MEXICO .- Francisco Javier Cabeza de Vaca , the governor of Tamaulipas Whom the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) wants to bring to trial for possible organized crime, operations with resources of illicit origin and tax fraud, he knew that organized crime was a parallel power in his state when he wanted to be governor.
The state he came to govern in 2016 had already decades under the operations of organized crime and thousands of bloody clashes for control of the square, where he supposedly got rich as soon as he took control, for which the federal congress removed the jurisdiction that prevented him from taking him to trial.
Public officials count on Mexico with jurisdiction , a legal figure that prevents rulers from being prosecuted for making decisions, however, it has also prevented many justice processes in Mexico.
The prosecutor’s office asked last February to the leg Islativo federal proceed with the violation and the weekend was completed. However, local legislators, mostly from the PAN, decided that Cabeza de Vaca continue “to serve in the public office for which he was elected in the year 2016 ”.
Now there is a confrontation between two powers while the state is bleeding daily between confrontations of the same side without respite as for decades. After the massacre of the 72 migrants in 2011 ; from others 16 last January, this year started with 12 violent murders per day.
The Zetas and the Gulf cartels went from being allies to enemies willing to destroy cities to make every inch of space for the smuggling of people, drugs, gasoline, weapons …
“I’m going to end once and for all with this situation, “he said in a meeting with journalists at the Regis hotel in Mexico City, where he traveled to promote himself as a distant governor to the complicities attributed to his predecessors.
It was the first president from the National Action Party (PAN) and would govern for the first time from a party other than the one that had always been in power, the PRI.
From the ranks Priístas left Manuel Cavazos, Tomás Yarrington, Eugenio Hernández and Egidio Torre Cantú, involved in crimes of all kinds, from undercover Into, operations with resources of illicit origin, embezzlement, criminal association to links with drug trafficking, organized crime, tax fraud and money laundering.
Five years later, García Cabeza de Vaca is in a similar situation The governor accuses “factional use” of justice in the middle of the electoral process, and affirms that he has not violated the law.
Congress could only proceed due to tax fraud in the purchase of a department in Mexico City and said that the FGR will be in charge of investigating the other accusations, once the president lost the protection of the jurisdiction.
During one of the sessions of the federal congress for the lawlessness, Elizabeth Alcántar, agent of the Public Ministry of the Federation said that
García Cabeza de Vaca, accumulated a millionaire fortune for some thirty hidden properties in Texas and Tamaulipas acquired mainly between the years 2005 to 2019.
Restaurants, art galleries, apartments, ranches and bank accounts … “A wealth of hidden goods through name men mainly from their family circle”
In those complaints, they were in the Mexican capital on 26 April when a confrontation in the The Tamaulipas region of Peña Blanca ended with eight people killed and burned in vehicles popularly known in the world of drug trafficking as “monsters.” On the day of the lawlessness, they dismembered a man there with threats to the Commander of Special Operations, Arturo Soto.
Intimidation with fire is one of the most popular strategies in Tamaulipas. A few days earlier, at least three people were executed in Camargo and then cremated in a pickup truck; The images were released on social networks without censorship: bodies burned, without members.
And the promises of change?
García Cabeza de Vaca promoted himself during the first months as a zero tolerance president. Coming from a family of entrepreneurs who got into politics from the opposition to the local government, this is how he explained the situation in Tamaulipas when he came to power:
“The fact that Tamaulipas today occupies the first place in kidnappings, extortion, robbery of fuel and missing persons, is not the product of chance, it is the product of irresponsibility and, above all, of the complicity of a political regime that, in order to remain in power, has not only diverted public resources, but also handed over to Tamaulipas to organized crime.
“Not only did he make a pact with them, he not only received money, but he shared power with criminal groups that surpassed them and gave the most sacred thing that we have des after life: our freedom ”
Why does the violence continue? Guadalupe Correa, a national security researcher and author of the book Zetas Inc, points out in an interview with this newspaper four reasons: ambition, geographic location, complicity between trafficking networks with local authorities and at the federal level, and impunity.
“When there is so much to gain and you are in power and there is no justice, we are talking about the ideal place,” he warns in an interview with this newspaper. “We are talking about an area that has been forgotten because it is a poor area with many people surviving as best they can.”
After President Felipe Calderón declared war on organized crime and beheaded the main organizations in the region – the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel – Tamaulipas became a battlefield of cells from both sides that, allied with other cartels such as Jalisco Nueva Generación .
Recently, the government of Tamaulipas and Texas reactivated the “Wanted” campaign, with which they seek to capture 10 transnational criminals, who operate on both sides of the border and are responsible for the violence regional.
Among them are Juan Gerardo Treviño Chávez, El Huevo, considered by the DEA as the last active leader of the Zetas, that formed the Northeast Cartel, having as its armed wing the so-called “Tropa del Infierno” with presen company in Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey, Nuevo León and Texas, where he traffics drugs and murder. Two million dollars are offered for his head.
The same amount is offered for rival cell leaders: Ernesto Sánchez Rivera, La Mierda, Cuate or M 22 and Héctor Sánchez Rivera, La Mimi or M1, who lead the Metro group of the Gulf Cartel in Reynosa, for human trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, theft of vehicles and homicides. For the rest, 1.5 million dollars are offered.
Continue Reading: The trail of blood for political power 2021 in Mexico