Borderland Beat
Page 34
Alonso himself would later be suspected of drug trafficking and ties to drugs cartels. He was also a suspect in at least one homicide in Albuquerque. His brother, Luis Ibarra, was executed along with six other people in El Paso, Texas, inside a club Luis owned. Rosalba had a husband serving time in a federal prison for drug trafficking. I remember Rosalba having diamonds on the silver-laced braces of her teeth. I made a comment about them to her once when I happened to be talking to her. She told me that when her husband was arrested for drug trafficking, the authorities had seized everything of value they owned. She told me if that ever happened again, at least they would not be able to take the diamonds on her teeth.
At the time, I did not know anything about drug cartels in Mexico. This was the closest I had come to knowing anything about organize crime, and I considered myself lucky to have survived the event to tell the story. But later in the years, I realized cartel incidents in the U.S. were alive and well, and apparently, it had been like that for a long time.
Although I no longer contribute to Borderland Beat, I still follow the Mexican drug cartels religiously. I read BB daily and make every attempt not to be lured back to the dark side of the drug cartels. I hear conversations about cartel activity or I watch the news about something cartel related, and it has my total interest, focus, like it did before, when I first started documenting stories myself. Things in the drug cartels have changed with time but at the same time, remain the same. Same story, just different place and people. Despite all the problems, violence and corruption, I still love Mexico. I love the places and people. I still travel to Mexico from time to time, I just don’t publicize it. I keep it to myself, although it’s hard at times.
I have left many things behind me, my law enforcement career and my involvement with reporting on the Mexican Drug War. Although, you can say both deal in negative terms. With police work, you deal with offenders, suspects, witnesses or victims of crime, it’s really never a good thing. I have never pulled anyone over to give them a treat or say hello. It is the nature of the job. After a while, in time, it’s just a job, an area of responsibility you have to get through with your sanity and life. The key word is longevity, surviving alive but also keeping your sanity. At the same time, reporting on drug violence is shocking at first, but you eventually settle down and realize it’s really the same over and over again. Yet, both still remain in my heart, but I have learned to accept it and let go.
Mexican Cartel Structure
The Mexican drug cartel structure is constantly changing, everything in Mexico is so fluid. Just when one thinks one particular cartel has been dismantled, it emerges out of the ashes. Or new ones sprout like some menacing flowers in spring after a downpour.
No one knows who is who. Plaza bosses get promoted as soon as the old one is executed or captured. Keeping track is a nightmare, and very hard to confirm.
Alliances among cartels change constantly and cells breakaway or start working independently.
For a while I was attempting to update the current affairs of the Mexican drug war, but just when I have it settle some dispute over authenticity of fact derails any attempt to get the beat of the heart in the cartel structure.
So I was happy User G]-[057 in the Borderland Beat forum attempted to give it a go. I thought it looked good, although I am sure someone will dispute some or parts of it, but here it goes:
MAIN CARTELS:
Cartel de Sinaloa
Cartel de Juarez
Cartel del Golfo
Cartel de Tijuana
Cartel de Los Zetas
Cartel Beltran Leyva
Caballeros Templarios
Cartel de Sonora
Cartel de Guadalajara
Cartel Oaxaca o El Istmo
Cartel de Colima
Cartel del Milenio
Cartel de Nezia
OTHER SMALL CARTELS:
Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion
Cartel de Centro
Cartel Independencia de Acapulco
Cartel de la Sierra
La Familia
Cartel Pacifico del Sur
Cartel Los Pelones
ARMED GROUPS OPERATING FOR A CARTEL:
Los Teos
Guerreros Unidos
Comando del Diablo
La Barredora
Guradianes de Morelos
La Resistencia “CT”
Comando Negro "CAF"
Fuerzas Especiales Muletas
Fuerzas Especiales Koreano "CIDA"
Fuerzas Especiales Zetas
Grupo Operative Zetas
La Comania
SINALOA FEDERATION BEGINING:
Los Linces "JUAREZ"
Los M’s "C.D.S OR JUAREZ" ???
