The message arrived on the night of Saturday, January 22, a clear, direct phrase, which was, in reality, the confession of a terrible intuition:
- Pablo, if I asked you a question, could you keep the question and answer confidential?
- Of course.
- Ok, to my misfortune it seems that the next attack will be against me.
A month and three weeks later, Professor Manuel Alejandro Jiménez Ponciano, municipal secretary of the Government of Xoxocotla, in Morelos, an hour and a half south of Mexico City, was dead.
Gunmen gunned him down at the door of his business, a cybercafé, shortly before lunchtime.
Witnesses to the attack have pointed out that Jiménez spoke with his killers before they killed him.
It is still unknown if he knew them or not.
In his premonitory message, the official said that he would be next.
It was not just any phrase.
11 days earlier, his boss, the municipal president of Xoxocotla, Benjamín López Palacios, had also been assassinated.
Armed men shot him dead in his house while he was resting.
It is not known if they were the same or different, or if both murders respond to a common strategy.
Although many in Xoxocotla think so.
The fact is that they were killed and that phrase -they were killed- sums up the day-to-day life of dozens of communities throughout Mexico, from the suburbs of large cities, to the tourist beaches of the Caribbean Sea, passing through a thousand dusty towns on hills and hollows.
They kill them, they kill them.
It doesn't stop happening.
The statistics are frightening, 100 murders a day, sometimes 85, sometimes 110. The victims are politicians, as in the case of Xoxocotla, but also journalists, environmentalists, taxi drivers, lawyers or businessmen.
They kill everyone.
To all.
For anything.
Each guild brings its numbers.
During the current government, for example, 16 mayors have been assassinated.
In the last electoral process, which began in 2020 and ended in 2021, 102 candidates and aspirants were killed.
Statistics consoles, fabricates an illusion of finitude, although sometimes its rigidity illustrates its own limitations.
What category does Secretary Jiménez fall into if not?
In that of politicians, in that of teachers, in that of small businessmen?
It is counted to ward off horror.
In Mexico, the spiral of violence is of such magnitude that counting the dead, the disappeared, becomes a victory.
It's just part of the narcotic clamp.
The other is the institutional response, phrases that usually start like this: "The prosecutor's office of" such a State "investigates the events that occurred in" such a place, "and initiates an investigation folder for" such a crime, "against whoever is responsible" .
Normally, no one is held responsible.
Impunity in the country is over 90%.
Secretary Jiménez, in a place in Xoxocotla, in January 2022, days after the murder of Benjamín López Palacios.
This photo is prior to the messages that Jiménez sent, predicting an attack against himself.
Nayeli Cruz
Where were they going?
- Why do you say that it is the next?
What has come to you?
- I am preparing a statement that in due course a person I trust will send it to you.
I can not say anything.
If something were to happen to me, the statement clears everything up.
- Manuel, wouldn't it be better to get out of there for a while?
- I'm analyzing it, but I need to gather more information.
And I know that maybe that just complicates everything.
But if you allow me a statement: The motive for the crime has to do with money laundering for a cartel.
Jiménez spoke of the motive for a crime that had not yet occurred: his murder.
Despite what he said in the messages, the secretary did not leave any statement.
And if he did he hid it so well that no one has ever found it.
He, too, did not leave the village and it is likely that he never thought of doing so.
All of his family lived in Xoxocotla.
There he grew up, taught, ran the school, opened his business... his widow, Laura Zacarías, says that they never had plans to leave.
Where were they going?
Four months of interviews and conversations with Jiménez himself, with neighbors, enemies and fellow townspeople, with relatives and acquaintances, in addition to the statements of many of them before the Morelos Prosecutor's Office, to which EL PAÍS has had access, reveal mistrust ferocious and thousand-layered entanglements around the murders.
Politics is mixed with power and ambition, variants that are excited by the heat of the municipal budget and the possibilities of doing business.
And then, the paranoia, the suspicions triggered by the violence: suspicions and cautions turn into pointed certainties.
In this time, it has been impossible to find any evidence that a cartel or any type of criminal organization has tried to use Xoxocotla as a washing machine.
