The governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, is the first to acknowledge that, in the state, power cannot be exercised without the implicit authorization of the Pacific Cartel: “Let’s not kid ourselves. Everyone here knows how things are. I went and talked to them, I know them because I am from Badiraguato.”
By Rodrigo Carbajal
“Let’s not kid ourselves. Everyone here knows how things are. I went and talked to them, I know them because I am from Badiraguato.” The governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, is the first to acknowledge that, in the state, power cannot be exercised without the implicit authorization of the Pacific Cartel. This was, until a few weeks ago, without the approval of Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada.
Now, Rocha intends to distance himself from the accusations made by the capo about the alleged links between the governor and the Sinaloa Cartel. The explanation, like the investigation by the Attorney General’s Office, has come too late. At least since 2021, a cascade of testimonies from members of the 4T, federal government intelligence reports, private conversations of the governor, and his own public statements have painted the narrative of a character who operates as the connection between the political class and the most sophisticated criminal organization in the country. No one can be surprised.
In April, Código Magenta published the explosive statements of Jocelyn Hernández about Rocha Moya’s campaign for the governorship of Sinaloa. Hernández, who is one of the founders of Morena and has a friendship with Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, was a subordinate of the 4T delegate in Sinaloa during the 2021 electoral process, Américo Villarreal, who is currently the governor of Tamaulipas.
According to this testimony, Hernández saw suitcases full of money arriving at Rocha Moya’s campaign house. And even more importantly, she recounted that Rocha Moya and Villarreal traveled to the mountains of Sinaloa to meet with Fausto Isidro Meza Flores, alias ‘El Chapo Isidro’. Hernández claimed that Villarreal admitted it was a clandestine operation: “You can’t go unless we blindfold you.”
Jocelyn Hernández was recorded in a restaurant in Houston, Texas as part of an investigation in the United States into illegal financing of Morena campaigns. Código Magenta had access to the content of the interview.
The alleged meeting of ‘Chapo Isidro’ with Rocha Moya and Villarreal is no small matter. He is a criminal target for whom the FBI offers a reward of 5 million dollars for relevant information leading to his arrest. Meza Flores is the heir to the old criminal structure of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel, and intelligence sources link him to the operation to move fentanyl laboratories from Sinaloa to Nuevo León. The United States Treasury Department designated the ‘Chapo Isidro’ criminal network as a Transnational Drug Trafficking Organization. In 2019, the Department of Justice classified Meza Flores’ file as a “priority matter.”
The question is inevitable: did the money arriving in suitcases at Rubén Rocha Moya’s campaign house come from the ‘Chapo Isidro’ organization? The suspicion reached such a degree that, according to a journalistic investigation by Milenio, the National Intelligence Center opened an investigation into the alleged links between the Pacific Cartel and Morena’s campaign for the governorship of Sinaloa.
In the 2021 electoral process, hundreds of poll representatives and territorial operators from the PRI-PAN-PRD alliance were kidnapped to intimidate the opposition. Rubén Rocha Moya was the beneficiary of this criminal mobilization. The complaint reached international instances. A group from the Va por México alliance went to the headquarters of the Organization of American States in Washington to point out the intervention of organized crime in Sinaloa’s elections.
Ángel Ávila, PRI-DPR representative before the National Electoral Institute, described this criminal offense as follows:
“It can be intuited that some candidates are involved, were part of or have a relationship with these groups of organized crime. In Sinaloa, the candidate Zamora has denounced it: almost 1,000 people raised between Friday, Saturday and Sunday; they were released on Sunday night. Even the PRI’s state election secretary in Sinaloa was kidnapped and was released on Tuesday. It is evident that drug trafficking operated, no survey gave such a wide difference as the one that resulted from the election, what is clear is that organized crime operated to favor Morena’s candidates.”
Publicly, Rubén Rocha Moya insists that there needs to be a state policy to coordinate with the criminal groups operating in Sinaloa. He acknowledges them as a fact-based power with which the government must deal.
And privately, the governor of Sinaloa is even more explicit. In a conversation he had with journalist Salvador García Soto shortly after the 2021 election, Rubén Rocha Moya admitted that making deals with the Sinaloa Cartel is inevitable:
“Look, Salvador, don’t let’s be stupid. Everyone here knows how things are. I went and spoke with them, I know them because I’m from Badiraguato. And I asked for their support. Whoever tells you they want to govern Sinaloa and doesn’t have their approval, lies to me. That’s how it is here, why should we be stupid?”
In fact, Rubén Rocha Moya has given the description of what some call the ‘Mexican narco-state’.
According to Ismael Zambada’s unconfirmed version, Rubén Rocha would have been part of a criminal scheme planned by Joaquín Guzmán López to hand him over to US authorities. ‘The Mayo’ claims that he was ambushed in the waiting room for a meeting where he had been called to mediate a conflict between the governor and politician Héctor Melesio Cuén about the succession at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. Cuén was killed on the day Zambada and Guzmán López were arrested. The circumstances of his execution are still unclear. All the protagonists in the story told by Zambada are either detained, disappeared or dead. Rubén Rocha Moya is the only exception.
The governor of Sinaloa has the unconditional support of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, incoming president Claudia Sheinbaum, Morena’s national leadership and the governors of the 4T. To what extent will they be willing to deny the reality of Badiraguato’s Ambassador?
Source: Codigo Magenta
