Sheinbaum says she must protect US ties; AMLO "can say more"
Asked about the book "Pueblo", the Mexican president called her predecessor's account of the capture of El Mayo Zambada "interesting" and separated facts from interpretation.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Wednesday that her office requires her to be very careful with the United States and other countries, and that former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador "can say more". She was answering, at her morning press conference on Oct. 7, a question about "Pueblo", the book in which her predecessor accuses Washington of striking a deal with Los Chapitos, the faction led by the sons of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, to hand over Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.
Salvador Corona, of the newspaper El Universal, asked about two points: the book's criticism of the US ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, and its thesis that Zambada's capture was an "extrajudicial and interventionist" act. Sheinbaum answered that she has stated her position several times and has no problem repeating it, but that she must maintain a diplomatic relationship. According to the automatic transcript of the conference, she added that when there is disagreement it is said aloud, and that there is "a basic principle": respect for Mexico's sovereignty.
She called the passage on Zambada "very interesting" and said it is "worth reading". When another reporter pressed the interference thesis, she distinguished between "fact" and "interpretation": her government laid out facts, and each person connects them in their own way, as the former president does in the book.
What the book claims
According to Infobae, the book says Washington agreed with that faction to take Zambada to US territory, which happened on July 25, 2024. López Obrador says that operation explains why daily homicides in the state of Sinaloa rose from 1.3 to 4.3, about 1,100 killings from August 2024 to August 2025. Those figures come from the book itself: no outlet consulted has verified them independently. The former president also says the army, the navy, the National Guard and the attorney general's office told him they had no part in it.
On Johnson, La Verdad reports that the book asks him to be "more even-handed and less arrogant" and describes him as an "excited and meddling police officer".
The book also addresses the cases Washington brought against Sinaloa Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya and Sen. Enrique Inzunza. The US Department of Justice formally charged them on April 29, 2026, along with eight other officials. López Obrador denounces "the fabrication of case files with doctored evidence", according to El Informador.
The US reaction is still missing: as of this report, no statement from its embassy or the State Department had been found. Sheinbaum's words also await the official transcript; the rest of the day is in the live blog of the press conference.
