Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro has brushed aside concerns that organized crime gangs are operating illegal “roadblocks” (retenes) on roads in the northern part of the state.
Here, according to many testimonies, motorists are obliged to pay what is known as a “derecho de piso,” a charge that allows them to continue their journeys into a municipality. The money, travelers are usually informed, goes toward local fiestas patronales (a town’s annual saint’s day celebration).
Despite evidence to the contrary, Alfaro stressed that these illegal checkpoints “are not a reality,” and if authorities receive a report of one operating anywhere in the state, “action is taken in a timely manner.”
Alfaro was responding to recent comments by Cardinal Jose Francisco Robles Ortega, the archbishop of Guadalajara, who said he was stopped at such a checkpoint in the municipality of Totatitche on the border of Jalisco and Zacatecas, and hit up for cash by people he presumed to be members of a criminal gang or cartel. He added that a colleague, the bishop of Zacatecas, had also been stopped at a similar checkpoint.
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