Jalisco, the battlefield of the cartels

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Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from El Siglo De Torreon

                   

The figures of the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP) highlight that the first half of the year was one of the most violent, registering 882 intentional homicides, considering that in 2015 there were 19 thousand in the year; in 2016, one thousand 153 and in 2017, one thousand 342. 

State security and law enforcement authorities reveal that the violence in the entity derives mainly from the split of the CJNG, which has left an internal dispute between several of its cells for the control of drug dealing, the main cause of homicides in the entity and more in the metropolitan area.

From January to June 2018 there have been 882 murders, representing, on average, 147 intentional homicides per month, 36.7 per week, 5.2 per day or one every 4.6 hours. Of those 882, 546 were perpetrated with a firearm, 81 with a knife and dismemberment, and 223 unspecified. 

According to official figures, violence has increased in the last four years; from January to June 2015 there were 425 malicious homicides, so 2018 exceeds that figure by more than double. 

Of the 125 municipalities that exist in Jalisco, the nine that make up the metropolitan area of Guadalajara are the ones that concentrate the highest number of intentional homicides, according to the crime map of the Attorney General of Jalisco, called Security Map.

Of the 882 intentional homicides recorded from January to June of this year, 649 were in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, that is, 73.6% of the total. The capital has the highest incidence with 207, followed by Tlaquepaque with 130, Tlajomulco with 103, Zapopan with 97, Tonalá with 65 and El Salto with 40. The rest are divided into Zapotlanejo, Ixtlahuacán and Juanacatlán with four, two and one respectively. 

VIOLENCE GENERATORS 

The intelligence document states that the dispute between the CJNG and other cartels on the Jalisco borders with Michoacán, Colima, Nayarit, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas and Guanajuato has been a factor generating violence for this entity.

The most violent battles that the CJNG disputes are, for example, in Michoacán with “La Nueva Familia Michoacana”, headed by the Sierra Santana brothers, better known as “Los Viagras”.

From the vantage point of the states of Guanajuato, Michoacán and Jalisco, “Viagras” try to contain the advance of the CJNG that has gained ground in Michoacán, where they have left innumerable confrontations, murders, kidnappings, enforced and dismembered disappearances. 

The intelligence concentrate points out that the interest of the CJNG is to seize the clandestine laboratories that control “Viagras”. 

In Nayarit, that group holds a battle with the “Cartel de Los Beltrán Leyva” and in Zacatecas with “Los Zetas”. 

Also in Colima and its border with Jalisco the CJNG has provoked an increase in violence, since since 2016 they managed to exile the cells of “The Knights Templar” and the “Cartel de Sinaloa”.

The violence of that area was known in February 2018, between the limits of Jalisco and Nayarit, where agents Alfonso Hernández and Octavio Martínez were kidnapped and forced by members of the CJNG to record a video (kneeling and being subdued by armed and hooded men) that was posted on social media networks. To date, the PGR has arrested 18 members of that criminal group who left the bodies of the agents in a vehicle located in Xalisco, Nayarit. The prosecutor’s office identified Mauricio Varela, “El Manotas”, of Colombian nationality, as the intellectual author.  

‘EL MAYO’ DIVIDES HIS ENEMIES 

The report to which EL UNIVERSAL had access indicates that drug traffickers Rafael Caro Quintero and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the latter in command of the operations of the Sinaloa Cartel, achieved their main objective: to divide the CJNG.

In August of 2017, the head of hitmen of “El Mencho”, Carlos Enrique Sanchez Martinez “El Cholo”, ordered the murder of Marcos Hernández, alias “El Kartón”, alleged financial operator of the CJNG. That homicide was considered by Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes as a betrayal, so he ordered the death of, until then, one of his closest collaborators: “El Cholo”, who survived two attacks against him in 2017 and from then on he became “the enemy in house “of Oseguera. 

The document infers that the rupture within the CJNG was taken advantage of by Caro Quintero and “El Mayo” Zambada, who currently finance the mobility and operations of “El Cholo”, who leads the newly created cartel called Nueva Plaza. Hence, “El Cholo” came to seize the state of Colima.

