Wise people
No voter in Sinaloa can say they are surprised or betrayed. On June 6, 2021, when they voted for governor, the two candidates on the ballot had been very transparent about their plans.
A month and a half before the elections, I traveled to Culiacán to interview the two candidates: Rubén Rocha Moya of Morena and Mario Zamora of the opposition alliance. I asked them both the same question: Can Sinaloa be governed without making deals with drug traffickers? Their answers were diametrically opposed.
Morena member Rubén Rocha told me that “we have to find a way to coordinate (with the drug traffickers).” PRI member Mario Zamora exclaimed emphatically: “Of course!” (that one can govern without making a pact with the drug traffickers).
Rocha beat Zamora by a landslide: 57% vs. 32%. The opposition reported to the OAS that the Sinaloa cartel kidnapped dozens of electoral coordinators and thus lost the ability to supervise the polling stations.
It would be incorrect to conclude that it was the security proposal that decided the election. What the polls show is that voters across the country rewarded Morena for its social programs, salary increases and the electoral boost associated with the figure of then-President López Obrador.
These same surveys indicate that for Mexican voters - not only in Sinaloa - security is no longer a differentiating factor between parties and candidates: since no one has been able to resolve it, no one will resolve it. So they decide who to vote for for other reasons.
I'll go further: in a large part of the country, the belief has spread that the only possible peace is the pax narca; that is, that the Government negotiates with criminal organizations so that a cartel rules a certain territory and then there is no violence when fighting over the territory.
The Sinaloa case is the perfect example that this does not work. When the State gives up power, it loses control. It does not command. It does not govern. And it is at the mercy of what the cartel decides. The candidate Rubén Rocha said in no uncertain terms that he was going to coordinate with the drug traffickers. No one was shocked in Sinaloa. Today we know that he met with the main drug lords during the campaign. No one is shocked. Governor Rocha did not lose control of Sinaloa. Because he never had control. The Sinaloa cartel always had control. And when the cartel broke down and lost control, the chaos of violence that has lasted for half a year was unleashed.
In his closing campaign speech, opposition candidate Zamora warned Sinaloa that there were two paths on the ballot: “one is like the night, dark, perverse.” The wise people chose. We are seeing it.
SATISFYING MORBIDGES
And if Rocha falls, we will have to see if the newcomer doesn't turn out to have even more ties. In Sinaloa, everyone knows who he is, everyone knows how much influence he has in the government, and everyone knows who he is with.
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