Federico Reyes Heroles
“…It didn’t start with the gas chambers. It didn’t start with the crématoriums, it didn’t start with the concentration and extermination camps (…) It started with politicians dividing people into ‘us’ and ‘them’. It began with speeches of hate and intolerance, in public squares and through the media (…) It began when people stopped worrying about it and became insensitive, obedient and blind, believing that all this was normal.”
The words are those of Primo Levi, who survived the Holocaust and who – thanks to Rabbi Marcelo Rittner – takes on a painful relevance. The first thing was forgetting as a strategy. But what about El Pozolero and San Fernando? What do we know about them? For six years, the issue was covered up. In Mexico, AMLO and other authorities said it a thousand times; there were no laboratories or consumption of fentanyl, we were just a transit territory. False! At the same time, everything was done to weaken the municipal and state police forces. The Armed Forces were involved in a very risky activity with an enormous corrupting capacity. They know it, and they pay for it with their reputation. And what about the National Guard, that new centralizing entity? There are scenes of the narcos applauding them. “Hugs, not bullets” destroyed essential elements of governability: respect for authority and fear of the consequences of the law. Hugs… Fear? It came from very high up. 48% of those who disappeared from 1988 to 2023 are their responsibility.
The penetration spread. Around 30% of the territory, a dozen entities of the Republic, is controlled by narcos, elections included. Who is involved? Many at all levels: from mayors, security chiefs, police forces, military, governors and former governors, and let’s look higher up. They all received and receive protection. That is still the signal. That is why they need control of the judiciary. The results are already there. Now, a local judge in Veracruz is going after the businessman who documented the undeclared properties of the candidate, now governor, Nahle. She fined him 14 million pesos for “moral damage”. A local judge in Mexico City imposed a fine of 15 million on each the former rector of the UNAM, Enrique Graue, and the former director of the FES Aragón. The reason is that the investigation into the plagiarism of Minister Esquivel was institutionally promoted. Justice at their service and… at the service of the narcos, that is our future.
Sheinbaum repeats that, with the election of the Judiciary, Mexico will be the most democratic country, that there will be “many Juarez”. They are burying thousands of experienced professionals but will give 5,000 pesos to “train” the new ones. In addition, judges and magistrates in areas sensitive to the federal government—telecommunications, for example—are reserved for territories Morena controls. And the rest of Mexicans? Of course, a ballot with hundreds of names on it. Excellent planning and… perversion.
There are two possibilities: either the President’s ignorance of how the judiciary operates in democracies is brutal or, true to her predecessor’s strategy, she is inventing a narrative with which she intends to bury reality. More than six million people have refused to participate in the organization of the process.
Sheinbaum is left with the explosion at Teuchitlán. In a matter of days, García Harfuch delivers results. It is not Teuchitlán; it is the whole state, as Jonathan Lomelí explains: four people a day; 28 a week; 117 a month; 171 clandestine graves. Jalisco is an extermination center. But, as it is organized crime, all three levels of government are responsible. Why didn’t they act sooner? Levi jumps in the grave. We no longer feel them.
Insensitive, obedient, blind.
P.S. Ricardo Anaya’s speech explaining the bilateral complexity of the drug trade is the best defense I have heard of Mexico’s reasons and the bilateral reasons for dealing with it. Brilliant.
Further Reading: