As Mexico attempts to appease the Trump administration and avoid a series of tariffs over “not doing enough” to eradicate drug cartels, a new scandal surfaced that ties the top political elite in Mexico with one of the country’s most violent drug cartels. That cartel was labeled this year by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization.
The scandal began earlier this month when Interpol issued a Red Notice for the arrest of Hernán “Comandante H” Bermúdez Requena, the former Public Security Secretary for the Mexican state of Tabasco. Authorities in Mexico have been forced to identify Bermudez as the alleged leader of La Barredora or Streetsweeper, an enforcement wing of Cartel Jalisco New Generation. According to Mexican federal authorities, Bermudez is believed to have fled the country in January when he found out authorities were looking at him.
The issue sparked significant political controversy, as Bermudez was the top security official in Tabasco and a personal friend of former Governor Adán Augusto López, a former presidential hopeful and current Mexican Senate leader for the MORENA party. After his term in Tabasco’s government, Adan Augusto Lopez served as Mexico’s Secretary of the Interior during the administration of former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. At the end of Lopez Obrador’s federal term, Adan Augusto was one of the three presidential hopefuls from the MORENA party but lost out on the party’s nomination to the current Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum. Since then, he became a senate leader for MORENA.
For days after news of the Interpol alert spread throughout Mexico, Adan Augusto López disappeared from the public eye as news and political opponents criticized his friendship with Bermudez and questioned how he could not know that his top security official was a cartel leader. Once he reappeared, Adan Augusto Lopez claimed to be free of any connections to organized crime. On social media, his staffers posted that during his term, Lopez had improved public safety in the state.
Last week, former Chiapas Governor Willy Ochoa added fuel to the fire by publicly claiming that La Barredora was able to operate in the state of Chiapas with complete impunity during the term of former Chiapas Governor Rutilio Escandon, a political ally of Adán Augusto López and López Obrador. As reported by Breitbart Texas, Ochoa had previously sounded the alarm about Escandon’s ties to CJNG and other criminal organizations that were allowed to operate in Chiapas.
“While the state government talked a mouthful about peace and transformation, La Barredora crossed our borders and operated in the municipalities on the north and western parts of the state with complete impunity,” Ochoa said in a prepared statement provided to Breitbart Texas. “Organized crime does not enter alone. It enters where there is omission, complicity, or cowardice in power. And that is exactly what happened during the government of Rutilio Escandon.”
Currently, Escandon is serving as Mexico’s Consul in Miami.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart News Foundation. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
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