awaiting trial for drug trafficking<\/a>. The circumstances surrounding their arrest are unclear. On July 25th, in Culiac\u00e1n, the state capital, a Cessna plane departed for Santa Teresa, New Mexico. Federal agents were waiting there to arrest them and transfer them to prisons in El Paso and Chicago.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis event would have been just another instance of collaboration between the judicial authorities of Mexico and the United States if it weren\u2019t for the fact that, according to President L\u00f3pez Obrador, he was not informed about the arrest of Ismael Zambada. This raises a series of questions about whether the arrests were the result of a betrayal or were carried out directly by U.S. agents on Mexican soil, violating national sovereignty\u2014or perhaps a mix of both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For two weeks, L\u00f3pez Obrador demanded information from the U.S. government without receiving any response, fueling suspicions that federal agents had acted on their own accord. This led U.S. Ambassador in Mexico, Ken Salazar, told the press that his government had nothing to do with it and that it was all the result of a kidnapping orchestrated by Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez to take away the freedom of El Mayo, also known as “boss of bosses.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next day, Ismael Zambada\u2019s lawyer released a letter signed by his client, narrating what happened and agreeing with Ken Salazar\u2019s version: He was overpowered by Guzm\u00e1n Salazar\u2019s gunmen and forcibly put on the plane that would take him to the New Mexico border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the letter said more. He had been summoned to a meeting in the suburbs of Culiac\u00e1n with Governor Rub\u00e9n Rocha Moya and newly-elected federal deputy H\u00e9ctor Melesio Cu\u00e9n Ojeda to mediate the conflict between them two, which had been ongoing for nearly two years, over political control of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa (UAS). For the governor\u2014from the ruling party Morena\u2014this would be the culmination of an autocratic project to capture the state\u2019s public institutions. According to this version, Cu\u00e9n Ojeda was allegedly murdered in the context of the mentioned meeting and the same could have happened to Zambada Garc\u00eda\u2019s escort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A commander working for the state attorney general\u2019s office, sparked speculation, especially when this institution offered the press a video in which presumed gunmen on motorcycles allegedly killed Cu\u00e9n Ojeda at a gas station in northern Culiac\u00e1n. However, this video turned out to be staged, according to the investigations by Mexico\u2019s Attorney General\u2019s Office. In that video, besides the gunmen, two police patrol cars with their sirens on are seen, whose occupants do not intervene and leave immediately after the assassination of the former UAS rector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In light of these events, which have led to Governor Rocha Moya being labeled as a narco-politician, President L\u00f3pez Obrador, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum and the association of Morena party governors immediately voiced their support for his innocence. This has been interpreted as pressure on the Attorney General\u2019s Office, which has taken over the case to investigate it, given the conflict of interest that the Sinaloa government has due to its involvement in the trust issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the end, this Sinaloa of the eleven rivers, with its green valleys, is the scene of an alleged betrayal in the narco world, an expression of narco-politics that has led to the capture of territory and institutions and a crisis of trust in bilateral relations between the two countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sinaloa is in the spotlight for the capture, kidnapping, or possibly negotiated surrender\u2014it is not clear\u2014of leaders of the so-called Sinaloa Cartel to the U.S. government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":331,"featured_media":43447,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16872,16815],"tags":[15635],"gps":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-43450","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mexico-en","8":"category-crimen-organizado-en","9":"tag-debates"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/331"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43450"},{"taxonomy":"gps","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gps?post=43450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}