Omar García Harfuch has won unprecedented popularity, bordering on adulation, for his apparent success in tackling organized crime and the drug cartels, especially in Sinaloa. Thwarted (by gender quota) in his run for mayor of Mexico City, he remains the most visible figure in the government after Claudia Sheinbaum, and could well run for president in 2030.
The powerful politician and adored crime fighter
29 November 2025 marked the first time that the name of Mexico’s Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Omar Harfuch, became known to an English-speaking audience. It was the Los Angeles Times that published an article headed Mexico’s ‘Batman’: The president’s favorite crime fighter, the cartels’ nemesis. This signalled the beginning of a campaign which could position Harfuch as the key candidate for the Morena Party’s internal leadership contest in 2029 and potentially as the future President of Mexico in 2030.
Omar García Harfuch is probably the most visible figure in the Mexican government apart from the president and polls show him to be among the most popular. Even current President Sheinbaum’s detractors cannot resist the gravitational pull of Harfuch’s competence and efficiency.
Spectacle or Substance?
Criticism of Harfuch tends to come from those who question reports of the attempt on his life in 2022, allegedly carried out by the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG – Jalisco New Generation Cartel). They argue that this event has been manipulated to strengthen Harfuch’s allegorical image and reputation in tackling organised crime.
This debate, however, cannot detract from his effective policies in Sinaloa in 2024, nor his most recent role in supporting the Plan Michoacán this year, which reduced crime in the state, according to some sources, by up to 40 per cent in the space of a month.
Government policies promoted by Harfuch include developing federal forces, strengthening the state prosecutor’s office via the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Investigation and Intelligence in High Impact Crimes, targeting ‘violence-generators’ and increasing investment in the Unidad de Inteligenica Financiera (UIF – Financial Intelligence Unit) to track the illicit financial dealings of these groups. Social and economic programmes include investment in the agricultural sector and wage security for farmers in the Michoacán state, as well as institutions aiming to cement dialogue, community-led input and victim support.
Harfuch’s serious suit-wearing demeanour and the effective government policies he undertakes as ex-Chief of Police have had resounding success according to some, but are seen by others as mere window-dressing.
Caped-Crusader: Harfuch is Undeniably Popular
The recent Los Angeles Times article suggests that Harfuch’s rise to power is a consequence of Sheinbaum’s favouritism. However his popularity is far more substantial.
For the Mayoral Elections in Ciudad de México 2023, the city was plastered with campaign material: a contest between Clara Brugada (the current CDMX Mayor) and Omar García Harfuch. The cult of personality surrounding Harfuch is inescapable; walking through the twisted alleys of the city we could hear music coming from a small house. Ringing the doorbell, we were met with a plate of chilaquiles and a well-lit, cosy home which on closer inspection was covered in Harfuch paraphernalia. The family later revealed that they had taken the posters from the street to adorn their casa.
It is noteworthy that the carefully-made shrine honouring Harfuch is surrounded by a group of women. Harfuch’s organised crime approach allows for freedom of movement, greater safety in day-to-day life and the ability to act with less anxiety and precaution in the city. All of which primarily enhance the lives of Mexico’s citizens, particularly those from a lower socio-economic background, and especially women. As fear dissipates on an individual level, the possibility of fewer disappearances, kidnappings and homicides seems a goal within reach for every Mexican.
The women pictured above form part of a personality cult which may well support Harfuch in the 2030 presidential race, after his exit from the CDMX mayoral election, where the Morena Party gender quota gave Clara Brugada the upper hand. It is possible that the women believe that Mexico’s security crisis would be dealt with competently by Harfuch.
If this image depicts a personality cult, it marks an ironic contrast to the pictures of mothers and relatives holding pictures of their disappeared loved ones.
This tension has been described in an article in Americas Quarterly which stated that ‘Sheinbaum’s crime-fighting strategy [with Harfuch at the centre] puts little emphasis on Mexico’s severe ongoing crisis of forced disappearances, and has proposed solutions that human rights experts say have failed in the past and don’t take account of the victims’ perspectives.’
