Rubén Rocha's Return to Sinaloa Governorship Ends in Record-short Tenure After 33 Hours

Rubén Rocha's return to the governorship of Sinaloa will go down in the record books as the shortest tenure of any governor in the position. Just 33 hours passed between his first tweet announcing his return and his final message stepping aside for an indefinite leave of absence. But in the span of just over a day, nearly all the variables of the six-year term converged: the challenge and testing of the president's power and the rest of the federal government's levers, from the Interior Ministry, a thousand-armed leviathan, to the Attorney General's Office (FGR).

Morena's unity, that large family not always on good terms, and its ability to respond and recover from the blow of one of its barons. In the background, as secondary actors, the shadows of organized crime and the threatening gaze of the United States. EL PAÍS reconstructs, through testimonies from half a dozen sources involved in the negotiations, the sequence of events of an explosive political day.

Friday, August 21, began without many curves in the official agenda. The president led, as every day, the Security Cabinet meeting at 6 a.m. sharp. The only unusual thing so far was that Sheinbaum barely had a voice.