La Linia "JUAREZ"
Los Tejas "C.D. "
Los Chachos "C.D.S OR JUAREZ"
La Gente Nueva "C.D.S"
Los Antrax "C.D.S"
Nueva Generacion del Chapo "C.D.S"
Los Aztecas "JUAREZ"
Los Triple A “CDS”
Comando X "C.D.S" mixture of G.N and Antrax i guess
BELTRANES FACTIONS SINCE BEGINING:
Los Mazatlecos "BELTRANES"
Los Negros "C.D.S AND BELTRANES"
Los Pelones "BELTRANES"
Los Tarascos "BELTRANES OR FAMILIA"
Los Numeros "BELTRANES"
LA MANO CON OJOS "BELTRANES"
Los Charritos "BELTRANES"
Los Gueros "BELTRANES"
Los Rojos "BELTRANES" they also had a group
Fuerzas Especiales de Arturo "BELTRANES"
Los Sultanes "BELTRANES"
Old school CDG 2003-2008 era some still exist. Back in the Day every border town had their own Nick Name of each CDG faction. I Just don’t remember who was who. After the Separation of Zs and CDG, everyone scattered joining one side. Then the CDG internal war, separated them again. All them groups have songs, either by the Cartel rap singers or Beto Quintanilla and his Brother Chuy.
Los Arfiles "CDG"
Los Lobos "CDG"
Los Escorpios "CDG"
Los Kalimanes "CDG"
Los Rojos de Laredo "CDG"
Los Oriones "CDG"
Los Cobras "CDG"
Los Deltas "CDG"
Los Sierras "CDG"
Los Gammas "CDG"
Comando 7 "CDG"
Los Metros de Raynosa "CDG"
Los L's "CDG"
Los Ciclones "CDG"
Los Alacranes "CDG"
Los Tiburones "CDG"
Los XW "CDG"
Other groups that fall uncategorized:
La Gente Nueva (Nuevo Leon) not sure if it was a branch of the Sinaloas.
Carteles Unidos "The Modern Federation of Sinaloa??"
Fall of Guadalara – Chart
1989 to 1999 Rise of New Cartels Chart
1999 to 2008 Shifting Powers - Chart
2009 to 2012 New Era - Chart
Bio of Mexican cartel covered in this book
Mexican cartels that played key roles during the time lines covered in this book.
Guadalajara Cartel
The Guadalajara Cartel was a Mexican drug cartel which was formed in the 1980s by Rafael Caro Quintero, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo in order to ship heroin and marijuana to the United States. Among the first of the Mexican drug trafficking groups to work with the Colombian cocaine mafias, the Guadalajara cartel prospered from the cocaine trade.
After the arrest of Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Félix Gallardo kept a low profile and in 1987 he moved with his family Guadalajara city. "The Godfather" then decided to divide up the trade he controlled as it would be more efficient and less likely to be brought down in one law enforcement swoop. In a way, he was privatizing the Mexican drug business while sending it back underground, to be run by bosses who were less well known or not yet known by the DEA.
Félix Gallardo "The Godfather" convened the nation's top drug narcos at a house in the r
esort of Acapulco where he designated the plazas or territories. The Tijuana route would go to the Arellano Felix brothers. The Ciudad Juárez route would go to the Carrillo Fuentes family. Miguel Caro Quintero would run the Sonora corridor.
The control of the Matamoros, Tamaulipas corridor - then becoming the Gulf Cartel- would be left undisturbed to Juan García Abrego. Meanwhile, Joaquín Guzmán Loera and Ismael Zambada García would take over Pacific coast operations, becoming the Sinaloa Cartel. Guzmán and Zambada brought veteran Héctor Luis Palma Salazar back into the fold. Félix Gallardo still planned to oversee national operations, he had the contacts so he was still the top man, but he would no longer control all details of the business; he was arrested on April 8, 1989.
According to Peter Dale Scott, the Guadalajara Cartel, Mexico's most powerful drug-trafficking network in the early 1980s, prospered largely because it enjoyed the protection of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad, under its chief Miguel Nassar Haro, a CIA asset."
