On Labor Day 2024, Morena party members in Tierra Caliente, Michoacán, rose early to prepare for the most anticipated event of the year. The following day, May 2nd, presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum would hold a rally in the main square of Apatzingán, the epicenter of the battle between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Carteles Unidos.
Dozens of Morena supporters had taken advantage of the holiday to decorate the plaza. While some hung maroon ribbons, others pruned the flowerbeds and painted the edges of the sidewalks. Still others invited their neighbors, walking door to door. The mood among the supporters of López Obrador was electric. A week earlier, “La Doctora” (as she was known) had once again defeated her rival Xóchitl Gálvez in a presidential debate, and polls placed her, on average, 20 points ahead of second place. Another six-year term for Morena seemed unstoppable.
The electoral defeat didn’t worry Morena’s members. Nor were they anxious about the low turnout. Even less concerned was the fact that the Bishop of Apatzingán, Cristóbal Ascencio García, wanted to boycott the presidential candidate’s event to prolong his dispute with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Only one thing kept the organizers on edge: the possibility of organized crime making its presence felt at the event. The mere image of a shootout among the attendees or an attack against the soon-to-be president kept the promoters awake at night.
The day before, April 30, two bodies, each with a gunshot wound to the head, were discovered in an abandoned house on the Apatzingán highway. And hours before that discovery, in the heart of the town, a furniture store owner was murdered by a hitman demanding payment of extortion money. Organized crime wanted to make its presence felt on the electoral agenda, and Mayor José Luis Cruz Lucatero’s call for a truce between cartels had failed.
Perhaps that’s why, at midday, the work stopped. From Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, the Morena party members received disheartening news: The Doctor had decided, at the last minute, not to visit Apatzingán and to move the rally to Chilchota. Afterward, she would continue on to Zamora and Uruapan. The official version insisted that the change in the schedule wasn’t related to insecurity, but rather to a new strategy to visit as many people as possible in the final stretch of the campaign. Almost no one in town believed them.
Dejected, the organizers dismantled the event. Ribbons, balloons, confetti—everything was stored at the local Morena headquarters. Most looked sad, although deep down they also felt a quiet relief: rumors were circulating that a well-known extortionist in the area wanted to reach Sheinbaum to deliver a letter with unknown contents. A high-risk maneuver for the presidential candidate. Fortunately for the residents of Apatzingán, César Alejandro Sepúlveda Arellano’s plan, nicknamed “El Botox,” was thwarted by the cancellation of the rally.
Omar García Harfuch, Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, at the National Palace press conference.
Omar García Harfuch, Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection. | Photo: Ariel Ojeda
Around that time, Claudia Sheinbaum was confident of victory. All the polls predicted a smooth win. So, in the midst of the presidential campaign, the Morena party candidate convened her team with one instruction: that each future cabinet secretary present a work plan for the first 100 days of the next six-year term.
At the table was Omar García Harfuch, who was on track to become a senator but was already considering requesting a leave of absence from his Senate seat to become the next Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection.
The former Mexico City police chief got to work and drafted a complex plan that would run from October 1, 2024, to January 7, 2025. The document would implicitly end President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s “Hugs, Not Bullets” strategy and inaugurate the “Zero Impunity” era of Mexico’s first female president. In addition to outlining his priorities as the person in charge of the country’s security, it would define his style of policing in a left-wing government.
Source: milenio
