There are small details that haunt the leaders of the frontier in their political career. The Governor of Tamaulipas, Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca, a seemingly mundane act in the city of Reynosa when he was mayor in 2005 has colored him. During the Children’s Day celebration, he allowed toys to be distributed to the little ones signed with a familiar name: Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, leader of the Gulf Cartel. Ten years later, as he was on the verge of becoming a senator for the conservative PAN, a DEA report put him in a meeting with Joaquín in 2012 El Chapo Guzmán in Baja California Sur and then Secretary of Public Security, Genaro García Luna, are being prosecuted by the United States today for drug trafficking. Those alleged connections and more specific ones that point to money laundering and tax fraud have shaken politics in Mexico. The prosecutor’s office attacked the governor, who is an opponent of the president, several months before the parliamentary and local elections.
The case of Cabeza de Vaca, 53, joins that of four other governors of Tamaulipas, a state that has been penetrated to the core by the drug cartels. Three and a half million residents, one of the most coveted borders for drug trafficking in the Gulf of Mexico, a step away from Texas and nearly 30 years of governments that have allowed, cooperated and even led criminal operations in the area.
From the mandate of Manuel Cavazos Lerma (from 1993 to 1999) – accused of money laundering and identified as a Los Zetas leader in a trial for meeting with a rival cartel – to Cabeza de Vaca, there is not a single governor of the entity that is not characterized by possible links to organized crime. Tomás Yarrington (1999-2004), arrested in 2017 and awaiting trial in the United States for drug trafficking; Eugenio Hernández (2005-2010), charged with money laundering and imprisoned; and Edigio Torres Cantú (from 2011 to 2016), charged with cover-ups and crime in 2017.
Cabeza de Vaca won the 2016 elections and his term expires in 2022. The prosecution’s hook is focused on the parliamentary immunity he maintains in order to be brought to justice for these crimes. The agency sent a request to the federal Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday to discuss the possibility of withdrawing jurisdiction there. A decision that, if the prosecutor’s office is right, should be turned over to the Tamaulipas State Congress and backed by a two-thirds majority, which is unlikely given that 23 of the 36 members are PAN militants, the same party as the accused.
The coup d’état of the prosecution, whose investigation has integrated the complaint of some members of the party Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Morena), puts the governor of an opposition party at a key moment: ahead of the elections that will renew the Chamber of Deputies in June , 15 governors and 2,000 other positions are elected. In addition, it gives a final message to the rest of the associate governors against the president, an organization called Alianza Federalista, to which Cabeza de Vaca and nine other presidents face the government on crucial issues such as budgets, fighting organized crime, and strategy. to face the pandemic. Some critics of the federal government are denouncing an election prosecution rather than a quest for justice and the fight against organized crime.
Among the evidence gathered by the Public Prosecution Service through the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) to file for the violation, there is a money laundering network between the governor, some front men and members of his family. According to the file, named by Mexican media Emeequis in December, the governor won the tender for a public work in 2017 that was never built and was pocketed 48.6 million pesos (about 2.4 million pesos through an empty firm). Dollar) and another 33.5 million ($ 1.6 million) through other operations with his brother José Manuel. In addition, the investigation against Cabeza de Vaca that was expanded by 2020 included 20 properties in Texas, worth $ 10 million, and 10 businesses with addresses in California and Seattle, United States, of which only two were active, according to the report. .
His inexplicable enrichment thanks to the political position he held during those years is not the only thing the Public Prosecution has documented. The DEA and the Treasury Department have been investigating him for years for money laundering, bank fraud and possible links to the Gulf Cartel. In addition, Emilio Lozoya, the former head of Pemex, and prosecuted today for his ties to the Odebrecht corruption scheme, pointed to Cabeza de Vaca among dozens of lawmakers who accepted bribes in exchange for votes for President Enrique’s energy reform. Peña grandchild.
Cabeza de Vaca was born in September 1967 in Reynosa, one of the main cities of Tamaulipas, which was governed from 2005 to 2007. He studied Business Administration and Marketing in Houston, Texas. And during his college years in the United States, he was arrested for a case of theft of a couple’s weapons in a van, as evidenced by the complaint Rojas filed against him with the prosecution. This episode in his life mainly accompanied him during his 2016 election campaign for governor and he claimed it was a mistake. However, the photo of his youthful face in a police station in McAllen, Texas, circulated among the attacks of his rivals.
Before starting his political career, he founded a family business, Productos Chamoyadas, specializing in one of the quintessential Mexican sweets. The business grew and together with his brothers, one of them, nowadays Senator of the Republic for the PAN in Tamaulipas, he founded a public corporation that has worked for Pemex and the National Water Commission. Last Wednesday, the governor put the government in a tight spot with the prosecution: “It was of minimal political decency to call me to appear a year ago, not now that the elections are starting. What a coincidence!”.
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