• DECISION: Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador corrected himself saying that it was him personally -not his national security cabinet as he had said before- who ordered that the son of drug lord Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán to be freed after a botched raid back in October.
• ORDER: “I ordered that this operation be stopped and that this alleged criminal be released”, López Obrador said Friday during a press conference. “The decision was made not to put the population at risk…if we did had not suspend the operation more than 200 innocent people could lose their lives”.
• BACKGROUND: Considered one of the major setbacks of his presidency, López Obrador had originally said that he supported the decision made by high level security officials to release Ovidio Guzmán -Chapo’s son- after mayhem erupted in the city of Culiacán on October 17, 2019.
• POLL: According to the most recent poll by Mexico City’s Reforma newspaper conducted last November, 52% of Mexicans were against the release of Chapo’s son while only 32% supported the López Obrador administration’s to let him go after Mexican military forces had captured him.