Does the current cult around Harfuch provide a positive future focus and resolution or obscure this criticism of a party in charge of one of the countries most afflicted by violence and organised crime in the world?
Harfuch’s state-by-state operations have been targeted and are thus gaining well-deserved popularity. His 2024 approach in Sinaloa reduced homicide rates in the state which was experiencing an intensification in armed conflict so extreme that parent-teacher associations lobbied for classes to be taught online to keep their children safe, especially in Culiacán, Sinaloa. Harfuch consulted businessmen, farmers, professional and civil associations alongside other groups in an attempt to fully understand their experiences and sought to amplify the voices of those silenced by fear, isolation and organised crime.
His presence was so essential to Sinaloa’s amelioration that the term “Harfuch” has been colloquially adopted as a blanket-term to refer to the elite forces carrying out operations against organised crime.
It is a cult of personality which the Morena Party seems to believe could stand the test of time, especially given the emerging contest posed by the nascent ultra right-wing in Mexico which has become increasingly vocal and critical over the last year about the issue of organised crime, exploiting its naturally emotive and polarising nature.
Not His Father’s Son
Harfuch himself is the inheritor of a rather complex family history. His father and grandfather were well-known for their abuse of power and use of torture during the PRI’s single-party dictatorship. With this background, it is surprising that Harfuch has been promoted to such a central position in the Party and that he has managed to pave such a unique path in Mexican politics. Real, substantive change to ordinary peoples’ lives seems to triumph over any shadowy past that could have haunted Harfuch’s career.
Harfuch’s success as Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection in the public eye is unprecedented. Mexico’s recent history is rife with less salubrious characters: Genaro García Luna, Secretary of Public Security under President Calderón, was convicted for engaging in continuing criminal enterprises and taking millions in cash bribes from the Sinaloa cartel.
Then there was General Salvador Cienfuegos, Secretary of Defense under President Peña Nieto, who triggered one of the worst diplomatic rifts between the US and Mexico.
Harfuch’s imperturbable demeanour and effective policies serve as a buffer against Trump’s invectives against Mexico’s management of organised crime. Given the rise of MAGA podcasters encouraging and popularising US intervention in Mexico, Trump’s aggressive advances in Venezuela, and the US’ decertification of Colombia as a partner in the ‘War on Drugs’, it is crucial for Mexico to demonstrate national strength, governance and resilience.
Cleaning up the backyard
Criminality and violence have consistently been seen as prolific in and inextricable from Mexico’s governments. The Morena Party’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) used a discourse of abrazos no balazos (hugs not bullets) to distance the government from being linked illicit crime and economies. Sheinbaum’s tack marks an evolution beyond this position; she presents both the government and State presence as actively combatting organised crime with homegrown policies which include cooperation, sometimes concession, but never acquiescence to the US.
The Monroe Doctrine, now rebadged as the ‘Donroe Doctrine’, has challenged Mexico’s constitutional provision for ‘self-determination’. The allegorical figure of Harfuch combats US intervention in its former ‘back-yard’ and in Mexico.
Harfuch is symbolically and emphatically one of the first Secretaries of Security and Citizen Protection who has reduced organised crime violence on a domestic level. This is well-received and beneficially impacts ordinary citizens’ freedom of movement across Mexico. Harfuch is no longer just CDMX’s ‘Batman’, but el súper-policía for all Mexicans.
He told the New York Times that: ‘I’m convinced it will be like in Mexico City. Once homicides and robberies started to go down, it took a long time for perceptions to change. But they did change.’
Harfuch also partially succeeds in appeasing the US: recent seizures of fentanyl laboratories and his strongman image have done much to ease diplomatic rifts and prove that US intervention in Mexico is not necessary.
While this marks an impressive feat for a country which has been suffering with organised crime for decades, México Pragmático raises the important point that Harfuch’s mythic status sometimes distracts from the challenges of the systemic economic structures that sustain extortion and disappearances which the country still faces.
Main image: photo-montage, Cuartoscuro
