Guanajuato was the laboratory of a coup attempt by the extreme right

Arturo Sanchez Jimenez

Newspaper La Jornada
Monday February 13, 2023, p. 7

Looks are deceiving, confirms Channel 6 de Julio. In his new documentary, The facades of the coupalert about the action of false civil organizations financed by the United States government, former public officials of PAN governments turned into activists and businessmen to possibly destabilize the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and derail the aspirants to continue the Fourth Transformation project in 2024.

We want to warn and point out a risk that the 4T process hassays in an interview the director of Canal 6 de Julio, Carlos Mendoza Aupetit, who has found repeated traces that the extreme right has a strategy in place to try to give a soft hit –or soft coup d’état– in Mexico against the government of the Tabasco or his successor.

In The facades of the coupMendoza Aupetit and his team deepen the research they presented in their previous documentary, In the name of freedom. Fourth Transformation and extreme rightfrom 2019, where they proposed the thesis of the gestation of a possible soft coup in Mexico and of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as a surreptitious adversary of the López Obrador government.

In this new installment they maintain that the strategy of the soft hit is still valid and that there are abundant indications that, in August 2022, Guanajuato, and in particular Irapuato, was the laboratory of a coup trial sponsored by PAN governments, businessmen, false civil society organizations and experts in covert operations that spread a narrative of chaos in various media in order to destabilize the Mexican government and set off interventionist alarms in Washington.

The documentary refers to the events of August 9, when 24 Oxxo stores were set on fire by alleged criminals in the entity governed by PAN member Diego Sinhue Rodríguez, in actions that were described as narcoterrorism in different media. Guanajuato authorities attributed the actions to the Jalisco cartel New generationbut later they reported that none of those detained for the events belonged to said criminal group.

The work of Mendoza and his team reveals the way in which these events were presented on television, radio, and in the press. It focuses on the fact that after the attacks, many media outlets interviewed David Saucedo, unknown until now and identified as a security analystwho spoke of “a wave narcoterrorist” with supposed analytical objectivity, but he hid that he is actually an activist of Causa en Común, an opposition group of the 4T which receives funding from USAID, according to the producer.

Behind USAID’s friendly and humanitarian façade lurk sinister storiespoints out the documentary, which affirms that this institution of the US government supports fake civil society organizations on the continent.

In Mexico, according to the investigation, USAID, together with the American organizations Red Atlas and the National Foundation for Democracy, finances, in addition to Causa Común, organizations such as Mexicans against Corruption, Article 19, México Evalúa and México Unido contra la Delinquency, from where former PAN officials who shed their skin to present themselves as activists operate.

The documentary reviews the names of different members of organizations that receive resources from USAID and focuses on the career of political scientist María Amparo Casar, former chief advisor in 2004 to Santiago Creel, then Secretary of the Interior, co-president of Mexicanos contra la Corrupción since its founding in 2015 and executive president of the organization since 2020, when Claudio X. González announced his separation from the institution.

The former official dressed as a civil society activist will contribute her experience in soft coups and will coordinate with her partner the political and social rightsindicates the investigation, which adds that the team of Casar en Mexicanos contra la Corrupción is casually Darío Ramírez, former director of Article 19 and also a former official of the Ministry of the Interior at the time of the impeachment of López Obrador.

The work of Canal 6 de Julio recounts the findings of the investigation by Mendoza Aupetit and his team regarding the relationship between Casar, Causa en Común – an organization of which the political scientist is a director and which is directed by José Antonio Polo Oteyza, who is identified as the former coordinator of advisers for Genaro García Luna in the Ministry of Public Security– and José Antonio Fernández Carbajal, a member of the Mexico Institute, a think tank (think tank) of the Wilson Center, and owner of the burned-down stores in Guanajuato.

For Mendoza, that it has been suggested that what happened in Guanajuato was narcoterrorism is part of a campaign that seeks discredit and destabilize the government in the eyes of the widest possible public.

All this assembly that we perceived that there was there had the objective of provoking a reaction in a neighboring government, that of the United States. It was an essay to measure the scope of pretending that there is an uprising of organized crime and a power vacuum in Mexico and to ask the US government to take action on the matter.says the documentalist.

The greatest risk that Mendoza observes is that the right wing manages to carry out a coup, although he affirms that he does not see this happening as long as López Obrador is president, since he has great popularity and political force. But the future is not so clear.

What will happen when there is no longer such a strong, popular president, and that, as everything seems to indicate, Morena continues to be a party without an organized and mobilized social base. I do not believe that whoever follows López Obrador has the same strength and the same support that he has, and I believe that the right wing can find opportunities thereassures.

I would not share the triumphalism that exists in the 4T: they are very concerned about who is going to turn around in 2024 and the devil may appear, they may have a serious problem before. I think these things should be taken much more seriously.he concludes.