Sinaloa Cartel
The Sinaloa Cartel (Pacific Cartel, Guzmán-Loera Cartel) (Spanish: Cártel de Sinaloa) is a Mexican drug cartel primarily operating out of the states of Baja California, Sinaloa, Durango, Sonora and Chihuahua. The cartel is also known as the Guzmán-Loera Organization and the Pacific Cartel, the latter due to the coast of Mexico from which it originated, another name is the Federation. The 'Federation' was partially splintered when the Beltrán-Leyva brothers broke apart from the Sinaloa Cartel.
The Sinaloa Cartel is associated with the label "Golden Triangle" as the regions of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua in which they operate the most form a 'triangle' when their capital cities are looked at on a map. The region is a major producer of Mexican poppy and marijuana. This area is similar in the United States to the Emerald Triangle consisting of the three largest marijuana-producing counties in the US:
Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity in Northern California, United States.
According to the U.S. Attorney General, the Sinaloa Cartel is responsible for importing into the United States and distributing nearly 200 tons of cocaine and large amounts of heroin between 1990 and 2008.
Background
Pedro Avilés Pérez was a pioneer drug lord in the Mexican state of Sinaloa in the late 1960s. He is considered to be the first generation of major Mexican drug smugglers of marijuana who marked the birth of large-scale Mexican drug trafficking. He also pioneered the use of aircraft to smuggle drugs to the United States.
Second generation Sinaloan traffickers such as Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and Avilés Pérez' nephew Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, would claim they learned all they knew about narcotrafficking while serving in the Avilés organization. Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, who eventually founded the Guadalajara Cartel was arrested in 1989. While incarcerated, he remained one of Mexico's major traffickers, maintaining his organization via mobile phone until he was transferred to a new maximum security prison in the 1990s. At that point, his old organization broke up into two factions: the Tijuana Cartel led by his nephews, the Arellano Félix brothers, and the Sinaloa Cartel, run by former lieutenants Héctor Luis Palma Salazar, Adrián Gómez González and Joaquín Guzmán Loera (El Chapo).
Leadership
Sinaloa Cartel hierarchy in early 2008The Sinaloa Cartel used to be known as La Alianza de Sangre (Blood Alliance). When Héctor Luis Palma Salazar (a.k.a: El Güero) was arrested on June 23, 1995, by elements of the Mexican Army, his partner Joaquín Guzmán Loera took leadership of the cartel. Guzmán was captured in Guatemala on June 9, 1993, and extradited to Mexico, where he was jailed in a maximum-security prison, but on Jan. 19, 2001, Guzmán escaped and resumed his command of the Sinaloa Cartel. Guzmán has two close associates, Ismael Zambada García and Ignacio Coronel Villareal. Guzman and
Zambada became Mexico's top drug kingpins in 2003, after the arrest of their rival Osiel Cardenas of the Gulf Cartel. Another close associate, Javier Torres Felix, was arrested and extradited to the U.S. in December 2006; so far, Guzmán and Zambada have evaded operations to capture them.
On July 29, 2010 Ignacio Coronel was killed in a shootout with the Mexican military in Zapopan, Jalisco.
Operations
The Sinaloa Cartel has a presence in 17 states, with important centers in Mexico City, Tepic, Toluca, Guadalajara, and most of the state of Sinaloa. The cartel is primarily involved in the smuggling and distribution of Colombian cocaine, Mexican marijuana, methamphetamine and Mexican and Southeast Asian heroin into the United States. It is believed that a group known as the Herrera Organization would transport multi-ton quantities of cocaine from South America to Guatemala on behalf of the Sinaloa Cartel. From there it is smuggled north to Mexico and later into the U.S. Other shipments of cocaine are believed to originate in Colombia from Cali and Medellín drug-trafficking groups from which the Sinaloa Cartel handle transportation across the U.S. border to distribution cells in Arizona, California, Texas, Chicago and New York.
Prior to his arrest, Vicente Zambada Niebla ("El Vicentillo"), son of Ismael Zambada García ("El Mayo"), played a key role in the Sinaloa Cartel. Vicente Zambada was responsible for coordinating multi-ton cocaine shipments from Central and South American countries, through Mexico, and into the United States for the Sinaloa Cartel. To accomplish this task, he used every means available: Boeing 747 cargo aircraft, narco submarines, container ships, go-fast boats, fishing vessels, buses, rail cars, tractor trailers and automobiles. He was arrested by the Mexican Army on March 18, 2009 and extradited on February 18, 2010 to Chicago to face federal charges.
