President Claudia Sheinbaum is now just six weeks away from completing her first year in office.
In less than two weeks, on Sept. 1, she will present her first informe del gobierno, or government report, to the Congress, and in a major speech.
In the lead-up to those two important milestones, Sheinbaum continues to hold morning press conferences every weekday, and travel widely in Mexico on weekends.
Here is a recap of the president’s Aug. 19 mañanera.
Mexico to ask US why it wasn’t informed about a DEA statement before it was published
Early in her press conference, Sheinbaum said that her government hadn’t entered into any agreement with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Her declaration came a day after the DEA announced what it called “a major new initiative to strengthen collaboration between the United States and Mexico in the fight against cartels.”
The DEA said in a statement that “at the core” of the effort to combat cartels is Project Portero, “DEA’s flagship operation aimed at dismantling cartel ‘gatekeepers,’ operatives who control the smuggling corridors along the Southwest Border.”
The U.S. agency also said that it had “launched a multi-week training and collaboration program at one of its intelligence centers on the Southwest Border” that “brings together Mexican investigators with U.S. law enforcement.”
Sheinbaum denies DEA agreement on anti-cartel operation, calls agency statement unauthorized
Sheinbaum said that she and her government became aware of the DEA statement at the same time as journalists and “all of Mexico.”
“When I saw the statement, I said: Just in case I’m wrong, I’m going to speak with the security minister,” she said.
Sheinbaum said that Security Minister Omar García Harfuch told her that Mexico hadn’t signed anything “additional” with the DEA and that Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero assured her that Mexico hadn’t agreed to “anything special” with the U.S. agency.
She indicated that she got similar responses from army and navy officials. Sheinbaum also indicated that an official — she didn’t say who — reminded her that she had authorized a number of Mexican agents to go to the United States to attend a “workshop.”
“Ah, yes, I remember,” she recalled saying.
“That’s all there is,” came the response from the official, according to Sheinbaum.
While the DEA referred to a “bold bilateral initiative to dismantle cartel gatekeepers and combat synthetic drug trafficking,” the president said there is “nothing in particular that has to do with an agreement with this U.S. agency.”
She said that the issuance of the DEA statement wouldn’t affect the security relationship between Mexico and the United States, but asserted that her government has “the obligation to clarify because if we don’t, this idea with no basis remains.”
Sheinbaum said that Foreign Affairs Minister Juan Ramón de la Fuente would speak to U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ron Johnson about the matter.
“Why was this [DEA statement] published without the knowledge of the government of Mexico?” she asked.
Sheinbaum met with Adán López, but says she didn’t speak to him about Tabasco corruption scandal
A reporter noted that the president met on Monday with the ruling Morena party’s leaders in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
Morena’s leader in the lower house is Ricardo Monreal, while its leader in the Senate is Adán Augusto López Hernández, a former federal interior minister and governor of Tabasco whose security minister in the Gulf coast state is accused of having headed up a criminal group while he was in office.
In late July, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) formally requested that the Federal Attorney General’s Office investigate López for criminal association and demanded that he resign from his position in the Senate.
Sheinbaum said that she spoke to Monreal and López about Morena’s “legislative agenda,” but didn’t discuss the case involving former Tabasco security minister Hernán Bermúdez, who is currently a fugitive.
Asked why she didn’t discuss such an “important” issue with the senator, the president responded that criminal investigations are the responsibility of the Federal Attorney General’s Office and state prosecutors’ offices.
“So, in the case of the ex-security minister, there is an arrest warrant issued by the Tabasco Attorney General’s Office. Anything that the senator has to say, he should say,” Sheinbaum said, noting that López has indicated that he will give a statement to authorities if summoned to do so.
“But everything needs to have a basis,” she said.
“That’s why we didn’t touch on that issue. That issue corresponds to the Tabasco Attorney General’s Office [and] to the Federal Attorney General’s Office,” Sheinbaum said.
She also said that there was no discussion about the possibility of López stepping down as leader of Morena in the Senate.
‘The end of an era of nepotism’
A reporter noted that the Supreme Court (SCJN) on Tuesday was holding its final session before recently-elected justices will assume their positions on Sept. 1. She asked Sheinbaum how she would “farewell” the current SCJN, and how she would describe its work over the past 30 years.
“[It’s] the end of an era of nepotism in the judiciary,” said Sheinbaum, who argued that the judicial elections held in June were needed to rid Mexico’s courts of ills such as corruption and nepotism.
“… It’s the end of an area of a judiciary that served only a few,” Sheinbaum said.
The president asserted that during a period of decades, more than half of Mexico’s judges and other judicial workers were “friends, siblings [and] cousins” of the people who appointed them.
“And now a new era begins starting Sept. 1,” Sheinbaum said.
“And it will be better, I don’t have the slightest doubt about that,” she said.
All of the incoming Supreme Court Justices are affiliated with, seen as sympathetic to, or were at least tacitly supported by the ruling Morena party at the judicial elections, a situation that government critics argue will eliminate a vital check on executive and legislative power.
By Mexico News Daily chief staff writer Peter Davies ([email protected])
