The position of the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, has just become complicated.
This Wednesday, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a formal accusation of drug trafficking against the governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, and nine other officials, including a pro-government senator, Enrique Inzunza Cázarez.
In the long history of disagreements between the United States and Mexico, something like this had not happened: that incumbent and popularly elected leaders were accused and sought by the northern authorities.
Rocha, who rejected the charges, has been the main ally in Sinaloa for decades of the movement that elevated Sheinbaum, the so-called Fourth Transformation.
Former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador called him into his coalition since the 90s. And when in 2011 he founded the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), the now all-powerful government party, Rocha was the key articulator of the operation in Sinaloa.
It is not the first time that Rocha has been the protagonist of a major scandal, but until now the former union member and former leftist professor has survived, in part thanks to his link with AMLO.
This time, however, the scandal looks different: not only is it an indictment by a US prosecutor with access to inside information, but it comes at a critical time for the bilateral relationship.
Sheinbaum is currently managing a difficult negotiation with the United States on all issues: security, migration and the economy. The wanted Free Trade Agreement (TMEC) between both countries and Canada is being renegotiated these days.
Donald Trump’s aggressive agenda has posed endless challenges for Sheinbaum, who until now has given the impression of knowing how to handle the situation with a “cool head”, high-impact concessions and nationalist messages aimed at Mexicans.
Every time Trump says that organized crime controls Mexico, Sheinbaum responds with a conciliatory, friendly message that calls for “cooperation without subordination.”
It has been a balancing exercise between pragmatism towards the north and the defense of sovereignty at home. An exercise that has now suffered a shake-up.
“We are going to continue supporting Sinaloa”
When Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada was deceived and sent to the United States to be arrested, the co-founder and leader of the Sinaloa Cartel was on his way, he said, to meet with Rocha.
“El Mayo” – as well as the children of his former ally, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman, already convicted – pleaded guilty in the United States and claimed to have collaborated with Mexican politicians.
Although the Secretary of Foreign Affairs responded to the accusation of the US Department of Justice this Wednesday with the argument that “it does not have elements of evidence”, it is likely that the testimonies of “El Mayo” and “los Chapitos”, among other drug traffickers seeking sentence reductions, are part of the evidentiary material.
Rocha said on Wednesday that he “will demonstrate with all force” that the accusations “lack any veracity or foundation,” and described them as “an insidious attack directed at Morena and our highest political and exceptional Mexican reference: former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.”
This week, when Sheinbaum was asked about the news that Rocha’s US visa had been cancelled, the president said she had no knowledge.
And, in 2024, when asked about Rocha’s alleged meeting with “El Mayo”, he said: “(Rocha) has enormous intelligently-liked support within Sinaloa, people love him very much. He gave his explanation upfront and direct, and we are going to continue supporting Sinaloa.”
Since “El Mayo” was arrested, Sinaloa has been the scene of a fierce war between factions of the Sinaloa Cartel seeking to fill the power vacuum. More than 2,400 people have died and nearly 2,000 have been missing.
The Sheinbaum government, led by the Secretary of Security, Omar García Harfuch, has made pacifying the state a priority and claims to be achieving a reduction in homicides.
The same at the national level: the government redoubled the fight against the cartels. And it has achieved important blows: they killed the most wanted drug trafficker, arrested his possible successor, dismantled hundreds of laboratories and arrested thousands of defendants.
All this to appease the pressure coming from Washington. But Washington still wants more.
The most difficult moment
But it is not from there, from the north, where all of Sheinbaum’s problems come from.
Morena’s motley, huge and powerful party seems increasingly difficult to control for the president, who has had to make changes in the movement’s leadership in search of mitigating the dissidence of those who see too much complicity with Washington, among other things.
Since she came to power, it was known that the absence of the party’s founder, AMLO, would be a challenge for Sheinbaum, who is more technocrat than politician, and the Justice Department’s accusation comes just when that tension is at its most complicated point.
Last week, two agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) died in the state of Chihuahua in what was reported as an accident following operations to dismantle drug laboratories in which they supposedly did not participate.
Sheinbaum said he was not aware of their presence in the country, and recalled that the law prohibits the participation of foreign agents in operations in Mexico.
Beyond the details, which are becoming known in dribs and drabs, the case showed that Sheinbaum does not control the agenda of the Mexican governors or Trump’s agenda in Mexico.
It demonstrated, then, what the Rocha case just corroborated: that Sheinbaum is trapped between pressure from Washington and the nationalist expectations of the unsuitable Morenista.
Rocha cannot be defended without diplomatic cost nor can he be sacrificed without internal political cost.
So much storm at the same time complicates the balance.
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