The Purge of old school CAF

Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Zetatijuana article

Subject Matter: Cartel Arellano Felix
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required

Carlos Ibarra, killed this week in a restaurant in the East zone of Tijuana, was identified as a member of the Cartel Arellano captured by the DEA and related to the operation of a narco tunnel, he had been returning to Tijuana since 2011. The PGJE have no leads in the investigation into his assassination. (Otis: I bet some BB readers have some theories on who did it and why.)

Reporter: Rosario Mosso Castro

When they assassinated him, Carlos Ibarra Castellanos was in the interior of the restaurant Dona Cuca located at number 20638, plaza la Riveriera on Cucapah Boulevard in the Buenos Aires Fraccionamiento in South Tijuana.

The homicide victim was shot three times, one of the bullets hitting the neck of the victim, who was converted to violent homicide number 255 from the start of the year to the 5th of April.

His murder would have been passed over unnoticed in the current wave of blood violence that affects Tijuana, if it had not been for two aspects: one that the body was identified as a member of “Old School” Cartel Arellano Felix; two that he was shot after a “strange” period of calm, with a total of 3 assassinations in a week, when previously there was an average of 13 – 16 bodies every 7 days.

The attack that ended the life of Ibarra Castellano was reported to C4 at 12:11 on Wednesday 27th of April, they reported gunfire and the existence of two victims in the interior of the restaurant. During this call the auxiliary groups declared Ibarra dead at the scene, with injuries in the neck, head and face, his identification was verified at the scene by someone who turned out to be his partner, Hortensia “N”, the other man wounded by a bullet to the arm was identified as Gilberto Orozco Rodriguez.

Minutes after the Corporations informed that the shot victim was an “Old School” member of the Cartel Arellano Felix linked to narco tunnels, to corroborate Zeta asked the United States authorities and they confirmed the coincidence of the data.

In April of 2003 Carlos Ibarra Castellanos was in the company of Juan Salas Burgos, in the interior of the Seven Dollar Parking Lot, inside a van parked approximately from the border with “San Ysidro”, some were smoking marijuana when they were surprised by a joint operation carried out by elements of the DEA and the ICE.

The agents knew who they what they were looking for. In the vans cargo area and located under a false floor they found more than a ton of marijuana, and when they moved the van, they found the exit of the tunnel, which had an entrance on the Mexican side in a house located in the Federal Colonia of Tijuana.

At that moment the United States authorities informed that the subterranean passage was used by traffickers from the Cartel Arellano Felix to cross drugs, but the head of the criminal group mentioned is Ismael “El Mayo Zambada”.

It was in July of 2004 when a Californian Court declared Ibarra guilty and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, that he would finish serving in 2013, however, the documents show that he obtained his liberty on the 19th of December of 2011.

After, the subject came to light again in the press in May of 2012, when he had already been released, when some media took reports of alerts to the hot line opened by the DEA against members of the CAF, in them, Maria de la Luz Burgos Escarcega, the first wife of Ibarra Castellanos was on the front page of the DEA “most wanted” for her involvement in trafficking of drugs.

At the moment of his assassination, Ibarra had four residences registered to him, one in Lorna Dorada, another in Guyacura Fraccionamiento, one more in the Buena Vista Colonia and another in the Buenas Aires Fraccionamiento where he was taken down.

Hortensia “N” the woman who identified his body, was his contact in case of emergencies. After his return to Tijuana the only incident the authorities had had with Ibarra was for drinking and driving. PGJE confirm they had no outstanding arrest warrants or charges pending for him.

Original article in Spanish at Zetatijuana