(CNN Spanish) – The Sinaloa Prosecutor’s Office reported this Saturday the death of at least four people on September 20, bringing the death toll from violence in the Mexican state, in the northwest of the country, to 53 people since September 9. September, the date on which an increase in clashes between criminal groups was recorded.
This week, the elected president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, defended President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policy of non-violence towards drug trafficking cartels when referring to the violence in Sinaloa, in the northwest of the country.
“The issue is if you get into a violent confrontation with these groups. What would happen if you entered into a violent confrontation? Probably more violence. So that’s why it’s a different strategy. Maybe it’s not exactly waiting for the groups to stop fighting. Only what is being done now, which is to protect the population,” Sheinbaum said.
For his part, the governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, assured that the security forces are not “overwhelmed.”
“Let people know that we are taking care of them. That they take care of themselves? Of course, we are taking care of them, we are doing our homework, the operation we have between the three orders is working. They are complicated, difficult events, not unprecedented in Sinaloa, they have occurred every time relations between crime groups break down. This is one and I am having to face it and we are not overwhelmed at all,” he said.
The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, reiterated on Thursday that he asked the United States for an explanation about the events that led to the arrest of the co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, which occurred on July 25, and He stated that the violence in the state is due to an alleged “agreement” between the US Department of Justice and one of the organized crime groups.
“The Department of Justice was holding talks with one of the criminal groups in Sinaloa and they had agreements. They even released, or gave a different status, one of the detainees in the United States at the same time they took another person away,” López Obrador said during his daily morning conference.
The head of state added that this “requires an explanation because if we are now facing a situation of instability and confrontation in Sinaloa, it is because they made that decision. And we don’t agree,” he said.
CNN has requested comments from the US Department of Justice on López Obrador’s allegations.
López Obrador also referred to the capture of Zambada as “someone kidnapped through an agreement” who “is taken to the United States,” and said that the violence in Sinaloa, which left at least 43 dead since September 9, is due to this “special, extraordinary situation.”
