The Lucero Sánchez López Case

A former beauty pageant winner, Lucero Sánchez became the youngest state congressperson when she was elected in 2013 at the age of 23. Backed by an alliance between the PAN, PRD, and the Partido Sinaloense, she represented the municipality of Cosalá, a small region south of Culiacán.

Her political career would be short; she served only one term and had never held office prior—excluding her selection as queen of the mardi gras carnival in Cosalá.

Today, Lucero Sánchez is a prisoner in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego, accused of conspiring with the Sinaloa Cartel to traffic drugs and launder money. Her arrest had been a stroke of luck for authorities: she attempted to enter the United States without knowing her visa had been cancelled.

In the case file, an informant from the “Sinaloa Cartel” alleged that Sánchez had been with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera when he nearly escaped capture in February, 2014—fleeing from a safehouse through a tunnel.

The file also describes Sánchez as a woman who bragged of being the drug trafficker’s girlfriend. Using a fake name, she visited him while he was a prisoner in the Almoloya prison.

The night of July 7, 2013, when Lucero Sánchez learned that she had been elected, there was a party in Cosalá—but none of the parties that had nominally backed her were there to celebrate. Her victory had been, for all intents and purposes, as an independent candidate, even if she would join the PAN caucus once in congress.

Her election was remarkable, an astonishing path from political anonymity to the second-highest vote total in the history of the municipality. She had won 4,167 votes—a sum that equaled 33% of registered voters in the municipality.

The Sinaloa state daily Noroeste later documented that Sánchez’s campaign could have been backed by Gúzman Loera, after obtaining anonymous reports from residents about a possible relationship—but nobody in Cosalá would speak openly about the link.

Other anonymous testimonies indicated that from a young age Sánchez had worked in the sierra. She served as a cook, preparing tortillas for fieldworkers who cultivated marijuana and opium poppy. It was there that she met the Sinaloa Cartel boss who would have backed her candidacy as queen of the mardi gras carnival in Cosalá.

Mexico’s federal attorney general’s office documented several meetings between Gúzman Loera and the state legislator, including his presence at a party hosted by Sánchez López’s sister.

Intercepted phone conversations from September 2013 between members of El Chapo’s ‘second circle’, which were released during his trial in 2017, also reveal the legislator’s participation in at least two operations to manage funds for narcotrafficking, with sums of 500,000 and 380,000 dollars. In these operations, Sánchez used the alias “Piedra,” while her sister used the name “Caro.”

Sánchez pled guilty to the charges in the United States, agreeing to testify against Gúzman Loera in exchange for a reduction in her sentence.

Political Violence Foretold

In its Third Report on Political Violence in Mexico 2021, the Etellekt consulting group observes that Sinaloa is at risk for high levels of violence. At the extremes, this could include assassinations of politicians, above all members of the opposition. The state is currently ruled by the PRI.

Such was the case in the murder of José Carlos Trujillo García, a city councilmember from the Partido de Trabajo in Navolato, who was murdered after leaving city hall on November 10, 2020. The 30-year-old was ambushed while walking to his car in the city center and shot at point-blank range.

For officials, much of the attention is on the rural, mountainous regions of the state. According to state security minister Cristóbal Castañeda Camarillo, in the municipalities of Concordia, Rosario, Cosalá, Culiacán, Badiraguato, Sinaloa, and Choix there are high probabilities of conflict between criminal groups.

There is recent precedent for violence: In March of 2020, criminal groups murdered Luis Alberto Monárrez, a former police officer who was Morena’s candidate for town councilperson in Tepuche, a community to the north of Culiacán. The next day, Jovel Pérez Meza, Tepuche’s municipal chief of police was also killed.

The violence in this region combined with the events of June 24 in Bagrecitos, a nearby community where 16 people were brutally murdered—two of whom simply had the misfortune to cross paths with the Sinaloa Cartel gunmen who carried out the attack.

The Seven Threats

Over a month of campaigns, violence has become a principal factor for candidates.

Electoral authorities confirm seven reports of threats received by candidates in Salvador Alvarado, Navolato, Culiacán, Mazatlán, Concordia, and Escuinapa. Of these, Castañeda Camarillo notes that the reports are “principally threats or regarding the presence of armed individuals who obstruct candidates’ activities.”

According to campaign officials from Morena, Movimiento Ciudadano, and Redes Sociales Progresistas, some of these complaints include attacks on campaign teams and candidates.

In Sinaloa officials have launched an operation to try to limit criminal confrontations that could affect the electoral process in rural regions. The effort focuses on the south of the state, where criminal groups have been more active, leading to conflicts. Attacks on military and police units have left several officers wounded.

The special operation has resulted in a number of arrests, and the murder of Joel Ernesto Soto, the state police chief who was killed while traveling in an unmarked vehicle in an attempt to avoid recognition. Authorities offered little information on the attack, other than to note it was carried out by an armed group.

The assassination followed a series of incidents involving the state police, above all in areas north of Culiacán. After armed groups launched the attacks, police responded with arrests and seizures of weapons, vehicles, and packages of synthetic drugs.

This violence is the other side of the electoral coin in Sinaloa, where criminal participation is as complicated as it is alarming.

What is a vote worth? According to the Sinaloa State Electoral Institute, the same as any other vote. Even the vote of a criminal boss? Absolutely, they say, a vote is a vote. But in Sinaloan politics, that logic is deceiving.

In this state, politics go hand in hand with the economy, society, and the criminal world. It is the order that was established according to those who, by force of arms, acquired territory and sought means of controlling their prizes.