Durazo gives his final report as Security Minister.
Homicides increased in 10 states and decreased in 22 in the first nine months of 2020 compared to the same period last year, Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said Wednesday.
He told President López Obrador’s press conference that homicides increased between January and September in Hidalgo, Durango, Chihuahua, Campeche, Michoacán, Sonora, Guanajuato, Yucatán, San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas.
Guanajuato has been the most violent state in the country this year, with more than 3,000 homicides in the first nine months.
Durazo, who is leaving his position to seek to be the Morena party candidate for governor next year in his native Sonora, said there were 2,807 homicides and femicides in September. That’s 243 fewer than in August, an 8% decline.
The combined figures for those crimes have now decreased in two consecutive months, he said, asserting that Mexico has reached an “inflection point.”
However, homicide numbers for the first nine months of the year – 26,231 – are 1% higher than in the same period of 2019, which was Mexico’s most violent year on record.
Femicides also rose slightly between January and September, increasing 0.4% from 721 in the first nine months of 2019 to 724 in the same period this year.
Durazo presented data for numerous other crimes, all of which decreased this year compared to the first nine months of 2019 with the exception of federal organized crime offenses, which include terrorism, arms trafficking, human trafficking, trafficking of human organs and sexual crimes against children.
Among the crimes whose incidence decreased significantly were petroleum theft, which fell 48.6%, and kidnappings, which declined 37.6%.
Extortion, vehicle theft, rape, business robberies, cattle theft, drug trafficking, assaults, financial crimes, firearms offenses, electoral crimes and crimes committed by public officials also declined in the first nine months, according to data presented by Durazo.
But while the decreases in those crimes are welcome, the federal government will ultimately be judged on its ability or otherwise to reduce the high numbers of murders.
In the 22 months between December 2018 – the month López Obrador took office – and September 2020, there were a total of 65,549 victims of homicide and femicide, according to National Public Security System data.
The figure is 10.9% higher than the 59,112 victims of the same crimes in the final 22 months of the government led by former president Enrique Peña Nieto.
López Obrador assumed the presidency pledging to reduce violence through a so-called “hugs, not bullets” security strategy that favors addressing the root causes of crime through social programs and the creation of job opportunities rather than combatting it with force.
He promised to gradually withdraw the military from the nation’s streets but published a decree in May ordering the armed forces to continue carrying out public security tasks for another four years.
That decision appeared to acknowledge that the National Guard, a new quasi-military security force created by the current federal government, had failed in its mission to reduce violence.
In the wake of a sharp increase in Covid-19 cases that is now overwhelming the state’s hospitals, the Chihuahua Congress has asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to enforce an agreement that is supposed to deny U.S. citizens nonessential entry into Mexico.
By agreement between the two nations, the land border has been closed to all foot and vehicle traffic since March and will remain closed until November 21, and probably longer. In theory, that means Americans seeking to cross into Mexico need an approved reason, such as family or medical emergencies or for work.
However, in practice, say Chihuahua lawmakers, border officials allow U.S. citizens to cross freely into Mexico. They believe such leniency is responsible for the state’s new Covid-19 spike, which has saturated hospitals.
As of yesterday, the state Ministry of Health reported that in the last 24 hours it had confirmed 359 new cases. The state is currently at the orange level (the second highest rating) on the national coronavirus stoplight risk map.
Chihuahua Deputy Alejandro Gloria González of the Ecologist Green Party (PVEM) proposed the resolution, which was unanimously approved. Speaking to the media, Gloria pointed out that El Paso, Texas, which borders the Chihuahua city of Juárez, has one of the largest numbers of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the U.S., adding that the state’s border cities have been the worst hit.
“The free transit of U.S. citizens [over the border] implies a great risk to the bordering cities in our state,” Gloria said. “The backtracking [of the state] to the color orange on the stoplight system for Ciudad Juárez requires immediate action by local authorities, so they are able to contain the pandemic.”
Four public hospitals in Chihuahua are currently at 100% capacity, including two in Juárez, according to the Ministry of Health. The city of El Paso posted this morning on its Twitter account that it had confirmed 670 new Covid cases, for a total of 8,820 that are currently active.
Sánchez: at times her opinion has not been taken into account.
