Mexico’s president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum on Thursday named an experienced policeman who survived a 2020 attack by drug traffickers as the violence-plagued country’s next security secretary.
Omar Garcia Harfuch, 42, will be in charge of one of the most challenging portfolios in Sheinbaum’s cabinet upon taking office on October 1.
He had served as Sheinbaum’s police chief when she was mayor of Mexico City from 2018 to 2023 and is credited with drastically reducing the number of murders and other serious crimes, earning the nickname “Batman.”
Sheinbaum attributes the achievements to a strategy that combined social investment with improvements in police investigative capabilities and better coordination with prosecutors — a plan she intends to replicate at the national level.
In June 2020, Garcia Harfuch was shot in the arm and leg in an attack blamed on the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) — the most powerful in the country.
Two escorts and a passerby were killed in the attack by 30 gunmen.
The country of 126 million people has seen more than 450,000 people murdered since the government of then-president Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive against drug cartels in 2006.
Another 100,000 people have disappeared.
After his selection Thursday, Garcia Harfuch announced that “intelligence and investigation capabilities” will be strengthened, and police salaries increased.
He also stands behind Sheinbaum’s plan to strengthen the National Guard — a body of some 133,000 troops created by outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The force falls under the Security Secretariat, but Sheinbaum plans to move it to the domain of the Army, a move first proposed by Lopez Obrador that critics claim is militarization of security.
Sheinbaum, elected by an overwhelming majority on June 2 to become Mexico’s first-ever woman president, has also vowed to maintain her predecessor’s “hugs not bullets” approach of addressing the root causes of crime, such as poverty and inequality, rather than tackling the cartels head on.
