Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya speaks during a news conference, in Mazatlan, Sinaloa State, Mexico, April, 2024. Mr. Moya and nine other current and former Mexican officials were charged with drug trafficking and weapons offences by the U.S. Department of Justice.RASHIDE FRIAS/AFP/Getty Images
The U.S. indictment of a sitting Mexican governor on drug charges has delivered a political blow to President Claudia Sheinbaum, complicating tense bilateral relations ahead of key trade talks with Washington.
The Department of Justice named 10 public officials Wednesday, including Governor Rubén Rocha Moya of the state of Sinaloa − a first for a sitting Mexican governor. It accuses him of partnering with the state’s eponymous drug cartel to traffic narcotics to the United States in exchange for swinging the 2021 gubernatorial election in his favour.
“It is evident that the Justice Department’s objective in these accusations is political,” Ms. Sheinbaum said Thursday morning. “Under no circumstances will we allow the interference or meddling of a foreign government in decisions that are the exclusive responsibility of the Mexican people.”
The indictment highlights Ms. Sheinbaum’s ongoing difficulties in dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump, despite his oft-stated respect for her. It also raises questions about how much she would be willing to concede to secure a favourable outcome in the upcoming review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
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Mr. Trump has demanded that his Mexican counterpart dismantle her country’s drug cartels or face the imposition of high tariffs on Mexican goods. He has even contemplated unilateral U.S. military action in Mexico.
“This is yet another manifestation of the weaponization of interdependence by Trump,” said Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to Washington. “Tariffs and the USMCA review are intertwined with counternarcotics co-operation. The latter feeds or derails the former.”
Mexico has stepped up security co-operation with the U.S. under Ms. Sheinbaum. She abandoned the “hugs, not bullets” security policy of her predecessor and mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and has handed over more than 90 accused drug cartel bosses to the U.S., including former Canadian Olympian Ryan Wedding.
But the indictment of a sitting governor sets a precedent.
“It opens an area that has never been explored in Mexico: prosecuting those who politically protect organized crime and those who politically benefit from it,” said Diego Petersen Farah, a columnist with the Guadalajara newspaper El Informador. The question for Ms. Sheinbaum is: “If I hand this one over, who’s next?” he added.
The indictment accuses Mr. Rocha of co-operating with Los Chapitos – the Sinaloa Cartel faction founded by the sons of imprisoned kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán – ahead of the June 6, 2021, state and midterm elections. He allegedly promised to place cartel figures in government positions.
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In exchange, cartel gunmen allegedly kidnapped opposition political operatives on the eve of the election, holding them captive in safehouses until the vote tallies were announced, according to Sinaloa newspaper Ríodoce.
Mr. Rocha has denied wrongdoing, writing in an X post that the charges are an attack on the Fourth Transformation, the leftist political movement founded by Mr. López Obrador that has dominated Mexican politics since 2018 under the Morena party’s banner.
Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said the indictment lacks sufficient evidence. The federal prosecutor’s office said it would analyze the case and start its own investigation.
The case follows revelations that two Central Intelligence Agency officials died in a car crash in northern Chihuahua state after accompanying state police for the decommissioning of a methamphetamine lab. Neither official was accredited to work in the country, according to the Mexican government, sparking a political firestorm. Morena supporters accused the Governor of Chihuahua, Maru Campos, of using the CIA to undermine the Sheinbaum administration.
Analysts say Mr. López Obrador’s perceived passivity in the face of organized crime has left the country vulnerable to Mr. Trump’s whims and with little leverage in trade negotiations.
“She is stuck between the rock of Trump’s pressure and the hard place of Morena narcopolitics,” Carlos Bravo Regidor, a political analyst in Mexico City, said of Ms. Sheibaum’s predicament.
“While there’s a real hard power asymmetry between the U.S. and Canada, it’s a hairline crack compared to the tectonic fault line that exists in terms of hard power between Mexico and the U.S.,” Mr. Sarukhán said. Prime Minister Mark Carney “did not inherit the public policy vulnerabilities and the toxic legacy, particularly regarding security collaboration, that Sheinbaum inherited.”