“What happened in Sinaloa should be celebrated.” This is how the United States ambassador, Ken Salazar, responded to the latest wave of questions from the Government of Claudia Sheinbaum and the Prosecutor’s Office of Alejandro Gertz Manero due to the lack of information about the capture of Ismael May Zambada. In a press conference this Tuesday, Salazar presented a chronology of communications at the highest level between both governments since the kingpin’s arrest, after landing near the border city of El Paso on July 25, but he left in the air the questions that Gertz raised hours before in La Mañanera about the identity of the plane’s pilot, why he was not arrested and why a “cloned” plane was allowed to arrive on US territory. Mexico and Washington have clashed again over the versions found to explain the fall of the co-founder and boss of bosses of the Sinaloa Cartel.
“The United States has informed us in part, but another part is missing that is fundamental,” declared Gertz, in his first public appearance in months. Three months after the arrest, the Mexican authorities assume that El Mayo was betrayed and handed over by Joaquín Guzmán López The Güerohis godson and son of Chapo, whom they point out as the main suspect. “The kidnapping is proven,” said the head of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR). The missing pieces of the puzzle are details about the plane’s arrival in the United States and what their American counterparts knew about Guzmán López’s intention to turn himself in and betray Zambada.
Salazar responded by presenting at least five letters that senior US officials sent to their Mexican counterparts about the investigations. The ambassador said that communication began on the day of the arrest, with a message from prosecutor Merrick Garland to Gertz, and continued with an exchange of calls between him and the prosecutor two days later. A week after the arrest, the number two of the FBI met with the head of the FGR to discuss the details of the case, according to this version. There was another letter on August 16 between both prosecutors. “High-level drug traffickers generally do not turn themselves in unless they feel pressure to do so,” Salazar read. “Their efforts to capture and extradite Ovidio Guzmán and Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas [hijo del Chapo y jefe de seguridad de Los Chapitos] has maintained pressure on the cartel leaders,” Garland wrote to congratulate the Mexican authorities. “The delivery of Joaquín Guzmán López is a victory for both countries,” he concluded.
The message that Salazar sent is that the focus has to be on this “victory” and not on the reproaches for the information that has not come to light. “The events were the result of the conflict between criminal groups and the immense pressure that Mexican authorities with the support of the United States have exerted on cartel figures in recent years,” wrote Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State, to the then-Chancellor, Alicia Bárcena, in a letter sent on August 19, which the ambassador read to emphasize his point.
However, doubts about the credibility of Washington’s explanations prevail. In that letter, Blinken insists to Bárcena that the United States did not carry out an operation in Mexican territory to capture Zambada and that the pilot was not an “employee, contractor or American citizen,” Salazar said. That was the official version that the White House offered on August 10, a day before El Mayo published a letter accusing him of being betrayed by his former associates, the main line of investigation of the Mexican authorities. When reporters insisted on why they have not said who the pilot is and why he was not arrested, the ambassador was visibly upset. “It was not our plane or our pilot,” Salazar concluded. “It couldn’t be said more clearly.”
During the conference, the ambassador described Sheinbaum as “a champion of the bilateral relationship,” although he also showed signs of wear and tear due to the tensions of recent weeks. “Say there is no problem and if there is a problem, [la culpa] It’s someone else’s, it’s not right,” Salazar said about the president’s statements about the responsibility that the United States has for the wave of violence and the cartel war that plagues Sinaloa after the capture. “We respect and expect respect” and “respect is paid with respect” were other phrases that the ambassador left. Despite the diplomatic frictions and in the run-up to the presidential elections on November 5, the Washington representative made it clear that his country is not going to take its finger off the line in the fight against drug trafficking and other thorny issues such as migration. “Without security there is no prosperity,” he concluded.
