A federal election court has revoked Abraham Salazar’s expiration in Xoxocotla, Morelos. Judges revoke state court’s audacity to award mayor to Salazar, who, along with his team and supporters, is being prosecuted for being behind the crime of the former mayor and his secretary in January and March . Salazar can still appeal to a higher court, even if that would only confirm or deny the constitutionality of the action.
This week, EL PAÍS reported on the confused electoral campaign that the indigenous community of Xoxocotla has been going through for more than a year. In June 2021, the city held elections for the first time after separating from Puente de Ixtla. But the winner, Juan López Palacios, died a few days after a heart attack. His team therefore separated. Some supported his deputy, Martín Flores, and others supported the deceased mayor’s younger brother, Menor López Palacios.
Months of conspiracies, rumors and suspicions wore Xoxocotla down, which eventually elected the last of the López Palacios twice, first in elections and then in an assembly. The new corregidor was sworn in on January 1 of this year. Minor López Palacios almost nothing lasted a few days longer than his brother. This time, the gunmen shot him in his own house. His team then accused his rival of previous months, Martín Flores, the new deputy, Abraham Salazar, and the supporters’ club of crime.
Majority in the council, supporters of Menor López Palacio elected one of them, Raúl Honrado, as deputy. But Salazar questioned his choice in court. At the same time, Xoxocotla held a convention to ratify Honoré or appoint Salazar. The former won by a landslide victory, but the Electoral Court of Morelos approved Salazar and appointed him corregidor. Xoxocotla has had two mayors and has operated that way since the summary conviction in March.
Things got even more complicated with the crime of one of the key figures in Raúl Honrado’s team, community secretary Manuel Alejandro Jiménez. On March 15, after Honrado was chosen for the council but before the audacity of the Morelos court and the meeting scheduled for the 20th, gunmen assassinated him outside his business, an Internet cafe.
Abraham Salazar, at his home in Xoxocotla in May. Rodrigo Oropeza
Once again, the Honrado team blamed Salazar and Flores, aided, they say, by a gang of local criminals allegedly led by Silvano Rivera and his brother Abel Rivera. So far, the crimes go unpunished, although the Morelos prosecutor’s office this week arrested Abel Rivera, “one of the community’s suspected violent criminals”, for an old drug case. Honrado’s team and other residents consulted by this newspaper suspect this man of being the material perpetrator of the murders. Abel Rivera is currently in hospital recovering from injuries sustained in a shooting in the city last weekend. Rivera allegedly shot another man in Xoxocotla. The man died, but managed to punch him before falling to the ground injured.
In its audacity this Saturday, the Regional Chamber of the Electoral Tribunal of the Summary Power of the Treaty of Mexico made no mention of the context in which Xoxocotla lives. The Secretary of the Court read the short and concise presentation of Minister Luis Enrique Rivero. “Substitution is not a means of accessing public office in the indigenous community according to its internal regulatory systems (…) In this sense, it is concluded that ordering the taking of the oath of Abraham Salazar as Speaker was not appropriate as a Member of Parliament. .
The publication still referred to the March 20 meeting that Secretary Jiménez meticulously organized until his crime. “It is recorded that the meeting was registered in a legalized relationship in which the certifier certified the presence of 4,237 people, the majority of whom voted for Raúl Honrado,” he said. And he concluded: “Bearing in mind that the greatest advisory viscera of Xoxocotla is the Generic Assembly, it is proposed to determine that Honoré assume the position of Corregidor.”
The investigating judge, María G. Silva Rojas, added: “Since last year, we have been deciding. We insist on the right of government and self-determination to set their own rules, to govern themselves without having to abide by the law.” All three judges on the court voted in favor of Rivero’s plan.
Without being definitive, the audacity seems irrevocable. The chamber of incorporation of the Federal Electoral Court has already twice confirmed the supremacy of the assembly. The verdict of the regional chamber now tests the governability of Xoxocotla. After the murders of Corregidor López Palacios and Minister Jiménez, and now their summary expiration, Honrado’s team fears any type of retaliation from the contest, be it Salazar, the Riveras or both.
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