This rupture between “El Mencho” and “El Cholo” caused other cells in his service to disperse and lead drug sales on their own. 

The document states that until two years ago the sale of drugs in Jalisco was handled by “El Mencho”, which was corroborated by the labels with the initials of the CJNG, with which the distribution envelopes are marked. 

Since the fracture of the cartel to date, the authorities have detected at least 16 more holograms with which the bags or envelopes with narcotics are labeled. 

These are holograms with the names and characteristics of the cells that distribute them: for example, “Lobo”, which is the most predominant, “Calavera Lemon”, among others. The document shows that there are now 16 more cells in the metropolitan area. 

The authorities say that the fight for drug trafficking between the cells, the split of the CJNG and the creation of the Nueva Plaza concentrate nine out of 10 murders in Jalisco.

Orlando is the father of two teenage daughters: Katia and Zulema who, together with his wife Maricarmen, were kidnapped in April 2015 by a group of armed civilians who identified themselves as members of the Jalisco Cartel Nueva Generación (CJNG). 

Katy, 17, was murdered in front of her mother and sister. The three women were tortured for a month and a half in an area of the municipality of Tlajomulco, where two clandestine graves were located two years later. 

Orlando, originally from Zamora, Michoacán, said his wife and daughters were confused, by the vehicle in which they were traveling, with the family of one of the leaders of the criminal group “Los Viagras”, an organization with which Michoacán is disputed. The chemical engineer and consultant in agricultural fields on the border of both states (Michoacán and Jalisco) said that his wife and daughters were kidnapped when they went from Zamora to Guadalajara to go to the high school where the two girls studied. 

Orlando and Maricarmen decided to enroll their daughters in a school in the capital of Jalisco, due to the wave of violence that hit the state of Michoacán, their homeland. Katia and Zulema had been together with their mother in Guadalajara for two years, when they were intercepted by an armed group on an April afternoon as they were traveling to Tlajomulco. They were forced to board another vehicle. According to the young women’s father, the armed civilians insisted from the first moment that they were deprived of their freedom, that they be told where Juan Carlos Sierra Santana was hiding “La Sopa”, one of the leaders of “Los Viagras”, murdered then in 2017. “Don’t pretend you don’t know that you are the b—- of ‘La Sopa’, this is your truck… tell us where he’s hiding, who came in [to Jalisco] and we’re going let them go “, recalled some phrases they shouted at Orlando’s wife.

Six months after the last clue of the Italians Antonio Russo, 25 years old, Rafaele Russo, 60 years old, and Vincenso Cimmino, 29 years old, the whereabouts of the three foreigners remains a mystery.

So far, four police officers from Tecalitlán have been detained in this case and one commander is on the run, in addition to which José Guadalupe “N” “El Quince”, alleged regional head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), captured in recent days in the south of Jalisco and Colima, who would be related to the disappearance of the three foreigners. 

The last point that Raffaele Russo could have been before disappearing on the afternoon of January 31st was Tecalitlán, Jalisco, on the border with Tierra Caliente, Michoacán. Two kilometers away from there, that same night, the last time his son and nephew Antonio Russo and Vincenzo Cimmino were located was when they were allegedly handed over by municipal police to a crime group.

According to the inquiries about his disappearance, the main person responsible would be a person identified as “Don Ángel”, presumed leader of the CJNG in that region. 

An important part of the reconstruction of the events was Francesco Russo, who from Mexico City had the last contact with his three relatives and was mobilized to track the GPS of the two rented vehicles in which the three Italians disappeared. It was on February 19 that the case gained notoriety. At a Club Napoli soccer match in Italy a blanket was unveiled in the stands with the request: “Free the Neapolitans in Mexico.” 

That day, the Jalisco prosecutor’s office intervened with the Tecalitlán police to investigate its elements. As a result of this, the authorities detained four police officers, who confessed that they had handed over two of the Italians to a narco group. 

In as much, they continue in the search for the director of the corporation, Hugo Enrique Martínez Muñiz, and two other elements. While in Italy, relatives of the disappeared maintain their hopes.