Mexican ruling party faces growing scandal – Solondais

MEXICO CITY — It was strange and surprising when Mexico’s most wanted drug lord landed at an airport near El Paso, Texas, in July. But the story of how he got there is now spiraling into a scandal that is threatening key figures in Mexico’s ruling party.

The question is whether Rubén Rocha — governor of the state of Sinaloa, where the cartel holds power and a close ally of the president — has been allowed to meet with leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, a major producer of the deadly drug fentanyl that kills 70,000 Americans each year.

The saga is filled with intrigue that wouldn’t be out of place in a 1940s film noir, but it risks compromising a central tenet of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who claims that while he refuses to crack down on Mexico’s drug cartels, he also refuses to make deals with them.

Federal prosecutors said Thursday that Sinaloa state officials mishandled evidence in an attempt to cover up the July 25 killing of Héctor Cuén, a politician who allegedly lured drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada to a house where he expected to meet Gov. Rocha. Instead, Zambada was kidnapped by another drug lord and flown to the United States, where he was arrested.

Zambada said in a letter released by his lawyer that Cuén was killed in the house where the kidnapping took place. Governor Rocha maintained that Cuén was killed by gunmen during a botched robbery at a gas station that same day, even providing security camera footage of the alleged attack.

But federal prosecutors quickly realized something was amiss: Autopsy reports showed Cuén suffered four gunshot wounds, while security footage showed only one shot and gas station employees said they heard no gunshots.

And the feds said Sinaloa officials broke all the rules of the murder investigation by having Cuén’s body cremated. Governor Rocha denies having scheduled a meeting with Zambada, but in the rest of the dispute over what happened that day, the drug lord’s version now seems more credible. Sinaloa’s top prosecutor resigned Friday.

“It appears that in Sinaloa, as often happens, they tried to cover up the crime,” said Mexican security analyst David Saucedo.

López Obrador acknowledged Friday that “there were contradictions in the case from the beginning” and vowed to get to the bottom of it. Federal prosecutors are investigating the case, with the president saying that “the attorney general’s office is showing that there are things that don’t add up.”

Governor Rocha is a spokesman of sorts for López Obrador’s “hugs, not bullets” policy, which involves not engaging in confrontations with the drug cartels. His state is home to Mexico’s most powerful gang.

The governor has accompanied the president on some of his most controversial trips: the president made six visits to Badiraguato, in the state of Sinaloa, the birthplace of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

At one point, Lopez Obrador stopped to talk to Guzmán’s late mother. Badiraguato is also the birthplace of Governor Rocha.

The Mexican president’s drug policy is based on a series of uncomfortable assumptions: There’s no point in arresting drug lords because new ones will emerge. López Obrador argues that arresting known cartels was a policy imposed on Mexico by the United States; refusing to allow them to continue is a victory for national sovereignty.

The president claims that Mexican cartels do not produce fentanyl (quite the opposite, as senior Mexican officials admit) and that America’s societal problems, not Mexican cartels, are responsible for the fentanyl crisis.

According to López Obrador, drug cartels are essentially “respectable people” who “respect citizens” and usually just kill each other. The only solution to Mexico’s staggering murder rate, he says, is to use job training programs to dry up the pool of potential drug cartel recruits.

All of these claims rest on a central premise that now seems questionable: that while the government isn’t attacking cartels, it’s not making deals with them either. While no one has produced credible evidence that the president has met with drug lords, analysts say Gov. Rocha, a member of the president’s Morena party, has.

“It’s not a suspicion anymore, it’s a certainty,” Saucedo said. “It’s become clear that the government has intermediaries who negotiate with the Sinaloa cartel.” Rocha has denied meeting or doing business with drug lords.

Saucedo notes that this would not be the first time that Mexican governors or their families have met with drug lords. One was caught on video in 2014.

The arrest in late July of Zambada and El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, was embarrassing for Mexico from the start, because the Mexican government was not even aware of it.

But it was Zambada’s later testimony about how he had been swindled by the younger Guzmán, who had always planned to turn himself in to U.S. authorities and had apparently taken Zambada, who had a $15 million bounty on his head, as a prize, that sent shivers through Mexico’s political elite.

Zambada said Cuén, whom he trusted, had invited him to the meeting to help resolve the bitter political rivalry between Cuén and Governor Rocha. Zambada had a reputation for evading arrest for decades thanks to his extremely tight, loyal and sophisticated personal security apparatus.

The fact that he deliberately left all that behind to meet with Governor Rocha suggests that Zambada considered such a meeting credible and feasible. As does the idea that Zambada, as leader of the oldest wing of the Sinaloa cartel, could act as an arbiter in political disputes in the state.

Governor Rocha has denied that he knew of or attended the meeting where Zambada was kidnapped. In a bizarre political stunt, Rocha released the flight plan of the plane he claimed had taken him out of the state that day for a family vacation, and even released a video that day in which he carefully explains that “I am out of the state.”

However, given the main conflict over the events of that day, Zambada’s version seems more credible.

“I think El Mayo Zambada’s version is much more credible,” Saucedo said. “It’s all true.”