Mexican Mayor Implicated in Drug Cartel Ranch Inquiry
Posted on: May 10, 2025 06:52 IST | Posted by: Nytimes
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The city manager of Teuchitlán is the number one regime functionary to have been arrested in connection with the case. Prosecutors accuse him of colluding with the cartel.
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and Maria Abi-Habib
Reporting from Mexico City
The mayor of a small Mexican town has been accused of colluding with one of the country’s most violent drug cartels to operate a recruitment and training center that was uncovered in March.
The mayor, José Asunción Murguía Santiago was charged with organized crime offenses and forced disappearance, prosecutors said at a hearing on Friday.
The site of the center, in the western state of Jalisco, gained notoriety after volunteer searchers announced the discovery of hundreds of shoes piled together, heaps of clothing and what seemed to be human bone fragments found in an abandoned ranch surrounded by sugar cane fields in Teuchitlán, a town outside Guadalajara, sending shock waves across the nation. The searchers claimed the ranch was the site of human cremations, but authorities have since said there is no proof of that.
The allegations against Mr. Murguía Santiago served as a stinging reminder of Mexican officials’ long history of collusion with organized crime, at a time when President Trump has proposed using American troops to crack down on cartels. Mexico’s president refused.
Attorney General Alejandro Gertz said last week that until recently the ranch in Teuchitlán had been used by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel for training and recruiting. Mexican officials have said that the cartel lured new recruits with fake job offers to the ranch.
But in a departure from previous comments, Mr. Gertz insisted that there was no proof of cremations carried out there, and said claims that the site had been an “extermination camp” were unfounded. Volunteer groups have disputed the federal findings, insisting that 17 batches of charred human remains, including teeth and bone fragments, have been recovered from the ranch.
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