The third anniversary of the Culiacanazo, the episode in which organized crime defeated the Mexican State, could have gone relatively unnoticed, but President Andrés Manuel López Obrador could not contain himself and yesterday spoke of the public works that have been carried out in Badiraguato, the municipality in the Sierra where Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, Ismael El Mayo Zambada, head of the Sinaloa Cartel, and Rafael Caro Quintero, one of the founders of the Guadalajara Cartel, were born. There was no need for it, but since the president is not a fool, one can think that what he did was make fun of everyone, as he usually does.
But beyond his motivations, the culiacanazo will be one of the moments that will define López Obrador’s six-year term and will mark him for life. You may not believe this, but it will be so. It demonstrated the inefficiency of the Armed Forces, the incompetence of the Ministry of Public Security, and above all, it was the moment when the president knelt before the Sinaloa Cartel, socializing an attitude that sowed eternal suspicion of his complicity with the organization. López Obrador has always denied it, but his inclination for the Sinaloans has been evident.
He treats him with a respect that he does not give to anyone, and at the time he put his cabinet to work to explore ways for El Chapo Guzmán to finish his sentence in Mexico. The Sinaloa Cartel is exempt from any federal offensive, and its leadership and structure are intact. In Badiraguato, he presumed, he is building highways that cross the mountains, which, if one knows the region, could be interpreted as opening up better ways for the cartel to efficiently send fentanyl and other drugs to the US market. And not only that. The only serious hydraulic project of the administration is in Sinaloa.
The Culiacanazo surprised many because of the way the Sinaloa Cartel militias doubled the Armed Forces to free Ovidio Guzmán López, son of Chapo. Looking back, three years ago there was a clash in the government, between those who wanted to stop him, responding to an extradition request from the United States, and those who sought to sabotage the act. The Attorney General’s Office is investigating who sabotaged the operation, but the authors are public: the Secretary of National Defense and the National Guard, for planning the operation, and the president for canceling it without resuming it to date.
The planning reveals much of what happened that day. Against all knowledge, it was not done at dawn, when the defenses go down, but at noon, with all the movement in an area with high traffic. Nor was a security perimeter established to stop the expected rescue attempt, and checkpoints were placed so vulnerable that when the criminals arrived, they greeted them and let them pass. There was no extraction plan, an essential requirement in this type of operation, to quickly remove Guzmán López from the place where he was detained and to remove him from Culiacán.
The command that arrested him belonged to the specialized units of the Federal Police, which captured him quickly and without a bullet. They were in the living room of his house with the young man sitting, without receiving any instructions. Those who intervened in his arrest did not carry it out because he never left his house, limiting himself to merely applying the doctrine of hugs not shots, so that he would “persuade” – a verb used by General Sandoval – his brothers, mainly Iván Archivaldo, to stop attacking the military and allow the arrest. His brothers ignored him and doubled their threats. The command that had captured him asked for reinforcements to get him out of there, but they never arrived. Neither did the Blackhawk helicopter’s request to extract it. The only order they received was to release him.
The timeline released by the Secretary of Defense, General Luis Cresencio Sandoval on October 18, three years ago, does not reflect a “hasty action” as the cabinet said the day before, but the incompetence of whoever designed the operation. and the lack of field knowledge and information of those who approved it. The architect of Culiacanazo, General Luis Rodríguez Bucio, head of the National Guard under the formal orders of the former Secretary of Security, Alfonso Durazo, although in reality under the command of General Sandoval, did not appear at the press conference where the route of the defeat of the institutions.
The description of how the events unfolded that day are the x-ray of a government that is strategically, tactically, and operationally incapable, and that, faced with the blackmail of criminals to confront them militarily, accepted their conditions. Durazo justified that they did not use firepower because it would have meant starting an armed struggle and the loss of many lives. Days later, the president used the same argument to explain the release of Guzmán López. It was a valid pretext, but what was inconceivable is that they would forget about it. There was no accusation against him, Durazo explained, and they simply let him go into the mountains and continue his criminal activities.
The Attorney General’s Office will determine, although it will keep it secret, if the actions of the military responded to collusion with the Sinaloa Cartel, but the planning of the operation leaves no doubt that, by omission or commission, it sabotaged the mission. The president is in a worse box, because having acknowledged several times in public that he ordered the release of Guzmán López, he admitted several crimes by him and his cabinet, having lied, being omitted and confirming that they failed to fulfill their responsibilities. The operation could have continued, outside of Culiacán, but by suspending it the president sabotaged a successful ending.
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If López Obrador believes that all this will be forgotten and violations of the law in Culiacanazo will go unpunished, he is wrong. Proceedings are likely to be brought against those involved, although the president continues to laugh at everyone, for now.
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