MEXICO CITY — No floodlights illuminate the night time sky when the residents of Mexico’s Gotham want a hand. No sizzling line summons this super-cop from a hidden redoubt.
However Mexico does certainly have its personal “Batman”: Omar García Harfuch, safety czar within the authorities of President Claudia Sheinbaum.
He acquired the Batman moniker throughout his days as Mexico Metropolis’s crime-busting police chief underneath then-Mayor Sheinbaum. Just like the stalwart Darkish Knight, García Harfuch emits the vibe of a vigilant protector who compensates for a scarcity of superpowers with extra cerebral expertise — a mixture of intelligence, resolve and moxie.
In his present submit (official title: secretary of Safety and Citizen Safety), García Harfuch is inevitably dispatched to sizzling spots from the northern border to the southern hinterlands — websites of assassinations, massacres, gang wars and different headline-grabbing incarnations of Mexican mayhem. The script by no means varies: He vows to snare the unhealthy guys. Arrests comply with.
Like his boss, Sheinbaum, the safety chief disputes President Trump’s assertions that Mexico is “run by” cartels, although he doesn’t deny the widespread sway of organized crime.
“Sure, there’s positively a presence of felony teams, however [Mexico] will not be managed by the cartels,” García Harfuch, 43, just lately advised the Mexican each day El Common.
Omar García Harfuch, far left in go well with, walks with President Claudia Sheinbaum, middle, and different Mexican officers throughout a ceremony in Mexico Metropolis in September to mark the Sept. 19 earthquakes that hit Mexico in 1985 and 2017.
(Juan Abundis / ObturadorMX by way of Getty Photographs)
His stern, just-the-facts Joe Friday recitals of arrests, seizures, drug lab takedowns and different enforcement actions are signature moments at presidential information briefings. García Harfuch — all the time decked out in go well with and tie — transmits an aura of competence, and his media-savvy advisors have burnished his picture as an implacable foe of the cartels.
Supporters started calling him Batman, in English, when crime charges dropped precipitously in Mexico Metropolis throughout his tenure as police chief. Supporters even circulated on-line photos of a modified Batman motion determine, with “Harfuch” emblazoned on the chest.
Whereas emphasizing intelligence-gathering and investigative diligence, he doesn’t shy from praising shoe-leather police work and citing conventional metrics of success. Since Sheinbaum took workplace Oct. 1, 2024, he says, authorities have arrested greater than 37,000 suspects in “high-impact crimes,” seized greater than 300 tons of illicit medicine and dismantled greater than 600 drug labs.
Such statistics had been not often tossed about through the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s predecessor and mentor. The ex-president favored a much-criticized “hugs not bullets” technique — curbing offensive operations towards cartels and as an alternative addressing poverty and different socioeconomic elements driving younger individuals to hitch organized crime. Many Mexicans seem pleased with the shift.
García Harfuch, on the Nationwide Palace in September, was chief of police of Mexico Metropolis earlier than turning into secretary of Safety and Citizen Safety.
(Gerardo Vieyra / NurPhoto by way of Getty Photographs)
“Harfuch appears to me a superb man who has good intentions, however, sadly, crime is so ingrained in Mexican society that it’s laborious to eliminate it,” mentioned Gregorio Flores, 57, a store proprietor in Mexico Metropolis.
García Harfuch is the most likely probably the most seen determine within the Mexican authorities aside from the president, and polls present him to be among the many hottest — and a doable candidate to succeed Sheinbaum, who clearly trusts him explicitly from their time collectively in Mexico Metropolis authorities. Even rivals of Sheinbaum acknowledge his effectiveness.
Taking a pronounced stance towards organized crime is hardly with out danger in Mexico, the place politicians, cops, journalists and anybody else who stands in the best way of the mobs could wind up within the gangsters’ cross-hairs. García Harfuch is effectively conscious of the stakes.
Consultants work on the crime scene after García Harfuch was wounded in an assassination try in Mexico Metropolis on June 26, 2020. Two of his bodyguards and a feminine bystander had been killed.
(Pedro Pardo / AFP by way of Getty Photographs)
In 2020, whereas serving because the capital’s police chief, García Harfuch survived three gunshot wounds in a brazen assault as his SUV traveled alongside Mexico Metropolis’s elegant Paseo de la Reforma. Killed within the assault had been two police bodyguards and a feminine road vendor who was a bystander. The commando-style strike using a number of high-caliber armaments surprised one of many capital’s toniest residential districts, one thing like a mob hit on Rodeo Drive.
