The news was explosive and injected a fresh layer of tension in relations between the United States and Mexico.<\/p>\n
U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday accused the sitting governor of Sinaloa state, Rub\u00e9n Rocha Moya, and nine other officials of helping a powerful cartel move vast quantities of drugs into the United States in exchange for bribes and political support.<\/p>\n
The accusations have caused a political crisis for President Claudia Sheinbaum, while Mr. Moya, a member of the same political party as Ms. Sheinbaum, has denied any wrongdoing and accused the United States of attacking Mexico\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n
But here in Sinaloa, where cartel violence is lived nearly every day, the news landed less as a shock than as a reckoning.<\/p>\n
For years, residents have traded in rumors and quiet certainties of collusion between the Sinaloa cartel and those in the upper echelons of power. When the indictment came, many said, it merely put into writing what had long been whispered.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have always known it, we all knew it was true, and it was about time this happened,\u201d said Omar Trejo, a salesperson. He added that the suspected ties between the governor, other officials and the cartel were an \u201copen secret\u201d here, a phrase repeated over and over by residents.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might be news to the world, but not to us,\u201d said Jes\u00fas Tirado, as he polished shoes in the main plaza in Culiac\u00e1n, the state capital.<\/p>\n
A few steps away, beneath the city\u2019s cathedral, a wall was covered with posters bearing the faces of the missing, victims of Sinaloa\u2019s violence. Nearby, in bright silver paint, a blunt verdict was written: \u201cnarco-estado c\u00f3mplice,\u201d Spanish for \u201ccomplicit narco-state.\u201d<\/p>\n
For nearly two years, internecine warfare between rival factions of the Sinaloa cartel has turned daily life into a landscape of fear and attrition, with shuttered businesses, empty streets and self-imposed curfews.<\/p>\n
Families continue to search for more than 3,600 people who have disappeared just in the past 20 months, a period that has also seen more than 3,000 people killed.<\/p>\n
Against that backdrop, more than a dozen residents described the indictment as both politically seismic and deeply personal. For many, the possibility that the governor and senior officials may have aligned with one of the very groups driving the bloodshed provoked a mix of anger, grief \u2014 and, for some, a grim sense of confirmation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just about corruption,\u201d said Adri\u00e1n L\u00f3pez Ortiz, editor of Noroeste, a leading newspaper in Culiac\u00e1n. \u201cIt\u2019s about the possibility that the person responsible for solving the violence and navigating the crisis was, at the same time, part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a Sinaloan, it is deeply saddening,\u201d he added. \u201cIf confirmed, it would mean that those at the top \u2014 sitting in the throne, the governorship and even the mayor\u2019s office \u2014 were directly entangled with these groups.\u201d<\/p>\n
The accusations also suggest something even more sobering, Mr. L\u00f3pez said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf those responsible for making decisions are themselves part of the problem, then when, and how, can it ever be resolved?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As for Mr. Rocha, just a day after U.S. authorities leveled the serious accusations, he sought to project a calm tone.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe who fears nothing lives at ease; he who owes nothing has nothing to fear,\u201d the governor told reporters on Thursday when asked about the indictment, exhibiting a sense of business as usual even as the accusations threatened to upend his administration and strain U.S.-Mexico relations.<\/p>\n
Just a day earlier, Mr. Rocha, in a statement, denied the charges as \u201centirely false and without foundation,\u201d and said they were an attempt by the United States to attack Mexico\u2019s leftist political movement, led by Ms. Sheinbaum.<\/p>\n
The other indicted officials include the current mayor of Culiac\u00e1n, the state\u2019s deputy attorney general, and several former top law enforcement officials in Sinaloa, some of whom are also members of Ms. Sheinbaum\u2019s party.<\/p>\n
The fact that top-ranking government officials, not just the governor, were indicted pointed toward a broader systemic problem, some Sinaloa residents said.<\/p>\n
The charges \u201claid bare the rooted problem of narco-politics in Mexico,\u201d said Manuel Clouthier, a businessman and former federal lawmaker. \u201cOrganized crime groups have flourished and can only exist with the support and collaboration of those meant to contain it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the original sin,\u201d he added, \u201cwhen governors and officials establish ties with drug-trafficking groups in order to get to power, and once they get elected they can\u2019t escape from it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, in a country where corrupt officials have long provided the scaffolding for criminal groups to thrive, Mr. Clouthier said he hoped an indictment that sought to establish a link between government and crime would in some way weaken it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have learned how to take care of ourselves here,\u201d he said, adding that survival had long meant not challenging criminal elements that plainly existed.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we are also tired that nothing happens,\u201d Mr. Clouthier added. \u201cSo I hope this forces us to stop lying out of fear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even as the indictment dominated headlines on Thursday, the pace of violence in Sinaloa continued largely unchanged. That morning, a local labor union leader, Homar Salas Gast\u00e9lum, was shot dead inside his home. His bodyguard was also killed. After a group of armed men shot up his residence right after his electoral victory in February, he told local reporters that he was aware \u201cthere are interests that didn\u2019t want us to get here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elsewhere that day, seven more people were slain and the remains of two unidentified victims were discovered in the city.<\/p>\n
U.S. prosecutors say Mr. Rocha accepted bribes from a faction of the Sinaloa cartel known as Los Chapitos, the state\u2019s dominant criminal organization, in exchange for protecting the group. The faction is led by the sons of Joaqu\u00edn Guzm\u00e1n Loera, the Sinaloa cartel\u2019s founder who is known as \u201cEl Chapo.\u201d<\/p>\n
The indictment described a meeting in which two of Mr. Guzm\u00e1n\u2019s sons, Ovidio Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez and Iv\u00e1n Archivaldo Guzm\u00e1n Salazar, told Mr. Rocha they could secure his electoral victory. He, in turn, agreed to install officials who would allow the cartel to operate with impunity, the indictment says.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say the cartel then helped deliver the election by stealing ballots, kidnapping opposition candidates and pressuring others to drop out of the race. Once in power, Mr. Rocha and his allies placed officials across state and municipal governments to help the cartel, according to the charges.<\/p>\n
For some in Sinaloa, the indictment brought grim feelings of vindication.<\/p>\n
Paola G\u00e1rate, a local congresswoman and one of Mr. Rocha\u2019s most vocal critics, said she was among dozens of opposition candidates and political operatives abducted on Election Day in 2021. She was held for nine hours by masked gunmen, she said, along with other candidates and operatives, until voting ended.<\/p>\n
The news, she said, left her with conflicting emotions.<\/p>\n
\u201cA sense of satisfaction on one hand, sadness on the other,\u201d Ms. G\u00e1rate said. \u201cBut above all, it confirms that the rule of law does not exist in Mexico, that it was not Mexican authorities who bring these accusations forward, but they are the ones who should have acted earlier, and they did not because they are part of the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHere being part of the opposition will cost you your life,\u201d she added, her voice breaking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The news was explosive and injected a fresh layer of tension in relations between the United States and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":767765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[112664,310471,314939,2222,50,91183,313372,313373,199375,313374,9615,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-767764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-claudia","10":"tag-corruption-institutional","11":"tag-culiacan-mexico","12":"tag-mexico","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-politics-and-government","15":"tag-rocha-moya","16":"tag-ruben-1949","17":"tag-sheinbaum","18":"tag-sinaloa-mexico","19":"tag-sinaloa-cartel","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116503951816028480","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}