Or that a criminal group, local or foreign, had to do with the murders.
The Prosecutor's Office has not done so either.
There are also no clues about the assassins, although there are a thousand rumors.
In a town of 15,000 inhabitants, where the two most relevant crimes in decades occurred in broad daylight, in the very center, there are no witnesses who speak.
Teammates of Secretary Jiménez and Mayor Benjamín López Palacios.
From left to right, Leticia López, Raúl Leal, Juan Pedro Eduardo and Sarath Carpanta.
Monica Gonzalez Islas
2,000 houses
- A report I saw said that municipalities fall due to pressure or seduction from organized crime.
And we are going to fall under pressure.
It just doesn't seem fair to me.
What is the point of campaigning and seeking support, if organized crime is the one that is going to command public policies at the municipal level?
- Are they already pressuring you?
- Not yet, but it won't be long
This story begins on June 6, 2021. The breakaway community of Puente de Ixtla, the indigenous municipality of Xoxocotla, held elections for the first time in its history almost a year ago.
Juan López Palacios, consensus figure, veteran politician, manager of federal government programs, won.
A well-known and loved person.
But the new mayor barely lasted six days in office.
On June 12, a heart attack took him ahead.
Since the victory, López Palacios and his team had been immersed in a fight with his predecessor, Leonel Zeferino, who had led the transition to independence from Puente de Ixtla.
According to the team of councilors of López Palacios, Zeferino did not want to give them the winner's certificate.
Upon his death, part of the team decided to focus on obtaining the act, via the courts, and part on organizing a new candidacy, in the probable event that new elections were held.
Each group focused on their own and, luckily or unfortunately, both were successful.
Electoral justice agreed with the part of the team that had defended the victory in the June elections.
Martín Flores, deputy for the late Juan López Palacios, had led that effort and planned to become municipal president.
For its part, the other part of the team, which had organized a candidacy for the new elections around Benjamín López Palacios, younger brother of the deceased mayor, won the new election, which took place on October 3.
For the faction that supported the youngest of the López Palacios brothers, Flores had ceased to be a good option quite soon.
In various conversations with them over the past few months, the council members explain that the deputy made a couple of moves that made them suspicious.
The first was shortly after the death of Juan López Palacios.
Flores brought the two groups together in a Xoxocotla party room.
He explained to them that the legal battle for victory would cost money, although, he said, there was nothing to worry about: some businessmen from Puebla had approached the city council offering to pay for the litigation, in exchange for the new local government awarding them works .
Flores also said that the businessmen offered to build 2,000 houses in the municipality at a non-refundable price, for the neighbors, as a gesture of goodwill.
The aldermen on the side of Benjamín López Palacios were surprised.
Who offers two thousand houses as a gesture of goodwill?
The seed of mistrust germinated in the certainty that those businessmen from Puebla were criminals and that the play of the 2,000 houses was a strategy to launder money.
In a telephone interview, the substitute Flores denies any criminal operation: “They are businessmen who lower federal resources.
I told them, 'we are missing everything: a bypass to Coatetelco, another to Atlacholoaya, another to Santa Rosa.
They are dirt roads.
I wanted to revive the economy and agriculture,” he adds.
“Then they said, 'Hey, we're going to build 2,000 houses.
I mean, it was a saying, it was nothing definitive.
Their business was that upon reaching the presidency, we were going to entrust the works to them.
But it couldn't, so they withdrew."
The question is whether they really withdrew or not;
if they really were mere businessmen, expert managers in the bureaucracy that the federal secretariats demand from the municipalities, to opt for public works, agriculture or livestock programs.
The aldermen on the side of Benjamín López Palacios were suspicious, but only came to the conclusion that they were a group of criminals when the new municipal president, the brother of the late Juan López Palacios, was shot to death days after being sworn in.
A woman walks through the streets of Xoxocotla, in the state of Morelos, on May 6, 2022. Xoxocotla is an autonomous indigenous municipality and elects its leaders through a local assembly.Mónica González Islas
Main office of the Municipal Presidency of the Xoxocotla authorities.
Monica Gonzalez Islas
The market of Xoxocotla.Mónica González Islas
Xoxocotla central square.
