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Political and judicial corruption: the breeding ground for criminal impunity in prisons in Mexico

2023-01-04T11:05:38.584Z


The most powerful prisoners live with all kinds of comforts in prisons and handle violence outside of them. The Cereso 3 has a security module that has hardly been used


“Violence in Ciudad Juárez is like a river that sometimes overflows and other times returns to its channels,” says criminologist Óscar Máynez Grijalba.

On August 11, it overflowed with a riot in the Cereso 3 prison, and the waters spread through the streets, leaving 11 dead between bullets and business fires.

Everyone knew that the orders had come from that jail, where El Neto, the criminal leader of the Mexicles, was locked up.

And those who did not know it could hear it from the mouth of the state governor, María Eugenia Campos, who assured it in February of this year.

She then communicated to the press a reduction in homicides in those months.

But the river overflowed again on January 1, again with the focus on Cereso 3:

an armed attack outside and a riot inside the prison left 17 dead and 30 prisoners on the run, including El Neto.

It was the third time he tried.

Máynez Grijalba maintains that the criminal "did not have to have been in that prison, but in a maximum security federal prison."

That's what everyone thought.

But there are prisoners in Mexico who do whatever they want.

The highest security authorities in the country said this Monday that a loot of 1.7 million pesos had been discovered in the fugitive's cell and in some others, probably from the sale of drugs, which they also found by kilos and well packaged. .

In these bedrooms there were plasma televisions, a safe, long weapons, cartridges, bulletproof vests, exactly the same things they would have found if they had raided the drug dealer's home.

They are the heads of the prison and control violence outside of it.

“Neither state nor municipal politics have the capacity to confront them, only a federal security strategy could, but there isn't one.

They put weapons, drugs, women in jails, celebrate with singers.

And that happens throughout Mexico," says the criminologist,

Máynez Grijalva refers to what has been called the narco-state, that is, a skein of corruption and bribery in which police officers, civil servants, politicians, judges, and criminals operate.

There is money for everyone and no one wants to go out of business, or they can't.

Silver or lead.

Why El Neto was not in a high security prison has a simple answer.

When an attempt is made to transfer these criminals, they revolt, spreading violence everywhere or they obtain legal protection that stops these procedures.

The judges grant it.

Silver or lead.

In June 2021, the still governor of Chihuahua Javier Corral filed the request for the transfer of El Neto to a federal prison as well as that of other leaders of criminal groups.

“These are long processes that require documents, files, legal resources and they usually obtain protection,

because there are very corrupt judges,” says Corral, who had to visit the then president of the Supreme Court, Arturo Zaldívar, during his tenure, to help him “unlock the issue of the amparos.”

Corral closely follows El Neto because he ordered his death three times, in which his bodyguards were injured.

He refers that it is the third time that the delinquent tried to escape from confinement.

"The first time he tried it was in a transfer for a judicial hearing, there were shots and one hit him in the head, but he survived."

Corral today accuses the current Chihuahua Administration of having allowed those efforts to transfer the prisoners that he initiated to fall into oblivion.

“August 11 passed [with the new prison riot] and they didn't move a finger.

There must be a lot of background.

After the massacre on Sunday, the prison director, Alejandro Alvarado, has been dismissed. The transfer of prisoners has begun urgently and an investigation into what happened.

"The director had to be detained, not dismissed," suggests Corral, who is in an open fight with his successor, Maru Campos, both from the same party, the PAN, although Corral has already announced that he will resign.

When the fire was put out and the shooting in the jail stopped, the shame was exposed and forced the authorities to recognize that what was happening behind bars was not acceptable.

The State Attorney, Roberto Fierro Duarte, assumed at a press conference that there were serious corruption problems in there: "We cannot hide the obvious," he said on Tuesday.

At the insistence of the journalists on whether they had not seen what was happening in prison, he replied: "It is not a matter of having seen or not having seen."

And he accused those previously responsible for the prison disaster.

In Cereso 3 there are 3,901 inmates, well above the population that can support the prison.

Now there will be more space, because 30 have fled and another seven have died in the rebellion.

The point is that while some are overcrowded, others live like kings.

And that also happens in other prisons in Mexico.

Just a few days ago, relatives of prisoners gathered in Mexico City to request the transfer to another prison of Abigael González Valencia, El Cuini, El Mencho's brother-in-law, who enjoys as many privileges as his extortion allows him, denounced those affected.

El Cuini is in the Santa Martha Acatitla jail.

During Corral's tenure, it was already known that the violence in the streets of Ciudad Juárez "was operated from inside the prison, that there were cell phones for it."

The former governor says that they carried out a major operation to put an end to it, but that there were leaks and the reaction of the criminal group "was virulent."

“Municipal Security offices were shot at, trucks were burned, there were executions.

It did not give the result we wanted, ”he says, but they then decided to build a high-security module in Cereso 3, which cost about 40 million pesos.

“It is a building with four levels and 450 square meters of construction, surrounded by a perimeter isolation mesh, cell monitoring, door and lock automation, cameras.

It has capacity for 46 inmates”, explains Corral.

And he assures that in the transfer of powers with Governor Campos he asked to be warned that he had "an important asset to transfer criminals" there.

Corral accuses the governor of having presented that project as her own in her first government report.

"It was never used, criminals have not allowed them to do so," says the former governor.

Whether or not there are prisoners in those cells is difficult to know.

“Journalists are not allowed to enter prisons,” says Rocío Gallegos, editorial director of

La Verdad

, in Ciudad Juárez.

“Criminals defy the police, the political authorities.

We already saw it when the riot in August, they said that the then director of Cereso had resigned and that an investigation was being opened.

The same as now.

But there were no consequences and no transparency.

This was an announced leak, ”she maintains.

It is known that the orders start from the jail because that is what the criminals say when they are stopped in the streets.

And it is known that the bosses enjoy "different" conditions from other cells, because from time to time it comes to light, as on this occasion with reports from the Sedena.

The big criminals control the smaller prisons and maybe the feds too.

Máynez Grijalva does not know about the security module in Cereso 3, but he does not rule out that the inmates refuse to be transferred there.

"Sometimes they put them in, take the photo and then take them out."

There is no force that can fight the narco-state, “which is what it is, even if they don't want to admit it.

The fight against violence is a farce, there is legislation, but it is useless.

If money laundering is attacked, they take the political class under their feet,” says the criminologist.

Ciudad Juárez is a border city, just a line on the map that separates Mexico from the United States, where arms enter and drugs, migration, prostitution and trafficking in women, the most lucrative businesses in the world, leave.

There is money for everyone.

The criminologist believes that the fugitives will not go very far, because they cannot go to the United States or travel through different Mexican territories without fighting with other groups.

"It will be easier this way for them to be recaptured."

Then they will go back to jail, turn on the TV, take their drugs and party with singers.

Cell phones will be in charge of issuing orders behind bars and the waters will return to their channels for a while.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-01-04

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