Organized Crime Strikes Mexico With Murder of Ex-Governor

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Organized crime has once again struck Mexico hard. Aristóteles Sandoval, Jalisco’s ex-governor, died in the early hours of Friday in an attack in a restaurant in the tourist hotspot of Puerto Vallarta.

The 46-year-old politician from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who headed the State Government from 2012 to 2018, took several shots in the back in the restroom of a restaurant, as reported by the local Prosecutor’s Office. The attack, which occurred at 1:40 AM local time, once again targeted a prominent politician seeking to fight the wave of violence arising from drug cartel-related crimes.

“The ex-governor gets up from the table, goes to the restroom and there he is attacked by a man directly with gunshots to his back,” prosecutor Gerardo Solís summarized early in the morning in a message released by the Prosecutor’s Office.

Sandoval lived in Guadalajara, the state capital, and had gone to Puerto Vallarta to relax for a few days. According to the authorities’ report, the ex-governor had been in the city since December 12th and had an escort of about 15 people, assigned by the state.

On Thursday night, at about 10 PM, Sandoval went to the Distrito 5 Bar, on Francisco Medina Ascencio Avenue. There he met three other people whose identities have not been disclosed: two men and a woman. Three hours later, he separated from the group and was attacked.

The ex-governor’s bodyguards entered the restroom in an attempt to rescue him and take him to the hospital. “When they were trying to remove him, they were gunned down”, said prosecutor Solís.

Authorities estimate that a group of eight to ten gunmen attacked Sandoval’s security guards when they were transferring him severely injured to Joya private hospital, where his death was confirmed. A video, broadcast on social media, shows the moment when the gunmen shot at the vehicles in which the ex-governor was transferred.

The prosecutor reported in the media that those responsible for the restaurant where the attack took place ordered the crime scene to be cleaned and that, until that time, they were refusing to hand over the establishment’s CCTV footage. The authorities had not arrested anyone for the attack.

“A sweep of the whole area is being done and we are waiting for the autopsy result to determine the cause of death, but it is clear that it was gunshots,” added the prosecutor.

This is the second attack by organized crime in the past six months against a prominent figure in Mexican politics. In June, an armed group ambushed Mexico City’s Public Safety Secretary Omar García Harfuch in a spectacular attack which he survived and ascribed to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), one of Mexico’s most feared groups, which he fought against in other government positions.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador mourned the politician’s death and declared that the investigation will be in the hands of the Jalisco government and that the National Guard will serve as support in the region for security operations.

“It is a matter that will be investigated so that the cause, the motive, and those responsible will be punished,” he said early in his morning press conference on Friday. The current governor, Enrique Alfaro, also expressed his “solidarity” with Sandoval’s family on his Twitter “in these very difficult times” and deployed the Security Office to Puerto Vallarta to conduct the investigations.

Sandoval was one of the governors appointed by the PRI during Enrique Peña Nieto’s government (2012-2018) and was part of what was called the “new PRI”, whose most prominent members were a generation of young politicians. During his government, drug trafficking violence increased and the CJNG expanded its power in the region while competing with the Sinaloa Cartel.

“In terms of security we have not succeeded in consolidating a model to have a strong police force, there has been much lack of coordination,” he acknowledged in a 2017 interview.

In his mandate, there were instances in which organized crime targeted the state. In May 2018, a few months before the end of the Sandoval government, an armed group tried to assassinate the ex-prosecutor of Jalisco Luis Carlos Nájera as he was leaving a restaurant in one of the busiest neighborhoods in the city of Guadalajara.

Sandoval declared that the attack on Nájera had been a CJNG reaction to his government’s actions to counter its crimes. “My Government’s position is not to negotiate, not to dialogue with criminals, and not to stand by,” he said at the time.

Since his government’s inception Sandoval has had warnings from the cartel: eight days after the start of his term, a group of gunmen murdered Secretary of Tourism José de Jesús Gallegos.

Source: El País