The leaders of this indigenous municipality are in dispute due to the murders of Mayor Benjamín López Palacios, perpetrated in January 2022, and Manuel Alejandro Jiménez Ponciano, Secretary General, last March.
Monica Gonzalez Islas
Announcement of the Xoxocotla Fair. Mónica González Islas
Cattle ranchers parade at the Xoxocotla Fair, Morelos, on May 6, 2022. Mónica González Islas
Public space where the assemblies of the community of Xoxocotla, Morelos are held. Mónica González Islas
A child walks in the municipal market of Xoxocotla, on May 25, 2022. Rodrigo Oropeza
Paranoia
- How come they won't be long?
Why?
As you know?
- (...) And we are being intimidated that the substitute should rise as president, because they are orders from the businessmen of Puebla.
- Explain this to me.
- That's how they referred to the cartel, like the businessmen.
I only know that they are from Puebla.
-…
- According to what I was able to investigate, they carry out house construction projects.
And their modus operandi is that they put in drug money, launder it through public works, and the money is distributed among the officials.
And with that they can launder money in the millions.
The afternoon he was killed, Benjamín López Palacios was resting on the top floor of his house.
It was Tuesday, January 11.
Ten days ago he had been sworn in as mayor, ending an increasingly tangled conflict.
In October, the neighbors had confirmed his victory in an assembly, a common instrument in Xoxocotla, one of the few indigenous municipalities in Morelos.
In addition, a superior electoral court had overturned the judicial victory of Martín Flores in the first instance, supporting his opponent.
Flores had no choice but to accept defeat.
Despite this, the atmosphere remained tense.
The Friday before the attack, armed men had arrived at the house of the new mayor, asking for him.
Since they couldn't find him, they left.
López Palacios ate with part of his team in a restaurant on the outskirts of Xoxocotla.
His sister called him on the phone and warned him.
He decided to spend the weekend at Secretary Jiménez's house, as a precaution.
On Monday, he added a new escort to his guard.
It was not the only strange event those days.
On December 31, a woman, Mayra Flores, had come to López Palacios' office to offer herself as chief of police.
She told him that she had been working with Flores on a strategic security plan for the municipality, but now, with the substitute out of the picture, she had come to offer it to him.
López Palacios did not accept, although she did not refuse outright either, according to his team, to avoid problems.
And there was more.
In the first days of January, Mayor López Palacios made some appointments that were difficult to understand.
One of his aldermen, Vidal De Dios Huerta, specifically spoke of one in his statement before the local Prosecutor's Office.
It was one of the daughters of an alleged local criminal, Silvano Rivera.
In his statement, Huerta recounted that he had asked the mayor about the appointment and that he had replied "that if he didn't do it they would disappear."
In the testimony, Huerta also pointed out a debt of the mayor with the governor of the transition, Leonel Zeferino, who would have supported the youngest of the López Palacios in his definitive victory against Martín Flores.
Without Zeferino, the post-election assembly would not have been held, weakening López Palacios.
The debt in question were put in the government team or cash, Huerta was not sure.
The alderman also did not know if this matter had anything to do with the attack.
For all these reasons, when the councilors learned of the attack on the afternoon of January 11, the surprise and horror of the first few minutes quickly turned into uncertainty, mistrust and paranoia.
Three assassins had broken into the house of Benjamín López Palacios.
They had subdued his driver, his secretary and two workers from a financial company who had come to offer their services to the mayor.
One of the three gunmen had gone upstairs.
The driver, the secretary and the employees of the financial company heard shots.
The hitman got out and fled with the other two.
López Palacios was dead.
Vidal de Dios Huerta, in a place he owns in Xoxocotla, in January 2022. Nayeli Cruz
horror constellation
- But then, is a group of people going to arrive, you say, to impose Martin Flores [as mayor] and thus launder money?
- No, Martin made the deal.
But he wants Abraham Salazar [to become president].
Because Salazar is registered as a substitute for Benjamin.
With him, all deals are back in use.
- How?
Does Martin want Benjamin's deputy to be president?
- Yes. They told me that for helping them launder the money they were going to give them 20% of each work.
