“Or you try to be a brake on the territorial advance of organized crime, and you pay it very expensive,” said David Mora, the main analyst of the International Crisis group, an organization that monitors and tries to mitigate armed conflicts, “or you bend and cooperates.”
The details of the case against the mayor came to light on Friday during an audience.
According to prosecutors, the mayor would have visited the ranch several times in 2024. Prosecutors also accuse Murguía Santiago of being on the payroll. In return, they say, the mayor allowed them to operate the training center and offered surveillance through the Municipal Police to ensure that recruits did not escape.
-“How is it possible that whoever should take care of us is part of this criminal organization,” said Víctor Manuel Guajardo, one of the prosecutors who supervises the case at the Audience on Friday. “It allowed this criminal group to develop, grow.”
Murguía Santiago has so far refused to declare. During the hearing, his defense team presented a witness, his secretary, who said that the mayor could not have visited the ranch in the months when he was accused of having been there because she was with him “most of the time”, although sometimes he lost his track in his afternoon, he said.
In March, Murguía Santiago declared journalists that he had no knowledge of what was happening at the ranch.
