In Mexico, everything goes through Omar García Harfuch

The Treasury, the Attorney General’s Office, intelligence agencies, tactical analysis and investigation teams, command positions in complex regions... Omar García Harfuch’s influence in the government apparatus grows month by month, under the absolute approval of President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has utmost confidence in the work of one of her top aides. The posting a few weeks ago of his colleague Omar Reyes to the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) of the Ministry of Finance sheds light on the journey of the official, who just over a year ago abandoned the race for mayor of Mexico City under pressure from the hardliners within Morena, the ruling party.

Much has changed in recent months. Coordinator of the Security Cabinet and Secretary of State for Security, Harfuch is reaping the rewards of that sacrifice. Eyes that once viewed him with suspicion now look the other way; voices that stifled murmurs of displeasure are now silent, forced by his evolution and growth. A stranger to the traditional left, to the grassroots movements in which his cabinet colleagues grew up, no one now has a problem with Harfuch, least of all the opposition, generally disoriented, and even more so in the face of a figure who usually generates consensus.

Reyes’s arrival at the UIF expands the capabilities of Harfuch and his team. Reyes was one of the specialists who came with Harfuch to Mexico City in 2019, during the first months of Sheinbaum’s administration as head of government for the capital. He first worked in the local Prosecutor’s Office, and then Harfuch, by then head of the city’s police force, appointed him to the Undersecretariat of the Penitentiary System. “He is part of the generation that trained in 2000 and 2001, in courses organized by the former Attorney General’s Office (PGR) for career officials,” explains a former colleague, who prefers to remain anonymous. “They joined the Attorney General’s Office and then made the leap to the Federal Police.”

The current director of the National Intelligence Center, Francisco Almazán Barocio, is also part of that generation. He joined the capital’s security forces at the same time as Harfuch and was later appointed to the federal Security Cabinet after Sheinbaum’s victory in the 2024 presidential elections. Reyes and Almazán make an ideal duo in the eyes of their erstwhile boss. The former now has the power to crack down on organized crime finances, supported by the newly created Specialized General Directorate of Criminal Operations. The latter manages Mexico’s powerful espionage apparatus.

Harfuch’s sledgehammer has more perks. A few months ago, the senior official appointed another of his close collaborators to a key area of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime within the Attorney General’s Office (FGR). This is César Oliveros, who has been in charge of the department investigating fuel theft, known in Mexico as huachicol, and vehicle theft for a few months. During Harfuch’s years in Mexico City, Oliveros served as General Coordinator of High-Impact Crime Investigations for the local Attorney General’s Office.

The list goes on. One of the capital’s police commanders during Harfuch’s tenure, Israel Benítez, is now in charge of Pemex Logistics, the department responsible for the oil company’s security. In Guanajuato, one of the states with the highest homicide rates in the country, Governor Libia Denisse García, of the opposition National Action Party, appointed Mauro González to head the police force. González also trained in courses organized by the PGR at the beginning of the century, like Almazán and Reyes. Like them, González served in the PGR before joining the Federal Police, where he met Harfuch.

For Carlos Pérez Ricart, a Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) academic and security policy expert, Harfuch’s evolution is evident. “His position has been strengthened by pressure from the United States,” he notes. The Secretary of Security’s good relationship with his American counterparts is no secret, a reason, according to the expert, for the “colonization” process he is undertaking in the federal government. “It was going to happen anyway, but U.S. pressure has accelerated it. The case of the UIF exemplifies this,” he argues. “The latter surprises me. Under López Obrador, the workload was more distributed; there were no super-powerful secretaries, only Adán Augusto López at the end,” he adds.

The future of Sheinbaum’s administration rests in Harfuch’s hands. Addressing the country’s insecurity and the growing power of the cartels in much of the country has become a priority. The apparent success of the security strategy, with a drop in homicides in the first months of her term, paves the way for the high-ranking official, who constantly boasts of drug and huachicol seizures. His control over the security apparatus is complete, thanks also to the laws Morena has passed in Congress. The only things beyond his remit are the territorial deployment of the Armed Forces and the customs agency. But everything else goes through Harfuch.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition