Guillermo Valdés Castellanos
President Sheinbaum’s response to the extradition request for the governor and a senator from Sinaloa, the mayor of Culiacán, and seven other officials from Rubén Rocha Moya’s administration has been highly revealing of the 4 T’s short-sightedness or blindness.
The initial reaction was to refuse, using legal and political arguments that were untenable and lacked moral authority: requesting judicial evidence when it is neither the time nor the place to do so; furthermore, doing so when her government has systematically violated the extradition treaty and has expelled 93 criminals from the country based on the National Security Law (which in no part authorizes such acts) and empowers the Financial Intelligence Unit to freeze accounts based solely on suspicion; invoking sovereignty over an interference that does not exist (requesting the extradition of criminals in an act of cooperation based on the treaty signed by the two countries).
The second reaction: going on a tour to Palenque (a terrible message that she is sharing her power) and ordering the governor’s leave of absence with the message that he is willing to appear before Mexican authorities. It is a clear attempt at damage control, but with an implausible message to the U.S. and Mexicans: the accused may have some connection. Still, we will investigate and judge them only through our own institutions (the Attorney General’s Office and the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation) that previously exonerated them.
Faced with a crucial moment—the public and international exposure of the rot within many Morena governments—and the opportunity to fundamentally correct the course, purge her party, and restart her project from a more solid political and ethical foundation, the head of the Mexican state has decided to protect her political movement and its true and only leader rather than the country. The problem is that this attempt to minimize damage leaves her cornered in a dead end, lacking moral authority, and with the added aggravation that the one harassing us is the most anti-Mexican U.S. president in history, who boasts of having no ethical or legal scruples whatsoever.
If the White House accepts that response and halts the subsequent extradition requests, there will be no doubt that both governments have reached an absolutely unspeakable secret agreement, which could range from concessions on trade (USMCA) and energy (fracking, but only with U.S. companies) to veto power over the nomination of Morena candidates for governorships in states with narco-governments and who knows what else. Let your imagination run wild regarding the true geopolitical and business interests of Trump and his cabinet.
In Venezuela, there was a spectacular display of U.S. military and technological might to kidnap its president and brutally subdue its regime. In Mexico, will an extradition request for 10 third-rate politicians be enough to achieve the same result? That is the extent of the vulnerability López Obrador has left Mexico in.
If that happens, the 4T, through its two administrations, will have been the perpetrator of a massive violation of national sovereignty in exchange for maintaining the pact of impunity for Morena and its model of government, founded on association with criminal organizations and criminal enterprises, such as the tax gasoline theft (huachicol). At the Morena Congress held yesterday, with their house on fire, not a word was said about it. Is there a single sensible politician or official in the 4T with a shred of objectivity who disagrees with the precipice toward which they are leading the country? Is there a single concerned Morenista, even just one?
And I’ll conclude with a note on the absence of a national security policy. The government’s response to this issue reveals that it had no risk scenarios or response strategy for the probability of occurrence or the magnitude of the damage—haphazard, improvised measures taken on the fly, with terrible consequences for the country. I truly wish I were wrong.
A Spanish version of this text is also published by laaurorademexico.com
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