Rubén Rocha Moya Returns as Governor of Sinaloa
This article by Irene Sánchez originally appeared in the August 21, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left-wing daily newspaper.
Mazatlán, Sinaloa. Rubén Rocha Moya announced that this Friday he resumed, “with a clean forehead and head held high,” the exercise of his office as governor of Sinaloa, after on May 1 he requested a leave of absence in order to be investigated over accusations against him in the United States for alleged ties to a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel.
In a message posted on his social media, he stated that it is his “duty to fulfill the mandate of the people of Sinaloa, who elected me as head of the Executive Branch to govern until October 31, 2027.”
He noted that after 112 days of investigation, “as Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office itself has already reported, in a press conference before the media, there are not the slightest evidentiary elements to support our participation in any criminal conduct — that is, I have not committed any crime, in accordance with the constitutional and legal framework of our country.”
He explained that during this period he put himself at the disposal of Mexico’s justice system to be investigated “over the false accusations that, with political and interventionist motivations of the national and foreign far right, an office of the United States Government made against me without any proof, seeking to harm our national sovereignty with its statements and slander.”
“Thus, as a plain citizen, forthright and without shielding myself behind the constitutional immunity of my office — to whose protection I renounced out of personal conviction — I submitted myself to the investigative action of all the competent institutions of the Mexican State.”
I have not committed any crime.
Rubén Rocha Moya
The Morena governor detailed that during this period he appeared in person before the Attorney General’s Office and answered “with pertinence and truthfulness the questions and requests put to him.”
He emphasized that he is innocent “of the schemes that have been concocted against me by agents of the far right to damage — as is now fully known — the left-wing political movement in which I militate and whose principles I fully embrace and represent.”
And he added: “Let no one have any doubt; now and always I will defend, implacably and without concessions, my honor and that of my family.”
He also reaffirmed his “loyal” participation in the Wellbeing State project of the Fourth Transformation, in which he said he will work harder than ever.
“We will do so under the leadership of the Head of the Mexican State, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (@Claudiashein), who vigorously defends, with great conviction and firmness, the guiding principles of our homeland such as National Sovereignty, our democracy and the independence of the Mexican people, in the face of the machinations of foreign interests and the felony of the opposition far right,” he concluded.
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