A gunshot wound, a murdered rival and a kidnapped drug lord: Mexico’s ruling party faces growing scandal

MEXICO CITY (AP) — 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 developing into a scandal that threatens top figures within Mexico’s ruling party.

The question is whether Rubén Rocha – the governor of the cartel-dominated state of Sinaloa and a close ally of the president – ​​has met with top leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, the main producer of the deadly fentanyl that kills 70,000 Americans a year.

The saga features villainy worthy of a 1940s film noir, but it threatens to undermine the central tenet of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who refuses to crack down on Mexico’s drug cartels but also refuses to make deals with them.

On Thursday, federal prosecutors said Sinaloa state officials mishandled evidence in an apparent 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 flew 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 has maintained that Cuén was killed by gunmen during a botched robbery at a gas station later that day, even providing security camera footage of the alleged attack.

But federal prosecutors quickly noticed something was amiss: An autopsy showed Cuén had suffered four gunshot wounds, while security camera footage showed only one shot and gas station employees testified they didn’t hear a single gunshot.

And the feds said Sinaloa officials violated all murder investigation rules by ordering Cuén’s body to be cremated. Governor Rocha denies having scheduled a meeting with Zambada, but in the rest of the dispute over the day’s events, the drug lord’s version now seems more credible. Sinaloa state’s chief prosecutor resigned Friday.

“It appears that what they did in Sinaloa, as they often do, was 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 have taken over the case, and the president said “the attorney general’s office is showing that there are things that don’t add up.”

Governor Rocha is something of a frontman for López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” policy, which does not target drug cartels, as his state is home to Mexico’s most powerful gang.

The governor has accompanied the president on his most controversial trips: the president’s six visits to Badiraguato, Sinaloa, the birthplace of imprisoned drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán.

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

The Mexican president’s drug policy is based on a series of clumsy propositions: there is no point in arresting drug lords because new ones will emerge. López Obrador claims that arresting prominent cartels was a policy imposed on Mexico by the United States; refusing to continue with it is a victory for national sovereignty.

The president claims that Mexican cartels do not produce fentanyl (they do, and top Mexican officials have admitted as much) and that American social problems, not Mexican cartels, are the cause. are responsible for the fentanyl crisis.

Lopez Obrador says Drug cartels are essentially “respectful people” who “respect the citizens” and mostly just kill each other. The only solution to Mexico’s staggering murder rate, he says, is to use job training programs to drain the pool of potential drug cartel recruits.

All of these claims rest on one central premise that now appears to be in doubt: that while the government does not attack cartels, it also does not make deals with them. While no one has produced credible evidence that the president has met with drug lords, analysts say that Governor Rocha, a member of the president’s Morena party, has.

“It’s not a suspicion anymore, it’s a certainty,” Saucedo said. “What has become clear is 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 relatives have met drug lords. One of them was This was captured on video footage in 2014.

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

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

Zambada has said that Cuén, whom he trusted, invited him to the meeting to help smooth over the fierce political rivalry between Cuén and Governor Rocha. Zambada was known for evading arrest for decades because of his incredibly tight, loyal and sophisticated personal security apparatus.

The fact that he would consciously leave all that behind to meet with Gov. Rocha means that Zambada saw such a meeting as credible and feasible. So did the idea that Zambada, as leader of the oldest wing of the Sinaloa cartel, could act as an arbiter in the state’s political disputes.

Governor Rocha has denied that he knew about or attended the meeting where Zambada was kidnapped. In a strange bit of political theater, Rocha released the flight plan of a plane that he said had taken him out of the state that day for a family vacation, and even released a video that day in which he carefully explained that “I am not in the state.”

But in the central dispute over what happened that day, Zambada’s version seems more credible.

“It seems to me that El Mayo Zambada’s version is much more credible,” Saucedo said. “It’s all true.”