Jalisco's Puente Grande: Prison made famous by El Chapo's laundry basket escaped closes its doors

 Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat  La Silla Rota

Famous for the ‘laundry basket’ escape of the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín ” El Chapo ” Guzmán Loera, this Monday the closure of the Federal Center for Social Readaptation Number 2 West, better known as the Puente Grande prison was announced.

The divestiture of that prison was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF) and is effective as of this day. “People deprived of liberty housed in the Federal Center for Social Readaptation number 2 Occidente will be transferred to the federal centers for social rehabilitation determined by the Commissioner for Prevention and Social Rehabilitation, who will carry out the necessary actions and procedures, respecting their human rights”, highlighted the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection in the document.

The closing agreement was signed by Alfonso Durazo, Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, who will determine the final destination of the real estate that the criminal. According to what is published in the DOF, the prison workers will be relocated to other federal penitentiary centers determined by the Commissioner for Prevention and Social Rehabilitation, according to the needs of the Institution’s service. 

The concrete fortress located on the free highway to Zapotlanejo, in Jalisco, was the second federal prison of its kind, which followed the architectural and disciplinary model of the maximum-security prison of Almoloya de Juárez, in the State of Mexico.

The prison complex is made up of the state prison and the federal maximum-security prison. The prison was inaugurated in 2013.

It is designed for 1,700 people at its maximum capacity.

THE FAMOUS OF PUENTE GRANDE

The Puente Grande prison is known for housing inmates considered highly dangerous.

The most famous was “El Chapo”, who managed to escape from the center considered maximum security in 2001 using a laundry cart and a strong network of complicities inside and outside the prison.

Currently in Puente Grande are held Miguel Felix Gallardo, better known as “The Jefe of Jefes’, leader of the Guadalajara cartel. Félix Gallardo was arrested in 1989 for the crimes of homicide, crimes against health and bribery.

Just in 2017, 37 years were imposed for the murder, in 1985, of the former DEA agent, Enrique Camarena Salazar and the Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar.

Other famous of Puente Grande: Jesús Alfredo Beltrán Guzmán, ”El Mochomito”, son of the head of the Beltrán Leyva cartel. “El Mochomito” is pointed out as the author of the attack against the mother of “El Chapo” and the kidnapping of Iván Archivaldo and Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, sons of the leader of the Sinaloa cartel.

Also in Puente Grande cells was Rafael Caro Quintero nicknamed The Narco de Narcos, founder of the Guadalajara cartel. Indicated accused of various crimes such as organized crime and drug trafficking and for the murder of the former DEA agent, Enrique ´Kiki´ Camarena Salazar and his pilot, Alfredo Avelar, in 1985.

Another “guest” of Puente Grande was Juan Pedro Saldívar Farías , known as El Z-27 , he was arrested in October 2013 in the municipality of San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León, identified as the alleged regional chief of Los Zetas in Tamaulipas.

Another behind the bars of this maximum security prison is Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, El Viceroy, who was captured on October 9, 2014 and it is unknown what other prison he will be transferred to.

The prison in addition to housing drug lords, one of its inmates was Sandra Ávila Beltrán known as “The Queen of the Pacific”, considered the most famous drug trafficker in the country.

Her stay was short and then she was transferred to prisons in the United States and in 2013 she returned to Mexico to be admitted to a prison in Nayarit. In 2015, Miguel Ángel Gallardo Félix’s niece regained her freedom.

CRIMINAL INCIDENTS

In June of this year, the technical director of the prison Marco Alberto Corona Baltazar was assassinated. Corona Baltazar was pursued by several men aboard other vehicles, from where they shot him, when the prison official was driving on the highway to El Salto, very close to the junction with the free highway to Zapotlanejo, in Jalisco.

The technical director served in various positions and had recently been appointed as head of office of the General Directorate while  Salvador Almonte Solís, recovers after being infected with covid-19.

In addition, on May 22, the Puente Grande prison was the scene of a fight that left seven dead, nine injured and five arrested, the State Prosecutor’s Office reported. In the prison, several leaders of organized crime have died, in 2019 Heleno Madrigal Virrueta , alias “El 20”, was found dead in his cell , identified as the alleged CJNG chief for the southern coast of the state.

Gerardo Mendoza Chávez and Adrián Gómez Meza died in 2018. The first, who died on May 13, was identified as a drug manufacturer and as the alleged mastermind of the assassination of former Colima governor Silverio Cavazos Ceballos in 2010. Gómez Meza was found dead on July 10, 2018, he had been apprehended for allegedly serving as one of the accountants for the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación.

                                                            Gordo May of Los Zetas

COVID OUTBREAK

The covid-19 pandemic also reached the prison when in May the disease affected more than 100 inmates, which led to visiting restrictions, and caused constant mobilizations of inmates.  

[Moisés Escamilla May, "El Gordo May" Zetas, died from Covid 19 in May of this year while at the prison]

Later, the visits of the relatives and lawyers of the inmates were renewed, but they were partial, less than a third of the regular visitors per day. Derived from the pandemic, the State Secretariat of Health was forced, under protection, to carry out 500 tests on federal inmates, but the process did not conclude. 151 positive cases and 110 people free of infection were reported, according to the latest report, 38 positive cases were subsequently confirmed, between inmates and staff. There were nine deaths from covid-19 in Puente Grande.

“When I read that the Penal of Puente Grande shut, gave me great pleasure,” agrees J. Jesús Lemus, a journalist who spent three years and five days in one of the toughest prisons in the country. In 2008, when he was reporting the Rojo Nota in Michoacán, he was kidnapped, tortured and about to be murdered were it not for a report from Reporters Without Borders about his kidnapping.

Instead, J. Jesús was presented before the media, unfairly accused of drug trafficking, he was a ” narco-doorman.”

Lemus, he assures, was arrested as the revenge of Felipe Calderón, as he was investigating the ties of the then-president’s family with drug trafficking. After his arrest and after spending a few hours in the Puentecillas Prison, in Guanajuato, a judge ordered his transfer to Puente Grande, in Jalisco.

There, Lemus lived what he himself describes as a hell, an extermination center, the icon of institutional perversity to violate Human Rights . In interview with La Silla Rota, the journalist remembers what it was like to be inside the Penal of Puente Gra.

Read the full article here from Lemus