The murder of journalist Heber López Vásquez at the doors of his home-studio in the port of Salina Cruz on Wednesday, February 9, has received attention rarely seen in the world. It may be because it was the fifth crime against journalists in the first six weeks of this year, the deadliest spell the union has had in such a short period of time, that it galvanized international attention and concern. But what surely did not motivate the great reaction is the most serious of all in the background. His death shows with enormous clarity the intervention of politicians and drug traffickers acting openly when a journalist crosses their path. The murder seeks silence and self-censorship, knowing that in the current conditions of the country, impunity is strengthened from the Zócalo of Mexico City.
For politicians and drug traffickers, colluded in large regions of Oaxaca, López Vásquez was a nuisance, according to the main line of investigation that is followed. The journalist was killed by at least two people, who were arrested shortly after he was executed. One of them, Ricardo Espinosa Cartas, is the brother of the former municipal agent of Salina Cruz, Arminda Espinosa Cartas, who, on the eve of his death, published a complaint against the former official for his alleged complicity with an executive of the INDI Group construction company. , which is in charge of the Breakwater project in that port, a major infrastructure project that includes the construction of multiple docks, which will be the port of entry for Asian products to the new Interoceanic Canal in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec that will connect with Coatzacoalcos, in the Gulf of Mexico, from where the merchandise will arrive to the East Coast of the United States.
The Interoceanic Canal, probably the most important work for Mexican trade in decades, has generated in this six-year term one of the most strategic rearrangements of organized crime, which had left the entire area of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to affiliated organizations, with well-defined territories. and settled. The new channel led the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación cartels to fight in the region for control of what will be a very lucrative drug transit route, particularly fentanyl and chemical precursors for methamphetamine, as well as weapons.
Salina Cruz, according to intelligence information, is under the control of the Sinaloa Cartel, whose affiliated organizations are the Gulf Cartel and Los Ántrax, founded in 2008 by José Rodrigo Aréchiga, nicknamed El Chino Ántrax, after the separation of the Beltrán Leyva brothers of the Sinaloa Cartel. Aréchiga, who became one of Sinaloa boss Ismael El Mayo Zambada’s top hitmen until he was assassinated in Culiacán nearly two years ago. The Sinaloa Cartel controls the entire coastal region and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, from the municipality of Tapanetepec – whose mayor has just suffered an attack – to Guerrero.
The Sinaloa Cartel and its subsidiaries are confronted with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which has been gaining ground at the hands of Oaxacan politicians, within a network that includes lawyers and notaries, whose main seat is in the Papaloapan Basin, in Veracruz, and extends its control to Coatzacoalcos. The Interoceanic Canal has made them fight over the entire territory, and they are seeking control of the municipalities, from the Veracruz-Oaxaca border to the south. They have not been able to defeat their adversaries, let alone challenge them in the coastal region. However, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel has managed to recruit several local governors and deputies in the Sinaloa area, particularly in Salina Cruz, according to intelligence information.
López Vásquez had become an uncomfortable journalist. Although the name of Espinosa Cartas does not appear in the intelligence list on the politicians in the payrolls and structures of the cartels, the attention that the journalist had managed to capture with his work on the interests behind the Rompeolas placed him in the middle of the criminal reorganization in the region. Ricardo, who drove the truck in which the journalist’s killers were transported, was also the husband -he is now divorced- of the mayor of Santa María Jalapa del Marqués, Joseline Esquivel Balseca, who is in the radius of influence of the Sinaloa Cartel.
The penetration of drug traffickers in the public and institutional life of Oaxaca has had several phases of evolution. There are politicians who have not been bought by the drug cartels because they are already part of their criminal structures. This is the case of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec corridor, where a good number of mayors, most of them from Morena, work for the Sinaloa Cartel or are subject to it, according to intelligence reports.
What is disturbing in some sectors of the federal government is the support that the pre-candidate for the state government, Senator Salomón Jara, has had from them, who has not made any demarcation of them, nor has he spoken out against drug trafficking. Worse still, he has also received public support from politicians identified in intelligence reports as part of the structures of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
For the dark interests of Oaxacan narcopolitics, the critical gaze of the press collides with their plans. López Vásquez, according to the information obtained, was making him uncomfortable with his complaints and placing the attention on the Breakwater. There is no line connecting Rosalinda Espinosa Cartas and the INDI executive with organized crime, but throughout that region the Sinaloa Cartel has total control of what happens in municipal structures. López Vásquez got involved, perhaps without knowing, in that mixture of political and criminal interests that is expanding in the country, which cost him his life and threatens that of many more.
#Hebers #murder