Last November, the governor of Tabasco, Javier May Rodríguez, said that the increase in violence in the state was the result of a possible pact between those who preceded him and organized crime. Although he did not mention them, attention was drawn to the current senator Adán Augusto López Hernández and Carlos Merino Campos, who succeeded him in 2021 when he left the state to take over as head of the Ministry of the Interior (Segob).
At that time, Javier May accused the former Secretary of Public Security of his predecessors, Hernán Bermúdez Requena, of leading a criminal group known as ‘La Barredora’, an operational arm of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG), considered one of the main generators of violence in the state. In this regard, Adán Augusto López Hernández said he was unaware of the statements of the new president and President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo has also reacted to these statements by the Morena member.
At the morning conference on Wednesday, December 11, the presidency was questioned about this alleged pact between the current coordinator of Morena in the Senate and organized crime: “I have no information that Adán Augusto when he was governor of Tabasco made an agreement, nor do I believe it either,” said Sheinbaum Pardo.
However, she did confirm that after the appointment of Carlos Merino Campos as interim governor of Tabasco there was an increase in crimes in the entity and for this reason she decided to remove her Secretary of Security from office, since he was accused of having alleged links with organized crime groups, derived from this, some investigation files were opened:
“In any case, if the investigations reached some server or someone who was a public official, then they would proceed, but it is not a pact, but simply at the moment in which the increase occurs, the decision is made to remove him from office,” said the president.
Government of Mexico
Highlights collaboration to reduce crimes in Tabasco
Resuming Javier May’s statements on the high crime rates in the state, Sheinbaum Pardo highlighted that she maintains constant communication and coordination with the Morena governor, who currently has a retired military officer as Secretary of Security (General Víctor Hugo Chávez Martínez), who also works jointly with the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC) of the federal government, headed by Omar García Harfuch, and with the state and General Prosecutors’ Offices of the Republic (FGR).
According to information from the National Survey of Victimization and Perception of Public Security (Envipe) of 2023, in Tabasco 60.4 percent of the population that is 18 years of age or older considers insecurity as the problem that most afflicts the entity; Likewise, 47.9 percent of Tabasco adults said that their neighborhoods or towns are unsafe, with ATMs being the place where they feel least safe.
In recent weeks, a series of violent events have been recorded – including two massacres – in Tabasco attributed to ‘La Barredora’, a criminal group widely linked to the ‘cartel of the four letters’, but from which it was supposedly distanced now, so it would maintain a constant fight for the square, according to José Barajas Mejía, head of the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) of Tabasco.
In 2022, the magazine Proceso reported that former governor Adán Augusto Hernández had ‘handed over’ the Security Secretariat to men linked to the CJNG, including Hernán Bermúdez Requena, and that since then the criminal group had operated with the protection of state authorities, as Javier May said a few weeks ago.
At that time, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador came out in defense of his Secretary of the Interior, whom he described as an honest man who had the full trust of the people of Mexico; during a morning press conference he even blamed the ‘conservative’ media for attacking his official with this type of reporting.
Source: infobae
