A fatal crash

Mexican politics

  by T.W. | MEXICO CITY

FRANCISCO BLAKE MORA, the interior minister who was leading Mexico’s war on organised crime, has been killed in a helicopter crash on the outskirts of Mexico City. All eight passengers and crew died. Among them was Felipe Zamora, undersecretary for legal affairs and human rights. The cause of the crash is still unknown.
Mr Blake, who was named interior minister in July 2010, is the second holder of that position to have died in an air crash in little more than three years. Juan Camilo Mouriño, an interior minister who was widely seen as Felipe Calderón’s chosen heir to the presidency, died when his plane crashed in the centre of Mexico City on November 4th 2008, in what investigators determined an accident. The final message from Mr Blake’s Twitter account, posted last week, was a tribute to Mr Mouriño on the third anniversary of his death.


The crash is a serious blow to the government. The position of secretario de gobernación is more important than our usual translation, “interior minister”, may imply. As well as having a broad policy remit including national security, the ministry functions as the link between the executive branch and Congress. Mexico has no vice-president, making the secretario de gobernación the de facto second-in-command. Mr Blake’s death leaves a gap at the top of government, at a time when the fight against crime is first on its agenda.
Mr Zamora, whom we interviewed this week, had also been in his post since last July. The other victims of the accident included Mr Blake’s private secretary and the interior ministry’s head of press.
UPDATE: Mr Calderón has promised a thorough investigation into the crash. He added, however, that “the cloudy conditions that prevailed precisely at that time along the route that the secretary [Blake Mora] was taking...certainly suggest the likelihood of an accident.”