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on the border line between the US and Mexico
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Sunday, February 14, 2016

Tijuana drug violence shoots up

Cartel Tijuana Nueva Generation emerges as a new player.

Menacing, crudely written signs hung from highway bridges or left with mutilated corpses have delivered the message: Mexico’s fastest-growing drug trafficking group, Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, is now in Tijuana — and fighting to expand its influence.

The group’s growing presence coincides with a surge in homicides in Tijuana that started last spring, authorities said, and have continued in these first weeks of the new year, with many of the perpetrators and victims described as low-ranking members of the city’s neighborhood drug trade.

Drug-related killings accounted for more than 80 percent of Tijuana’s 670 homicides in 2015, the highest number in five years, according to the Baja California Attorney General’s Office. A total of 71 homicides last month marked the most violent January in the city since 2010.


In Tijuana’s Colonia Libertad Parte Alta, a man waiting inside his vehicle for one of his children outside a gym and was ambushed by at least two people who shot him and fled the scene.

With the participation of Nueva Generación, the battle for control of Tijuana’s neighborhood drug trade and lucrative smuggling routes to the United States has entered a new phase, one that has left the Sinaloa cartel increasingly on the defensive and led to the defections of some of its members, according to law-enforcement officials.

Nueva Generación “is the new player in town that is trying to gain control of the Tijuana plaza,” said Gary Hill, assistant special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s San Diego office.

While the extent of Nueva Generación’s physical presence and influence is the subject of some debate, there is consensus about this: The group is now involved in both the street-level sales, narcomenudeo, and cross-border smuggling activities, called trasiego.

Daniel de la Rosa, Baja California’s public safety secretary, said Nueva Generacion has focused on forging alliances with members of the Tijuana underworld in a challenge to the Sinaloa cartel, which has been widely acknowledged in recent years as the city’s dominant drug trafficking group. Their rivalry preceded the recent recapture of the Sinaloa organization’s longtime leader, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

“As far as a visible head of Grupo Jalisco Nueva Generación, we don’t have one,” de la Rosa said last week. “You don’t see the presence of their operators, their hit men, criminal logistics. The only thing that we’ve detected is smuggling, and the protection of their loads heading to the United States, and the importing of cash and weapons from the United States.”

Changing dynamics


For years, Tijuana was known as the domain of the Arellano Félix Organization, and that family’s control extended over both the smuggling of drugs to the United States and the local drug trade, authorities said.

That supremacy unraveled amid the detentions and deaths of its leaders and challenges from rivals in the drug trade. The final blow came in 2008, when an Arellano former lieutenant, Teodoro García Simental, mounted a bloody challenge to his former bosses, with backing from the Sinaloa cartel.

Now, it seems the tables have been turned.

To gain control in Tijuana, Nueva Generación has been recruiting former members of the Arellano Félix Organization and persuading Sinaloa operatives to switch sides, according to one U.S. law-enforcement official. “They’re not just lightly treading through here. They’re setting up shop and digging in their heels,” he said.

Authorities said the pressures have prompted the Sinaloa cartel’s alleged leaders in Baja California — brothers Alfonso Arzate and René Arzate — to flee the state. But even in absentia, the brothers, who are under indictment in San Diego on drug trafficking charges, “still have their influence,” said Hill from the DEA’s San Diego office.

A key figure said to have switched his allegiance from the Sinaloa cartel to Nueva Generacion is Arturo Gómez Herrera, better known by his nickname, “El Gross.”

According to Tijuana police, “El Gross” now leads a criminal cell that has been fighting for control of the drug trade in Tijuana’s impoverished Sanchez Taboada neighborhood. Last week, police announced the arrest of a 19-year-old they said was a hit man working for “El Gross” and connected him to the killings of at least five neighborhood drug dealers.

