The decision of a jury from the Eastern District of New York that found the former Mexican Secretary of Public Security, Genaro García Luna, guilty of conspiracy for drug trafficking, ignited the public debate in Mexico and once again pitted supporters of the regime against opponents.
The verdict coincided in the middle of last week with the call made by a handful of diverse organizations to the great national march in defense of the National Electoral Institute (INE) and the reforms promoted in said institution by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador approved, by true, since Wednesday night in the Senate of the republic.
The aforementioned concentration held on Sunday the 26th in the Zócalo of Mexico City, had replicas in almost the entire country and a dozen cities in the United States, New York included. In all of them the figure of one of the architects in Mexico of the infamous War on Drugs, Mr. García Luna, appeared both in the speech, in blankets and in general his figure floated in the environment like a ghost that further clouded the already tense Mexican political atmosphere.
On Monday morning, the 28th, López Obrador said that most of the conveners “have belonged to the narco-state, as has been made clear with what happened with García Luna” accusing them that their defense of the INE is based on “the lie that they wanted to affect democracy in Mexico when, in essence, they are anti-democratic”.
Previously, and in what seems like a desperate attempt not to continue losing popular support in the face of the 2024 presidential elections, the conservative National Action Party, which governed the country from 2000 to 2012, the time of the accusation against the former super police officer, said in the voice of its leader Marko Cortés that they “demand that justice be done and that any public servant or former servant who has committed a crime be tried and punished to the fullest extent of the law,” adding that “García Luna has never been a militant of National Action”.
After the verdict announced Tuesday afternoon in the Brooklyn court, the debate also moved to the media where a majority celebrated that justice had been done to the dark character who is blamed, whether for collusion with criminals or due to incompetence, of the escalation of violence in the country. Other communicators such as the former director of the influential newspaper MILENIO, Carlos Marín, criticized that “the lack of evidence” has led the jury to make a decision “based on their faith.”
In this controversy, even The New York Times newspaper itself was scrapped after a sector related to the Amloista government criticized it for having brought the electoral dispute to its front page (“Plan B: Mexico restricts its Electoral Institute”) but not the guilty verdict against Garcia Luna.
A discussion that will return at the beginning of the summer when the defendant is sentenced.
* Juan Alberto Vázquez is a correspondent for Milenio (Mexico) and author of the book “NXIVM: The sect that seduced power in Mexico”.Twitter @juansinatra