.2 million pesos per year (El Universal, 9/3/2025), one-tenth of a day of fuel theft. Republican austerity?
Here we are, seven years after Tlahuelilpan, fireworks that hid the reality. The armed forces have been penetrated to the highest levels, and this is probably only the beginning. Everything indicates that at the local level, many of the new judges have already been captured by the “generators of violence,” drugs, and fuel—the armed forces in everything.
If Sheinbaum wants to regain sovereignty, so that Mexicans can vote freely anywhere without pressure from drug traffickers and others, the recent major blow to fuel theft is the way forward. We knew it, we wasted a lot of time. The predictable happened: our institutions were wounded.
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