Authorities in Guanajuato – Mexico’s most violent state – are not supporting the federal government in the fight against crime, President López Obrador said Monday.
“What worries me about Guanajuato is insecurity because there is a lot and the government, the Attorney General’s Office in particular, isn’t taking action” he told reporters at his regular news conference.
Violence is a problem that was allowed to grow in Guanajuato, López Obrador said. “It’s very probable that the violence problem in Guanajuato has been encouraged because they [the National Action Party, or PAN] made a political alliance with [organized] crime in order to always win,” he asserted.
The current Guanajuato governor, Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo, and the previous seven all represented the PAN.
López Obrador noted that there were 32 homicides in Guanajuato on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, a figure that accounted for 15% of all murders across the country.
“This is what worries me and that’s why I urge the governor” to do something, he said. “… We’re doing everything we can but we don’t have support. The attorney general [Carlos Zamarripa] has been there a long time and there are no results.”
The president last month called on Sinhue to remove Zamarripa, who has been state attorney general for 12 years.
“I can make recommendations; if they don’t take them into account that’s another matter but I would recommend renewal because things aren’t getting better and we have the National Guard and elements of the army and navy there,” he said July 26.
“We’re helping but we don’t see the same in the actions of the state Attorney General’s Office.”
Guanajuato, where several criminal groups including the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel operate, recorded 2,098 homicides in the first seven months of 2021. That figure represented a 22% decline compared to the same period of last year but was insufficient for Guanajuato to relinquish the unenviable title of Mexico’s most violent state.
Mexico News Daily
