In a few weeks, the man who helped secure the World Cup will be out of a job. Rodrigo Martínez Celis says it without drama: “In two months I’ll be out of work.” At 47, he’s about to start over. It’s not the first time.
He was born in Chiapas almost by accident — his parents, accountants, worked there — and grew up in Mexico City and the avocado orchards of Michoacán. His German grandfather, an old-school farmer, put him to work every summer. His mother, daughter of those migrants, learned German before Spanish. That’s where the discipline comes from; that’s also, perhaps, where the maternal surname that almost no one pronounces correctly comes from: Wogau.
A career built on intelligence work
Rodrigo wanted to join the Mexican Air Force. His parents enrolled him in a military school at age 12 with an implacable logic: “It’s easier for him to change his mind in middle school than to fall behind in his career.” But he didn’t change his mind then — he did later, in what he calls his first big painful decision: at 17 he chose ITAM and international relations instead of the uniform. Martínez Celis respects the military and works with them to this day, but he wanted to multiply his possibilities, and his paths.
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In university he discovered that the Cisen existed and knew he wanted to work there. He joined young, with Guillermo Valdés at the helm and Felipe Calderón as president, as head of organized crime analysis. Martínez Celis lived through the explosion of violence. He stayed 18 years.
The turning point for him was Ciudad Juárez. He was under 30 when they sent him to lead the intelligence side of a unit that brought together the Army, the Federal Police and the Attorney General’s Office, in what was then the most violent city in the world. He lived in the military zone, in a house with one bathroom for six men. One winter the pipes froze for three days. The group reported 14 murders a day to the center. Martínez Celis rented refrigerated trailers because the morgues couldn’t keep up.
One Christmas, while he was talking to his mother on the phone, he heard a colleague promise his son that he would soon help assemble the train he had just been given. The future security director broke down crying. “Now I feel it more, because I have children.”
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From that unit came the information that later formed the Todos Somos Juárez plan. Martínez Celis clarifies without being asked: “I didn’t create the plan. I was in the unit that collected the information.” It’s something about him: sharing the credit before it’s attributed to him.
From state security to the World Cup
Then came the lateral moves: Cisen’s offices abroad, the relationship with US and Spanish intelligence agencies, until he became general coordinator of intelligence. All of the Mexican state’s information crossed his desk. When the administration changed in 2018, Martínez Celis handed over to the incoming team, was confirmed for a few months and understood that his cycle was over. It hurt: he was where he had always wanted to work.
Then the governor of the State of Mexico, Alfredo Del Mazo, summoned him without saying why. In the first private conversation, the governor offered him the position of Secretary of Security of the state: “Take as much time as you need, but you’re not leaving here without giving me your answer,” he joked. In a minute Martínez Celis thought a thousand things and accepted. He only told his wife. A week later he was called to the Palace of Toluca; it was serious.
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Rodrigo Martínez Celis says it was one of the best decisions of his life, even though working with police was never in his plans. It was the most populous state in the country, bordering eight other states and with the most overcrowded prison system: at the time there were 16,000 spaces for 35,000 inmates.
He boasts two figures: he received the prisons among the worst-rated and left them among the best, and the number of fallen officers reached zero. “That was what mattered most to me.”
That experience gave him one of his causes: “In Mexico we demand everything from a police officer. He must be a lawyer, a psychologist, get into shootouts with better-armed criminals, withstand the line when they
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