In the late 1980s, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration believed the Sinaloa Cartel was the largest drug trafficking organization operating in Mexico. By the mid-1990s, according to one court opinion, it was believed to be the size of the Medellín Cartel during its prime. The Sinaloa Cartel was believed to be linked to the Juárez Cartel in a strategic alliance following the partnership of their rivals, the Gulf Cartel and Tijuana Cartel. Following the discovery of a tunnel system used to smuggle drugs across the Mexican/US border, the group has been associated with such means of trafficking.
By 2005, the Beltrán-Leyva brothers, who were formerly aligned with the Sinaloa Cartel, had come to dominate drug trafficking across the border with Arizona. By 2006, the Sinaloa Cartel had eliminated all competition across the 528 km of Arizona border, and it was suspected they had accomplished this by bribing state government officials. The Colima Cartel, Sonora Cartel, Milenio Cartel, Guadalajara Cartel and Sonora Cartel are now branches of the Sinaloa Cartel.
In January 2008, the cartel allegedly split into a number of warring factions, which is a major cause of the epidemic of drug violence Mexico has seen in the last year. Murders by the cartel often involve beheadings or bodies dissolved in vats of acid.
Atlanta has been used as a major U.S. distribution center and accounting hub, and the presence of the Sinaloa Cartel there has brought ruthless violence to that area.
Alliances
Since February 2010, the major cartels have aligned in two factions, one integrated by the Juárez Cartel, Tijuana Cartel, Los Zetas and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel; the other faction integrated by the Gulf Cartel, Sinaloa Cartel and La Familia Cartel.
Allegations of collusion with Mexican federal government forces in May 2009, the U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) aired multiple reports alleging that the Mexican federal police and military were working in collusion with the Sinaloa Cartel. In particular, the report claimed the government was helping Sinaloa cartel to take control of the Juarez Valley area and destroy other cartels, especially the Juarez Cartel. NPR's reporters interviewed dozens of officials and ordinary people for the series. One report quotes a former Juarez police commander who claimed the entire department was working for the Sinaloa cartel and helping it to fight other groups. He also claimed that Sinaloa cartel had bribed the military. Also quoted was a Mexican reporter who claimed hearing numerous times from the pub
lic that the military had been involved in murders.
Another source in the story was the U.S. trial of Manuel Fierro-Mendez, an ex-Juarez police captain who admitted to working for Sinaloa cartel. He claimed that Sinaloa cartel influenced the Mexican government and military in order to gain control of the region. A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent in the same trial alleged that Fierro-Mendez had contacts with a Mexican military officer.
The report also alleged, with support from an anthropologist who studies drug trafficking, that data on the low arrest rate of Sinaloa cartel members (compared to other groups) was evidence of favoritism on the part of the authorities. A Mexican official denied the allegation of favoritism, and a DEA agent and a political scientist also had alternate explanations for the arrest data. Another report detailed numerous indications of corruption and influence that the cartel has within the Mexican government.
Battling the Tijuana Cartel
The Sinaloa Cartel has been waging a war against the Tijuana Cartel (Arellano-Félix Organization) over the Tijuana smuggling route to the border city of San Diego, California. The rivalry between the two cartels dates back to the Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo setup of Palma's family. Félix Gallardo, following his imprisonment, bestowed the Guadalajara Cartel to his nephews in the Tijuana Cartel. On November 8, 1992 Palma struck out against the Tijuana Cartel at a disco in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, where eight Tijuana Cartel members were killed in the shootout, the Arellano-Félix brothers having successfully escaped from the location with the assistance of Logan Heights gangster David "D" Barron.
In retaliation, the Tijuana Cartel attempted to set up Guzmán at Guadalajara airport on May 24, 1993. In the shootout that followed, six civilians were killed by the hired gunmen from the Logan Heights, San Diego-based 30th Street gang. The deaths included that of Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo. The church hierarchy originally believed Ocampo was targeted as revenge for his strong stance against the drug trade.