Family, oil and media: the president enters the melee

On the morning of December 31, López Obrador and his wife, Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, recorded a video in the Empress Garden of the National Palace. They showed an ahuehuete planted a year before and the president congratulated the Mexicans with a message of optimism. “I have a lot of faith in the future,” he summed up. The immediate future, for him, was made up of a race with the wind in his favor on his favorite terrain, that of the electoral campaign, and a clear horizon, the victory in a referendum on the revocation of the mandate designed to vindicate himself at the polls. . The route has not changed and the panorama for that April 10, the day of the vote, remains the same. But it started to rain. On January 27, questions began to be raised against the eldest son of the president, José Ramón López Beltrán, for having occupied between 2019 and 2020 a house on the outskirts of Houston, in Texas, owned by a former director of an oil company that contracted with the company. state-owned Petróleos de México (Pemex). The fuse was the investigation of an NGO, Mexicans Against Corruption, which was followed by more publications, reports and accusations. The direct criticisms that point to a conflict of interest were mixed with the background sea of ​​voices that question the president’s austerity and anti-corruption discourse. More than three weeks later, the rain still hasn’t stopped.

López Obrador has chosen to enter the melee. Counter. That has always been his strategy since he took office in December 2018, but this time he has put all the variables of his great battles into the equation. The strained relations with Spain, to the point of requesting “a pause” in the bilateral agenda. The pulse with the National Electoral Institute (INE) and other autonomous bodies such as the Transparency Institute (INAI). The electrical reform and tensions with investors. The media and the attacks on some journalists and activists who are very critical of his project, the Fourth Transformation, especially those who have questioned the expenses and income of his son. López Beltrán’s homes and work in the United States have become a central element of the political confrontation and, instead of reducing the controversy, the president has decided to fight against all those he considers his opponents from the rostrum of his conferences morning press releases, the morning calls. The central question now is whether that rain anticipates a hurricane front and, therefore, represents a turning point in the six-year term or if, in the end, it is just a storm.

To have a more complete demographic panorama, we will have to wait for the data from the end of February. However, the high popularity of López Obrador was not affected at least during the week after the first revelations. A study by the consulting firm SIMO carried out between January 27 and February 5 indicates that 65% of those surveyed continued to approve of the head of state and 73% were in favor of ending his term. In the opinion of Francisco Abundis, director of the Parametric firm, the evolution will depend on the dynamics of the case and that there is more information. “He doesn’t have control of the agenda right now, I think that’s what bothers him the most, but maybe his reaction isn’t the best way to deal with it,” he says. Roy Campos, president of Mitofsky, also sees the president “out of his comfort zone” and that adds to the fact that he has already started the electoral ban. “I expected that the campaign for the revocation would be given in another way and it has not been like that. He brought up several themes and they didn’t work for him because the theme is still the son. So he decides to open a front by publishing the alleged income of Loret de Mola. But there is a cut, because this week we have already seen a strategic López Obrador, more deliberate, trying to place his message, ”he continues.

Carlos Loret de Mola is one of the journalists who has published the most about José Ramón López Beltrán on his website, Latinus. The president exhibited a sheet a week ago during a press conference comparing his salary with the alleged contributions of various media to the communicator. The information, he said, was sent to the National Palace by “anonymous persons.” The affected denied these data, but the president did not give up and asked the Transparency Institute to publish “the origin of the wealth” of the informant. The body denied it, as it was not a public official, although the pulse is not over yet. In addition to Loret de Mola, he charged against Carmen Aristegui, Joaquín López Dóriga or Ciro Gómez Leyva, all of them informants with a high public presence.

Loret believes that López Obrador is facing his worst crisis, but he has the strength to recover. “The one who has given us signs that we hit the nail on the head and that the information impacted his waterline and has made it very clear to us that he is in a moment of crisis, that he is weak, that he is erratic,” he says. he. “He is a president who has been questioning his financial footprint since he was head of government. More recently his brothers, Pío and Martín. None of this seemed to make an impact until the Houston house arrived. Having said this, I believe that we are dealing with a political animal in the most respectful sense of the expression. As a leader he has been a failure, but as a politician he is a success, as a campaigner he is a success and I believe that he has the tools to reinvent himself as president. I do not believe that this is the lethal blow to the Administration as it was the White House for Enrique Peña Nieto”, continues Loret de Mola in reference to the purchase of a mansion in Las Lomas, one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Mexico City, by Angélica Rivera, ex-wife of the former PRI president.