Rise to power


Nemesio Oseguera Ramos, aka “El Mencho”
Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, often called CJNG, is a relatively new player in Mexico that emerged from a power struggle among drug traffickers in the country’s central region. The group rose to power around 2009 with the decline of the Valencia-Milenio cartel, according to the U.S. State Department.

The current leader is said to be 49-year-old Nemesio Oseguera Ramos, “El Mencho,” a native of Michoacan “who has been significantly involved in drug trafficking activities since the 1990s,” according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

Oseguera served nearly three years in a U.S. prison following a 1994 federal conviction of heroin distribution in California’s Northern District. In 2014, he was indicted in U.S. federal court in Washington, D.C. And last April, the U.S. Treasury Department named Oseguera a “kingpin,” a designation that involves freezing any of his or his group’s U.S.-based or U.S.-controlled assets and prohibiting transactions with them.

The U.S. State Department is offering up to $5 million for information leading to his capture and conviction. “Through extreme violence, corruption and extortion, CJNG has increased its presence in Mexico, engaging in turf battles throughout the country and steadily expanding its territory and control,” reads the agency’s description of the organization.

On both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, law-enforcement authorities and drug experts are watching the group closely. “What happens with Nueva Generación over the next year is going to reshape the landscape of drug trafficking in Mexico,” said David Shirk, a professor at the University of San Diego who studies the drug trade and Mexico’s justice system.

Alejandro Hope, a Mexican analyst and the security and justice editor of the website El Daily Post, expects Nueva Generación and other cartels to continue fragmenting.

“The large-scale, vertical, highly visible, highly identifiable cartels that were so prominent between the 1980s and the 2000s are increasingly a thing of the past,” Hope said. “Thinking about cartels is a misnomer about what is going on in Mexico. The fragmentation that has dominated the Mexican underworld is here to stay. Ten years from now, neither Sinaloa nor Nueva Generación will exist.”

Drop in common crimes
The rising count of homicides in Tijuana has been in counterpoint to the fall in common crimes there, as well as a sharp drop in kidnappings last year, according to law-enforcement statistics.

Police forces in Baja California have worked to reduce corruption and step up training and certification programs — and that shows in the results, said Gustavo Fernández del León, president of the Tijuana business group Coparmex. “We see a renewed police, we see coordination in fighting common crimes,” he said.

But even though most of the killings appear to target members of the drug trade, “we cannot accept it,” Fernández said. “We need to demand that federal authorities intervene with greater efficiency so that this does not continue.”

State officials said in many of the homicides, the victim and assailant were acquaintances. “They’re street traffickers who know each other. They go to their houses and kill them there, or abduct them and then dump their bodies,” said de la Rosa, the Baja California public safety secretary. “In some cases, they might have a confrontation in a bar.”

José María Gonzalez, Baja California’s deputy attorney general for organized crime, sees a direct connection between the presence of Nueva Generación and the increased violence. “It went up because a third group is in the process of becoming established that previously had not been playing a role in the local drug market,” he said.

In some cases, the killers have left signs on victims’ bodies, proclaiming their allegiance to Nueva Generación and its local offshoot, which calls itself Nueva Generación Tijuana. But in many instances, those who investigate these crimes are hard-pressed to identify which groups are involved.

“We’re dealing with the lowest level; all they know is that there’s a dispute for the local trade,” González said. “When we show them the groups that they may belong to, they don’t even know. They just say, ‘This guy came up to me, he asked if I wanted to sell these packets, that I could earn 20 to 30 to 50 pesos for each one.’”

For Tijuana human-rights activist Victor Clark, authorities are too quick to dismiss the crimes as disputes between low-level members of the drug trade.

“The idea is that these are minor players and it’s not important. But they fail to explain that they form the base of the structure of drug trafficking organizations,” Clark said. “This is organized crime, and nothing else.”

Source San Diego Union Tribune

87 comments:

  1. Holy kadoodle,670 murders last year in TJ!Calgary same size as TJ and we are hard pressed to get 40 in a bad year.Half of them are domestic family disputes and there's a thriving drug trade but no one fights[or very few]over territory.People get their own customers.Good informative article Tex!