From his hospital mattress, García Harfuch — a former federal cop who additionally has a legislation diploma — blamed the highly effective Jalisco New Technology cartel.
Ongoing threats towards García Harfuch are ceaselessly reported within the Mexican press, together with chilling scribbled loss of life threats present in Could alongside a number of mangled our bodies, presumed cartel victims, dumped outdoors Acapulco.
“García Harfuch is the cartels’ enemy No. 1,” mentioned David Saucedo, a safety analyst. “He’s develop into a headache for them. The cartels had been accustomed to creating offers with [the government]. … However Harfuch gives the look that he’s not disposed to succeed in an settlement with organized crime teams. And that’s an issue for the cartels.”
Safety is Mexicans’ main concern, and Garcia Harfuch gives the look that the great guys are cracking down, even when many are doubtful concerning the steep crime declines Sheinbaum often touts.
Homicides have nose-dived by virtually 40% since Sheinbaum took workplace final yr, the federal government says, although critics name the statistic inflated — it excludes, for example, the rising numbers of “disappeared” individuals, presumed crime victims consigned to clandestine graves.
And a few have steered that Sheinbaum’s save-the-day call-ups of her media-savvy safety chief are extra performative than substantive, and possibly counterproductive.
“There’s no Batman,” columnist Viri Ríos wrote just lately in Mexico’s Milenio newspaper. “The parable of Batman is harmful, particularly for Harfuch. Making him a delusion imposes on him the duty of pacifying the nation. However, as everyone knows, Omar can’t defeat organized crime by himself.”
In actual fact, García Harfuch has comparatively few forces underneath his direct command. Corruption stays rampant amongst state and municipal police, prosecutors and judges in Mexico, usually rendering them unreliable companions. Thus García Harfuch depends on different companies, notably the nationwide guard, a 200,000-strong drive underneath army command.
Sheinbaum speaks at her each day press briefing in November as García Harfuch seems on. He’s a fixture on the briefings.
(Carl de Souza / AFP by way of Getty Photographs)
García Harfuch often extols his relationship with the armed forces, regardless of rumors of resentment towards his sweeping powers and his closeness to Sheinbaum. Mexico’s first feminine president additionally serves as army commander in chief.
García Harfuch is claimed to have the belief of U.S. legislation enforcement, though the Trump administration’s ever-escalating calls for and threats of unilateral strikes on Mexican territory put him in a tricky spot. Solely final week, Trump declared that he was “not completely satisfied” with narcotics-fighting efforts in Mexico.
“The People believe in García Harfuch, however they’re all the time asking for extra — extra arrests, extra extraditions, extra decommissions” of drug labs, mentioned Saucedo, the safety analyst.
For safety causes, officers present few particulars on García Harfuch’s private life, past saying he’s divorced and a father.
García Harfuch descends from a line of distinguished authorities officers, their careers reflecting, partially, Mexico’s previous underneath a repressive, authoritarian authorities.
His grandfather, Gen. Marcelino García Barragán, was a secretary of protection through the notorious 1968 bloodbath of pupil protesters in Mexico Metropolis’s Tlatelolco district; and his father, Javier García Paniagua, was a politician who held varied posts, together with chief of a now-disbanded federal police company assailed for human rights abuses.
Mexico’s prime cop could not put on a cape and masks, however his background does have a contact of present enterprise: His mom, María Sorté, is considered one of Mexico’s best-known actors, usually portraying characters in telenovelas, or cleaning soap operas. Few know her actual title, María Harfuch Hidalgo, whose paternal surname displays her Lebanese ancestry.
“Harfuch strikes me as a superb man with nice intentions,” mentioned Carmen Zamora, 46, a restaurant proprietor in Mexico Metropolis. “However he wants extra time. One can not resolve in a single yr the violence that we’ve seen for therefore lengthy in Mexico.”
Carlos Monjarraz, 34, a capital automobile salesman, will not be satisfied.
“All this Batman stuff is only a joke on Mexicans when all the pieces is similar — the identical murders, narco-trafficking, insecurity,” Monjarraz mentioned. “We don’t want a Batman to save lots of us. What we’d like is for authorities to jail the true criminals — crooked politicians who maintain defending one another.”
Particular correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
