AMLO Claims US Evidence Against Gen. Cienfuegos was Fabricated

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador hypothesized that the United States investigation against the former Secretary of Public Security, Genaro García Luna, and the former Secretary of National Defense, Salvador Cienfuegos, is totally different because the latter case could be the revenge of United States agencies because the Mexican Army did not allow itself to be infiltrated like the Navy in Mexico.

He explained that in the case of Cienfuegos, the United States sent them the entire file "and our attention was drawn to the fact that it was fabricated, that there was no evidence."

– How did they know, if a trial was not carried out to find out if, in fact, that evidence was real?

"Ah, of course," replied the president. "It was a five-year investigation in the United States and here in two months it was determined that it was not," he insisted.

"No, but it is that since a high-level official arrives, it is very likely that the agencies in the United States will open a file, be it the CIA, or the DEA. Because it is a way of control and submission, it is that they could use that as revenge" he answered.

When asked what argument was used to request that the charges against Cienfuegos be dropped? And if it was not a diplomatic and political matter that was above the interest of a criminal investigation in the United States, AMLO responded:

"No, it's that we weren't going to let an injustice be committed. We had the evidence in our hands and we analyzed it and it's on the internet," he said.

He explained that during the Calderón government, the DEA and the CIA got in "as if it were their house, they got into the kitchen," so the sovereignty of Mexico was not respected during that period.

The President also asserted that "they began to dominate the Secretary of the Navy, which was a secretariat before Calderón dedicated it to taking care of the ports, the coasts, and other activities, and suddenly they turned it into a secretariat whose main purpose was to act as an elite body to confront drug trafficking directed from the United States".

When making the difference between the Navy and the National Defense, the Mexican president spoke of his hypothesis:

"They wanted to do the same with the Army and couldn't because the Army has a different trajectory. Let's not forget that the Army emerged with the Revolution, which is a nationalist Army, and since they couldn't, then they were dissatisfied," for that reason, he affirmed, there are officials who have declared that they have more confidence in the Army than in the Navy.

General Cienfuegos was at the head of the Army as the Secretary of Defense from 2012-2018 (just after Genaro Garcia Luna had retired). Cienguefos oversaw the operations regarding the Autodefensas, or self-defense groups emerging in Michoacan and other areas. A scandal occurred as he sought to block the interviews of Army soldiers regarding the 43 Missing Students case in Ayotzinapa; especially in the case of the deaths and tortures of several suspects. He also sought to have the Army removed from the streets of Mexico as an enforcement arm but obtained a legal framework for their operations, and gave lectures about ways to combat drug trafficking.

In 2018, General Cienfuegos received the Legion of Merit award from the United States. A year later he was indicted and in October 2020 he was arrested. The charges were later dropped in the US and he returned to Mexico in 2021 where no charges have since been filed.

Sources Processo