“We do not produce fentanyl and we do not consume fentanyl,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said during his press conference on March 9.
A week later, on the morning of March 16, after information was disseminated in various media about the seizures of fentanyl and its precursors and the destruction of laboratories that produce the drug carried out by the armed forces during his six-year term, AMLO He backed down, accepting that: “fentanyl comes from Asia, and it not only enters through Mexico, it also enters directly into the United States.”
Later, this exchange took place between a journalist and AMLO, which I partially transcribe as it appears on lopezobrador.org.mx. The president reneged on what he said a week earlier, but tried to minimize the importance of Mexico in the illegal fentanyl business:
Question: Do you confirm that fentanyl is not produced here in Mexico, Mr. President?
AMLO: No, it is that it is a raw material that is brought from Asia.
Question: But there are no laboratories here?
AMLO: Ah, no, yes, yes, yes, but that raw material, what is made here. And Mexico is not, I repeat, the country that introduces fentanyl to the US the most (…) here what is done is that they make pills (…) They punch them.
Question: There are investigations (…) of fentanyl producers in Mexico…
AMLO: Yes, yes, there are producers (…) in the time that we have been seizing 6,000 kilos of fentanyl (…) Each kilo of fentanyl is one million doses (…) all the ones we confiscate are blue and there it turns out that there are red, green, yellow and of all colors and flavors…
Question: Mr. President, I want to make a comment.
AMLO: It’s over, we’re over. Bye bye.
So far part of the exchange that the president terminated after being forced to accept what he flatly denied a few days before.
On March 9 AMLO broke part of the promise he made on December 1, 2018 when in the Zócalo of Mexico City he said “I reaffirm the commitment not to lie, not steal and not betray the people”, because saying that “Here we do not produce fentanyl and we do not consume fentanyl” was a major lie.
Since he lied, the president has generated that in the US every day there are more people who support the idea that his armed forces attack the cartels inside Mexico. And not only that, by sending a letter to President Xi Jinping in which he attacked US legislators, he encouraged the Chinese government to use his words to go against the US.
Last Friday, a day after several members of AMLO’s cabinet met in Washington to discuss the fight against fentanyl and arms trafficking with US and Canadian officials, the US Department of Justice announced that it will proceed judicially against the Sinaloa Cartel leaders and their enablers around the world.
About the meeting a day before, the US Attorney General, Merrick Garland, only said this: “Just yesterday, we met with our counterparts in government law enforcement and security (…) we renewed our commitment to work closely in the fight against fentanyl and firearms trafficking”. Not another word to indicate if the meeting served any purpose.
Facebook: Eduardo J Ruiz-Healy
Instagram: ruizheal
Place: ruizhealytimes.com
