President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ( AMLO ) claimed to have “a clear conscience” after giving the instruction to release Ovidio Guzmán, son of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, to appease the Sinaloa Cartel and prevent more violence in the country.
This Wednesday, October 26, recalling the events that occurred in the so-called Culiazanazo, in which the son of Chapo Guzmán was captured and later released, the president denied that the action had responded to pressure from a criminal group, although they were in the process of unleashing violence across Mexico when the President ordered the release.
He recalled, on October 17, 2019, a group carried out an investigation in Culiacán, Sinaloa, to arrest Ovidio Guzmán; However, after his arrest “there was a reaction from the criminal group .”
“They decide to apprehend him at noon at his house and there is a reaction from the criminal group, they begin to mobilize with high-powered weapons, they begin to attack military housing units, they kidnap soldiers, they place themselves in strategic places in Culiacán,” the president recalled.
He added that after being informed about the facts, the first thing he thought about was the lives of the people, as he said, it was a delicate situation where “there was going to be a confrontation in the middle of the city that would possibly cause the death of hundreds of people.”
The president spoke of the events as his government didn’t know that the modus operandi of cartels is to unleash violence in retaliation for the arrest of their leadership. The president and authorities were woefully unprepared and uninformed. Cartels have learned over the years that violence is the most successful way to maintain control of the government and run shadow governments in Mexico.
Weeks after the President ordered the release of Ovidio Guzmán, son of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, the president met the mother of El Chapo, grandmother of Ovidio, on a dirt road in Sinaloa where he greeted the matriarch of the cartel family with pleasantries.
The failed operation, which became known as “Culiacanazo”, was described as one of the biggest security failures in the six-year term of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena).
Years later, in May 2022, President López Obrador promised to give a full report on the failed operation in which the son of the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel was released.
