MEXICO CITY (Process).– Year after year, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador justifies why he has not fulfilled the commitment 54 of the 100 he offered during his campaign: decentralization so that federal agencies and instances are located in the states where They have greater representation due to demand or problems.
In most dependencies the transfer has not materialized, only among some officials.
In the final stretch of his government, the president has barely managed to get certain holders to go from Mexico City to various states. Through special orders he has sent them to supervise pending works, for example. These are state secretaries or general directors who have had to temporarily leave their offices in the country’s capital.
One of those cases is that of Rocío Nahle García, Secretary of Energy who was in charge of the Dos Bocas refinery project in Tabasco, for which she has been permanently in Paraíso, a fact confirmed by President López Obrador on December 12. June when he explained that his position was only normative because oil sales efforts, blocks for oil exploitation or rounds are no longer necessary because “the privatization policy was stopped.”
The president added that Nahle, since he no longer had these activities, could only help him in the construction of the Dos Bocas refinery, for which he had to be permanently.
“She was responsible for building the Dos Bocas refinery, which is strategic, and it remained there and it is still there because this year we already began to produce, as in July, the first stage, and in November-December all 340 thousand barrels we are going to process at that refinery,” he said.
“Imagine doing a refinery in five years. Where? Where in the world? Only like this, with a person in charge, ”she added.
The move also applied to the National Fund for the Promotion of Tourism (Fonatur), whose headquarters are still in Mexico City; However, its general director, first Rogelio Jiménez Pons and now Javier May, had to focus all his work in the southeast of Mexico with a mission: the Mayan Train.
The case of Fonatur is another example of federal agencies whose owners still have their headquarters in the country’s capital, but physically they had to move due to a presidential order, since May must deliver the mega-project next December.
“I anticipate that I want to go down in history as the second president to leave the most protected natural reserves during my government; the first is held by General Lázaro Cárdenas. I aspire to that (…) All the land of Fonatur already, by decree, (are) protected natural areas, also take care of the ambitions ”, he said at the beginning of last June.
Of the few federal officials who addressed the issue of decentralization and spoke of moving was the Secretary of Health, Jorge Alcocer; He assured that since October 3, 2021, he began his change of headquarters to Acapulco, Guerrero. However, he constantly moves to the National Palace, in Mexico City, for work meetings with the federal president.
In November 2022, the president himself acknowledged the informality of his 54th campaign promise: “We are committed to decentralization, and we have not yet complied, we still need it, but we do hope that next year we can deliver more results.”
He said that he had advanced only 20% and that the case of Dr. Alcocer is the one who “is in Guerrero, the Secretary of Health works there; the Secretary of Energy is already working in Villahermosa; others have already advanced”.
The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources already has offices in Mérida, “but there is still a lack; Culture has an office in Tlaxcala, but it is missing; Agriculture needs to leave, it already has something to Ciudad Obregón, Sonora. You already have something from the Ministry of Tourism in Chetumal, but no, “added the president.
Time is running out
According to President López Obrador, with the move of the federal dependencies his government would be austere, since public money would no longer be spent on luxurious offices.
However, in one year and three months he must complete what he has not been able to do in five years of government: remove 80% of the dependencies that are still to be decentralized from the country’s capital. The delay, the president replied, is due to the pandemic caused by covid-19.
In his speech on December 1, 2018, before a packed Zócalo, the president read in his commitment 54: “The federal government will be decentralized, and the secretariats will be located in different states of the Republic because the entire country is Mexico.
“This process will be carried out voluntarily, without affecting the workers at the service of the State; on the contrary, they will have opportunities for the acquisition of housing, education for their children, medical attention and social security”.
That promise for most federal workers did not come.
In addition to the aforementioned dependencies and its original headquarters, the government had planned that the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare would go to León, Guanajuato; the Welfare Secretariat, to Oaxaca, Oaxaca; the Secretary of Public Education, to Puebla, Puebla; the Ministry of Communications and Transportation, to the capital of San Luis Potosí, and the Ministry of Public Function, to the capital of Querétaro.
As for the Secretariat of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development, it should go to Pachuca, Hidalgo; the Ministry of Economy, to Monterrey, Nuevo León; the National Forestry Commission, to the capital of Durango; the Tax Administration Service, to Mexicali, Baja California; Conapesca, to Mazatlán, Sinaloa; the National Customs Agency of Mexico, to Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas; the National Sports Commission, to Aguascalientes capital; the IMSS, to Morelia, Michoacán; Banobras, to Cuernavaca, Morelos.
Petróleos Mexicanos would go to Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche; Infonavit, to Toluca, State of Mexico; The Federal Electricity Commission, to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas; the National Institute of Migration, in Tijuana, Baja California; Nacional Financiera, to Torreón, Coahuila; ISSSTE, to the capital of Colima; Conacyt, to La Paz, Baja California Sur, and the National Water Commission would move to Xalapa, Veracruz.
In Mexico City, in addition to maintaining the presidential headquarters, the secretariats of the Treasury, the Interior, Foreign Relations, the Navy and Defense would remain; In June of last year, President López Obrador still affirmed: “And that the rest of the secretariats go to the different states. This stopped due to the pandemic, but we are going to continue.”
