Did López Obrador’s meeting with a drug trafficker exist?

Recent news has led me to dig into my memory of past times and distant coverage. Recently, reports about United States investigations into alleged links between the campaigns of the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and the Sinaloa Cartel transported me back 18 years.

Now, a passage in the new book by journalist Anabel Hernández that examines these links and reveals an alleged meeting between López Obrador and the drug trafficker Sergio Villarreal Barragán, “El Grande”, took me back to those memories to locate when it happened. , on June 15, 2006 in the city of Gómez Palacio, Durango.

My conclusion is that it couldn’t have happened.

I make a clarification: in the book there are details about money from drug trafficking that reached López Obrador’s campaign in 2006 and that are beyond doubt.

On the one hand, the links between El Grande and businessman Francisco “Pancho” León, who was a candidate for the Senate of the same coalition led by the PRD that nominated López Obrador for the presidency, and who disappeared months later. On the other, the presence of Jaime Meraz, leader of taxi drivers, former local leader of the PRD, linked to drug trafficking, who was murdered weeks before the disappearance of Pancho León.

But the book exposes, based only on an anonymous witness, that López Obrador and El Grande met at a motel in Gómez Palacio on June 15, 2006 so that the head of operations of the Sinaloa Cartel in La Laguna gave him a suitcase. with half a million pesos to the presidential candidate.

The meeting seemed strange to me. Not because of the details of the place and geography of Gómez Palacio, accessible to anyone who has passed through there, but because of time. Looking back on the coverage of López Obrador’s tour that day, there was simply no time for a clandestine getaway.

I remember that tour well. It was the last from López Obrador to La Laguna, for a great closing in the dry bed of the Nazas River, on the limits of Torreón and Gómez Palacio, in the heart of the Lagunera Region. More than 30,000 people were transported in dozens of trucks. The Arrolladora Banda Limón entertained the event. The waste was the trademark of Pancho León, who had placed 10 Hummer trucks painted with the yellow of the PRD and who did not separate himself from the candidate at the stage.

At that time I was editorial director of El Siglo de Torreón and that day I was behind López Obrador and some people close to him to give me an interview. I already had an agreement for the next day with Felipe Calderón, who would be visiting La Laguna.

In her book, Anabel Hernández does not specify the time of López Obrador’s supposed meeting with El Grande, in which Pancho León and General Audomaro Martínez, then in charge of the candidate’s security, would also have participated. I was curious to reconstruct the visit of the then candidate and I dug up the memories of that day.

López Obrador arrived on the afternoon of Thursday, June 15, at the Torreón airport and went directly to the event on the river bed. On the way he was followed by supporters until he reached the temple. There was no way to detour to a motel to receive a suitcase of dollars.

Below the stage I spoke with Manuel Camacho Solís, with whom I had spoken in the days prior to the interview. He told me that they would go to the hotel from the event, that I could look for him there, so when López Obrador got off the stage I went ahead to the hotel.

According to a United States government investigation published in February, at the end of that event López Obrador would have received a call from Édgar Valdez Villarreal, alias “La Barbie”, who at that time was still working with El Grande for the Beltrán Leyva brothers.

It was around eight at night when the candidate arrived. It was the Fiesta Inn hotel in the Galerías shopping center, 11 kilometers from the motel where the supposed meeting with El Grande was held. Again, there was no time.

I greeted López Obrador in the lobby, but he denied me the interview. I went back to the newspaper to write the chronicle (which is cited as a source in the book). He later learned that the candidate had dined at the hotel with relatives of one of his closest friends. The next day López Obrador left La Laguna.

The only indication of the time the meeting with El Grande may have occurred is when Hernández mentions that an agency where El Grande offered to buy a Suburban was already closed to take the half million dollars to Mexico City. That would put the meeting after 6 or 7 p.m. At that time, the candidate was in the booth. From there he went directly to the hotel.

Unless López Obrador had sneaked out of the hotel at midnight and traveled 11 kilometers to meet El Grande, there is simply no window of time in that tour of the 15th to Torreón and Gómez Palacio for the candidate to take a getaway.

The meeting is supported only by the statement of a witness, identified as T5, but does not appear, for example, in the United States government investigations that are based on testimonies from El Grande.

However, the nomination of Pancho León as a PRD candidate in 2006 and the presence of Jaime Meraz in that PRD campaign in 2006 sheds strong indications of links with organized crime, considering that less than a year later León was disappeared and Meraz was murdered. . They were also the first signs of drug violence in La Laguna.

Going back 18 years to delve into memories is an interesting exercise, but in the end it may be useless. Those who believe that López Obrador’s campaigns were infiltrated by drug traffickers will take a meeting with a drug trafficker as credible. Those who think that the president would never do that will never believe it.

Subscribe to the EL PAÍS Mexico newsletter and to whatsapp channel and receive all the key information on current events in this country.

_