“Considerable” misogyny in the federal security cabinet is one of the challenges she had to face in her political ascent, said the federal government’s highest-ranking minister this week.
“Many of the challenges were to demonstrate that women are as capable [as men] or more so,” said Interior Minister Olga Sánchez Cordero. “Even today there are very considerable misogyny issues.”
The remarks were made during a virtual event held by the Women’s Museum on the 67th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote, where Sánchez explained that she has been a victim of misogyny by members of the security cabinet, which President López Obrador assembles every morning.
“There have been times … when sometimes my opinion — and I don’t mean the president, on the contrary, the president has always given me my place — but among the members, my opinion was not taken into account at times, even if I was right and even if I was contributing something important,” she said.
Sánchez also said she has been a victim of exclusion throughout her career in the public sector and has been blocked from joining some groups.
“In effect, we have the right to vote and be voted for, but our representation in decision making areas is low. We have the right to justice, but our real access to the courts is precarious if we are women. If it concerns poor or indigenous women who are victims of violence, the possibilities of obtaining a favorable response from the authorities … are still threatened by stereotypical conceptions of who we are and how we should behave,” she said.
Sánchez, who graduated with a law degree from the National Autonomous University, was Mexico City’s first female notary public. She was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1995 by then-President Ernesto Zedillo, where she remained until 2015.
Sánchez became Minister of the Interior when President López Obrador took office in December 2018, the first woman to hold that position.
“During my participation in the Women’s Museum lecture series, I stressed that we still cannot speak of a fully democratic country until women have representation equal to that of men,” she tweeted yesterday. “Being in charge of Mexico’s domestic policy represents a unique opportunity to set the precedent that allows more and more women to occupy strategic positions in decision making.”
Police in Puerto Escondido round up maskless scofflaws.
More than 200 people have been arrested in the resort town of Puerto Escondido in a span of just five days for not wearing face masks.
The municipality of San Pedro Mixtepec on the Oaxaca coast began a mandatory mask program on October 16 but it doesn’t appear to be catching on with some residents, including the 233 police had arrested as of Tuesday.
“More than about law, it is about justice, because it is not fair that we continue to spread the virus if the authorities do not do something forceful, something that really shakes up the citizens,” Mayor Fredy Gil Pineda Gopar said when he announced the measure on Friday.
Those detained by police for not wearing a mask are given the choice of serving six hours in jail, performing three hours of community service, or paying a fine of 150 pesos (US $7.12). The municipality has already collected 27,000 pesos in fines (US $1,280) from the 180 people who chose that option.
Forty-four people opted for jail time while just nine chose community service.
Among those arrested was a foreign tourist who was jailed on Saturday for not wearing a face mask after he lowered it to smoke a cigarette. The man, identified only as Derek, recounted the experience on his YouTube channel, calling it “one of the worst days of my life, pretty much. I mean it’s in the top 10 or top 15; it was pretty bad,” he said.
Mayor Gil said he was aware of the political cost he may face due to the mandate. “I am willing to assume it because we have to keep order. Someone has to face this pandemic with a strong and firm hand, and we want to be pioneers in the fight against the pandemic.”
According to Oaxaca Health Services, as of yesterday the Costa region had recorded 1,003 cases of the coronavirus and 86 deaths; San Pedro Mixtepec has seen 184 accumulated cases and Santa María Colotepec 55.
Oaxaca as a whole has seen 20,021 accumulated cases of the coronavirus and 1,591 people have died.
The asparagus packing plant that was set on fire in Caborca.
A turf war between rival cartels has turned the Sonoran Desert into a battleground.
The sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán are fighting for control of the area with the Caborca Cartel, led by Rafael Caro Quintero, and homicides are up 28% over 2019, Televisa reports.
Assaults are also on the rise, especially on the highways leading to and from Caborca, Puerto Peñasco and Puerto Lobos.
So far this week two cattle ranches in the agricultural valley of Caborca on the old road to Puerto Lobos were set on fire by an armed group. Three homes were shot up, a tire business and an asparagus packing plant were set on fire and four men were murdered, one in front of his family after armed men pulled him from his home.
More than 100 truck drivers spent a night in Sonoyta for fear of being attacked by criminal groups on the highway to Caborca.
