Elements of the Zapopan Police carry out the expert work of a body found on the side of the Juchipila-Guadalajara highway, on February 17, César Rodríguez
He had half of his skull disfigured, two toes had been torn off him and a knife stuck in his lifeless chest that served as a stake to hold the poster with a message: “The treacherous.
Carlos Enrique Sánchez Martínez, alias
El Cholo
”.
The images of the body on the table in the morgue of one of the few men who had dared to face the boss of the most powerful drug of Mexico sent this week a message to the Government of the State of Jalisco: the powers that be
here are
them
.
The latest coup by the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel in a tourist area of the metropolitan area of Guadalajara consolidates crime in a State incapable of curbing violence and terror.
This criminal group, led by the drug dealer most wanted by the DEA, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias
El Mencho
, tortured, publicly humiliated through a video and murdered the leader of the rival gang that kept the municipalities surrounding the capital under siege. of the State, Guadalajara, in an open war for control of the square.
And to culminate the ritual of horror, he placed his mummified body with a garbage bag in one of the most touristy areas of the metropolitan area of the city.
On one side of the emblematic plaza of mariachi and tequila, the corpse sat on the bench of a charming park in Tlaquepaque, to the horror of hundreds of neighbors who had seen scenes like this on the news.
The crime against El Cholo, leader of the rival cartel, Nueva Plaza, was an affront to state authorities and the federal government, chaired by Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
That a criminal group publicly demonstrate the ability to walk with a corpse through the streets of the third most important city in the country, cultural and tourist headquarters of Mexico, and perpetrate a scene like this, highlights the fragility of the State.
As in most cases like this, there are no detainees.
The war that has caused homicides in municipalities surrounding Guadalajara, such as Tonalá, Zapopan, Tlaquepaque and the capital itself, have doubled in recent months - according to figures from the specialized consulting firm Lantia - and wake up every day with bodies bagged and thrown to a gutter, multiple murders, dismembered and thousands of disappeared, took a new impulse with the crime of the main enemy of El Mencho.
Some experts predict that the blood count will only get worse.
"Probably what we will see in the following weeks will be reprisals for the murder of their leader," warns security expert Eduardo Guerrero.
The Nueva Plaza cartel has a presence in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, but also in Colima and Guanajuato, where, according to the consulting firm Lantia, it receives funding from the main enemy coalition of the Jalisco Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel.
“With this it is clear that Jalisco [the Jalisco Cartel] is stronger than ever and is trying to weaken its enemies as much as possible in all parts of the country.
Sinaloa being really its important enemy at the national level ”, Guerrero sums up.
The security analyst explains that in Mexico factions of the two great coalitions that control the drug trade at the national level coexist at the local level and the war in Guadalajara responds to the battle they also face at the municipal level in other parts of the country.
Image released by the Jalisco Prosecutor's Office to confirm the death of Carlos Enrique Sánchez Martínez.
The battle between Nueva Plaza and Cartel Jalisco began in 2018. An expert source in security in the area, who prefers to remain anonymous for fear of these groups, explains that although there have always been crises in the State, it is a key area for the Drug traffickers from the defunct Guadalajara Cartel (which later became the Sinaloa Cartel), for three years the situation has become critical.
It was in 2018 when El Cholo rebelled against his boss, El Mencho, and founded a division, Nueva Plaza, to fight him for control of Guadalajara and surrounding areas.
His letter of introduction was the murder of one of the financial operators of the Jalisco Cartel in Puerto Vallarta and he continued to spread blood, dead and disappeared, the capital.
In the video that went viral last Friday, where El Cholo appears flanked by six men armed with military arsenal, the criminal acknowledged before the camera that he had been the one who ordered the execution of 11 bricklayers in Tonalá (in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara) a few weeks ago.
The Jalisco Cartel sought with these images that went viral on social networks to justify the crime they would commit a few hours later.
The Nueva Plaza cartel and El Cholo were responsible, according to them, for what they cruelly call "heating the plaza," that is, killing civilians at their discretion, disappearing, torturing and displaying the corpses of alleged rivals, with the aim of destabilizing the area and that the State Government turned to the federal forces and the Army to fight the big one: Jalisco Nueva Generación.
“The vision and aggressiveness of Cartel Jalisco is surprising,” Guerrero continues.
“It does not have a self-containment mechanism like Sinaloa does. In order to maintain a good relationship with the federal government, they do not get involved in open combat, but rather through local organizations.
But Jalisco does not mind crossing that line, it has a very offensive strategy and it lost its fear of the State, ”explains the analyst.
As examples: the attack against the chief of the Mexico City police, Omar García Harfuch, in one of the emblematic avenues of the capital in June;
the murder of federal judge Uriel Villegas and his wife in Colima also in June; and the murder of former Jalisco governor, Aristóteles Sandoval, in a Puerto Vallarta bar in December.
"They are capable of launching against anyone, even members of the Cabinet," says Guerrero.
In their land they feel strong.
In recent months, the fight against Nueva Plaza in Guadalajara has provoked scenes more typical of the era of the war against drugs (from 2006 to 2012) than of the pacifying stage that López Obrador presumes with his government.
Street shootings in the commercial heart of the capital of Jalisco, open clashes between criminals and the Army in the poorest neighborhoods and dozens of human remains dumped in bags in front of the Las Chivas football stadium.
State authorities attend every day as spectators of unpunished and cruel violence.
For none of these events is there any public information of possible suspects, nor of detainees.
The police forces, some of them like that of Zapopan, recognized as the best in the country, have become paralyzed before a capacity of force that exceeds them, as happened after the case of the shooting at the Los Otates restaurant in February.
And while the country prepares for state, local and legislative elections in June and a country in transformation is drawn from the electoral platforms, in one of the most important capitals of Mexico the power of the drug trafficker is more implacable than ever.
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