After his liberation, former Mexican Defense Secretary met with generals: "My detention was DEA's retaliation against Mexico's release of Chapo Guzman's son"

General Salvador Cienfuegos lives peaceful days at his residence in the State of Mexico. After a little more than a month in detention in the United States, the former head of the Mexican military was returned to Mexico by the Department of Justice in charge of William Barr, who found no solid evidence against him. The reasons for his detention and the explanation for his release remain the central themes of the general's private conversations.

The former Secretary of National Defense has met at least three times with senior military officials who have visited him to learn more about his traumatic experience, which began in the evening of October 15 at the Los Angeles airport. The talks are quiet, but loaded with political definitions.

Serene, as LPO was able to learn, the general is convinced that the investigation of Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero will not find solid evidence against him either. "You know me, you know about my family, you know about this house where I've lived for years, what you see is what there is and the prosecutor will see that too," he slides in front of his interlocutors.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of these conversations is that Cienfuegos is nourishing, without blushing, a thesis that has been circulating for weeks in the Mexican military: his arrest was the result of some kind of retaliation by the DEA against the Mexican government. The motive would be the failed capture of Joaquín Guzmán Loera's son, which was triggered by the Culiacán incident in 2019.

Under this logic, Cienfuegos assures that he has already heard versions about the time that the DEA would have given the Mexican government to generate some kind of decisive arrest - as published in Reuters. That detention did not come and the retaliation was the arrest of the general. LPO revealed that the National Palace had ordered a major review of Cienfuegos' assets and that the result was negative.

Cienfuegos is worried about the fate of the bilateral relationship. He believes that the DEA will now want to demand the arrest of Rafael Caro Quintero, the drug lord who is credited with the torture and murder of the notorious DEA agent Enrique Camarena.

The request to go after Caro Quintero was already in the Mexican military at the time of Cienfuegos but the government of Enrique Peña Nieto never granted it because it understood that the former drug lord is already a very peripheral figure and that there are other targets of greater interest. Cienfuegos remembers that pressure began when Caro Quintero disappeared after a confusing judicial release at the beginning of Peña's six-year term.

LPO revealed that Cienfuegos' release generated strong unrest among the staff of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, and that the DEA was highly exposed to the fall of the case.

For the Mexican government it would be a very complex demand to fulfill because it also implies reviving, as has already been reported in movies, TV and books, the fight between the DEA and the CIA over their operations in Mexico. For the time being, last week the DEA increased its reward for data on Caro Quintero. It is now $20 million.