A former minister who was considered an architect of Mexico’s war on drugs has been arrested on charges that he allowed the Sinaloa cartel to operate with impunity in exchange for briefcases stuffed with cash.
Genaro García Luna, who oversaw the creation of Mexico’s federal police, was arrested in Texas on Monday.
He helped oversee the militarized crackdown on organized crime which was launched in 2006 by the then president, Felipe Calderón, and has continued with slight modifications ever since.
But according to the indictment against him unsealed on Tuesday, García Luna “received millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel in exchange for providing protection for its drug trafficking activities”.
Calderón sends in the army
Mexico’s “war on drugs” began in late 2006 when the president at the time, Felipe Calderón, ordered thousands of troops on to the streets in response to an explosion of horrific violence in his native state of Michoacán.
Calderón hoped to smash the drug cartels with his heavily militarized onslaught but the approach was counterproductive and exacted a catastrophic human toll. As Mexico’s military went on the offensive, the body count skyrocketed to new heights and tens of thousands were forced from their homes, disappeared or killed.
Kingpin strategy
Simultaneously, Calderón also began pursuing the so-called “kingpin strategy” by which authorities sought to decapitate the cartels by targeting their leaders.
That policy resulted in some high-profile successes – notably Arturo Beltrán Leyva, who was gunned down by Mexican marines in 2009 – but also did little to bring peace. In fact, many believe such tactics served only to pulverize the world of organized crime, creating even more violence as new, less predictable factions squabbled for their piece of the pie.
Under Calderón’s successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, the government’s rhetoric on crime softened as Mexico sought to shed its reputation as the headquarters of some the world’s most murderous mafia groups.
But Calderón’s policies largely survived, with authorities targeting prominent cartel leaders such as Sinaloa’s Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
When “El Chapo” was arrested in early 2016, Mexico’s president bragged: “Mission accomplished”. But the violence went on. By the time Peña Nieto left office in 2018, Mexico had suffered another record year of murders, with nearly 36,000 people slain.
'Hugs not bullets'
The leftwing populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador took power in December, promising a dramatic change in tactics. López Obrador, or Amlo, as most call him, vowed to attack the social roots of crime, offering vocational training to more than 2.3 million disadvantaged young people at risk of being ensnared by the cartels.
“It will be virtually impossible to achieve peace without justice and [social] welfare,” Amlo said, promising to slash the murder rate from an average of 89 killings per day with his “hugs not bullets” doctrine.
Amlo also pledged to chair daily 6am security meetings and create a 60,000 strong national guard. But those measures have yet to pay off, with the new security force used mostly to hunt Central American migrants.
Mexico now suffers an average of about 96 murders a day.
“García Luna stands accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes from ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel while he controlled Mexico’s federal police force and was responsible for ensuring public safety in Mexico,” said US attorney Richard P Donoghue.
“Today’s arrest demonstrates our resolve to bring to justice those who help cartels inflict devastating harm on the United States and Mexico, regardless of the positions they held while committing their crimes.”
García Luna led Mexico’s federal investigation agency from 2001 to 2005, and from 2006 to 2012, he served under Calderón as secretary of public security.
Calderón deployed troops against the cartels in December 2006, but the crackdown unleashed a wave of violence which has claimed more than 200,000 lives, left more than 35,000 missing and continues today.
The arrest of Calderón’s right-hand man delivers a serious blow to the former leader, a prominent critic of the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has promised a “hugs not bullets” strategy of tackling the social roots of crime.
“This is a bombshell,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a commentator in Mexico City. “There’s never been a detention of such a high-ranking Mexican official.”
Calderón stood steadfastly by García Luna despite growing allegations of impropriety and accusations that security forces concentrated their efforts against the Sinaloa cartel’s rivals.
A 2010 analysis of crime figures by NPR found that only 12% of people arrested, prosecuted or sentenced for drug, organised crime and weapons offences had ties to the Sinaloa cartel.
“This guy probably knows where all the bodies are buried and all other kinds of secrets involving political figures – the most important aspect of drug trafficking together with the money trail,” said Jorge Kawas, a security analyst in the northern city of Monterrey.
On Tuesday Calderón tweeted that he only learned of the arrest through social media. “My position will always be in favour of justice and the law,” he said.
According to the indictment, cartel bagmen twice delivered briefcases containing millions of dollars to García Luna. In 2018, former cartel member Jesús Zambada testified at the trial of the Sinaloa kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán that he personally made at least $6m in hidden payments to García Luna, on behalf of his older brother, cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
In exchange for the bribes, the Sinaloa cartel obtained safe passage for its drug shipments, inside details of police investigations, and information about rival drug cartels, the indictment said.
García Luna departed Mexico after Calderón left office in December 2012. Prosecutors allege García Luna lied to US authorities about his activities for the cartel when he applied for naturalisation in 2018.
“According to financial records obtained by the government, by the time García Luna relocated to the United States in 2012, he had amassed a personal fortune of millions of dollars,” the indictment said.
Mike Vigil, a former DEA chief of international operations, said he and other US anti-narcotics agents had worked closely with García Luna. “I never saw any issue of corruption, any issue which compromised any of our operations,” he said. “Whatever we needed, he provided without question. We probably worked better with him than any other Mexican official.”
García Luna is charged with drug-trafficking conspiracy and making false statements. If convicted on the drug-trafficking charges, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and could receive a life sentence.
