In December 2021, four months after Ken Salazar was officially sworn in as U.S. ambassador to Mexico, the Secretariat of National Defense (Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional, Sedena) began to closely monitor the official’s statements and activities.
The first report, dated December 9th of that year, recorded the meeting Salazar held in Nuevo León with the group of governors of the northeast of the country, with the mission of improving efficiency in customs.
Open source monitoring reported that Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca, from Tamaulipas; Samuel García Sepúlveda, from Nuevo León; Miguel Ángel Riquelme Solís, from Coahuila, and representatives of the government of San Luis Potosí were present.
At the end of the month, he detailed the meetings he had with Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard at the installation of the Mexico-United States High Level Security Group.
It was also reported that during the installation of the Mexico-US Bicentennial Group (Grupo Bicentenario México y Estados Unidos contra el tráfico de armas), Salazar said that “only by working hand in hand between the two countries will it be possible to reduce cross-border crime.
A search of emails leaked by the Guacamaya group shows that at least 21 reports on the ambassador’s activities, interviews and social media posts have been sent in less than a year.
The reports include messages that Ken Salazar shares on social networks. For example, the Sedena system detailed on January 25th of this year that on Twitter the US embassy in Mexico “was alarmed by the murders of journalists and expressed solidarity with Mexican journalists”.
Back in March, it was recorded that Salazar published a photograph in which he appears with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Ebrard in Chiapas.
Salazar also posted a tweet in which he “thanked” the Mexican government for its efforts to capture Miguel Angel “N,” alias “El Huevo,” the leader of the Northeast Cartel.
The monitoring report included Salazar’s meetings with Alfredo del Mazo, PRI governor of the State of Mexico, and Ricardo Gallardo Cardona, the PVEM governor of San Luis Potosi, to whom it was said that he “offered resources and the forces of the US government to strengthen actions against organized crime in the state”. Also of the visit he made to Chihuahua for a meeting with María Eugenia Campos, governor for the PAN.
Sedena’s monitoring also made a personal mark on the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Christopher Landau, who preceded Salazar and was under the secretary’s radar. The emails account for 25 reports on his activities, between March 2019 and January 2021, since Donald Trump proposed him as ambassador to Mexico. The same happened with Roberta S. Jacobson during her representation in the six-year term of Enrique Peña Nieto.
References:
Crail, A. (2022, octubre 5). Ken Salazar, con marcaje personal de la Sedena. El Universal. https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/ken-salazar-con-marcaje-personal-de-la-sedena?utm_source=web&utm_medium=social_buttons&utm_campaign=social_sharing&utm_content=whatsapp
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