The stakes involved in President Sheinbaum’s (selective) actions to investigate and prosecute the corruption and criminal networks in which some members of the ruling coalition have participated could not be higher. At issue, nothing more and nothing less, is the direction in which the consolidation of Mexico’s new political regime will move forward.
Last week, I analyzed the three crucial areas for Mexico’s political stability that will be shaped by the decisions the Sheinbaum administration makes in the fight against fuel theft: the bilateral relationship with the United States (which could be one of greater subordination or greater autonomy), the balance of power and the unwritten rules of civil-military relations, as well as the balance of power within the ruling coalition (and, consequently, the level of influence that mafia cadres will have within Morena and the government).
I will dedicate this column to outlining the strategic areas that will be influenced by the decisions the president and her inner circle make in the case of Adán Augusto López and Hernán Bermúdez Requena.
First, a clarification: it is evident that the president will not cross certain red lines and that actions against corruption, influence peddling, and the criminal ties of members of the ruling coalition will always be selective and arbitrary, balancing partisan considerations (increasing the presidential influence over the party), electoral considerations (not affecting Morena’s popularity), political considerations (not touching sensitive issues for political stability or affecting AMLO or his inner circle), and even personal considerations (not persecuting people close to Sheinbaum or those to whom the president owes political debts).
The case of Bermúdez Requena, who was both a police leader and a criminal boss in Tabasco, and of Adán Augusto López, who has shamelessly washed his hands of the situation despite having elevated the latter figure to the Tabasco government, is a perfect example of what my colleague and security expert, Armando Vargas, calls a “criminal regime.”
Vargas argues that “a criminal regime has the following characteristics: i) criminal organizations hold maximum authority, ii) organized crime regulates any political, economic, and social activity at will, seeking its organizational strengthening, iii) they operate outside of any written norms, and iv) they lack temporal and geographic limits.” Tabasco, under Adán and Bermúdez, is a clear example of these conditions, but it is not the only case. There are many other states and municipalities that could be considered criminal regimes in Mexico.
In the case of Tabasco, the president chose to undermine the criminal regime by persecuting Bermúdez and weakening Adán politically, since the media offensive against López Hernández could not have occurred without the approval of the National Palace, although the senator apparently enjoys guaranteed legal impunity. At the same time, it is clear that the president does not consider it necessary or pertinent to dismantle other criminal regimes, for example, Sinaloa, (mis)governed by Rubén Rocha.
The problem these cases shed light on is the intertwining of the political sphere and the criminal arena. They are no longer separate fields, which sometimes negotiate and interact; rather, they are interconnected and interdependent spaces. Simply put: political activity increasingly depends on organized crime, and, in turn, criminal businesses require the active participation of politicians and officials.
This is not a new problem for Morena. The case of Sergio Carmona was there, for anyone who cared to see it. The new development is that the mafia elements of the ruling coalition were becoming more brazen, had become overly empowered, and were acting autonomously for personal gain.
At the beginning of the six-year term, Humberto Beck warned that, although Sheinbaum’s government, with its legislative supermajorities and judicial reform, seemed all-powerful, its political space for action was actually severely limited from two sides: on the one hand, organized crime and its territorial control, and on the other, the Armed Forces, on which the Mexican state has become dependent.
Source: politica.expansion
