Mexican governor and mayor indicted by US for drug trafficking step down

FILE - Sinaloa state Gov. Ruben Rocha waves as he takes part in an annual earthquake drill in Culiacan, Mexico, Sept. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ and ISABEL DEBRE Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Two members of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s party in the northwestern Sinaloa state said they would temporarily step down from their posts after the United States charged them and eight other politicians and security officers with drug trafficking in a bombshell indictment that has shaken Mexico’s political establishment.

In a short video announcement at midnight Friday, Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya, the highest-ranking official named in the indictment, denied accusations that he protected the Sinaloa cartel and helped it smuggle drugs into the U.S. in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.

“My conscience is clear,” said Rocha, 76, a longtime ally of influential former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “To my people and to my family, I can look you in the eye because I have never betrayed you, and I never will.”

But he said he would take a temporary leave of absence from the position he has held for six years to defend himself against what he called the “false and malicious” allegations and cooperate with the Mexican government’s investigation.

Juan de Dios Gámez Mendívil, the mayor of the Sinaloa state capital Culiacán named in the indictment, also said he would take leave and denied the charges. In a special vote Saturday, the state’s local congress appointed as interim governor Yeraldine Bonilla Valverde, an ally of Rocha who previously served as the state’s secretary of government.

As governor and mayor, Rocha and Gámez Mendívil enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution, requiring Mexico’s Congress to first impeach them if they are to face charges. Their decision to take temporary leave rather than resign allows them to retain that immunity.

Sheinbaum has struggled to strike a balance between the interests of her progressive Morena party and pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to step up the fight against cartels.

In a nod to her party’s anti-corruption platform, Sheinbaum said she wouldn’t defend anyone found to have committed a crime.

But she vigorously defended Mexico’s sovereignty, vowing that if federal authorities uncovered “irrefutable” evidence linking the 10 indicted officials to cartel crime, the accused would be tried in Mexico, not the U.S. — a move that risks backlash from an American administration that has threatened military action against cartels on Mexican soil.

“We will never subordinate ourselves because this is a matter of the dignity of the Mexican people,” she said Friday.

Pending investigation, the Mexican attorney general’s office said it would not arrest Rocha or the other accused officials, as requested by the U.S.

Rocha, a point person for the hands-off “hugs not bullets approach to dealing with organized crime that López Obrador pioneered and Sheinbaum has since ditched, insisted in the video that the indictment represents a political attack on Morena.

“I will not allow myself to be used to harm the movement to which I belong — one that has improved the lives of millions of Mexican men and women,” he said.

Born in the same town as the notorious Mexican drug kingpin “El Chapo,” Rocha has found himself embroiled in similar scandals before. In 2024, he was named in a published letter written by a then-Sinaloa cartel capo who was kidnapped by leaders of a rival faction and handed off to U.S. law enforcement. In the letter, the capo said that he was on his way to meet Rocha when he was abducted.

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DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.