The Triple Life of Denisse Ahumada, a Councilor in Tamaulipas Accused of Trafficking Cocaine

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

Public official from Monday to Friday and alleged mule of the Gulf Cartel on weekends, the young PAN member had multiple identities and dangerous relationships.

Fake profiles on Facebook, dangerous friendships on the web, rumors of high-level love affairs and an alliance with Mexico's oldest drug cartel were the heavy features of the life of Denisse Ahumada Martínez, the now former councilor of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, who was arrested on June 10 for trafficking 42 kilos of cocaine.

A character that seems to be taken from a series about narcos.

What is known about her is worrying: that being a councilor of a city gripped by the drug cartels, she drove her white Mazda vehicle to the northern border, crossed the Hidalgo international bridge and at a review point in the city of Falfurrias, Texas, she was arrested with packages of drugs hidden in hollows in the doors. Worse: she admitted in front of a judge in Texas McAllen that that was not the first time she had transported cocaine.

Denisse Ahumada, detention file.

Despite the evidence, five days later a judge dismissed the charges against her, but the dream of freedom soon vanished, since this Friday she was re-arrested and accused of the crime of possession of a controlled substance.

In the United States they want to verify that Denisse Ahumada was a public official from Monday to Friday and an alleged mule of the Gulf Cartel during the weekends.

But what is not known is even more alarming: which of all the identities of that 34-year-old woman is the right one? Because on social networks, at least, she is known by three different names or aliases. Each one has a particular personality and a hidden facet.

The good girl, the buchona and the diva

On the one hand, the now former councilor had an "official" Facebook profile as Denisse Ahumada Martínez. In it she showed, at first, her life as an ordinary citizen and, later, her activities as an official. She was warm, close to the people and had an intense family life. But it happened that hours after her arrest, that profile was deleted, it is no longer possible to visit her.

Denisse Ahumada Martínez. Regidora

A second Facebook profile shows a radically different facet: it is now called "Essined Montalvo" - Essined is Denisse backwards - and she made posts in full view until September 2021. The profile photo coincides with her, but the affable personality is no longer there. Most of her publications boast about the envy and jealousy she reaps in her path with "buchonas" images, that is, the luxury lifestyle that women long for in organized crime.

"Keep researching and asking about my life, thank you for being my fans and investigating so much about what I do, I say, I publish," she typed on that profile. "I’m leaving everything available as homework so that you can entertain and investigate more, we all have more than 2 Facebook accounts. Greetings and God bless you." [sic]

Among her friends on that social network there are several men who publish images alluding to drug trafficking cartels, cocaine lines, weapons and in general the fleeting life in organized crime. They are the ones who usually give likes to Essined's publications.

That's where the mystery doesn't end because there is a third identity. The local media Circo Urbano republished an interview he did last year with her, in which he confronts her for another hidden identity on the web: in addition to Denisse and Essined, she also called herself "Mónica Robles", the name of a character in the narco series The Lord of the Skies, and her supposedly refined alter ego displaying gold jewelry and self-improvement phrases. The former councilwoman confirmed her multiple faces on social media. 

"The issue there of social networks is because I had security problems; in fact, this morning I still had security problems," she said, again, without explaining how three personalities protected her from alleged threats.

Mónica Robles. Businesswoman

Another mystery is the route which this woman with no experience in public service followed to land in an office with a salary of 42,000 pesos per month from the treasury.

Until two years ago, Denisse Ahumada had only had three jobs, according to her resume: head of sales in a small water purifier business, purchasing supervisor for a metal parts manufacturer and import and export coordinator of a customs agency with 10 offices in Mexico... and one in Texas, where she was arrested.

A response of the labor jump towards the public administration is the civil association Periodistas del Noreste, which on November 27, 2022 published on Facebook that Denisse Ahumada arrived in 2021 to the position of councilor thanks to a shortcut and a trick: first, a boyfriend who helped her get placed and, second, the concealment of her alleged residence outside Reynosa.

Local reporters have their version: "Denisse Ahumada is a plurinominal councilor. Nobody elected her for that position, she came to office because the party in which she infiltrated thanks to the fact that her boyfriend in 2021 was the coordinator of the Green Party, included her in the electoral roll by falsifying residence documents in the hope of achieving a juicy salary and substantial concessions to live comfortably from the treasury for three years.

Once she arrived in office, peculiar facts were uncovered; for example, her quick resignation from the party that nominated her and her sudden alliance with Luis Cantú, El Cachorro, a state leader in the Acción Nacional political party, an institute that ignored her as a militant as soon as her arrest in the United States was known.

Connections between officials and drug traffickers

Denisse's story is the most recent episode of the narco politics in the Reynosa border, a bastion of the Gulf Cartel where the splits known as Los Metros, Los Escorpiones and Los Ciclones fight.

The three armed wings are fighting for drug routes to the US and the five international bridges where the drug moves that alleged mules, such as Denisse Ahumada Martínez, carry by vehicle to McAllen.

The connection between politics and organized crime is not new in Reynosa. Between 2005 and 2007, when former Tamaulipas governor Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca was mayor of that municipality, the Gulf Cartel used to present themselves with municipal permits in public in order to hand out toys to boys and girls every April 30, according to declassified cables from the US anti-drug agency, DEA.

Since then, it is rumored that those who win elections in that border municipality must do so with permission from the criminal company that was once led by Osiel Cárdenas Guillén: all the mayors elected since 2005 - from Cabeza de Vaca to the current Carlos Víctor Peña Ortiz - have been pointed out by foreign authorities, nationals or narco messages from organized crime for their alleged dark ties.

Even, on June 14, the mayor of Reynosa confirmed in a press conference that during the first year of his municipal administration he carried out an anti-doping test on trustees and councilors, and that several tested positive. Those public servants - whom he called "addicts" - are alien to the Morena political party, said the mayor, who assured that he would later disclose their names.

Local reporters who spoke to MILENIO in exchange for anonymity assured that on that list of councilors who use drugs is, precisely, the former official graduated from the International Relations career who went from having an office in the municipal presidency of Reynosa to sleeping in a cell outside her country waiting for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

When you know what your destination will be, the only doubt you will have is how you would like to be called: Denisse Ahumada Martínez, Essined Montalvo or Mónica Robles?

The triple life of the former councilor of Reynosa.

Milenio