Alejandro Gertz Manero left his position as head of Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office, after lengthy negotiations with the ruling party, on Thursday. His term ended in January 2028. According to several sources close to the negotiations, the idea was for Gertz (86 years old) to submit his resignation in the morning, thus avoiding the narrative of a confrontation between him and the government and Morena in the Senate on the other hand. But hours passed and the resignation did not arrive. It finally happened this afternoon after hours of speculation and rumours. In the text of his resignation, Geertz confirmed that President Claudia Sheinbaum had offered him an ambassadorial position “in a friendly country.”
The resignation text continues: “This proposal will allow me the possibility of continuing to serve my country, in a new assignment for which I am honored and grateful; and thus validates my long-standing career in public service; and for this reason, as of this date and with all corresponding legal implications, I will retire from my current position as Attorney General.” Under the law, the specialized prosecutor for competition control must assume his position on an interim basis, while the Senate, in cooperation with Sheinbaum, selects his replacement.
According to the same sources mentioned above, who are aware of the entire resignation process, Geertz is falling due to the cooling of his relationship with the president and the security ministerial council in recent weeks. Gertz, who took office with the support of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024), thus concludes his time at the head of the agency, a path marked by its bureaucratic shift, from the Attorney General’s Office to the Attorney General’s Office, and also marked by the focus of Gertz himself, an evasive official, unable to bring the corruption of previous governments to trial.
Gertz’s departure marks the end of a period in Mexico, of which the senior official was one of the few survivors. Of those who came – or returned – to power with López Obrador, inside or outside the Cabinet, the prosecutor was almost the only one who remained aware of his nine years in office. All that remains is the current Minister of the Interior, Rosa Aisela Rodriguez, formerly responsible for security and citizen protection. She has been predicted these years many times over, mainly due to her age and alleged serious illnesses that were never confirmed, and the Senate, responsible for finding a replacement, is now writing her political obituary.
The Prosecutor General’s departure allows the government to redesign the Federal Security Service, led by President Claudia Sheinbaum. During these 13 months of her term, the head of the executive branch tried to show some kind of rapprochement with the Prosecutor General, who regularly attended meetings of the Security Cabinet, and even Sheinbaum’s morning press conferences. This rapprochement was also noticeable in the facilities provided by Gertz to the President and her security team, led by Branch Secretary Omar García Harfouch, to place their bishops in subordination, as the case of Cesar Oliveros reached the Office of the Public Prosecutor specializing in organized crime.
But his departure clears the way for Sheinbaum and his government, aware of the serious problem they face with impunity, and the number of crimes — most of them local in nature, it is true — that arrive forcefully in court and then collapse in the hearing arena, either for want of evidence or for their mediocrity. One of the goals of the Security Cabinet, as Harfouche has repeated these months, is to strengthen criminal investigations and improve evidence so that cases do not reach a judge. The arrival of a new prosecutor, close to your ideas and interests, would put an end to any pretext for the future, in terms of results.
Gertz’s name is now remembered in history as the first prosecutor of the independent republic, and also for her role in one of the country’s most famous potential influence-peddling cases in recent years, involving her in-laws, her brother’s partner, who died years ago, and her daughters. In short, Gertz accused the former spouses and their two daughters of not taking care of his brother who had pneumonia, which caused his death. After his death in 2015, a complaint filed by Gertz, then in private practice, to the Mexico City prosecutor’s office was unsuccessful. But, for some reason, the process picked up after he arrived at FGR.
With Gertz installed at the head of the department, the D.C. Attorney’s Office, then in the hands of Ernestina Godoy, the current presidential legal advisor, revitalized the case against the former partner of the prosecutor’s brother and his two daughters. In September 2020, Godoy agents obtained arrest warrants for both of them, and in October, they arrested one of the daughters, Alejandra Cuevas. Although he never lived with his mother and prosecutor Gertz’s brother, Cuevas spent a year and a half in prison. Until the Supreme Court rejected his case in March 2022 and returned him to freedom.
The Attorney General has been the hero of other controversies these years, some of them perhaps embarrassing, because of the expectations that have arisen, and which have come to nothing at the moment. The Odebrecht case easily appears on this list, as it is the spearhead case in the Lopez Obrador administration’s efforts against the corruption of previous governments. In July 2019, a judge issued several arrest warrants against the former director of the state oil company Pemex, Emilio Lozoya, during the years of President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), and some family members. According to the accusation, Lozoya was at the center of a bribery scheme, paid for by the construction company Odebrecht, in exchange for public contracts.
This case raised eyebrows like few others, and made us believe that justice was possible. Lozoya included a significant number of senior officials in his government and the opposition in his statements, but the impossibility of proving his statements left the case futile. So far there is not a single conviction in this regard. The same thing happened with the factory corruption cases, and the case of Sigalmix, an organization that fought for the food security of the population and hosted the embezzlement of millions. To this day, the FGR keeps mid-level officials in prison, without any punishment.
Another blemish on the Gertz file is the decline in investigations into the Ayotzinapa case. The investigation, promoted by López Obrador, into the disappearance of 43 boys, in the municipality of Iguala, in Guerrero, in 2014, has stirred up the country and, above all, the families of the disappeared, after years of inaction by the authorities, in a case that has touched the nation. After a promising first two years, during which Gertz’s investigators were able to identify the bones of two boys, the prosecutor, prompted by Lopez Obrador, forced the person in charge of the case, Omar Gomez, to leave, and put the investigations back in the freezer, in a move that is still not understood today.
It seemed unlikely that Geertz would remain in public service. The octogenarian was in his second five years, and his years in the prosecutor’s office signaled his retirement, especially after the death of his longtime aide, Juan Ramos. But the embassy option will keep him active now. He left behind half a life of public service, associated with various political parties and movements. Before becoming a prosecutor, Gertz was a deputy and chief of the Metropolitan and State Police, an agent of the old district attorney’s office, and part of the team that led the first operations to eradicate illegal crops in the country… If he one day writes his memoirs, it would be a great sin to ignore them.