“If we are going to continue working, we have to get him out of the way, so they can kill him. Give him a beating in Zacazonapan, I’ll send them there. I want them both dead and we can work well.”
This is a fragment of the conversation that the Morena mayor of Amanalco, María Elena Martínez Robles, had by telephone with a boss of the Familia Michoacana plaza: Pablo Hernández Hernández, El Pelón.
On January 25, 2023, the mayor ordered the trustee Guillermo Jerónimo Roque, as well as another official, Miguel Ángel Lara Cruz, to move to Zacazonapan. The armed group that was waiting for them on the road executed them.
Intelligence personnel from the State of Mexico’s prosecutor’s office detected that, with the help of treasurer Isaac Marcos Flores, the mayor was diverting resources that were given to the Familia Michoacana.
Mayor Martínez Robles was one of the targets of Operation Swarm: an investigation that the State of Mexico prosecutor’s office put together over 20 months in order to cut the links between mayors and public security directors of ten municipalities with criminal organizations such as the Familia Michoacana, the Jalisco Cartel, the Unión Tepito and the criminal group known as Nuevo Imperio, among others.
According to state sources, the files were put together independently. To avoid leaks, a specific working group was set up that reported directly to prosecutor José Luis Cervantes Martínez.
Information about the mayor of Santo Tomás de los Plátanos, María del Rosario Matías Esquivel, nominated by the PRD, reached that group. To carry out her campaign, she had contracted a debt of 15 million pesos with the heads of the Familia Michoacana, which she promised to cover with public resources.
The Familia Michoacana paved the way for her to the presidency: they kidnapped the father-in-law of the Morena candidate, who was favored by the polls. The candidate received a call: “that it was not the first warning and that she should withdraw from the campaign or her children would be next.”
The candidate withdrew and Matías Esquivel won. According to the investigation, under her administration she allowed kidnappings, extortions, and theft of land and buildings to be committed. Not only that, she entertained the idea of leaving her husband, Pedro Luis Hernández de Paz, as president of Santo Tomás for the period 2025-2027. In fact, he requested the help of La Familia so that the father-in-law of the other contender would be kidnapped: El Tuza, right-hand man of El Pez and El Fresa, the two leaders of the FM, called him to inform him: “It is done.”
Hernández de Paz was declared the winner of the elections on June 2. When a joint operation was launched to arrest him and his wife, the hawks warned of the mobilization. The mayor and the mayor-elect left their phones on at home, to avoid being followed, and they disappeared. According to the sources consulted, they went to Guerrero to seek the protection of their accomplices.
On May 10, an armed group arrived at a party with orders to kill a drug dealer nicknamed El Barny. El Barny had just left, but the hitmen from the Mafia Nueva group, young and drugged, opened fire on the women who were celebrating Mother’s Day. Six of them lost their lives. The attack left a total of eight dead. The attackers arrived and left under the protection of municipal police officers who were part of a protection network woven by the operational director Rodolfo Chávez Torres and the regional chief, Roberto Malpica Santos. Telephone analysis revealed that both had ties to the Jalisco Cartel, the Familia Michoacana and the Mafia Nueva. They were two of the seven arrested in the operation, which also included the arrest of the deputy director of the Naucalpan police, Omar Leyva Montalvo, who is linked to the Nuevo Imperio cartel.
Other lines led the prosecutor’s office to Tonatico, where the president’s husband, Ellery Guadalupe Figueroa, sold protection to the mafia; to Chimalhuacán, where the mayor’s brother was the boss of a criminal group, as well as to Coacalco, where the authorities protected the Tepito Union and the Jalisco Cartel.
Chicoloapan, Tejupilco, Jilotzingo and Texcaltitlán were other municipalities included in the investigation through which the authorities went after mayors and police commanders who were colluding, facilitating or participating in the activities of organized crime: municipalities governed by Morena, the PT, the PRI, the PAN, the PRD and Movimiento Ciudadano.
In mid-October, personnel from the prosecutor’s office and the public security secretariat of Edomex met with Omar García Harfuch to plan Operation Swarm and design the operational deployment of the 1,500 elements and the 14 cells that took part in the operation. There they began to discuss how to enter, how to leave, where to certify the detainees and to which prisons to take them.
Scenarios were designed in case criminal groups tried to prevent the capture of the targets and in case the residents did not let the forces leave, especially in the southern region of Edomex.
There were two months of planning and a simultaneous operation that was launched as soon as the arrest warrants were released.
The security director of Texcaltitlán, Isidro Cortés, shot himself when they were going to arrest him. His agents had handed over to the Familia Michoacana some of the residents of Texcapillla who in December of last year rebelled against the extortions of the criminal group and killed 14 of its hitmen. As far as is known, at least eight of these residents perform forced labor for Pez and El Fresa in the municipality of Arcelia.
Operation Enjambre demonstrated to what extent the political parties have been corrupted and infected. To what extent we have lost the country and to what extent organized crime governs the lives of millions of people.
So much filth was produced in just one day that one wonders who will be held accountable for the state of affairs. Certainly not the mayors, not the security directors. High up, there is someone responsible.
Source: eluniversal
