Guerrero: Kevin de León’s bid for sympathy digs a deeper hole in history
A year-long battle to clean up Guerrero has left state agencies wringing their hands.
The state government’s top executive officer is a convicted gangster whose conviction has cast an ominous cloud on an up-and-coming community.
But in some ways this is not that different from the controversy over his predecessor, former Gov. Manuel “Mat” Peña.
In the Peña era, his predecessor, Manuel “Manny” Villarreal, was known as “El Diablo,” or the devil.
Many residents of the state’s southernmost municipality have grown wary of the current governor.
In their view, his actions, some of them questionable, have hurt Guerrero like the “devil’s horns” did Sodom.
If Guerrero is judged by the actions of Peña, De León’s win is a stunning indictment of the city and its leaders.
Guerrero is “the heart of Guerrero in all its complexity,” state Deputy Gov. Luis Fernando Torres declared last year, referring to his election as the city’s mayor.
Torres said the Guerrero government is the only one in the state that will always be there to look after the interests of Guerrero citizens or the state of Guerrero.
“There is another Guero in the state of Guerrero,” said Torres.
But it has been a year since Torres gave that speech and now he faces the prospect of being called out by his own supporters for the claim.
The year is a reminder that the past is no longer a guide to judging the present or future.
Guerrero’s future
The city of Guerrero has always been at the center of the state’s politics.
The city has been home to leaders in the church, the police and the underworld over the years. It has the distinction of hosting two of the most important political prisoners, Carlos Hank Bolanos, the mayor of the 1980s, and Héctor Beltrán Leyva, a former governor and the first of the current president’s “families.”
Guerrero has had a long, violent and sometimes murderous history, one that came to a head in the late “80s and early ’90s when the so-called “Narcoterroristas” sought to destroy the city of Guerrero.
They called the city