When the military promotion ceremony in the Army, Air Force and Navy takes place this Monday, November 20, the group that the Secretary of National Defense has formed over five years will be outlined, and that in the last year of the six-year term seeks to position itself for the presidential succession of 2024.

The clique of General Luis Crescencio Sandoval González has two characteristics, the majority are cavalry officers like him, and they were his contemporaries during his time in the classrooms of the Military College and the Higher War School (ESG). It is the common data of the current Chief Officer, the Inspector and Comptroller General, and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the National Defense.

The promotions to division general, the highest rank in the Mexican military, which will be announced within the framework of the 113th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, are led by Brigadier General Andrés Fernando Aguirre O. Sounza, current director of Industry Military, and until last September director of the National Defense College. A relevant fact in his file is that he was private secretary of General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda in the first half of his administration as head of National Defense, a position that he left to go as military attaché to the Mexican Embassy in Washington.

The person who had his promotion to division announced at the beginning of the year when he was appointed commander of the XII military region in Irapuato, Guanajuato, a position reserved for division generals, was Enrique Covarrubias López. The general began his career in 1976 by entering the Military College where he graduated four years later as a cavalry officer, one year after General Sandoval. Covarrubias is perhaps the one with the most operational experience of the six generals who are promoted to divisional.

Another cavalry officer who is promoted to divisional is José Joaquín Jiménez Cueto, a classmate of the 1977 class at General Sandoval’s Military College. Last September he was appointed commander of the seventh military region in Chiapas. The person who had also announced his promotion since that month was General Julio Álvarez Arellano, since then appointed commander of the sixth military region based in Puebla. He is a contemporary of Jiménez Cueto and General Sandoval at the Military College, an institution of which he was director a few years ago.

In the military environment, the promotion to division of General Enrique Martínez López, current commander in the 35th zone in Chilpancingo, generated suspicion. In November 2021, as director of war materials, he was accused of alleged irregularities in the assignment of contracts to a company that sold construction materials as well as medical equipment, in addition to having a “ghost” address registered in Villa Nicolás Romero, State of Mexico.

The promotion to division of Gustavo Ricardo Vallejo Suárez, director of Military Engineers, responsible for the construction of the AIFA and the Mayan Train, was considered an “award” for his role this six-year term, where he became famous for being “the general who speaks to the statues”, for that video where he addresses out loud the effigy on horseback of General Felipe Angeles.

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