AMLO presents his most recent book “Halfway Through”

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Halfway through, the most recent book by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador contains unpublished information on matters of international politics, national security, foreign policy, and tax collection.

The most recent book by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, A Mitad del Camino, published by Editorial Planeta, is not only a portrait of the president’s idea of ​​the country and self-evaluation of his government but also contains unpublished information on national security matters, foreign policy, and tax collection.

For example, the president revealed a facsimile of a letter sent to him by the former secretary of National Defense in the Peña Nieto administration, Salvador Cienfuegos, shortly after his arrest in the United States on alleged drug trafficking and money laundering charges. In the manuscript, the general told López Obrador that his arrest had been humiliating and that he did not have enough money to pay for his defense in the North American country.

The book also includes an unpublished report from the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) on the rescue mission of Evo Morales after the coup in Bolivia, for which Mexico sent an official aircraft. The document reveals that when the plane took off from the Cochabamba airport, with the president and his entourage on board, Bolivian soldiers fired a rocket at it in an attempt to shoot it down.

López Obrador also reveals that his administration reached an agreement with the companies that run prisons so that, at the end of the current contracts (of 22 years), the prisons become the property of the government.

In  A Mitad del Camino (Halfway through), there is also a report from the Tax Administration Service (SAT) that reveals a list of the 58 large taxpayers that benefited the most from condonations during the six-year terms of Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto.

The list of beneficiaries includes the names of companies whose owners are now advisers to President López Obrador, such as Grupo Salinas –of Ricardo Salinas Pliego–, to which 7,775 million pesos were condoned, mainly during the Peña Nieto Administration; Deacero –owned by Sergio Gutiérrez–, who had waivers of 1.9 billion pesos, all in agreements with Peña Nieto; and Grupo Financiero Banorte -of Carlos Hank-, which was condoned 1.4 billion pesos also during the Enrique Peña Nieto six-year term.

Evo MOreales en Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico City 2019

The attack on Evo Morales

During the rescue mission of former President Evo Morales after the coup in Bolivia in November 2019, the military personnel from that country launched a rocket from the ground at the Mexican government aircraft where the deposed president was traveling with the intention of shooting him down.

The attack was carried out with a Russian-made RPG-7 rocket launcher, which is designed to destroy tanks and is also capable of shooting down aircraft (it has been used by terrorist organizations to bring down US and NATO helicopters). In Mexico, the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel shot down an Air Force helicopter with one of those missiles in 2015.

The Mexican crew, led by the military, managed to evade the projectile launched by Bolivian soldiers when the official aircraft, a Gulfstream G550 jet, began to take off from the Chimoré airport in Cochabamba.

The revelation is part of an unpublished report prepared by the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), in charge of executing the Morales rescue plan, and which was included in the most recent book by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Halfway through, published by Editorial Planeta.

“Evo used to say that we had saved his life; I thought that this expression was just a gesture of gratitude for our solidarity, but when the Secretary of Defense gave me the report on the details of the operation, I realized that Mexico really saved his life, ”López Obrador writes.

The Sedena report was made from the statements of the military directly involved in the “Bolivia Mission”: the crew aboard the Gulfstream G550 that traveled from Mexico City to the South American country in the early morning of November 11, 2019, after the coup led by conservative groups in that country in collusion with the Army.

The crew was made up of Airman Pilot General Miguel Eduardo Hernández Velázquez, Airman Pilot Lieutenant Colonel Felipe Jarquín Hernández, and Second Captain Julio César Sánchez Ruperto. Their functions would be, respectively, those of pilot, co-pilot, and onboard mechanic. They were accompanied by Froylán Gámez Gamboa, from the Special Affairs Directorate of the SRE’s Undersecretariat for Latin America and the Caribbean, as the diplomatic representative of Mexico.