Adán Augusto López Hernández is in the center of the table. Behind him, the shield of Mexico, with a legend below: Senate of the Republic. He begins relaxed, explaining the journalistic revelation that he received four million dollars in income from companies while he was a public employee, without reflecting it in his balance sheet. Little by little, while the journalists present question him, Adan Augusto’s face becomes tense. Even his voice, which goes from affable to aggressive.
—Isn’t it a conflict of interest if one of these companies received public contracts when you were governor of Tabasco, and then, when you aspired to be a presidential candidate, deposited millions in sums?
“Don’t act maliciously, there is no conflict of interest,” Adan Augusto blurted out, pointing his finger. Don’t lie.
This long hour of exchanges, forced by the words of President Claudia Sheinbaum – “let the senator clarify” – is the closest thing to an interview the Morena leader has given to the Upper House in recent weeks since his name began to be heard in several scandals.
Adán Augusto entered national politics in August 2021, when his compatriot and supporter, then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, summoned him to the capital to become his second Minister of the Interior, his main political operator and a very important figure. Previously, he was a wealthy student in Paris, undersecretary in the PRI governments in Tabasco, notary, coordinator of the PRI government campaign Manuel Andrade, general secretary of the PRI in Tabasco, coordinator in Tabasco of López Obrador’s first presidential campaign in 2006, deputy and senator of the PRD and in 2014 he turned to Morena, member of the La Choca park running club and governor of Tabasco for two years and seven months from January 2019. A classic political career among the Mexican elite – of his gang of friends, three have been governors – with scandals and sins that EL PAÍS reconstructs by talking to friends, acquaintances, adversaries and party colleagues.
The charges have been piling up since September. They criticize the appointment of the delinquent Hernán Bermúdez Requena as Secretary of Security in Tabasco, for the substantial public works contracts received by his friends, for the multimillion-dollar payments from private individuals when he was a public employee or for the inconsistencies in his asset declaration. The first suspicion about Adam Augustus dates back to 1992, when he received his first political office.
In his early thirties, he joined the PRI government as undersecretary Manuel Gurría Ordóñez. Three Tabasco sources place him as responsible for the management of the CIAR-100/92 tender (Inter-institutional Commission for the attention of Recommendation 100/92). Born from one of the first recommendations of the National Commission on Human Rights, it consisted of a series of cash compensations to farmers and fishermen affected by oil wells and spills. “Most of these resources were diverted for political purposes, cases of corruption multiplied, from which many claimants were not immune,” the report reads. Donations and donations from PEMEX in Tabascoprepared in 2006 by the Fundar research institute and the Santo Tomás Ecological Association. And a local publication, Southeastern Reporterdescribes that “not only farmers but also leaders of opposition parties paraded through Adam Augustus’s offices to receive wads of banknotes he had in egg cartons under his desk, money which he used to bribe those who were willing and steal most of it.”
In those years, his political group was formed, with names like Enrique Priego Oropeza, Carlos Manuel Merino or Jaime Humberto Lastra, who will accompany him when he reaches the governorship of Tabasco in 2019. Sources in his inner circle maintain that you govern with people you know, not with anyone you pass by on the street. His opponents speak of a cabinet of former PRI members, comrades and notaries. The truth is that, when he was governor, the notaries Priego Oropeza and Lastra respectively directed the Judiciary and the State Attorney General’s Office, as well as appointing several secretaries with this same role. A good representation considering that there are over 80 notaries present throughout Tabasco.
He inherited this profession from his father, Payambé López Falconi, a respected man from Tabasco who helped López Obrador found the PRD in the state. In 1995 he received the notary, number 27, and, while his sister Rosalinda grew up in the PRD, Adán Augusto did so in the PRI, becoming general secretary of Tabasco. In 2000, he coordinated the gubernatorial campaign of his childhood friend, Manuel Andrade Díaz, in this party. It wins with the minimum, but is canceled by the protests of the PAN and the PRD because the state administration, of the outgoing governor Roberto Madrazo Pintado, has not been neutral and has supported the PRI, with greater television presence, diversion of resources in money and in kind and use of public officials in partisan tasks, according to a news report from The day.