[wpgmza id=”261″]
Earlier this month a family from Mesa, Arizona, traveling to their vacation home in Puerto Lobos, was robbed at gunpoint of their truck, trailer loaded with three ATVs, and all their luggage. No one was injured in the assault and the family’s truck was later found abandoned and returned to them.
The mayor of Caborca, Librado Macías, admits that the area’s location near the border with the United States makes it a prime target for cartel violence as gangs fight for control of the drug route north. “It is related to the proximity that this region has with the United States, it is a very long border area. … It is a confrontation between two stubborn groups that want to kill each other,” Macías said.
Narco-banners signed by the Caro Quintero faction have appeared in the area, asserting dominance and warning that attacks will continue. The message is similar to one left in May, which was found with two ice chests filled with human remains.
In June, a firefight between rival groups left 12 people dead and several houses, cars, and a gas station were set on fire, prompting the United States to issue a June 22 travel alert.
Cienfuegos' attorneys charge up to US $1,000 per hour.
A United States judge has refused to grant bail to former army chief Salvador Cienfuegos on drug trafficking and money laundering charges, rejecting an argument that the ex-defense minister was not a flight risk because he is determined to clear his name.
At a hearing in Los Angeles on Tuesday, the attorney for Cienfuegos, who was arrested at L.A. airport last week, said that his client could offer bail of US $750,000, an amount he described as the former general’s life savings.
Duane Lyons, a partner at Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, the largest litigation firm in the world, said that his client, who he called “a dedicated Mexican general who served his country honorably for a number of years,” has “every intention of clearing his name.”
If he were to be released on bail and flee, “his name and reputation would be ruined,” Lyons said. If he were to return to Mexico while out on bail, the United States’ extradition treaty with that country would help ensure that he was sent back to the U.S., he said.
The lawyer also argued that Cienfuegos, 72, was at risk of being infected with the coronavirus by being kept in jail, pointing out that he is vulnerable to a serious illness due to his age.
United States District Court Judge Alexander MacKinnon dismissed the argument that the former defense minister was not a flight risk, saying that Cienfuegos, who didn’t appear at the hearing, has a powerful incentive to flee because he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
The ex-defense minister, chief of the army during the entirety of former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s 2012-2018 term, could face a mandatory prison sentence of at least 10 years if convicted on conspiracy charges.
He is accused of helping the H-2 Cartel, an offshoot of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel, to operate with impunity in Mexico and smuggle large quantities of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States. He is also accused of laundering the proceeds of his alleged illicit activities.
Mackinnon rejected the notion that Cienfuegos could be promptly returned to the United States if he fled to Mexico, siding with government prosecutors who argued that extradition could take years.
The district judge said that he would sign an order to transfer the former defense minister to New York – where the court that indicted him is located – on Friday, giving Cienfuegos time to meet with his Mexican attorney who is currently in Los Angeles.
Lyons said that Cienfuegos wouldn’t oppose the transfer.
Quinn Emmanuel Trial Lawyers also took on the case of former security minister Genaro García Luna, who was arrested last December on charges of collusion with the Sinaloa Cartel.
But the ex-official, security chief in the government of former president Felipe Calderón, later changed his legal team, asserting that he couldn’t afford Quinn Emmanuel’s fees, which reportedly range from US $800 to $1,000 per hour.
President López Obrador, who has used the charges against Cienfuegos and García Luna to support his claim that Mexico’s recent past governments were corrupt, said Tuesday that he would be his administration’s sole spokesperson on the former army chief’s case.
He said that designating himself as the government’s spokesperson would avoid “manipulation of information” about the charges Cienfuegos faces. The president said Monday that his government would ask the United States to share all its information about the former defense ministers’ alleged ties to drug traffickers.
Speaking on Tuesday before MacKinnon denied Cienfuegos bail, López Obrador made it clear that he agreed with U.S. prosectors’ assessment that the former general was a flight risk, asserting that he has “very important connections in Mexico who could protect and hide him.”
It is also a sticky issue for López Obrador because he has repeatedly portrayed the army and navy as trustworthy, corruption-free institutions even though there was ample evidence to the contrary, even before Cienfuegos was taken into custody.
President López Obrador today contradicted the federal Health Ministry, rejecting its assertion that at least eight states are facing new outbreaks of the coronavirus.
