The Christmas eve of 2023 was bloody for Tabasco. That weekend there were riots in four prisons, and in the streets were shot and burning vehicles. At that time it was thought that an attack had even occurred against the then Secretary of State Security, Hernán Bermúdez Requena, because there was a shooting near his home, in Villahermosa, the capital. The governor, Carlos Manuel Merino, was that weekend with the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whom he had accompanied to the inauguration of the Isthmus train. The news of the crisis in Tabasco came to them at the same time. It could not be worse time for Merino, who felt tested at that moment. The matter aggravated by the fact that López Obrador is originally from that state, to southern Mexico. The governor excused himself, sorry, and assured the president that he would take action on the matter.
The chaos of that Christmas now makes sense, in the light of the criminal record of Bermúdez, called Commander harrested since Thursday in a maximum security prison for its alleged links with the Barredora, a cell of the New Generation Jalisco cartel (CJNG). The president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has assured that López Obrador directly asked Merino to dismiss Bermúdez from the Tabasco Police. The ex -president’s environment, who is now part of the Sheinbaum government at the Mexico City International Airport (AICM), clarifies that version.
According to witnesses of those conversations, Merino called Bermúdez as soon as he returned to Tabasco that weekend. The then police chief assured him that he would solve the problem and asked for a few days. But violence did not stop. The first week of January 2024, with the weight of the gaze from the National Palace, Merino ceased Bermúdez. A revealing detail occurred in the interim. Merino called Adam Augusto López, who left the position of Governor of Tabasco to join the Cabinet of López Obrador as secretary of the Interior, and asked if he agreed with the movement. López gave him green light.
Adam’s opinion, today Morena’s senator, was very important. For Merino, perhaps, as relevant as that of the president. Adam Augustus was elected in 2018 for a period of six years, but left the governorship shortly after to move to Mexico City and work in the federal government.
Adam Augustus was the head of a Tabasco political clan born almost three decades ago, within the PRI governments, according to sources from the near the senator. In that group were Bermúdez, Merino and other politicians who Adam Augusto became officials when he reached the governorship, in 2019. The formation of the group brought with him the birth of his counterweight, that of the pure workshops who never militated in the PRI. His head is Javier May, the current Tabasco governor, which largely explains the political background behind the investigation against Bermúdez. May prosecutor Óscar Vázquez said Friday seeking a sentence of 158 years in prison against the former official.
Adam Augustus has not denied his relationship with Bermúdez. This week, when the former police chief was sent to Mexico by Paraguay, where he had escaped, the Morenista senator said they had a friendship of many years. The link was forged in the nineties, in the heat of the crisis that crossed the Tabasco policy, cracked by the open confrontation between López Obrador, a rising star of the opposition, and the chiefs of the PRI. López Obrador, himself expriista, contended in the 1988 election for the governorship by folding the nascent PRD. He lost to the official candidate, Salvador Neme. Accusing an electoral fraud, the opposition leader headed mobilizations and organized thousands of people against the president and the PRI. That forced the early resignation of Neme de la Gubernatura, in 1992.
Instead of Neme, the State Congress, dominated by the PRI, appointed Senator Manuel Gurría, a Tabasqueño politician rather rooted in capitalist politics and very close to the influential PRI Carlos Hank González, who ruled Mexico City. The Gurría period, which concluded in 1994, marked the origin of Adam’s clan. It is the group that would recycle when he became himself into a state president. Gurría appointed Enrique Priego as Secretary of the Interior, and placed Adam Augusto, and Jaime Humberto Lastra as the head of Public Security of the State as Undersecretary of Government and Legal Affairs. It was Lastra, according to the sources consulted, who led to Bermúdez, originally from Chiapas, and crowned him as head of the State Police.
At that time, Merino was Private Secretary of Adam Augustus. The politicians consulted say that there is a photo where the entire clan appears, in a private event where everyone celebrated their appointments. There also appeared Luis Romeo Gurría, collaborator of Lastra in the Undersecretariat of Government. The group dispersed momentarily in the six -year term of PRI Roberto Madrazo, who defeated López Obrador in 1994.
After losing, the PRD leader denounced a fraud. Its support base grew in this fight. His followers blocked the Government Palace, the Chamber of Deputies and the Superior Court of Justice to curb Madrazo’s inauguration. In January 1995, protesters were violently repressed and evicted. “It could be said that, while Javier May was outside the palace protesting, Adam’s group was inside. From there comes the historical rivalry,” says one of the sources.
Adam Augustus was distanced from the PRI and began his approach to López Obrador and the PRD. The opposition leader, who was already head of Government of Mexico City, extended Adam Augusto the appreciation he had for his family. The father of today Morenista senator, the notary Payambé López, helped the birth of the PRD as a party at a time of enormous PRI domain and repression of dissent. In 2003, Adam Augustus was postulated by the leftist party as a candidate for mayor of Villahermosa. Merino was his campaign coordinator. They lost in front of the PRI, but strengthened their position in the PRD.
In 2006, for his first presidential campaign, López Obrador commissioned Adam Augustus for the political operation in the southeast states. That year, Bermúdez was arrested by the area of the Attorney General’s Office dedicated to the investigation of organized crime, pointing it for the murder of a livestock leader. Bermúdez was Undersecretary of Civil Protection, Prevention and Social Readaptation in the Local Government Secretariat, with Lastra as the holder. Finally, the official was free without charges. It was a first call for what would come years later.
López Obrador’s overwhelming triumph in 2018 led Adam Augusto to the governorship of Tabasco, and with him to his entire clan. The president appointed Jaime Lastra as state prosecutor, and this in turn placed Bermúdez as director of the Investigation Police of that agency. Enrique Priego became president of the State Superior Court. Luis Romeo Gurría assumed the Ministry of Works. The first Secretary of Security appointed by Adam Augusto was Mario Balcázar, who resigned within a few months. It was Bermúdez’s opportunity window, which took over in that agency in 2019, to begin to form his own group. One of his designations was Ulises Pinto, aka El mamado, as a investigation police. This was recently captured, indicated as second to the Barredora.
Merino, who was a delegate of social programs, did not make any change in the structure when he relieved Adan Augusto in power, despite the growing decomposition of security in the state. In 2021, Lastra resigned from the prosecutor, and is now a federal deputy of Morena. In the political mentisers it was said that Adam Augustus never stopped making decisions in Tabasco. That explains that, from Mexico City, without already having a public office (he left the governorate to assemble his campaign for the presidential candidacy of Morena), it was he who, in fact, approved the dismissal of Bermúdez. He faces several years in prison today, while the future of today senator within the movement is uncertain.
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