For a work of five million, how much do officials get "free"?
Too.
The murder of López Palacios put Xoxocotla in a loop, a space-time fold where the political conflict started from scratch.
The mayor had appointed Abraham Salazar, a former collaborator of his older brother, Juan López Palacios, as his substitute.
At first their relationship went well, but Flores' first victory in court, which came just days before the October election, drove them apart.
When the new mayor was assassinated, with Flores out of the game, Salazar claimed the municipal presidency.
For the López Palacios councillors, Salazar embodied the same evil as Flores.
They saw with fear that he was also promoting the arrival of the mysterious businessmen from Puebla.
As the weeks passed, his suspicions grew.
They saw threats everywhere, always with the businessmen as context.
The memories they shared of the murdered mayor's last days underpinned his fear of the other side.
Thus, for example, Secretary Jiménez recalled that the woman who had visited the mayor before his inauguration to offer herself as chief of police, Mayra Flores, had returned at least once, on January 10.
One day before the murder.
According to Jiménez, the mayor himself had told him that the woman had offered him contact with businessmen from Puebla.
“She told him that the tenders could be made for the new projects of the municipality,” Jiménez recounted to the Morelos prosecutors.
Mayra Flores, Abraham Salazar and Martín Flores… The aldermen loyal to López Palacios thought they were all part of the same thing.
And that, in addition, they were supported by an alleged group of local criminals, a gang supposedly led by Silvano Rivera and another character of little prestige in the town, Liberio Díaz, alias Silverio.
Not in vain was it Díaz, alleged partner of Silvano Rivera, who had connected the businessmen with Martín Flores and Abraham Salazar.
For the López Palacios aldermen, all these names formed a kind of constellation of horror.
Abraham Salazar, once an ally and later a rival of Benjamín López Palacios, Secretary Jiménez and his team, pictured at his home.
Rodrigo Oropeza
January and February were months of enormous tension in Xoxocotla.
Deputy Salazar was pressing for the aldermen to name him mayor, but he only had the support of three of the nine.
To further complicate matters, the municipal trustee, Silvia Herrera, provisional president while the aldermen made a decision, took a liking to the position and sabotaged any attempt by either party to elect a new mayor.
“Well, yes, I also wanted to be president, but then I went to church and a friend told me, 'When it's for you, it's for you.'
And I stepped aside, ”explains the woman.
Finally, despite Herrera's tricks, the aldermen met to make a decision on February 28.
López Palacios' side had a majority of six aldermen and had its candidate, Raúl Leal.
The trustee Herrera also proposed and Salazar, who thought that the meeting was simply to ratify his appointment, flew into a rage when he understood the intentions of the López Palacios councilors.
Leal won, a decision that a new municipal assembly had to endorse on March 20, with all the neighbors present.
Salazar left there rehearsing a kind of threat.
He said that he was not responsible for what might happen in the assembly.
The substitute challenged Leal's appointment before the electoral court of Morelos.
The trustee Herrera decided to support Salazar as well and began a "smear campaign" against secretary Jiménez, according to the aldermen of the Leal and López Palacios camp.
Jiménez was an important character at that time, since the organization of the assembly and the coordination of the aldermen loyal to the assassinated mayor had been left in his hands.
It was evident to everyone that in the future he aspired to the municipal presidency.
The tension with Herrera grew and grew to the point that, one day, in a meeting, the mayor held the secretary responsible "for anything" that could happen to him.
Asked about it, Herrera says that in those days she was involved in strange situations.
One morning, she says, someone shot at the door of her house.
Days later, someone left a piece of paper with a message on her door: "Take care of yourself for your life," she read.
Herrera says: “I used to say to Manuel all the time, 'what's going on? What agreements are there?'
Even if she only went to find out where the locks were coming from.
But he never said anything, he never shared information, that's why I told him that I held him responsible for what could happen to me."
The aldermen on the side of Flores and Salazar, first, from Martín Flores, and then from Salazar.
From left to right, Javier Sánchez, Hilda Quintana and Enique Longardo.
Rodrigo Oropeza
face down
- I understand all this, more or less... now, why do you think they are going against you now?
