Authorities in Mexico have made a high-profile arrest just as they mount an international manhunt to capture a former security official accused of colluding with organized crime, yet the timing of the investigation raises questions about why the government is only acting now, three years after the allegations emerged.
Mexican officials have requested the support of Interpol to arrest Hernán Bermúdez Requena, who served as secretary of public security in the state of Tabasco between 2019 and 2024, according to a recent radio interview. He is wanted for illicit association, extortion, and kidnapping. As of July 24, a red notice for Bermúdez had not yet been published on Interpol’s portal, though not all such notices are made public.
Bermúdez is accused of leading a faction of the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) called the Barredora during his time as security chief in Tabasco, the bastion of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his ruling Morena coalition.
While Bermúdez remains a fugitive, federal authorities arrested his alleged second-in-command, a former federal police officer named Ulises Pinto Madera, on July 23 in Jalisco state for his supposed involvement in extortion, kidnapping, drug trafficking, and fuel theft.
As security chief, Bermúdez’s tenure was marked by a rise in organized crime-related violence across the once-peaceful state. In early January 2024, Bermúdez resigned from his post following a wave of robberies and attacks on businesses in the state capital of Villahermosa, as well as roadblocks set up by armed groups.
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Just a week earlier, rival armed commandos clashed in several shootouts and burned more than a dozen vehicles in Villahermosa, while prisoners attempted to stage a riot inside the maximum-security Huimanguillo prison. In Tabasco, the CJNG, Sinaloa Cartel, and other local criminal cells have profited from a myriad of illegal economies, including oil theft, kidnappings, drug trafficking, and migrant smuggling and extortion.
Shortly after his resignation, security officials said Bermúdez fled Mexico from Mérida, Yucatán en route to Panama and then Spain, and that they have now allegedly tracked him to Brazil.
InSight Crime Analysis
Bermúdez is just the latest high-ranking Mexican official to be accused of colluding with organized crime groups. And despite this week’s arrest of one of his top associates, previous similar cases suggest federal authorities may have tolerated Bermúdez’s alleged ties to the CJNG for political reasons even though the accusations first surfaced several years ago.
The highest profile case is that of Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s former public security chief under former President Felipe Calderón who was convicted of taking millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel and sentenced to 38 years in prison last year. A few years earlier, US prosecutors convicted the former state attorney general of Nayarit, Edgar Veytia, for his role in a drug trafficking conspiracy with a criminal organization called the H-2 Cartel.
Identified as “El Comandante H,” Bermúdez was allegedly among the top leaders of the CJNG’s Barredora cell in Tabasco, according to information from Mexico’s Defense Ministry (Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional – SEDENA) obtained and shared with journalists by the Guacamaya hacker collective in 2022.
In one of the hacked documents dated October 2021, Mexican intelligence officials found that Bermúdez had gone so far as designating regional leaders who operated with his backing. Some of those allegedly connected to Bermúdez engaged in mass kidnappings and fuel theft, among other crimes.
“The corruption of the Tabasco state authorities with the Jalisco Cartel New Generation is evident,” the report concluded.
Despite these internal reports, some of which were produced at the end of 2019, federal authorities did not issue an arrest warrant for Bermúdez until this month.
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“Whether as a strategy to combat insecurity, political expediency, or complicity, the truth is that the federal government long had evidence of the links between [Tabasco state officials] and drug trafficking. But they did nothing,” David Saucedo, a Mexican security analyst, told InSight Crime.
Bermúdez was appointed to his post in December 2019 by Adán Augusto López, the brother of ex-president López Obrador who was then the governor of Tabasco and is now interior secretary. For his part, López said he never suspected Bermúdez and would have removed him from his post if he had.
“It’s incredible that a governor who held all the reins of power in his state, as [López] did, was unaware of Hernán Bermúdez’s criminal ties to the CJNG,” Saucedo said.
Featured image: Hernán Bermúdez Requena is accused of leading a faction of the CJNG in Tabasco while security chief. Photo: Tabasco State Security Secretary