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    1. Hey canadiana, why do canadians love México so much. I was in algodones next to the border of california and there was hundreds of canadians there.

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    2. 5he campaign for mexico did not get heavy in murders until the end of the salinato, because the federal government represented by el "hombre de Agualeguas" started robbing the mexican treasury like never before, and giving green light to supplementary affairs with all kinds of narcos, even becoming a narco-businessan was ok, then their share started getting smaller and smaller, combined with the war for the presidency of the narco-governors and their associates headed by epn, they started taking out the narcos, and now want to take the business from the mini-cartels, but not kill the drug trafficking, that has been their businesses' bread and butter for too long...the tijuana patrones de la confederación patronage de la republica mexicana have been much too used to eating egg, they ain't about to change, they are the ones that collect piso, plaza, quotas, and kickbacks, and they say who the biiig pussy is, and they ain't about no change for nothing...

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    3. 4:51-There's 50,000 Canadians in Yuma in winter.I personally know more than 1 that goes there.Mind you they stay in US.Probably go across the line for their meds because meds more caro in US than Canada.WE are cold 6 months of year so Canadians appreciate good weather more than southern Americans do although I live on the 51 parrelel of latitude north[arctic circle is at 60]it was 17 degrees C last week right in the throes of winter.For you Americans 17 degrees C is 65 degrees F.El Nino winter[warm].

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  2. Cjng is actually getting hit hard by the government and cds together cjng real leaders are now in prison not all of them.yet but the biggest ones like el cuini the real cjng boss is in prison now .

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    1. Do you know how much brothers el cuini and el mencho have? Don't think you do, if notyou wouldnt be posting this lol

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    2. el Cuini wasn't CJNGs main leader, he was identified by the DEA as a senior lieutenant and financial operator of Mencho. Lucio explains it here http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2015/04/los-cuinis-cjng-worlds-most-wealthy.html?m=1. Also notice the article states there are 5 other Valencia brothers besides Cuini, so one of them has most certainly filled his place. Also Cuinis were known for specializing in trafficking to Europe, with "no shipments seized" according to the DEA, so CJNG is likely as well funded to continue the war as CDS is.

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    3. They said cjng was doing their shit with europe, there is more shipping to europe through veracruz than through the pacific, what are the chances?javier duarte has been a nobody, a federal congressman , secretario de gobierno and governor, about more than 20 years...could he have been helping out?
      --There are some Greek families in veracruz that love to deal in oil and gas and like Aristotle Onassis and all of his family, "in rare Turkish tobaccos"

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    4. By the way y do u think cjng is also in veracruz they use many ports to ship and now planning to use the border

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    5. 1:33 yes, cjng has part of veracruz. They went and cleaned out zetas around there. Something cds could mever do, that's why I think cjng will get Tijuana

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    6. Javier duarte de ochoa sold the plaza seta de veracruz to cjng too, they say there was a gato encerrado, but it looks like it was un marrano encebado, " la marrana parada", javier duarte de ochoa, have it run on the street y matenlo a garrotazos y a pedradas...

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  3. Chapo lost all of baja and sinaloa

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    1. Lmao. Hey Cholo, just cause you buy a dime of weed a month your some sort of expert? BB, if you want to be taken as a serious news outlet, you cannot allow lames like this tool to comment without facts. Journalism is about facts isn't it?

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    2. They havent lost it but it seen like they will by la rana fleaing the state because he knows tj is ge5ing outa hand a he is not able to control it

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    3. What the hell sinaloa is run by sinaloenses even the parts cds dont control is run by sinaloenses and tj is still run by mz

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    4. Snitchola, it feels good not being from sinaloa

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    5. 10:55 I bet your not an American where your free to speak your opinion

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    6. It feels good being sinaloaense

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    7. 10:55-us commentators are not reporters rather speculators.