And in any case, even if they go against you, why do you think they will kill you?
- Because the group trusts me.
And they know I wouldn't let them get here.
They know that either they negotiate with me, or they take me away.
On Tuesday, March 15, Secretary Jiménez and his wife, Laura Zacarías, planned to celebrate the second birthday of their son, Diego.
Jiménez was going to attend to his business in the morning and then they would meet at the cybercafe, a block and a half from the municipal plaza.
They would choose a cake at the store across the street and return home to spend the afternoon with their family.
Jiménez left at 9 in the morning.
He stopped by the town hall for a moment due to a small problem with his uncle, a municipal worker.
He then he went back to the house.
He couldn't find his laptop charger and he assumed he had left it there, but he didn't find it.
He left again shortly before 10 o'clock, heading for the cybercafé, which he used many days as a private office.
Zacarías planned to take care of the child during the morning and put together a small backpack to leave before noon.
The little one usually takes his nap at that time and the woman wanted to leave a little earlier, so that she could sleep in the store.
Thus the hours passed.
Zacarías was already preparing to leave, when his phone rang.
She was one of the cyber employees.
She answered and then the girl uttered a phrase that she will hardly forget: "Manuel has been shot, come quickly!"
With fright in his body, clinging to the idea that Manuel was injured, but alive, Zacarías left the boy with his sister-in-law and ran to the road.
She hailed a motorcycle taxi and asked him to take her to the internet cafe.
“When I arrived it was cordoned off.
In the end I passed and I already saw it.
He was lying, with his blue shirt, his shoes.
He was face down, surrounded by blood and when I saw him like that… I took his hand, I started talking to him.
I stayed there,” she recalls.
Zacarías recounts that the employees of the cybercafe told him later that Jiménez had lunch there and that, before the attack, he was installing a horn on the roof of a mototaxi.
The assembly to ratify Raúl Leal was in five days and the city council was in the final stretch of preparations.
The motorcycle taxi driver would spread the word.
There he was, when two men arrived on a motorcycle.
They talked to the secretary.
Zacarías says that the business was an “in and out of people”, the usual hustle and bustle of a normal morning in the center of town.
That's when he was shot.
Laura Zacarías, widow of secretary Jiménez, in the cybercafé, which she now runs.
Monica Gonzalez Islas
Threat
- Hello, Laura, how are you?
- Well, as far as it goes.
And you?
- Well well.
- How was the other day you came to Xoxocotla?
Did you get anything?
There was little time for mourning after the assassination of Secretary Jiménez.
The electoral court of Morelos was about to resolve the appeal filed by Abraham Salazar, after the team of aldermen of Benjamín López Palacios had appointed Raúl Leal as mayor in February.
In addition, the town was summoned to the assembly that same Sunday.
If after the attack against López Palacios, fear and paranoia had spread among the members of his team, the attack against the secretary left them paralyzed.
The conviction that the opposing aldermen, Silverio, Silvano and their gang, were behind the murders increased.
Some, in the case of Vidal de Dios Huerta, began to wear bulletproof vests on a regular basis.
Two days after Jiménez's murder, a rumor began to spread in Xoxocotla.
He had to do with the imminent resolution of the electoral court in favor of Abraham Salazar.
For the López Palacios councillors, it made no sense.
In the first stage of the conflict, the highest electoral court in the country had ultimately ruled in his favor, against the substitute, Martín Flores.
The role of the assembly had been central in the court's decision, so they did not understand why now the local court wanted to decide days before the assembly, agreeing with Salazar.
Although it was just a rumor, they found a way to meet with the magistrates.
They did it through the government of Morelos, on Friday, March 18.
Even the head magistrate of the room that saw the case, Ixel Mendoza, was connected to the meeting virtually.
There, the councilors of López Palacios claimed him.
Was it true that the decision was imminent?
Why didn't they wait for the decision of the assembly on Sunday?
After all, the court's deadline was the following Monday.
The aldermen also expressed their anguish after the murders, how threatened they felt.
They summarized their version of what was happening, their actors, Salazar, Flores, Silverio, Silvano... But the answer was not what they expected.
