Horacio Duarte, former director of the National Customs Agency Photo: twitter.com/horacioduarteo

By MARK LORENZANA

Less than a week after Mexico’s Secretary of Economy Tatiana Clouthier tendered her resignation, Horacio Duarte has also stepped down as director of the National Customs Agency (ANAM).

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) announced on the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 12, that Duarte is leaving his post to dedicate himself to the “master battle” in the State of Mexico (EdoMéx), where Delfina Gómez, former head of the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP), is running for governor as the standard bearer of AMLO’s leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena).

“We wanted it to be reported here that Horacio has given me his resignation because he is going to focus on another task, and we did not want him to leave through the back door,” said López Obrador.

The former ANAM chief was once positioned by Morena as a possible choice for the governorship of EdoMéx — along with Ecatepec Mayor Fernando Vilchis — but Gómez has since become the official candidate, which triggered her resignation from the SEP in August.

Duarte  was registered on July 9 of this year “as a candidate to lead the Committees for the Defense of the Fourth Transformation in the State of Mexico.”

Shortly after, he confirmed his intentions to be Morena’s candidate for the governorship of EdoMéx on his Twitter account.

“Mexiquenses will come out united, and with vision we will achieve transformation. The People of #EdoMéx will not be wrong,” he wrote at that time.

Under his term, the ANAM has managed to collect 820 billion pesos from January to September 2022, an increase of 11 percent compared to 2021, a record year in collection, according to Duarte in his final report as ANAM chief.

Duarte was named head of the ANAM after the departure of his predecessor, Ricardo Ahued, who resigned in April 2020, almost a year after replacing Ricardo Peralta Saucedo, who likewise stepped down in 2019.