The Great Failure of López Obrador

The Great Failure of López Obrador

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was always correct in the diagnosis: violence in Mexico was linked to a mafia in power.

And now that we know that that is true – with the guilty plea against the alleged super policeman Genaro García Luna – we must also recognize that AMLO has failed in his main promise and responsibility: to stop that violence.

López Obrador was chosen, precisely, to face the crime and chaos that terrifies the country. And he hasn’t been able to with the order. His strategy of “hugs, not bullets” has made his government the most violent since the Cristera war and the revolution. Faced with this failure, he has not stopped blaming his predecessors.

“We still have to face that pig that they left us,” AMLO said in a morning. That “cochinero” was formed, in part, when García Luna occupied the main police positions in the country. He was the director of the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) from 2001 to 2006 during the presidency of PAN member Vicente Fox. And then, from 2006 to 2012, he was Secretary of Public Security of Mexico under the government of Felipe Calderón.

There is no doubt that the so-called “war on drugs” – which began with Calderón and then spread during the presidency of PRI member Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) – has been a national tragedy and has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. But it is also true that López Obrador promised in his last electoral campaign to end that violence and has not been able to. “I’m going to get peace, that’s my commitment,” he said in January 2018. “In the middle of the six-year term, there will be no war.”

AMLO didn’t comply.

We have already passed half of the six-year term, the war continues with other names and the violence is worse than ever. The figures don’t lie. Since López Obrador became president, 139,077 Mexicans have been assassinated, according to official data from the same government. This figure exceeds the 124,478 intentional homicides that occurred in the Peña Nieto government. And it is higher than the 121,683 murders that occurred in Calderón’s presidency, according to the INEGI count.

López Obrador’s diagnosis of violence was accurate. But he didn’t know what to do with it. The result is a country submerged in crime, with drug cartels controlling parts of cities and the national territory, with a very dangerous void of authority in entire regions and a terrifying forecast. (2023 started badly, with 2,582 intentional homicides in January; more than the 2,426 that occurred in January 2022.) Violence has normalized in Mexico. And it no longer surprises us until a murder, a kidnapping, a robbery or an extortion arrives near the family.

Several of us have warned the president that his strategy is generating more murders than any other government – I have gone four times in the morning to tell him – but he ignores. On the contrary, if he continues like this, his six-year term could culminate in about 190,000 deaths.

Despite the terrible results of his security strategy, AMLO refuses to correct course. He has militarized the country and the National Guard, and his idea of investing in the most vulnerable areas and groups to reduce violence could take decades before it knows if it works.

Therefore, we have to be realistic and recognize that AMLO is not going to be the president to end the violence in Mexico. History will mark his six-year term as the bloodiest of the century. His great failure was to have the correct diagnosis, the time to do it, the majority support of the population, all the resources of the government … and to be wrong miserably in the strategy and in the execution. This has left us with a country full of graves and deaths.

And since AMLO does not have the solution to violence, we must look for someone else to do it and concentrate on the possible candidates for the presidency for 2024. The next leader of Mexico must have as a priority that they stop killing so many Mexicans. We have to look to the future. The present is stubbornly stuck in formulas that do not work, in innocent ideas, in good intentions and in useless recriminations to the past. Mexico needs a new leadership with a very clear objective: no more deaths.

The trial of García Luna was a shock for Mexican society because it exposed the very high levels of corruption that exist in the government and in the country. Instead of chasing drug traffickers, García Luna helped them. And, without a doubt, he could not act alone; the trial unearthed a shameful network of complicity. But the last government position that García Luna held was 11 years ago. How long will your trial be used to try to justify the flaws in the current security strategy?

Blaming previous governments for the current violence in Mexico is not a solution. It’s an excuse. And so you can’t govern a country like ours.