López Obrador, who has made the break with the previous Administrations the main reason for his Government’s existence, has maintained that the accusations against the son are only an attempt to undermine his moral authority. José Ramón López Beltrán, 41, a law graduate, moved to Houston in 2019 along with his partner, Carolyn Adams, whose father is American and mother is Brazilian. Between that year and the next they lived in a house, with a plot and a pool, owned by Keith Schilling, then a director of the Baker Hughes firm.

This company, the fifth contractor that invoices Pemex the most, has been operating in Mexico for more than 60 years, has worked with all the last governments and retains with the current 10 contracts for 3,021 million pesos (about 150 million dollars), according to the most recent monthly report on payments and debts of the company cited by the publications. The director of the state oil company, Octavio Romero Oropeza, has pointed out that the largest contract amounts with Baker Hughes occurred in 2008, 2012 and 2014, that is, under the administrations of Felipe Calderón (PAN) and Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI). .

Carolyn Adams has explained in a statement that she worked in the energy sector in the United Arab Emirates and Mexico, although she has not specified the companies. She affirms that when she moved to Houston she rented a house while José Ramón López Beltrán processed her visa, she denies having had “any relationship with Baker Hughes or any of her executives.” Later, she bought a house in the suburbs of Houston to which they moved in 2020. Keith Schilling, for his part, stated in statements to Bloomberg that he did not know that López Beltrán is the son of the Mexican president.

For two years, López Beltrán has been working as a legal advisor to the construction company KEI Partners, according to what he himself has stated. This data contributed to fuel new criticism. Two of the shareholders of that company are the children of Daniel Chávez, a businessman considered close to the president and “honorary supervisor” of the Mayan Train, one of the most emblematic works of the Mexican Executive. Chávez, however, has categorically denied having “commercial or work relationships of any kind with any level of government or public officials” as have his family and the group he founded, Vidanta. EL PAÍS has tried to contact López Beltrán through official channels. You have not received a response.

For the president there is no case. However, instead of letting it go, he insists on a counteroffensive that takes place in precise circumstances. It comes after a particularly complex start to the year due to the security crisis and inflation. In addition, Roy Campos recalls, “his attack on the media was not at the most appropriate time, because there are mobilizations of journalists for the murdered colleagues.” Five reporters executed by organized crime in a month and a half. Added to this are some especially solemn moments, such as the announcement of a “political testament” shortly after contracting covid for the second time and undergoing cardiac catheterization. Or the letter in support of López Obrador and signed by the head of the Government of Mexico City and favorite for succession in 2024, Claudia Sheinbaum, and the governors of her party, Morena.

The writer and journalist Jorge Zepeda considers that this trance “could be considered a turning point in terms of strategy, not in terms of repercussions.” “I believe that the president feels overwhelmed by a reality that is far below expectations. A series of frustrations are added and the way out has been a strategy, an acceleration of a feature of his political strategy, which is polarization. Between the belligerent verb, the appointments of ambassadors and then the emotional reaction to the son’s questions, returning the blows more than making a defense… All this configures a modification of the strategy already delivered in the arms of polarization “, reasons. For Zepeda, there are two plausible causes: one would be the surrender to the emotional reaction to the figure of head of state and another that, faced with the impossibility of meeting expectations, tries to cement its social foundations with political calculation. Even so, in his opinion, in practice little will change and there will be no significant turnaround in the 4-T.

“Nobody has bordered on anything,” says Martha Singer, a professor at the Center for Political Studies at UNAM. “Every day he puts the accent where he decides, but we are reaching a point in the six-year term where we normally see a downward curve. Now we are in a very different scenario and the issues on which the president has decided to discuss and put on the table in the public space are running out somehow. The issue of corruption is running out and political life is more complicated than the sheer will for change. But nobody has caught him by surprise, ”she stresses.

For Humberto Beck, a professor at the Colegio de México, the political cycle, on the other hand, is facing a turning point and a decisive moment. He recalls that “the government plan was three years to lay the foundations and three to consolidate it.” “Now it is evident and we see that the project has reached its limits. The president is betting on him to win a discursive fight about the meaning of his own image, hence the importance of finding a legacy. He is playing the future and building his historical image. And if we compare the results, he fell far short of what was promised”, he continues. A construction that goes through melee tactics and direct confrontation with his opponents.

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