In the country of 100,000 disappeared, surviving a kidnapping is almost a miracle, which is why the release of the 16 workers from the Chiapas Public Security Secretariat, who were kidnapped by a criminal group last Tuesday, has caused a sensation. widespread relief throughout Mexico. Despite the fact that the state government refused at all times to comply with the demands of the captors, who demanded the resignation of three high-ranking officials accused of corruption, the kidnapped were released this Friday a few meters from the place where their relatives were demonstrating. , provoking a reunion as improbable as it is emotional.
The scene was captured live by television cameras. Since the road blockade that had been lifted three days earlier, the relatives watched as their loved ones descended, one by one, from a van abandoned by their captors. Still in disbelief, they launched into a 200-meter dash to confirm it with their own eyes. Indeed it was them: they were safe and sound, although slightly dehydrated. The survivors and their families melted into eternal hugs, full of shouts and tears of joy. “I am crazy with happiness, miracles exist, God exists,” the wife of one of the victims assured Televisa. For his part, the survivor José Javier Jiménez acknowledged that the 16 kidnapped “we have been reborn.”
His nightmare began last Tuesday, when the bus that was transporting the workers of the Chiapas Public Security Secretariat, from the Llano San Juan headquarters to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital, was intercepted by an armed commando in the middle of the highway. . As can be seen in a video recorded by one of the witnesses, the criminals forced all the passengers to get off, taking 16 men and freeing all the women. Most of them were administrative staff from the Ocozocuatla prison who had no responsibility for security. The next day, all of them appeared – in apparent good health, but crestfallen and visibly scared – in a video released by the kidnappers.
“On behalf of our colleagues who are doing very well, so that our families don’t worry,” one of them is heard saying, while reading a message written out of shot, “we ask the governor for his valuable intervention so that we can return with our families.” The criminals demanded from the state authorities the resignation of Francisco Orantes, Undersecretary of State Security, Roberto Yahir Hernández, director of the border police, and Marco Antonio Burguete, director of the preventive State Police, considering that they are on the payroll of the drug cartel. Sinaloa and that they would also have authorized the kidnapping of an unknown singer from Chiapas.
The kidnapping of Nayeli Cinco could have been forgotten, as is the case with the majority of women who disappear every day in Mexico, if it weren’t for the fact that the kidnappers of the 16 officials once again brought her name to light. According to the images captured by security cameras in the area, on June 22, an armed commando broke into the singer’s house. She tried to escape from her through the roof along with her two daughters, aged 10 and 5, but one of her hit men managed to catch up with her, drag her by the hair towards the stairs and force her onto a of the trucks. After witnessing the events, her daughters asked the neighbors for help.
“She has nothing to do with it, just like us, we are paying the just for sinners, please,” one of the 16 kidnapped is heard kneeling. In a third video, hidden behind a mask, one of the captors claims: “Just as in this case the authorities intervened quickly to search for the Secretariat workers, we want them to also intervene for a person who is Nayeli. We do not want problems with you, we want to negotiate.” At the moment the relationship between the singer and the kidnappers is unknown, although everything indicates that she would have some kind of sentimental or family relationship with one of the leaders of the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel.
As they explain in a message, presumably sent by themselves via WhatsApp, the high-ranking officials mentioned would be working for the head of the Sinaloa cartel in Chiapas, Jesús Esteban Machado, alias ‘El Pulseras’, and would have authorized the kidnapping of Nayeli: “This lifting of SSP personnel was because they allowed ‘Güero Pulseras’ to lift the women’s Nayeli Cyrene Cinco, if they don’t return her alive, the same will be done to their staff who were lifted. Even for that they are fucking filthy like ‘ The Pulseras’ that do not respect the codes, because the family is respected”.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has promised to investigate “the behavior of these three public servants who are being identified as accomplices”, but has refused at all times to comply with the conditions of the kidnappers. True to his style, AMLO threatened them that if they did not release the victims, “I am going to accuse them with their parents and their grandparents.” This massive kidnapping has once again highlighted the growing climate of violence in Chiapas, a mostly indigenous and traditionally peaceful border state with Guatemala, which has become the scene of clashes between various criminal groups that are fighting for control of the territory. .
The release of the 16 kidnapped workers has brought some hope to a society that lives with a shadow of corruption over its political leaders, an open war between the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel, and the armed conflict recently unleashed in the mountains. , between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and a paramilitary group, which has left Chiapas “on the verge of civil war”, as the guerrillas denounced on June 9 in several simultaneous demonstrations held throughout the country.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project