“There are no new outbreaks. There are some states where infections have increased but we can’t speak about a resurgence [of the coronavirus],” he told reporters at his regular news conference.
López Obrador noted that Covid-19 deaths are on the wane – they decreased 51% between October 4 and 10 compared to the previous week, according to Health Ministry data – and claimed that it is “very probable” that Chiapas will soon become the second green light “low” risk state in the country.
The president’s remarks came after the Health Ministry said Sunday that new coronavirus cases increased in Aguascalientes, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Durango, Hidalgo, Nuevo León, Querétaro and Zacatecas in early October.
López-Gatell: ‘Early signs’ of a new wave of infections.
“There are eight federal entities with clear statistics of new outbreaks,” said Ruy López Ridaura, director of the Health Ministry’s National Center for Disease Prevention and Control Programs.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, Mexico’s coronavirus point man, presented national data on Tuesday night that showed that new cases numbers increased 4% between October 4 and 10 compared to the previous week.
The spike in new cases followed numerous weeks during which the pandemic in Mexico was on the wane.
López-Gatell said that there are “early signs” of a new wave of infections, noting that in addition to an increase in new case numbers, the positivity rate (the percentage of Covid-19 tests that come back positive) and the number of hospitalized coronavirus patients have recently risen.
The deputy minister also presented updated coronavirus statistics showing that Mexico’s accumulated case tally had risen to 860,714, an increase of 5,788 compared to Monday, and that the official Covid-19 death toll had increased to 86,893 with 555 additional fatalities registered.
He highlighted that only 4% of just under 1 million “estimated” cases in Mexico since the start of the pandemic are currently active.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
Despite its low testing rate, Mexico currently has the 10th highest case tally in the world and the fourth highest Covid-19 death toll.
According to Johns Hopkins University, Mexico has the highest case fatality rate among the 20 countries currently most affected by Covid-19, with 10.1 deaths per 100 confirmed cases. On a per capita basis, it ranks fourth for deaths among the 20 most affected countries behind only Peru, Brazil and Spain.
López Obrador’s claim that the eight states where numbers are on the rise are not yet facing large new outbreaks provides no comfort for the local authorities.
In Chihuahua, which recorded a 37% spike in new case numbers in early October – the second highest after Durango, the Covid-19 wards of four hospitals are already at capacity.
ISSSTE hospitals in Ciudad Juárez and Delicias are full as are the IMSS general hospitals in Juárez and Nuevo Casas Grandes. Across Chihuahua – which is estimated to have just under 2,400 active cases – more than 80% of hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients are currently occupied.
Authorities in the other states where case numbers are on the rise are preparing to respond to a new wave of infections.
Nuevo León Governor Jaime Rodríguez Calderón warned that coronavirus restrictions could soon be tightened in the northern state, which has the second highest number of active cases among the 32 states behind only Mexico City. However, he acknowledged that the state lacks resources to confront a new wave of infections.
Coahuila Governor Miguel Ángel Riquelme said that authorities have agreed to place renewed limits on people’s movement between different parts of the state as part of efforts to slow the spread of the virus.
The northern border state is estimated to have 2,300 active cases, the fifth highest number in the country after Mexico City, Nuevo León, México state and Chihuahua.
President López Obrador’s plans to force fund managers to slash their commissions as part of a pension overhaul has triggered threats of litigation.
Private pension funds would have to nearly halve their commissions to 0.54%, from 0.92% according to a bill sent to Congress in September, which is expected to pass in both houses in the coming weeks. The industry has 4.5 trillion pesos (US $212 billion) under management.
The government is seeking to revise the private pension system, which was set up in 1997, to boost retirement pay by 40% and pulled off a coup by persuading the private sector to increase its contributions. Without changes, it says workers could expect to retire on just 30% of their salaries.
The planned commissions reduction took the fund managers by surprise, Bernardo González, president of the Association of Mexican Private Pension Funds, told the Financial Times. Several private funds would no longer be able to operate and would trigger litigation under international trade treaties including USMCA, he warned.
Funds with foreign capital were evaluating litigation under the USMCA or the Pacific Alliance treaties, González said. “They [the funds] are obviously very worried … because they would have to have recourse to the treaties to defend themselves,” he added.
