Héctor Melesio Cuén Ojeda, who next September was to assume the position of federal plurinominal deputy for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, lived involved in controversies, confrontations and accusations of imposing a cacique system within the Autonomous University of Sinaloa (UAS), which led him to confront the current governor, Rubén Rocha Moya.
The politician and businessman was also murdered in Culiacán on July 25, hours after the drug trafficker and founder of the Sinaloa cartel, Ismael The May Zambada was placed at the disposal of United States judicial authorities.
Cuén Ojeda began his career at the UAS as a professor of chemical-biological sciences in 1978; he was rector of the institution from 2005 to 2009.
In politics, he served as mayor of Culiacán in 2011 and 2012, and as a state deputy from 2013 to 2016. He was also Secretary of Health of Sinaloa and a candidate for governor and senator. In 2012, he founded the locally registered Partido Sinaloense (PAS).
In 2016, Melesio Cuén ran for governor, and although he did not win, the PAS obtained six plurinominal state deputies for the first time.
Breakup with Rocha Moya
In 2021, the party allied itself with Morena to promote Rocha Moya’s candidacy for the Sinaloa government, who gave him the position of Secretary of Health and dismissed him the following year. From that moment on, the former rector and the president had repeated verbal confrontations.
As rector of the UAS, Cuén Ojeda eliminated universal suffrage for the election of authorities and established control of the University Council, which appointed rectors, school directors, vice-rectors, as well as leaders of administrative and academic unions.
Thus, the university community did not participate in any type of election to appoint its directors or council representatives for almost two decades, which did not prevent students and professors from being sent to distribute propaganda for the standard-bearers in 2010, when the National Action Party (PAN) ran for governor. blue and whitewith the threat of being expelled and, in the case of professors, fired or removed from their workplaces.
Cuén Ojeda was even accused of promoting the departure of Aarón Quintero Pérez, who sought the rectorship in 2005, accusing him of not attending his class schedules.
He is also remembered for a case from 2009, when, after administrative worker Kirey Hernández Colunga won the leadership of the Single Union of Workers of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa in the southern part of the state, she was accused of dispossession and imprisoned.
On July 17, Roxana Rubio, state leader of the PAN, declared that the controversy surrounding the university, regarding the criminal proceedings against its officials for alleged corruption, and the meetings they have had with Governor Rubén Rocha to reach agreements, are a personal matter between the Morena leader and Héctor Cuén Ojeda.
