Mexico: A defense minister on a drug cartel’s payroll?
The arrest of a former Mexican defense minister by U.S. authorities has landed here like a bombshell, said Raúl Trejo Delarbre in La Cronica de Hoy (Mexico). Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, who led the defense ministry from 2012 to 2018 under President Enrique Peña Nieto, was busted at Los Angeles International Airport last week on drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration alleges that this pillar of the Mexican establishment is actually El Padrino (the Godfather)— the shadowy and powerful protector of the vicious H-2 drug cartel. In return for hefty payouts, officials claim, the 72-year-old Cienfuegos not only steered military operations away from H-2 but actually sent troops after the cartel’s rivals. In one case, information allegedly supplied by Cienfuegos led to the murder of an H-2 member incorrectly identified as an informant. If these shocking allegations are true, Cienfuegos has conned us all with his frequent and vehement defenses of “the integrity of the Mexican army.” Worse, if he is guilty, there is “a huge gap in the security of the Mexican state.”
Don’t rush to judgment, said Jorge Fernández Menéndez in Excélsior (Mexico). Consider how Cienfuegos was supposedly exposed as El Padrino: The New York Times reports that the DEA intercepted a phone call between two drug traffickers in which one said the mysterious Godfather was on TV that very moment. Agents checked who was on the air and found it was Cienfuegos—thin evidence indeed. And if Cienfuegos really is crooked, why did top Pentagon officials meet with him in Washington two years ago, at the very same time he was being investigated by the DEA? And why would such a powerful man ally himself with such a minor cartel? “It makes no sense.” This arrest smells political. It may be the last effort of U.S. President Donald Trump’s losing campaign to tar honest Mexicans as criminals.
But the case against Cienfuegos looks solid, said Raymundo Riva Palacio in El Financiero (Mexico). U.S. prosecutors say they have thousands of intercepted messages and recordings, “which suggests a long period of intelligence work.” And the fact that they didn’t ask Mexican authorities to conduct the arrest, but waited until Cienfuegos was on U.S. soil, shows they believe that the rot goes deeper than just this one man. It’s a terrible blow to the reputation of the Mexican military, traditionally the most trusted institution in the country. It’s also a major headache for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said Jacobo Garcia in El País (Spain). He has tried to appease Trump and at first seemed content to blame the administration of his predecessor, Peña Nieto, saying any official linked to the Cienfuegos scandal would be suspended until the matter had been investigated. But once he realized that the whole top brass could be smeared, he changed tack and began criticizing U.S. agencies, accusing them of working with untrustworthy cartel sources. The military is “a fundamental pillar” of López Obrador’s authority. Don’t expect him to pry too deeply into its secrets.