On October 16, Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s former Public Security chief, was sentenced to 38 years and 6 months in prison in the United States. He must also pay a fine of 2 million dollars for “helping the Sinaloa cartel for a decade in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.” According to the US Eastern District Federal Court of New York, the former Mexican official who was supposed to be a key player in the fight against drug trafficking, in fact had important links with drug trafficking groups.
In 2019, six years after leaving office, García Luna was apprehended in the United States, where he resided, and charged with five drug trafficking-related crimes, including drug trafficking conspiracy, continued membership in a criminal organization, and making false statements to US authorities.
The initial accusations and suspicions against García Luna arose in the same court where Judge Cogan previously tried drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. In that trial, a former member of the Sinaloa cartel claimed that he delivered nearly USD 6 million in cash to García Luna between 2005 and 2007. According to the prosecution, the former Secretary of Security allegedly helped the Sinaloa cartel to keep the Mexican state from interfering with the entry of drugs into the United States, reveal control operations to his henchmen, appoint corrupt officials to certain strategic positions in the state, and assassinate members of rival cartels. After five months of trial, he was found guilty of all charges in 2023.
With this decision, Judge Brian Cogan closes one of the most relevant chapters in recent years regarding the deep penetration of drug trafficking groups in the Mexican State. During the 2000s, García Luna was one of the most important political cadres in the government of Felipe Calderón, who has stated on multiple occasions that he was not aware of the relations between García Luna and the Sinaloa cartel.
Calderon’s government and the ties to Sinaloa Cartel
However, the links between the Mexican Executive and one of the most powerful cartels in the world have raised some suspicions as to the real extent of such relations. Mexican journalist Alina Duarte of De Raíz said in the program Disputar el ALBA: “For us Mexicans, this ruling is historic and important because it shows that there was a narco-state. The biggest cartel in Mexico was led by the president of this country [(Felipe Calderon)] and the second in command ([(Garcia Luna)], who, [Calderon] says, betrayed him.”
In addition, Duarte suggests that the sentence against García Luna demonstrates that the so-called “War on Drugs” during Calderón’s administration (which left more than 250,000 dead in six years) was a war against cartels that were not allied to the Executive at the time. She also emphasized that it is “paradoxical” that the United States has awarded and recognized García Luna’s work despite his links to the Sinaloa Cartel: “Part of the awards given to [García Luna] were granted by the FBI, by the US agencies that today provide evidence [to convict him]. There is quite a bit of cynicism in this case.”
To this point, DEA official Anne Milgram, involved in the case against the former Mexican security chief, said in a press statement about his sentencing, “Instead of protecting the citizens of Mexico, Garcia Luna was protecting drug cartels. The DEA will continue to relentlessly pursue drug trafficking organizations and those who protect them.”
Further, the former US ambassador to Mexico, Roberta S. Jacobson, said that she did warn the Calderon administration about the links between Garcia Luna and the Sinaloa Cartel (especially with “El Chapo” Guzman). Despite this, in an interview for the weekly Proceso in May 2022, she said that despite knowing about such nexus, she worked with Garcia Luna to achieve certain objectives: “you have no choice but to work with government security officials, as long as you are cautious, you try to work carefully and achieve your goals, something that we were able to achieve on some occasions with Garcia Luna.”
For now, it remains to be seen if the trial against Garcia Luna will lead to new investigations by the US justice system into the Calderon administration. A few months ago, Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras, was convicted for his ties to drug trafficking, something that has created a precedent that could promote deeper and more revealing judicial investigations.
