The mayor of a small Mexican town is accused of working with one of the most violent drug cartels in the country to operate a recruitment and training center that was discovered in March.
The mayor, José Asunción Murguía Santiago was accused of organized crime offices and forced disappearance, Prosecutors said during a hearing on Friday.
The site of the center, in the western state of Jalisco, became known after volunteer seekers announced The discovery of hundreds of shoes piled up, a huge amount of clothing and what seemed to be human bone fragments that were found in it An abandoned ranch surrounded by sugar cane fields In Teuchitlán, a city outside of Guadalajara, who sends shock waves all over the country. The seekers claimed that the ranch was the site of human cremations, but the authorities have since said that there is no proof of that.
The allegations against Mr. Murguía Santiago served as a stabbing memory of the long history of collusion of Mexican officials with organized crime, at a time when President Trump has proposed to use American troops to renovate cartels. The president of Mexico refused.
Attorney -General Alejandro Gertz said last week That until recently the Ranch in Teuchitlán was used by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel for training and recruitment. Mexican officials have said that the cartel has lured new recruits with fake offers to the ranch.
But in a deviation from previous comments, Mr Gertz insisted that there was no evidence of cremations that were performed there, and said that claims that the site had been a “extermination camp” were unfounded. Volunteer groups doubtful The federal findings, which insist that 17 parties charred human remains, including teeth and bone fragments, have been found from the ranch.
Mr. Gertz said that his office did not know how many people could have disappeared on the ranch and that researchers would “go behind those who deepen or participate” of the operations of the cartel.
The case has paid renewed attention to the More than 127,000 people who have disappeared in Mexico since the sixties. It has also become a thorn in the part of the board of President Claudia Sheinbaum from Mexico, who is under pressure to resolve the disappearance crisis of the country once and for all. Since she took office in October, almost 8,700 people have disappeared according to the government data.
Although Mrs. Sheinbaum has sworn to use her troops to combat the cartels – and has increased that efforts since Mr Trump came to power – the Nexus between the Mexican authorities and drug groups remains a problem.
So far, more than a dozen suspects have been arrested in connection with the Teuchitlán case. They include four former police officers and a police chief, as well as one cartel leader Identified as José Gregorio Lastra, who, according to the authorities, supervise the training center.
According to Mr Lastra’s testimony, unveiled Partly by Mexican officials, his group would kill, hit and torture people who resisted training or tried to escape from the ranch.
Mr. Murguía Santiago, now in his third term of office, is the first government official to be held. His arrest on 3 May, experts say, indicate the close -knit relationship that organized crime has established with local authorities in some parts of Mexico, either through cooperation or coercion.
“Or you try to stop the territorial advance of organized crime, and you pay a lot for that,” said David Mora, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, an organization that monitors and tries to reduce armed conflicts, “whether you bow and cooperate.”
Details of the case against the mayor came out on Friday during a hearing.
According to public prosecutors, he would have visited the Ranch several times in 2024. Public prosecutors accuse Mr. Murguía Santiago also of being on the wage list of the cartel. In exchange, they say that the mayor allowed them to exploit the training center and offered supervision of the municipal police to ensure that recruits would not escape.
“How is it possible that the person to take care of us is part of this criminal organization?” said Víctor Manuel Guajardo, one of the federal prosecutors who supervise the case, during Friday’s hearing. “He let this criminal group develop and grow.”
Mr. Murguía Santiago has so far refused to testify. During the hearing, his defense team brought a witness, his secretary, who said that the mayor could not have visited the ranch in the months that he was accused of having been there because she was “usually” with him – although she would sometimes lose sight of him in the afternoon, she said.
In March, Mr. Murguía Santiago said reporters that he had no knowledge of what happened at the Ranch.
“I’m not worried,” he said In an interview on television. “We are not involved. What I have always tried as a mayor is to help people.”
Since he took office in January, the Trump has administration accused the Mexican government of controlled by the cartels, suggestion That American troops are needed to make their enormous drugs and to smuggle the empire. That led to Tension With the Mexican government, which insists that a one -sided attack by the Pentagon against the cartels would be a violation of the sovereignty of Mexico and reduce bilateral relations for decades.
Carolina Solís Contributed reporting from El Salto, Jalisco.
- Advertisement -