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    8. Nada va a cambiar, mayo o no mayo, chapo o no chapo, and all the kings horses and all the kings' men can not figger' out why...

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    9. I would rather be a snitch than an extorter that goes after the innocent!

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    10. 7:30 Canadiana don't be like the rest of these comentators that claim that cds are for the people but constantly kill innocent people all over northern México. I see your comments on stories when cds kills inocents so I know you are aware of it too. All cartels are scumm. And fuck snitches!

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    11. The snitchola rats dont run la Baja. Cartel Arellano sige activo y no cambiamos de lina compas. Nomas por que tuvimos bajas no segnifica que perdimos la guerra. Acurdense que en el Canaveral les peliamos y la cipla fue el ejemplo que el CAF es puro poder

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    12. 8:60-O I'm not cheerleading anybody.I just made a general statement.I see what you are saying but it's not what I meant.I just see more comments on snitching[which it's probably misinformed criminals] than comments on exhorting the innocent.I'm the furthest thing from a cheerleader.I totally agree with you.

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  4. Judging by there handwriting, it's safe to say there recruiting 5th graders

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    1. Well the majority of the people who are in this business barely made it past 5th grade so I really doubt it.

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    2. Thats why the join cartels because no money to even eat and the gob does not help at all so cartel is almost only choice

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    3. Sheeet, Luis videgaray went to Yale, Carlos salinas de gortari to Harvard, mitt, two degrees from Harvard, and is a divinity specialist for the Mountain Meadows Massacre church, calderon fecal teaches at harvard, and ernesto zedillo "la neta" too,
      Wonder boy student for life el bertie boy moreira, 4 masters degrees he bought in a spanish flea makret, and a PhD in Pendejo, miguel angel osorio chong, genghis chon, also bought his degree 20 years after he was allowed to graduate, but he graduated...we have quality narcos-politicians and criminales with some educaishun in mexico...dammit! But not as many as the us, dooo...

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    4. Shhh, I wasted my time in mexico, looking at pretty girls, and stealing their calzones from del tendedero.

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  5. Cjng is going to get bigger and more powerfull the only ones that can stop them is the government now. Cds has no chance, they don't have the street soldiers like cjng

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    1. We know who runs la baja and it ain't cjng with all those caf ops getting wacked left and right

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    2. Yehea thats what yhey kept saying about mich and look at the now

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    3. 11:18 yea, the government got mich. No cartel could have gone and take out la familia

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  6. The thing with mencho is if he's pinched his whole organization crumbles and Sinaloa on the other hand is run with a board of directors. In the end cartel members will go with whoever pays more also what ever happend to Erick Valencia "El 85"?

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    1. Al 85 lo mataron en guadalajara...

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    2. He is still serving time he will be out before u know it

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    3. Good point of view, also the CDS is bringing them war in Michoacan with the NFM and in Colima with the group La Barredora this group is lead by Cochos, Michoacanos, Jarochos and people from Colima.

      And el 85 it's in prison last time I knew something about that guy he was captured by Jalisco government in Guadalajara around 2012-2013.

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    4. Lol you said la barredora is bring them war en colima thats not war la barredora is killing people who are not in the cjng and nfm aready got hit hard they arrested 9 of them cjng is simply taking over with no battle from anybody

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  7. I wonder if CAF is OK with CJNG.

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  8. But AFO is coming back....LOL!!!

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  9. El 85 messed up, he was living in Zapopan at the time of his capture... he made the same mistake Nacho Coronel made... trying to live the Narco life out in the open in Guadalajara... El Mencho quickly visits Guadalajara for business and then quickly leaves... he knows not to stay long and suffer the same fate as El 85 and Nacho Coronel.

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    1. Seems that Jalisco government is with the CDS and not the CJNG in that state especially in Guadalajara area.

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    2. Mencho has Jalisco on lock, you fools are funny with that sinaloa bluff.