According to their opponents, the rapprochement with Obrador only came in 2003, after Adán Augusto left the PRI and joined his sister Rosalinda in the PRD, where as they gradually conquered spaces of power they nicknamed them The successful Lopez. It is here, his friends say, that he falls out with Javier May, his successor as governor of Tabasco. This, a pure Obrero, accused Adán Augusto of elevating and hiding Hernán Bermúdez Requena, his secretary of Security, who turned out to be the godfather of the mafia in the State: who decided in disputes between local leaders, who ordered when to execute.
His defenders point out that López never knew about Bermúdez Requena’s parallel activities, even though intelligence reports on his role as a crime boss have existed since 2020. His opponents charge that all of Tabasco knew that Bermúdez was a bad guy, but that, needing results as governor, Adán Augusto decided to fight fire with fire.
This was not his only scandal in his short time as governor. In less than three years you have time to do the club lawwhich punishes with imprisonment from 10 to 20 years the blocking of works or roads even if in protest; THE comparative lawwhich allows the awarding of public works without tender, and the dedazo lawwhich establishes that municipal delegates are elected by municipal councils and not by popular vote. Part of the first two was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation and the third was revoked by Javier May’s government.
All sources agree that his path to becoming governor was paved by his relationship and closeness with López Obrador. He was the coordinator of his campaign for the south-eastern states in 2006, helped him in the north to convert Morena into a political party in 2014, and when, after the defeats, he began to visit the republic, López was in charge of managing the demonstrations and their logistics, including paying for food, accommodation and transport in the south, PRD colleagues and PRI opponents point out at the time.
Also in these years he created commercial relationships (an example: he was godfather to the daughter of the builder Manuel Santandreu, who benefited greatly from his government), networks that were pointed out as part of his power structure, and his notary office was involved in the accusation of having certified the purchase and sale of a building with hidden defects and an excessive price to the Electoral and Citizen Participation Institute of Tabasco, then directed by Carlos Enrique Íñiguez Rosique, his future private secretary.
His detractors call him uncharismatic on stage and in the public square, but skilled face-to-face, with access to large sums of money to finance campaigns. Suffice it to recall his ostentatious operation as Morena’s presidential candidate, when he covered the entire republic with hundreds of spectacular advertisements, used private planes, had three-dimensional caricatures made, hired foreign consultants… far exceeding the spending limit set by his party; or how his friend, public entrepreneur Fernando Padilla Farfán, supported Senator Andrea Chávez with illegal donations on a tour that smacked of a highly anticipated campaign for governor of Chihuahua.
This alliance earned him the latest clash with President Claudia Sheinbaum, with whom, according to his colleagues and party opponents, he does not have a good relationship. Rivals for the candidacy for the presidency of Mexico, according to sources close to his campaign, Adán Augusto said that López Obrador encouraged him to run and told him that he could be his successor. Despite his million-dollar campaign, he lost by a lot to Sheinbaum and the current Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard.
In the distribution of defeats that left López Obrador trapped, he had to be Morena’s leader in the Upper House, from where he used his recognized skill as a negotiator both to work to his own advantage and to pass the laws imposed by the presidency. His greatest success, the electoral reform, was criticized even by the purest sector of Morena. To achieve this, he had to demonstrate pragmatism (lack of scruples, his opponents say) and agree on impunity and atonement for the Yunes clan, denounced by members of the PAN in Veracruz for diverting resources and a bitter enemy of López Obrador, in exchange for their joining the official bloc.
What all those interviewed agreed on was that Adán Augusto López is an ambitious man and his desire is to serve in the National Palace. I disagree on whether he will have enough flight if he is not removed as he is seen as a liability for Morena. In the latest Enkoll poll for EL PAÍS and W Radio, he is the politician from Morena with the lowest score. But in politics there are no deaths, many say, and there are five long years until 2030. A blow that doesn’t kill, strengthenshis friends and acquaintances underline. And they warn: Get ready for the return. His opponents and party colleagues agree. Adán Augusto López does not forget.