The court, they were told, was to decide that very day.
According to the account of several of the aldermen and the Morelos government official present at the meeting, Judge Mendoza added that, like them, she also felt threatened.
Preguntada al respecto, Mendoza explica que el bando de Salazar se mostró muy agresivo durante el proceso. “Amenazaron con tomar las instalaciones, como una forma de presionar para que tomáramos una decisión, un día incluso tuvimos que desalojar el tribunal”, dice. “A mí incluso me llegaron mensajes por Facebook, diciendo algo así como ‘resuelvan ya el asunto porque si no se los va a cargar la chingada’. Pero bueno, estamos sujetos a este tipo de situaciones. Yo vivo con protección desde hace un año, porque un dirigente político, Javier Estrada, del Partido Verde, me amenazó en público”, añade. Sobre el mismo tema, Salazar dice: “¿Cómo vamos a amenazar a una magistrada? Solo les exhortamos a que saliera su resolución y que actuaran conforme a la ley”. Mendoza dice que las amenazas no afectaron la decisión del tribunal. “No podemos ceder a ningún tipo de presión”, dice.
Fuera como fuera, la resolución del tribunal de Morelos salió ese mismo día, favoreciendo a Abraham Salazar, que se convirtió en presidente municipal de Xoxocotla de manera oficial. Aun así, el pueblo se reunió en asamblea el domingo, votando a favor de Raúl Leal. Su equipo además impugnó la decisión del tribunal ante la instancia superior, la sala regional de Ciudad de México, del Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación. Xoxocotla tenía de repente dos presidentes, dos equipos, dos ayuntamientos. Así siguen hasta ahora.
Nadie ha resultado responsable de los asesinatos del alcalde y el secretario de Xoxocotla. Al menos de momento. En la Fiscalía de Morelos se quejan de que ni un solo testigo ha declarado nada contra nadie. Solo rumores. Algunos apuntan a Silvia Herrera, otros a Abraham Salazar, algunos pocos al entorno de Leonel Zeferino, todos a la dupla que forman Silverio y Silvano… Pero son solo eso, rumores. La sala regional tiene ahora la palabra. De lo que decidan depende el futuro del pueblo.
El cibercafé del secretario Jiménez. Hombres armados le mataron en la puerta del local el 15 de marzo. Mónica González Islas
Más muertos
Ha habido muertos este fin de semana en Xoxocotla. Uno al menos. Se llamaba Jesús Capistrán y tenía 21 años. Tres hombres armados vestidos de negro a bordo de una moto lo alcanzaron el sábado por la noche, en una calle cerca del centro. Le descerrajaron varios tiros entre pecho y espalda y huyeron. El muchacho murió antes de llegar al hospital.
El rumor en el pueblo es que familiares y amigos de Capistrán supieron enseguida quiénes eran los agresores. Tomaron sus armas y se fueron a la caza. No está claro dónde los agarraron, ni si acertaron con las presas, pero la cosa acabó a balazos. Dos hombres llegaron heridos al mismo hospital en que el cuerpo de Capistrán yacía sin vida. Uno de los dos heridos es Abel Rivera, hermano de Silvano Rivera.
En Xoxocotla no se habla prácticamente de otra cosa estos días. Los muertos que deben los Rivera, la mano de los Rivera en los casos del alcalde y el secretario. En estos cuatro meses de charlas y pláticas con vecinos, más de uno ha dicho, sin prueba alguna, que Abel Rivera era uno de los asesinos materiales de Benjamín López Palacios. Irónicamente, el último que lo dijo, un viejo colaborador del gobernante de la transición, Leonel Zeferino, aparece vinculado al mismo asesinato en las declaraciones de otro vecino ante la Fiscalía.
But at the moment there is nothing.
The Morelos Prosecutor's Office investigates the alleged responsibility of Abel Rivera and the other wounded in the attack on Capistrán.
The Morelos Prosecutor's Office is investigating whether Rivera killed López Palacios and Jiménez.
The Morelos Prosecutor's Office deals with about 100 murders every month, 105 last month.
The violence continues, the violence does not stop.
Violence, always.
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