Three men riddled with bullets in a church, two Jesuit priests and a well-known tour guide in the area.
Two more disappeared, a house burned down and the uncertainty about the whereabouts of a woman and her son who lived there and were later located safe and sound.
Twenty-four hours of lead and terror sponsored by José Noriel Portillo Gil, alias
El Chueco
, according to the authorities.
A local narco leader, who acts as a cacique in the heart of the Sierra Tarahumara, where Cerocahui is located, north of Chihuahua.
In this rural, indigenous and poor municipality of Mexico, of about 1,000 inhabitants, where everything bad that happens is usually made invisible with the same naturalness as the basic needs of its inhabitants, the horror of the narco has been concentrated once again.
The State Prosecutor's Office has reconstructed the last hours of fire in this town.
And it all started with a baseball game.
To understand how the bullets entered the church where the Jesuits Javier Campos and Joaquín Mora were, who ran to help the guide Pedro Palma, it is necessary to go back to Sunday.
The team that financed El Chueco had lost, a dispute broke out among those present and that was where the fuse was lit.
The local narco leader could not accept defeat.
A message of weakness for a man who for at least five years has done and undone what he has seen fit in these lands, with the power of twenty men and his own pistols.
Allied to the Los Salazar cartel, the armed wing of the feared Sinaloa cartel.
On Monday, El Chueco and his rifles arrived at the house of the brothers Paul and Armando B., who had participated in the baseball game and defeated their rivals.
According to witness statements, the criminal shot Paul, kidnapped Armando, and then set the house on fire.
Both are missing.
In the home there was also a woman and her son who were reported missing.
It is known that they had a family relationship with the brothers, but nothing more.
This Wednesday the authorities confirmed that they had been located alive.
Neither the fire in the house, nor the kidnapping of two people, was enough for any authority to prevent El Chueco and his men from continuing to walk around the municipality with impunity.
And terror spread through Cerocahui.
Its inhabitants were left alone, aware that the real power was that and not a trace of the State.
Aerial view of the arrival of military personnel at the church in Cerocahui, Chihuahua, on June 22, 2022. Christian Chavez (AP)
Hours later, Pedro Palma was eating with a group of tourists at the luxurious Misión Cerocahui hotel, known to tourists who make the El Chepe train route between the Copper Canyon, with prices per night of room around 200 dollars. .
Witnesses told the police that the well-known guide “interacted” with El Chueco right there.
Details of what could have been an argument have not been released.
Later, the criminal ordered his kidnapping.
The Prosecutor's Office says that Palma managed to escape, after receiving severe blows.
And he fled to the village church.
The priests, Javier Campos and Joaquín Mora, ran when they heard the scandal in the temple.
One of them approached to help him, they killed him in front of him and the priest was also killed.
The other tried to calm the hit man, according to what one of his companions, the religious Javier Ávila, told EL PAÍS, and was shot in cold blood.
The criminals dragged their bodies to a van, according to a priest who was there and managed to survive the carnage, and fled.
The bodies of Campos, Mora and Palma were found this Wednesday.
The authorities then targeted El Chueco.
They offered on Wednesday a historic reward of five million pesos (about $250,000) for a clue to the criminal's whereabouts.
And this Thursday the Prosecutor's Office announced the arrest of two men armed to the teeth, César Iván PP and Humberto BC, who fled from the security forces when they ran into them on a local road.
One of them is Portillo Gil's cousin.
The Army, the National Guard and state forces continue to search for the capo.
El Chueco had been booked by the police five years ago, when he attacked the headquarters of the State Investigation Agency in Urique, the municipal seat of Cerocahui, in 2017. And above all, he became the public enemy of the region after the murder of the American professor Patrick Braxton-Andrews, who according to official information was shot after being mistaken for a DEA (United States Drug Enforcement Agency) agent in October 2018. Despite the promises of the governor at the time, Javier Corral, the narco He was never arrested for this crime.
The prosecutor of the State of Chihuahua, Roberto Fierro, during a press conference in which he announced the reward of 5 million Mexican pesos for the alleged murderer of the two Jesuit fathers, José Noriel Portillo Gil, "El Chueco", on Wednesday 22 June 2022. Attorney General of the State of Chihuahua
And he kept killing.
He is also accused of having participated in the kidnapping and murder of the activist Cruz Soto Caraveo in 2019. Soto was a member of the Collective of Forcibly Displaced Families of the Sierra Tarahumara and was found dead on October 19, 2019, six days after he was reported his disappearance in the community of Los Llanos, municipality of Guazapares, after having attended a meeting with local authorities, according to the newspaper
Reforma
.
The multiple crime in the Sierra Tarahumara was conceived since Sunday, although it did not escalate to international outrage until the pressure of the Jesuit community on Tuesday.
Pope Francis spoke out against the wave of violence that has shaken Mexico for years, dozens of religious organizations, as well as powerful names in the academic, cultural and political world, showed their pain for the deaths of their "brothers" and impunity with which organized crime operates in the country.
There are at least three other victims: Pedro Palma and the brothers Paul and Armando, whose bodies remain unaccounted for.
But for any authority to persecute El Chueco and stop the bloodletting that he causes in the mountains, the bullets in the church have been necessary.
subscribe here
to the
newsletter
of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current affairs of this country