There’s drama in the Mexican state of Morelos, and it involves a former soccer star, an assassination plot, and a city fair. Legendary Mexican striker and Cuernavaca mayor Cuauhtémoc Blanco said he fears for his life following the April 6 murder of Juan Manuel García Bejarano, one of the city’s notable businessmen and the concessionaire of the 2017 Feria Cuernavaca.
Blanco had been in hiding since the incident, saying that he feared for himself and his family in the aftermath of García Bejarano’s death. “Yes, I’m scared, for my life, my family. But here I remain, strong,” said Blanco in his first public statement since the García Bejarano’s death. “This gives me all of the strength to continue to fight injustice, which is truly an aberration and a sickness.”
In a twist worthy of the most outlandish novelas, however, Blanco has been named as the mastermind behind the assassination of the fair organizer, and by none other than the killer himself, José Fierro Escobar, who said that he acted under the mayor’s order when firing upon the 25-year-old García Bejarano.
For his part, Blanco has stated that he goes that the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) of Mexico gets involved, as he does not trust the state of Morelos to handle this case; he believes that the governor of the state, Graco Ramírez, is behind the smear campaign against the former soccer player.
“I hope that the PGR takes this case. Here, there is nothing, it is not protected. The governor handles everything, so you have to go to the PGR in Mexico to resolve these things, because this is disgusting,” said the former El Tri star.
Taking office after his retirement from soccer, Blanco’s tenure as mayor of Cuernavaca has been dotted with controversy. In December of 2016, he staged a hunger strike to protest an impeachment vote at his expense in the Morelos state legislature; the impeachment eventually failed and Blanco returned to office.