The populist president has upset business leaders with other decisions during his nearly two years in office, including regulatory changes that penalize renewable energy generators and the scrapping of a partially built brewery and airport projects following informal “people’s polls.”
The government argues that commissions charged by the Afores, as Mexican private pension funds are known, are some of the highest in the world and wants to benchmark them to those in the US, Chile and Colombia — currently 0.45%, 0.54% and 0.62% respectively.
The commissions reduction was “fundamental and cannot be postponed,” the government said, adding that the pension system regulator, Consar, had calculated that if commissions were halved “the average saving per worker would increase by 12%” and boost cash available upon retirement.
“This is not about wanting to protect disproportionate profits,” González said. “It could force several private funds out of the market and concentrate resources in the hands of just a few Afores, which is not good for competition.”
López Obrador told a news conference: “I want this [reduction in commissions] to be by law because that will generate more savings. The fund administrators may say it would no longer be profitable, but it would.”
But capping commissions by law would prevent new entrants into the market because a low starting client base together with low commissions would be uneconomic, González said. Funds targeting lower-income workers would be most vulnerable.
Under the reform proposal, employers will increase their contributions to enable workers to retire after 750 weeks of contributions, rather than 1,250 currently. But those higher contributions from employers would happen in two years, meaning that if commissions were slashed before then “that would push some Afores into the red,” he said.
González said the push to slash commissions would favour funds with state participation. Mexico’s biggest Afore, XXI Banorte, is half-owned by IMSS, the state social security agency, while PENSIONISSSTE is fully state owned.
Published by the Economy Ministry and the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) on the request of the Oaxaca government, the GI designation states that authentic wooden alebrijes can only be made in five locations in the southern state: San Antonio Arrazola, San Martín Tilcajete, Unión Tejalápam, San Pedro Taviche and Oaxaca city.
The designation also protects Oaxaca-made sculptures of nahuales, supernatural beings with the capacity to metamorphose into animals, and other unique locally-made wooden carvings.
According to the Oaxaca government, the request for a GI designation it submitted to IMPI earlier this year sought to protect not just the alebrijes themselves but also the history surrounding them, the materials they’re made with and the artisanal process.
Economy Minister Juan Pablo Guzmán said in January that the GI designation would protect the wooden figurines “at the national and international levels so that they won’t be subject to plagiarism and piracy.”
He cited Chinese fakes as a particular concern to local artisans.
Guzmán also said that a GI designation, which already applies to products such as Roquefort cheese, Colombian coffee and Thai silk, will add to the commercial value of the wooden alebrijes made in Oaxaca.
He explained that the protection will prevent the export of foreign-made replicas of the sculptures just as fake tequila is blocked from entering different countries around the world.
“Tequila arrives that is made in other … countries and when it’s detected at customs, a report is sent to Mexico. [If] it’s verified that it’s not really that beverage, fines and sanctions are issued. In addition the product is destroyed,” Guzmán said.
A GI designation is similar to designation of origin status, the minister said, explaining that they both offer protection to a range of products. The former is more widely recognized in the United States while the latter is more prevalent in Europe, he said.
“They don’t compete with each other, … both seek to maintain the attributes of a product from a determined region. The difference is that in a GI [designation] not all of the elements of a product are necessarily from that place,” Guzmán said, explaining that if a gold adornment is part of an alebrije, the gold doesn’t necessarily have to come from Oaxaca.
However, all the work must be completed in the place to which the GI designation corresponds and the product must originate there, he said.
Among the Mexican products that have a geographical indication designation or designation of origin status are tequila, mezcal, talavera pottery, Morelos rice, Chiapas coffee, Olinalá wooden handicrafts from Guerrero and vanilla from Puebla and Veracruz.
López Obrador and army chief Luis Crescencio Sandoval, whose institution has been embarrassed by the arrest of its former chief.
Is it a good idea to appoint an army general as the next federal security minister? Is it wise to give the military so much responsibility for public security tasks? Should the navy have been given control of Mexico’s ports?
They are some of the difficult questions President López Obrador might be contemplating in light of the arrest in the United States of former defense minister Salvador Cienfuegos on drug trafficking and money laundering charges.
Despite pledging to gradually withdraw the military from the streets when he took office in late 2018, López Obrador published a decree in May ordering the armed forces to continue carrying out public security tasks for another four years.