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    3. Forsure just look at the 43 cjng yungsters who where killed last may they all lived so close to eachother they all would hang out on a block and every body knew that they where members and still suported them because they help the community to stay safe. dep los guerreros

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  10. chapo has nothing to do with bc. zambadas are in bc whole different story.

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  11. Cds is the government cartel and at the end they will rule as simple as that i really wanted cds and cjng to stay together they will be cleaning left and right all of the other mugrosos all over the country unfortunally cds was afraid of cjng cause they were growing too much and too fast.

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    1. Cjng could not stay with cds because the betray in the end cjng will own most of mexico by 2017 including sinaloa

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    2. Cds was the government spoiled litle child but not the favorite anymore after it had more children. Now It's getting treated like a red headed step child lol

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  12. I can care less of what cartel wins but lets be realistic here. Alot of people say cds is going to win but I dont think all the bust and cds infighting is going to help them. Now sinaloa and the golden triangle is a war zone and its up for grabs.you have chapos brother trying to kill his other brother and cds snitching left and right. Cds is a mess right now, if cjng dont wipe them out they will do it themselves. I bet cds will be hit hard this year and be so desperate they will try to get with other cartel to survive. They already got with la familia just after chapo said they were a bunch of dirty ratts. Lol

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    1. You don't understand how massive CDS is. There's hundreds of families in sinaloa moving major weight up north that no one has even heard about. Kill and arrest all the top dogs, it doesn't matter because there's 100 guys just waiting to replace them and do a better job

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    2. All the factions of CDS fighting each other but them pussies will always run towards each other when an outside cartel intervenes. Specially in Sinaloa, Durango and Sonora and the bottom fifth of Chihuahua! These are the areas where the Sinaloa narcos hire the stupidest peasent families to do their crimes for them! The first to jump at the opportunity to work for CDS and the first to bitch cry and whine when the government or other narcos come down hard on them! Fucking idiots!

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  13. A los MICHOACANOS c les respeta limpiando toda la basura d sinaloa.. k esta escondida en tijuana y otay. el mencho ya miro komo le jugo el puto akilez al INGE El no les va dar quebrada d chambiar y pagar pizo ..nomas les va dar PIZO HAHK sho vecino como anda HAHA.. saludos de san diego cali

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    1. Michoacan never exported drugs on a worldwide scale....never

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    2. 3:28 estas menso o te estas asiendo jaja

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    3. All of the organizations that have come out of michoacan have been stealing, extorting scum. Sinaloa federation meanwhile has been called by the DEA the most advanced drug operation in the world....you tell me who's objectively better

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    4. You are wrong , el milenio cartel never did that which is now cjng but im not sure about cjng doing dirty shit now i really hope not. Cause if they do fuck them . Im from.michoacan by the way

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    5. Yeah sinaloa ruined juarez by going in and killing kids familys and charging stores to stay open cds is a peice of trash that is soon gone

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    6. You are a dumbass michoacanos biggest meth cooks in the northern hemisphere.. And the only reason chapo and u dumbass sinaloenses call them rats is because la tuta JACKED CHAPO For a shitbload of work and how did chapo get back at him by putting la tuta n jail . He was to sacred to get it back he knew where he was out

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    7. Parandada de gringos inútiles tan ridículos convencidos que se bajaron del monte con espejo sin embargo siguen con ni la mismita idea de nada.

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  14. Almost 700 homicides in 2015, 71 homicides in January happening a stones throw away from a major US city and and you hear fuck all about it in the news. Where is CNN FOX news, BBC? The reason Mexico will never change is because they get almost zero coverage on an international level. I would bet money that when people think about Mexico, 90% are thinking about a beautiful resort or a vacation. Fuckin sickening

