Héctor Melesio Cuén Ojeda, the former mayor of Culiacán, Sinaloa, and the founder of the regionally influential Sinaloa Party (PAS), was murdered Thursday night in his home state.
Cuén Ojeda was shot while driving near La Presita, north of downtown Culiacán, and it was reported that he died 30 minutes later in a private clinic due to a heart attack brought on by loss of blood. He was 68.
Culiacán, Sinaloa is a stronghold of the Sinaloa Cartel, formerly led by imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Two of the criminal organization’s top dogs, notorious drug trafficker Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López, son of “El Chapo,” had been arrested earlier Thursday in El Paso, Texas.
An influential politician, Cuén Ojeda was also a businessman, a pharmacobiological chemist by training and from 2005 to 2009, the rector of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, where he earned a Ph.D.
The mayor of Culiacán from January 2011 through February 2012, Cuén Ojeda was born in 1955 in Badiraguato, Sinaloa — also the 1957 birthplace of “El Chapo” Guzmán. In June, he was elected to represent Sinaloa in Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies starting in September 2024.
“I would like to express my condolences to his family, his friends, the students and teachers of the University of Sinaloa, and the members of his party,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at his Friday morning press conference. “We are going to investigate how the events occurred. We don’t have much information,” the president said.
The Sinaloa Attorney General’s Office (FGS) reported that it has launched an investigation, which included a forensic examination of Cuén Ojeda’s body in the hours following his death.
Cuén Ojeda is survived by his wife, Jesús Angélica Díaz Quiñonez, three daughters and a son. Díaz Quiñonez is a social activist, a member of several boards and commissions, and a former PAS deputy in the state legislature who has been approved to serve in that same role in the new legislature starting next month.
Cuén Ojeda founded PAS in August 2012, largely to support his run for Sinaloa governor in 2016, which he lost. He had wanted to run for governor in 2010, but the National Action Party (PAN) opted against nominating him — which is why he ran for mayor of Culiacán, instead.
He was mayor for only 13 months, leaving to run for the Senate.
According to the digital media outlet Animal Politico, Cuén Ojeda “amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune, built a profitable local political party and made the highest educational institution in Sinaloa his preserve of power and influence.”
Other sources indicated that Cuén Ojeda acquired his wealth through real estate, laboratories, restaurants and the creation of the PAS.
Recently, he was working as a political adviser to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) on a national level. That marked a split from his former alliance with current Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya of the National Regeneration Movement, or Morena party.
On Friday morning, the PAS posted an emblem on its Facebook account as a sign of mourning.
With reports from Noroeste, Reforma, Proceso and El Financiero
