Adela Navarro

The General who wants to be governor

It was 2010 in Tijuana, when when General Alfonso Duarte Múgica was introduced, citizens stood up and began to chant: "Governor, Governor".

By Adela Navarro

It was 2010 and the first edition of Tijuana Innovadora. Don José Galicot, a life enthusiast, wanted to change the image of the city. To take it out of the narrative of insecurity, violence, murders, the Arellano Felix, prostitution and narco, and orient it towards the dynamism of a multicultural, industrial border, binational economic development, bilingual education, first class gastronomy, and fashion.

In a room full of other enthusiasts and curious to know everything that is manufactured in Tijuana and the scope of its economy and binational life, President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa was in charge of inaugurating the meeting, which continues to this day. Accompanying him as guests were all sorts of municipal, state and federal officials, businessmen and representatives of the military. When he mentioned some of them at the microphone, when it was the turn of General Alfonso Duarte Múgica, then Commander of the II Military Zone, the citizens present applauded unusually, stood up and began to chant: "Governor, governor, governor".

They asked the notorious General to run for the governorship of Baja California. Three years later, in 2013, there would be local elections to renew the governorship, mayors and congress.

Overwhelmed by the support and confidence of the citizens, the General only thanked the show of support with gestures, but that display of citizen support was enough to attract even more the attention of the President of the Republic, who would promote Duarte to Major General a few months later and appoint him Commander of the II Military Region.

His support for Duarte was not gratuitous. Like few others, he had teamed up at some point with General Sergio Aponte Polito, and he had been fully involved in the persecution of drug traffickers. Particularly against members of the Arellano Felix cartel and the Sinaloa cartel, which at the time were engaged in a violent and bloody war for the Baja California territory.

General Duarte and his troop, always accompanied by a Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, had managed to apprehend notorious criminals in the service of both cartels, with leading roles in the corrupting arm of the cartels, such as Luis Ramirez Vazquez "El Guero Camaron", who would also turn on hundreds of state and municipal police officers on the drug trafficking payroll; or lieutenants of both criminal organizations such as Filiberto Parra Ramos, "La Perra" (The Bitch).

A fierce defender of security and a sharp military officer against drug trafficking, corruption and impunity, General Duarte gave many signs of his commitment to Baja Californians. He set up checkpoints throughout the length and breadth of Sonora, Baja California and Baja California Sur, to detect and secure the drugs being trafficked through that region, and to locate and eradicate the crops. This is how he discovered the largest marijuana plantation: 120 hectares of weed planted near the highway that connects San Quintin with Guerrero Negro.

Despite the citizen petition, General Duarte did not run for the Government of Baja California. His military career was at its peak and from the II Military Region he was sent to command the III Third Military Region with headquarters in Mazatlan, and from there to the VIII in Oaxaca, where after 49 years of service to the Mexican Army, he retired.

Four years after military retirement, General Alfonso Duarte Múgica wants to be governor. Not of Baja California, but of Morelos, where he was born in the municipality of Puente de Ixtla.

Insecurity is the main problem in Morelos. This is not only reflected in surveys conducted among the population of that state, but also in the fact that murders are becoming more frequent; from massacres where five people are murdered in a house, to bloody weekends in which 14,15 people are executed in three days.

The origin of the violence and insecurity in Morelos lies in the criminal confluence of four cartels in the region, which develop criminally based on impunity and corruption provided with complicity by security forces.

Morelos is not a particularly attractive place for drug trafficking, it is not a place for the installation of clandestine laboratories, nor is it a place for the cultivation or transfer of precursors, the state became a place of retreat and refuge for criminals like Amado Carrillo in the nineties, or Arturo Beltran Leyva in the two thousands. But it was precisely the arrival of the Beltrán Leyva cartel that triggered the insecurity and violence in the state.

Today, the state ranks twelfth among the most violent in the country according to a count by the weekly ZETA of executions in the first four years of the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Still governed by former soccer player Cuauhtémoc Blanco, who was the standard bearer for the PES, but ended up allied with Morena.

Morelos deals with the criminal activity of four cartels: Guerreros Unidos, the Familia Michoacana, Los Rojos, and the Jalisco Cartel - New Generation. The unpunished war that these criminal organizations maintain for drug dealing in the Morelos region has harmed the citizens, since from drug distribution and settling of scores, the narco-criminals have moved on to extortion, extortion and disappearances; several narco-graves have also been discovered with hundreds of corpses.

Alfonso Duarte Múgica, has found the support of an important part of the Morelos community to seek the candidacy for the state government in the 2024 elections, when both the Executive and Legislative branches, as well as the municipal governments, will be renewed.

The support that General Duarte has received from businessmen, politicians, religious groups and civil society is not gratuitous. They recognize the results he has achieved in his fight against insecurity and violence during his 49 years in the military, particularly since the six-year term of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa.

Should General Duarte's aspiration to become a candidate for the government of the state of Morelos become a reality, it would be, so far, for the Alianza Va por México (Alliance for Mexico). The retired military officer has already held talks with Marko Cortes, leader of the National Action Party, has the endorsement of Jesus Zambrano, leader of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, and even though he has not met with Alejandro Moreno of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, he has already established a dialogue with Pablo Casas and Joaquin Henricks. It seems that the opposition alliance goes with the General.

Recent polls in that state give the victory, even without the electoral process being open and without candidates, to the official party, Morena, but Duarte is willing to measure himself in candidate selection polls with those who aspire to the candidacy from the opposition.

The last military-trained governor was precisely in Morelos, Jorge Carillo Olea, who, it must be said, did not finish his six-year term -he served four years from 1994-1998- because he requested a leave of absence when he still had two years left in office, due to accusations of criminal activities.

If successful, General Duarte would be the first retired military candidate in the era of a president like Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known for his tendency to militarize different areas of government, although Duarte, the General who wants to be governor, would be so for the opposition, in a state where insecurity reigns, a matter in which his capacity has already been proven.