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  15. Estas bien Correcto 1:26.... Los Sinaloenses tien problemas grandes en su propia tierra con EL BLO... Y Los Michoacanos son EL CJNG..... Y estos pendejos apoyadores del CDS...piensan ke los LOS CUINIS nomas era el Abigael... No compitas... Los Cuinis son Muchos ermanos... Y estan bien apoyados por Su Familia....EL MENCHO.. Los Michoacanos no traisionan a su propia familia... Nosotros nos acordamos como chambiar al cien...pinche bola de corrientes mugrosos... PURO CJNG...CUERNAVACA...MORELOS

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    1. Do you realize how stupid you sound right now? Look at your precious state michoacan, full of extortion and kidnappings. In Sinaloa that stuff doesn't fly. Sinaloa pa los sinaloenses, michoacan para todos

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    2. Thats right when have u heard of el menchito or 85 or el elvis telling the feds where el mencho location at never thats a real cartel

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    3. 12:31 si michoacan is para todos porque tienen miedo ir para ya los sinaloas?

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  16. I thought his name was Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes.

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  17. I think the Mexican government is going to have a hard time dismantling CJNG, every time they go after Mencho 10 to 15 law enforcement end up dead, being Marina or cops,compare that to every time they caught El Chapo, i think there gonna let this one ride out till it just gets to big and implodes its self,looks like mencho invested well on weapons and its people,hes too militarized,he learned a lot from FARC, create casualties and chaos and they will leave you some what alone,

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    1. That's because mencho has the marina in BC payed off y no sale de ahi y de gdl....as soon as he steps foot near sinaloa or Durango he's a dead man.

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    2. 7:32 i think you are wrong,cjng uses same tactics as the zetas,from the killing to the caos they create when federal troops capture or are send in to capture some one from cjng.I have no idea why you would assume they learned it from the felow colombian terrorist group called farc

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    3. @7:42pm, FARC is or was in close buis. with CJNG , some sources that i know in Jalisco told me a couple years ago Mencho sent some security details to columbia to learn gorrila tactics from FARC, and one of their main teachings was invest heavy on weapons and militarize your organization

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  18. Chapo never said la familia was a bunch of dirty rats. He said that about tuta and his CT.

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    1. Tuta was a founder of la familia and he left it to create ct, same shit diferent toilet. Chapo basicly said michoacanos were dirty rats but now cds is clicked up with them. Both pathetic and desperate to take out cjng

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  19. Que se pongan a Limpiar banos, basureros y calles... por el bien de la sociedad.

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  20. That's just like saying blo is sinaloa or zetas is golfo. Not the same shit n definitely a diff toilet. Ct doesn't even like la familia, they were the same people at one point but shit changed. Never heard about him saying "michoacanos" are dirty rats, Ct was what he answered about .

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  21. I can't help but think BB overestimates the power of cjng. Only reason they've taken over Tijuana and la Baja is because mencho had some high ranked connection in the marina.

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    1. Ok, so your telling us cjng is overestimated but has high ranked connections? You do realize your contradicting yourself righ.,,

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    2. No, what I'm saying is they don't have the manpower a lot of people on BB think they have

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  22. And let the sinaloa vs michoacan rivalry continue

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    1. There is No rivalry. Sinaloa blew past Michoacan a while ago when CT got kicked out of their own state and Sinaloa was sending merchendise to Europe, Asia, the Middle East, USA, etc.

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    2. 10:08 hell yea theres ravalry, cjng are michoacanos, cds are sinaloenses. Let the games begin. Lol you do know cjng sends most of their shit to places you just mentioned right?

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  23. Lo ke mucha jente se olvida es ke el triangulo de oro era fuerte para cultivar mota y amapola... La mota ya No vende bien... La unica cosa ke tiene de valor es la amapola... So EL MENCHO no tiene rason para llegar a Sinaloa o Durango...El esta bien apalabrado con los Colombianos... Y lo ke ase el CJNG fuerte es la ventanita.... Esa madre la cosinas onde sea compita...

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  24. Cds is so bad but their main leader chapito keeps geting arrested in Sinaloa lol and they claim they run mexico but cant even run Sinaloa. Pendejos lol

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