This week’s stunning arrest of Genaro García Luna, the nation’s public security chief under President Felipe Calderon, confirmed long-held suspicions of many journalists in Mexico that he was in the pocket of the Sinaloa drug cartel.
U.S. federal agents detained García Luna in Dallas December 9. He was subsequently charged with conspiracy to import and distribute drugs and making false statements. The indictment accuses him of taking millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. Not since the detention of Jesús Hector Gutiérrez Rebollo, Mexico’s anti-drug czar under Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), has such a high-profile public figure faced such serious charges.
García Luna was appointed by Calderon in 2006 and remained in the post until the end of the six-year presidential term in 2012. During this period he was chiefly responsible for putting into practice Calderon’s anti-drug “strategy” that targeted drug criminal organizations through the use of the military, financed in large part by the Merida Initiative, a bilateral security agreement that saw the United States provide material support to the tune of US$2 billion.
Prior to his appointment as a cabinet minister, García Luna served as director general of the Agencia Federal de Investigación, similar to the FBI. According to the U.S. Justice Department, he began receiving payoffs from the Sinaloa Cartel, run by Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, while in this position.
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