When Omar García Harfuch arrived at the Mexico City police force at the end of 2019, the situation was complicated. Insecurity in the capital was overwhelming. The previous year had ended with more than 1,500 homicides, an all-time high. Nearly 300 people had been kidnapped and robberies of homes, vehicles and pedestrians, violent or not, amounted to more than 120,000, according to official data. Harfuch, who had just headed the local prosecutor’s investigative police, had a very specific task: dismantle the violent criminal groups operating in the city.
The appointment surprised both insiders and outsiders. Harfuch was not part of the political families that had come to power with Morena. Nor was he part of the dying PRD. He lacked a past of social struggle, like his boss, Claudia Sheinbaum. Worse still, he came from one of the most controversial PRI families of the second half of the 20th century, the Barragán-Paniagua. His father and grandfather had been leaders of the regime against which the grassroots left had fought, Sheinbaum among them. And yet…
Five years later, there are no doubts about Harfuch in the entourage of the future president, who has just named him Secretary of Security. On the contrary. The shadows of his past, attributed mainly to his actions in the Ayotzinapa caseseem resolved. At least in the eyes of her boss. Another issue is the crooked noses of old Morena families, the most purist, which even caused her to withdraw from the race for the party’s candidacy in Mexico City. Harfuch, who had won the internal poll, stepped aside without a word.
His image has only improved in recent years. The criminal ambush he suffered in mid-2020, when he was shot hundreds of times on his way to work, cut short much of the internal criticism against him. Harfuch ended up in the hospital, with several bullet wounds in his body. The photos of the police chief, convalescing in the hospital, softened the hardest hearts. In addition, the good results in terms of security in the city, which in 2022 recorded 747 murders, 35 kidnappings and half as many robberies as four years earlier, ended up paving the way for him.
But even before all this, Sheinbaum’s choice made a certain amount of sense. When she took office at the end of 2018, the head of government’s collaborators put her name on the table for the police chief’s post. She then preferred Jesús Orta, a cadre trained in local government in previous years, who had also been a senior officer of the now-defunct Federal Police. But Orta did not last a year in office. An investigation for embezzlement forced Sheinbaum to dismiss him. When she looked around, the head of government saw Harfuch as the ideal option.
The policeman, meanwhile, had done his homework. Harfuch, a career policeman, had begun his six-year term as head of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC) of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR). It had not been a gamble by the new prosecutor, Alejandro Gertz. He had come to the position during the previous administration, headed by the PRI member Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), after a stint in the Federal Police, with which he was in operations and posts in Michoacán and Guerrero. In the months that he and Gertz coincided, the policeman felt out of place, according to a person on his team these years, who speaks on condition of anonymity. “They didn’t ask him to do anything,” he explains.
Harfuch first came to light in the capital. In the first half of 2019, he dedicated the FGR’s efforts and resources to pursuing the criminal leaders of the Unión Tepito and the Fuerza Anti Unión, the criminal groups that generated the most violence in the capital. In May, an operation by the Attorney General’s Office ended with the arrest of the two leaders, alias El Tortas and alias El Jamón. The following month, Harfuch resigned from the AIC. Days later, the capital’s prosecutor, Ernestina Godoy, introduced him as the new head of the local investigative police. Months later, when Sheinbaum removed Orta from the cabinet, Harfuch already seemed like a safe bet.
Madrazos
“When I arrive [a la policía]he would say, ‘look, I only know how to hit people and arrest them, I need you to help me with this or that.’ It was like that,” says one of his collaborators in the capital’s police force. It may seem a bit exaggerated, but the phrase sums up two traits of his character, according to the collaborator: the love of street work, and the ability to recognize his own limits and delegate. “Now it has changed a lot, but in essence it is like that. It is the same now. When he started to sound like a secretary, he would say, ‘well, but three million people voted for me as senator, how am I going to resign from the position?'” he adds.
Both traits call into question Harfuch’s future as head of the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection. The same source points out that the future secretary will have to occupy spaces where he can, either in the FGR, in the National Guard, a security body attached to the Secretariat of Defense, or in his own secretariat, with hardly any agents. What seems difficult is that the police officer will adopt a coordinating role, similar to the one that has been played in recent years by the current secretary of the branch, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, who will assume the Interior Ministry in the new cabinet.
This newspaper reported this week that one of the solutions that the future secretary may seek is to strengthen or create teams within Security and Citizen Protection. Currently, the secretariat has three areas that could serve the new Government. On the one hand, there is the Commission for the Attention of the Crime of Intentional Homicide and the National Anti-Kidnapping Commission. These are spaces with little operational experience but that, with Harfuch, could change, either by incorporating agents from the National Guard, or personnel from other corporations.
Another option is the National Intelligence Center (CNI), an agency attached to Security, currently headed by retired general Audomaro Rodríguez. According to EL PAÍS, the CNI currently has around 5,000 agents, a much smaller force than the one Harfuch has managed in Mexico City, but similar to the one he had in the AIC. This Thursday, the future secretary has indicated that the new Government will strengthen the intelligence and investigation capabilities of the State, precisely through the CNI.
Another option is to look for spaces outside. Claudia Sheinbaum has accepted the definitive transfer of the National Guard to the administrative umbrella of the Army. But it would not be strange if, in the future, she and Harfuch manage to reassign some of their areas to Security and Citizen Protection, mainly those that have to do with intelligence and roads. For the president and her collaborator, increasing control on the roads is a priority, according to sources close to the future cabinet.
In any case, the new government seems little concerned with the power of the Army in matters of security. The source mentioned above in this section points out that Harfuch has earned the respect of the Army and Navy “because he puts his body on the line.” He explains: “They trust him because he knows what it is like to stand in an Oxxo for hours, standing guard. He is not a politician, he is an operative and has worked with Army and Navy commanders in his years in the Federal Police and the old prosecutor’s office.”
And then there are his genes. García Harfuch is no stranger to the military. His grandfather, Marcelino García Barragán, was Secretary of Defense during the government of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970), of infamous memory for the country, for the savage repression against the student movement, symbolized by the Tlatelolco massacre. His father, Javier García Paniagua, headed the Federal Security Directorate in the darkest years of the Dirty War in the country. Without seeming too conflicted, he has tried to distance himself, but his genealogy is part of his book of credentials, whether he likes it or not. For better or worse.
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