‘Barbie’ cartel head ‘funded’ Mexico’s leader
President received $2m from criminal infamous for taping beheadings of rivals, investigators claim
‘How are we going to talk about fighting drugs if one of their agencies is leaking information and damaging me?’
MEXICO’S president was backed in his efforts to win power by a powerful cartel leader known as “Barbie”, according to reports.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, received nearly $2million (£1.6million) in cash for his first presidential campaign in 2006 from Edgar Valdéz Villarreal, a notoriously violent leader of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, according to an investigation by three news outlets including Pro Publica.
The money was said to be part of a deal to help the cartel’s criminal operations once he gained power. AMLO lost his first election campaign by less than half a per cent to conservative rival Felipe Calderón, whose subsequent military clampdown on the cartels triggered a bloody conflict that claimed an estimated 120,000 lives.
When the result was announced, Valdéz Villarreal was so incensed he sent a convoy to kidnap the chairman of the electoral tribunal that had confirmed the vote count, reports Propublica.
Nicknamed “La Barbie”, Valdéz Villarreal, who was infamous for videotaping the beheadings of his rivals, only called off the convoy after learning that the tribunal headquarters were being guarded by the Mexican military.
AMLO then staged a months-long sit-in in central Mexico City to protest the result of the election which, he claimed without evidence, had been stolen from him. The Leftist populist was accompanied by thousands of supporters who installed tents in the city’s vast main square.
Valdéz Villarreal, 50, reportedly provided food for the protesters. He subsequently made international headlines after his 2010 arrest when, handcuffed, he smirked as Mexican police paraded him before photographers. He is now serving a 49-year prison sentence in Florida.
The lax approach from AMLO, to the cartels has long concerned Washington. Before eventually winning the presidency in 2018, he vowed to reduce drug violence by halting law enforcement’s confrontations with the traffickers, with a campaign slogan of “hugs not bullets.”
Responding to the report by US news outlets, AMLO said US officials should apologise for the “baseless allegations” which he suggested could harm talks on migration and drugs.
“I don’t accept this. What I want is for the US government to take a stand,” the Mexican president said at his daily morning press briefing. “If they have no proof, they have to apologise.”
“President [Joe] Biden has to find out about this.
“How are we going to sit down at a table and talk about fighting drugs if one of their agencies is leaking information and damaging me? How are we going to talk about migration, how are we going to talk about fighting drugs or fentanyl?”
The allegations highlight how close Mexico, Latin America’s second largest economy, is to becoming a narco-state, with the brutal cartels penetrating the highest levels of politics and even seeking to control the country’s counter-narcotics policies.
Founded by cousins of Guzmán, Mexico’s most powerful drug kingpin until his 2017 extradition to the US, the Beltrán Leyva cartel was long allied with his Sinaloa cartel, until a blood-spattered falling out led to its demise. The links between AMLO’S campaign and the Beltrán Leyva cartel were documented during a highly sensitive DEA investigation, with officials split over whether they should risk a diplomatic dispute with Mexico, from where most cocaine and fentanyl enters the United States.
“The corruption is so much a part of the fabric of drug trafficking in Mexico that there’s no way you can pursue the drug traffickers without going after the politicians and the military and police officials who support them,” Raymond Donovan, who recently retired as the DEA’S head of operations, told Propublica.
The DEA did not respond to The Telegraph’s request for comment. AMLO has denied the accusations, insisting on Wednesday that there was “no proof.”
He added that the claims came from “vile defamers, even if they are prize-winning journalists”.