"Commissioner Castillo's Strategy Is Bullying, Bully, Bully, Bully"

Clean cut, photogenic, well educated, smooth talking and articulate - Alfredo Castillo has always been the "go to guy" when EPN needed someone to put out fires and put the damper on potential scandals.  

None of the scandals that he managed for the President touched or tarnished the perception that the press and the public held for him as a honest forthright spokesperson.

But he has never been put into a situation as volatile as the situation in Michoacan when Pena Nieto created (by fiat) a Commission for Peace and Security and the Integral Development of Michoacán, and appointed Castillo as Commissioner.  

He effectively took over the powers of state government in Michoacan in January of this year. and he was thrown into the public spotlight for the first time.  As Commissioner, some call him Viceroy, he seems to be causing more fires than he is putting out.

As  reported in the publication la Journal,  in an article written by Arturo Cano,  Selene Vázquez,  Independent Deputy in Michoacán State Legislature, is quoted as saying  Castillo's strategy is summarized in one word that she repeats:
 
 "Bully, bully and bully."

With a long career [at the national level] in the PRD [Party of the Democratic Revolution], Vázquez left the PRD after the last presidential election and is now the Independent Deputy in the Michoacán Legislature. She is perhaps the politician closest to the self-defense groups (she is credited with the idea of ​​the movement "I Am Self-Defense," that will meet on Wednesday, May 28, in the Siqueiros Polyforum in Mexico City). 

 "He Threatens Everyone": Deputies

In her role as Deputy, Vázquez voted against the forfeiture law recently passed by the Michoacán Legislature. She gives her reasons:

    "Before it was approved (May 8), there was a meeting of the Commissioner and PRI Deputies. One of them told me: 'He yelled at us; it isn't worth it. He threatens all of us'."

Independent Deputy Vázquez continues:
 
"He told them that he had more photos and videos of La Tuta, that the Congress was useless, and that they were not helping the President's strategy." 

(dd; yes it has been photo-shopped)

The Commissioner's main complaint was that the Legislature had not approved the forfeiture law, which he himself and Governor Fausto Vallejo announced last February.

Before meeting with the PRI, Castillo met with PAN Deputies in early May.

Someone had to point out the small detail that the State Legislature had not received any initiative [draft bill] on the subject. The deficiency was resolved immediately. The day after the meetings with legislators, they presented the

    "initiative as a matter of opinion, as if it had already been studied, read, dealt with by the Deputies. It was approved by the PRI and the PAN without reserve."

Their haste can be explained by what a PRI Deputy said to Vázquez:

    "Very agitated, he asked me, 'Can they put a Deputy in jail?'

    "I answered, 'Yes.'

    "You can imagine what he threatened them with."

The PRI Deputy also asked if they could disappear the powers of the state of Michoacán:

    "I replied that, definitely, they need the helping hand of their PAN and PRD allies in the Senate, but regarding the powers of the State, yes, they can. Imagine what fear they put into their fellow PRI members, which forced them to take, without an opinion, a law that was not discussed. It is very serious."

The new forfeiture law (the haste is not understandable, given that the same draft set a deadline of 60 days for its entry into force), was given to the Deputies only 40 minutes before the vote.

 La Jornada: The vox populi [voice of the people] speaks of "Viceroy Castillo."

    "A species of vice-consul or viceroy. All the instruments of power are at his service. If it is necessary to put Hipólito in jail, a crime is invented, you let him stew in jail for two months, then you promise him that you're going to get him out, and you even promise him, as his attorney said, that he is going to be governor. The institutions become an instrument for forcing a peace that does not exist in Michoacán."

La Jornada: Now the charges against José Manuel Mireles must be added.

    "Today Castillo can play at embracing Hipólito, but it was he who, on national television, said that Hipólito was involved in two murders. He announced it the same way he announces everything, because he likes being on TV.

    "Although the day he wanted to close the fair he left after the shortest jeers of his life, because he couldn't bear more than 20 seconds of being shouted down."

La Jornada: He did something similar with José Manuel Mireles.
 
"What he did was shameless. If they tell you on the news program "Channel of Stars" that Mireles held a head as a trophy and there are photos ... It turns out that it isn't so; it turns out that the photo is of a body [intact] that does not have the head detached, but the image is what remains. In this war there have been so many dead that this scene can be repeated 20 times, and that picture, too, and not just with him, but for example with El Pantera and others who have fallen."

Accusing Mora and Mireles in the media, says the Deputy, "backfired" on the Commissioner, so

    "he starts backpedaling with his rhetoric. Then, he who accused [Mireles] of having a head as a trophy, four, five days later, he [Castillo] says definitely, that they [Mora and Mireles] are going to register in the rural police, and that Mireles asked him to register other of his boys [bodyguards]."

Secretary of Social Development in the administration of former Michoacán Governor Leonel Godoy, Vázquez judges that on this issue the Commissioner has acted in a "ridiculous" manner.

    "But it's a media war, into which the media fall, because they are also part of the toolkit that power has for beating up on a movement in order to do and undo, without being accountable for abusing all the institutions of the State."

The Commissioner Against Michoacán's Movers and Shakers

A few weeks ago, Alfredo Castillo, Federal Commissioner for Michoacán, asked the priest José Luis Segura, pastor of La Ruana, to accompany him to a meeting that he was to have self-defense leaders at the prison constructed in that community.

Segura has been the parish priest twice in La Ruana, and he is knows the locals very well. He knows what he's talking about when he says:

    "I had never seen the people here afraid of anyone, but they fear Commissioner Castillo."

Alfredo Castillo didn't just impose on Michoacán's Secretary of Public Security and the State Attorney General. Lest there be any doubt about who holds the reins, he also installed one of his cohorts, Óscar Juárez Davis, as Undersecretary of Finance. A member of the Michoacán Cabinet says:

    "They imposed him [Óscar Juárez Davis] on the Governor, and he controls all federal resources, which are nearly all [Michoacán's resources, since the states receive most financial resources from the federal government]."

The same official believes that former Acting Governor Jesús Reyna, the most powerful PRI member in local politics for the past 20 years, fell out of favor "because he got in the Commissioner's way."

No sector of Michoacán has escaped the Commissioner's sword--neither the bullied Michoacán government, nor the subdued Deputies [State Legislature], nor the co-opted and threatened self-defense members. The official adds:

    "When he arrived [at a banquet] with the public notaries, he told them, 'I'm not staying to dine with you, because you are not going to like what I came to tell you'."

Meanwhile, Deputy Selene Vázquez relates Castillo's attendance at the swearing-in of the new leadership of entrepreneurs:

  "He ended up by saying that there were white-collar criminals. All the instruments of power serve one end, which is to discredit, intimidate, beat up on and pretend to administer justice without making it a reality."

La Jornada: With all this going on, where are the people of Michoacán?

  "Yes, where are those of us from Michoacan? When Castillo leaves, where are we Michoacanos going to be? How are we going to know what sticky mess he left us?

    "We have not been involved. I have asked in the State Legislature that we hold meetings, participate in decisions, but it hasn't been possible."

La Jornada: Because everyone is terrified.

  "It is political terrorism."

A few weeks ago, Alfredo Castillo, Federal Commissioner for Michoacán, asked the priest José Luis Segura, pastor of La Ruana, to accompany him to a meeting that he was to have self-defense leaders at the prison constructed in that community.

Segura has been the parish priest twice in La Ruana, and he is knows the locals very well. He knows what he's talking about when he says:

  "I had never seen the people here afraid of anyone, but they fear Commissioner Castillo."