President Claudia Sheinbaum did not pick up the phone again. The decision, announced from the National Palace mañanera podium Friday, was that any further communication with Chihuahua Governor María Eugenia "Maru" Campos about the deaths of two American agents in the Sierra Tarahumara would pass through Secretary of Security Omar García Harfuch. [1] "Depende de ella," Sheinbaum said when asked whether she expected information from Campos. It depends on her. The president's tone Friday morning was, by El País's reading, less conciliatory than Campos's. [2] The paper's Friday lead named the operation a violation of Mexican law and surfaced the LA Times disclosure of a third covert action. Saturday's posture is harder, and it has a procedural shape.

The shape is the FGR. The Fiscalía General de la República, federal Mexico's prosecutorial arm, holds the file. Senators from Sheinbaum's Morena coalition have warned publicly that Campos could face a juicio político — a political trial — for permitting alleged U.S.-agent participation in state operations against drug laboratories. Senator Óscar Cantón Zetina said Friday that elements were sufficient for that procedure; Senator Juan Carlos Loera said the case would be evaluated after Campos's meeting with Harfuch. [3] The meeting itself, held privately at SSPC offices Thursday, was described by both sides as cordial. What it produced, by Friday morning, was Campos thanking the president for "openness and disposition" — and Sheinbaum responding with the formula that the state-federal channel is closed at her level.

Sheinbaum's line on Tuesday was about the Chihuahua state prosecutor, César Jáuregui Moreno, who had told reporters Sunday that the two dead American instructors had not participated in the operation that secured the narcolab. By Monday, Sheinbaum said publicly, "the prosecutor changed his declaration." [4] What changed is what Mexican law requires. Article 89 of the Constitution, read against the National Security Law, prohibits foreign agencies from operating directly with state authorities; coordination with U.S. agencies must pass through the federal government. The Sheinbaum frame is that Chihuahua bypassed the Federation, and the prosecutor's reversal is the evidence. The Campos frame is that no Americans were in the operation. Both cannot be true.

The Saturday picture, then, is a federal prosecution machinery now in motion against an opposition governor whose state harbored what the LA Times called a third covert action. The Senate has summoned Campos and Jáuregui. The FGR has not yet filed; preliminary determination is still pending. Sheinbaum has not ruled out sanctions. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City has issued no statement on Sheinbaum's CIA naming. What Sheinbaum has done is make the dead-Americans incident the lever by which an opposition governor — the most prominent PAN executive in the country — is tested against the Constitution and the National Security Law, on Sheinbaum's calendar, through Sheinbaum's choice of channel.

The Mexican press, predictably, divides on the question of whether this is a sovereignty defense or a domestic consolidation. It can be both. The technical question — was a U.S. agency operating on Mexican territory in coordination with a state government and without federal authorization — has a clear constitutional answer. The political question — whether the Morena Senate elevates this into a juicio político against Campos — has a different one, and Sheinbaum has placed the timing of that answer in her own hands. By Saturday she had nothing left to say to Campos directly. The instructions to Harfuch, the FGR file, and the Senate calendar will say it for her.

-- LUCIA VEGA, São Paulo