Security cooperation will be the main topic of the first meeting of the new Mexican government with the United States. This was announced by President Claudia Sheinbaum, after presenting her administration’s strategy to combat organized crime and confront the wave of violence that is ravaging the country. Sheinbaum spoke of the crisis that Sinaloa is going through, immersed for a month in an internal war between Ismael El Mayo Zambada and Los Chapitos, and made a first call to Washington to clarify the conditions that precipitated the arrest of El Mayo and the objective of the capture operation on July 25. “There is still not enough information,” said the president at La Mañanera. It was also reported that the Secretary of Security, Omar García Harfuch, will travel this Tuesday with other members of the Cabinet to Culiacán to supervise the response of the authorities.
Sheinbaum announced this week that the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, and the US ambassador, Ken Salazar, plan to meet at the Foreign Ministry. The Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador declared a “diplomatic pause” at the end of August, after Salazar questioned the direct election of judges proposed in the judicial reform promoted by the then president, which has cooled contacts between both countries. The president has outlined the line that her government wants to follow to overcome the slump: dealing with the issue of security with a focus on shared responsibilities, especially in Sinaloa, where the capture of El Mayo unleashed a shock wave of violence.
The president also hinted at a change of manners: the representative of the United States will no longer have the right to use the doorknob to the presidential office in the National Palace, as with López Obrador. The president has delegated the management of the bilateral relationship to De La Fuente, who was Mexico’s representative at the United Nations during the previous Administration. Salazar has been reluctant to take responsibility for the conflict between El Mayo and Los Chapitos, former allies under the umbrella of the Sinaloa Cartel. “What we are seeing in Sinaloa is not the fault of the United States,” the ambassador declared on September 20.
However, Mexico has shown signs that patience is beginning to wear thin in the face of Washington’s silence on El Mayo. Sheinbaum was the last to ask for more information, but so did López Obrador and the Attorney General’s Office, which opened its own investigation to clarify what happened in Mexican territory on the day of the arrest. Two and a half months after the capture, neither the Mexican government nor the US government have been able to give a convincing explanation backed by evidence of how one of the most powerful drug lords in the world ended up on a plane bound for Texas and was arrested without a shot being fired.
Sheinbaum also backed the governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha, and confirmed that he is not being investigated by the FGR for the kidnapping of El Mayo by Joaquín Guzmán López, the son of El Chapo, the main line of investigation of the Mexican authorities. “There is no evidence against Governor Rocha,” she said about her party colleague, in the eye of the storm since the capture was announced and after Zambada mentioned that he was “ambushed” after being summoned to a meeting with him. “I am not a criminal. Nobody is investigating me,” Rocha said on Monday. “It will not be resolved in one day,” said the president about Harfuch’s visit to the entity. “Security is a problem that requires shared responsibility and a unified response.”
Source: elpais
