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By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
Less than 24 hours after five Gomez Palacio, Durango transit police agents were gunned down in the La Laguna region, Durango's Secretaria de Seguridad Publica Estatal (SSPE) has stepped down, according to Mexican news accounts.
Jesus Antonio Rosso Holguin was "relieved" as a news report in El Siglo de Durango news daily reported the news Saturday morning. According to the translation, the news was released by Durango's Fiscalia General del Estado (FGE) or attorney general's office. Rosso Holguin's replacement was named as Roberto Flores Mier, who was sworn in Friday.
Roberto Flores Mier, a veterinarian by trade, has served with the Durango FGE and SSPE for 19 years.
The departure of Rosso Holguin was reportedly part of a minor shakeup of Durango governor Jorge Herrera Caldera's cabinet. A second folio was changed as well: Juan Francisco Gutierrez Fragoso of Durango's Secretaria de Desarrollo Economico was replaced by Ricardo Ociel Navarrete Gomez, who had held a private foundation job in the state.
State cabinet shakeups are not unusual in Mexican local politics. Indeed, as Governor Herrera Caldera enters the third year of his six year term, so some changes are expected. Changes in Mexican state top security postings are rare, however.
For example, Durango's current FGE, Sonia Yadira de la Garza Fragoso took the attorney general's spot before the second year of her predecessor, Ramiro Ortiz Aguirre, was complete. Ramiro Ortiz Aguirre was murdered almost a year ago, a few hours after FGE Garza Fragoso pulled Ortiz's security detail. Ortiz presided over the nearly year-long discovery of mass graves in Durango state which eventually totalled 331 dead.
Another example would be the resignation of Brigadier General Ubaldo Ayala Tinoco, the SSPE of Tamaulipas, who left his post two years ago, just as the mass graves in San Fernando were coming to light. Those graves contained a total of 193 dead.
Rosso Holguin leaves in his wake a weakened but only recently revived security program in La Laguna and the oncoming pressure imposed by the newly elected federal government requiring that all police working in Mexico will be certified or lose their jobs by November, 2013. Many state and local police corporations have already begun the tests and transition to the new requirement, including Durango state.
The far eastern Durango municipality of Gomez Palacio lost almost 160 police agents earlier this month because of an internal investigation, and because those police agents refused to take part in training offered to them, according to Mexican press accounts.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com