López Obrador has repeatedly portrayed the army and navy as trustworthy, corruption-free institutions despite evidence to the contrary. Those qualities make them apt for the execution of key government tasks such as public security and infrastructure construction, he has argued.
But the arrest of Cienfuegos, army chief during the entirety of former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s 2012-2018 government, raises awkward questions about the president’s reliance on the military, according to a report by the news agency Reuters.
It said that the detention of the former defense minister at Los Angeles airport last Thursday “sent shockwaves through the political establishment and embarrassed a once highly trusted institution.”
Reuters also said the arrest of the former army chief poses a threat to relations between the government and the military.
A rift between the two would place López Obrador in a very difficult position.
“He has placed his entire political capital on making his political project work through the armed forces,” Falko Ernst, senior Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group, told Reuters.
“If he steers away from that, there’s no one else to turn to right now. He doesn’t have many other options left.”
Peña Nieto and then defense minister Cienfuegos, now in a US jail facing drug charges.
After Cienfuegos’ arrest, the president said he had complete confidence in the current army and navy chiefs, asserting that he vetted them personally and could vouch for their honesty.
Nevertheless, he committed to a “cleansing” of the army in order to remove any officials who might have colluded with the former general, a pledge at odds with his previous declarations of confidence in the security force.
Although López Obrador publicly remains committed to using the armed forces to tackle the high levels of violent crime, unnamed officials told Reuters that he may discard plans to appoint military officials to top civilian security roles in his government.
The news agency reported that before Cienfuegos was taken into custody, speculation was growing that the president would replace current Security Minister Alfonso Durazo, who has indicated that he plans to contest next year’s gubernatorial election in Sonora, with a general.
But López Obrador would have to “pay a high political price” to appoint a military official to head up a civilian security department, said a senior police official who described Cienfuegos’ arrest as a “game changer.”
Analysts have used similarly robust language to describe the detention of the erstwhile defense minister.
César Gutiérrez Priego, a lawyer who specializes in military matters, said the arrest deals a “very heavy blow” to the image of the army and the morale of military personnel, while León Krauze, a columnist for the newspaper El Universal, said the apprehension of Cienfuegos will have “profound implications” for the army, the former and current governments and the bilateral relationship between Mexico and the United States.
In light of Cienfuegos’ arrest, criminal justice researcher Layda Negrete questioned why López Obrador and his two most recent predecessors, Peña Nieto and Felipe Calderón – who launched the so-called war on drugs in December 2006 – placed so much faith in the military.
Writing in El Universal, Negrete charged that the former presidents had – and López Obrador currently has – a “fanciful belief” that si está de verde no muerde, which roughly translates as, “If they’re in green uniforms they can do no wrong.”
With that prevailing view, the three presidents failed to implement accountability mechanisms to keep the armed forces in check, she wrote.
Thus in 2020 “there is a lack of impartial and effective supervision mechanisms” for the military, Negrete said. “We’ve given them a blank check.”
The researcher contended that the problem is “clear” – any person who is authorized to carry out security tasks and who is not subjected to effective oversight will face the temptation of colluding with organized crime.
Criminal justice researcher Negrete: ‘We’ve given the military a blank check.’
Low-ranking military personnel and generals are “human beings that make mistakes,” Negrete added. “With weapons and power and without supervision, they will be more prone to make more and more serious mistakes.”
Negrete also noted that Calderón’s decision to deploy the army to the nation’s streets almost 14 years ago, and the perpetuation of the strategy by Peña Nieto and López Obrador – despite the latter’s claim that he favors a hugs, not bullets, approach – has not improved the security situation.
“There is not more security, there are not fewer human rights violations and there is not less corruption. The lack of accountability is what creates a favorable atmosphere for collusion with cartels, torture, mass extrajudicial killings and excessive spending on [military-led] public projects,” she wrote.
“With [the arrest of] Cienfuegos, the vulnerability of a system — not a single person — is exposed. Andrés Manuel López Obrador shouldn’t wait for the results of foreign investigations against our compatriots [former security minister Genaro García Luna is also in U.S. custody] to act,” Negrete said.
“The prosecution of serious crimes cannot be optional. … Our president doesn’t need the support of foreign governments to act nor does he need the approval of the people. He needs his own resolution to extinguish the fire at home.”
