El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, Chile and now Mexico….
The Secretary of National Defense of Mexico (Sedena) has been his latest victim. The clandestine cyber group Guacamaya obtained classified communications and reports, published this Thursday by the news portal Latinin which the health problems of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador unknown until now by Mexicans and other controversial aspects of his management and the role of the Armed Forces in his country are revealed.
Guacamaya has specialized in stealing information from the official defense agencies of Latin American countries and disseminating it, which has caused notable scandals and has turned it into a real headache for the governments of the region.
Why is there so much scandal in Mexico?
The confidential communications of the Mexican National Defense Secretariat filtered by Guacamaya range from 2016 to September 2022.
According to the media that published them, there are a total of six terabytes of information that reveal that López Obrador suffers from gout, hypothyroidism and high-risk unstable angina, a heart condition that forced him to undergo a catheterization on January 21 and that his Secretary of Communication presented to public opinion as a routine intervention.
Days earlier, on January 2, according to leaked communications, the president had to be rushed by air ambulance from his ranch in Palenque, in the state of Chiapas, to a military hospital in Mexico City, where he was diagnosed her with angina.
This Friday, the president acknowledged his health problems at a press conference. “Everything that is said there is true,” he noted.
“I have several ailments. There is only one thing I don’t have and that is alcohol, but the other thing I do, and other evils, “explained López Obrador, who declared that the air transfer from Palenque to the Mexican capital was due to the risk of a heart attack.
The documents stolen by Guacamaya also reveal that the president ordered to stop the operation deployed to capture Ovidio Guzmán López, son of drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who was released after his brief detention in Culiacán, Sinaloa, unleashed a confrontation between federal forces and their followers that resulted in at least 8 deaths.
How Macaw acts and why
López Obrador described the Guacamaya hackers as “very specialized people” and said that they took advantage of a change in the Army information system to appropriate the material.
Guacamaya summarized his activity in a statement: “We filter military and police systems in Mexico, Peru, El Salvador, Chile, Colombia and we deliver this to those who legitimately do what they can with this information.”
The group has also attacked large mining corporations that operate in the region and accuses the security forces of being “the guarantee of the domination of North American imperialism” and of “the extractivist presence of the global north” in the “misnamed America” , which the group refers to as Abya Yala, an old indigenous place name.
In a statement posted on the Hacktivist Link website, the group condemns the colonial rule that began with the Spanish conquest of America, which it considers prolonged by the United States, and manifests itself against global capitalism for its social and environmental effects. “Our Pachamama, mother from whom we come, has been contaminated, exhausted, extracted, plundered and, ultimately, raped,” they say.
For them, the military and police are the “repressive forces” that ensure that large companies can carry out the exploitation of natural resources and the deterioration of nature.
What Macaw did in Chile
Although he has acted in several countries, the theft of more than 400,000 emails from the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Chilean Armed Forces had so far been his most notable blow.
In one of the leaked reports, the Chilean military referred to the tendency of Argentine President Alberto Fernández to “meddle” in the politics of neighboring countries and pointed to the risk of a possible resurgence of border disputes with its Argentine neighbors.
The leak forced Chilean Defense Minister Maya Fernández to suspend a tour of the United States and led to the resignation of General Guillermo Paiva, head of the Chilean Joint Chiefs of Staff.