The end of the Coronel clan

Rio Doce (January 28, 2013)

Translated by un vato for Borderland Beat

On Saturday, January 19, Jose Angel Carrasco Coronel was arrested by the Army, and his detention dims the Canelas, Durango, lineage that, under the leadership of Ignacio Coronel Villareal, at one time controlled large swaths of drug trafficking in Mexico.

He was on the run. Pursued by the federal government since the death of Ignacio Coronel Villareal, he had to take refuge in his native land, Durango, and operate from there for his new mafia boss, Joaquin Guzman Loera.

Jose Angel Carrasco Coronel, also known as "El Changel" and "El Cero Cinco" ("0-5"), was born in El Potrerito de Carrasco, Canelas, Durango, on November 3, 1969, and joined the ranks of Nacho Coronel from a very early age, for whom he worked first in his home territory and then in Jalisco.

According to information from Sedena, from Jalisco, Carrasco Coronel directed the transport of drugs in Michoacan, Oaxaca and Chiapas, and through connections with drug traffickers in Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Nicaragua, Belice, Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

He held management positions in Jalisco, but the pressure pushed him towards his home territory. Upon the death of Coronel Villareal and that of his brother Mario Carrasco Coronel the next day, he was left in charge of his uncle's organization. He created the criminal organization "Nueva Generacion" (New Generation) and fought the war against the Zetas who, allied with the "Cartel del Milenio" (Millennium Cartel), were harassing the area.

But he ran out of luck. The night of the 18th, a convoy in which Jose Angel Carrasco was traveling ran into an Army patrol in the vicinity of El Espinal, Sanalona township.

They couldn't avoid the military patrol and chose to confront them. "El Changel" fell with a bullet wound to the head, along with another one of his companions, last name Meza. They took them to the ISSSTE clinic (social security clinic), where the soldiers installed a fortress. Carrasco Coronel was identified immediately, hence the security measures.

The other wall was the silence. Officially, nothing was known until days later, when General Moises Melo Garcia, commander of the Third Military Region, confirmed the name Carrasco Coronel for the press. Both men were turned over to the PGR (Attorney General).

That suspicious release...

They had already detained him in Atlajomulco de Zuniga, Jalisco, on March 14, 2009, during a confrontation between cells belonging to Nacho Coronel and state police and Mexican Army forces. Six other individuals were picked up along with him.

The detentions took place when elements of the State Police and the 15th Military Zone arrived at a casino where someone had reported that several armed men were firing weapons. It was the "Durangos", as they were known in the narco language. A man by the name of Alejandro Chaidez Garcia died in the confrontation and five weapons were secured.

But the six individuals were released hours later. So strong were the connections between the Coronels and the State Police that the police argued that they had not found any weapons on them when they arrested them. Thus, there was no crime to prosecute. They set them free "because of legal reservations."  

The federal Deputy Secretary of Public Security at the time, Francisco Niembro, was already bragging that "El Changel" had been captured when they told him that he had been released "for lack of evidence." Arrested with "El Changel" on that occasion were  Javier Carrasco Meza, 43 years old , Valentin Leon Rodriguez, 30, Jose Manuel Garcia, 43,  Ranulfo Beltran Rosales, 24, Israel Lopez Vizcarra, 32, and a minor whose name was not released.

 

Six months earlier, in September of 2008, two police officers who claimed to represent one hundred active members of municipal and state police agencies delivered to the journal Proceso a copy of a letter they had sent to the President of Mexico in which they accused the head of the Jalisco Public Security (agency), Luis Carlos Najera Gutierrez, and his principal collaborators of being involved with organized crime.

 

In the letter, they stated that the government official attended a party in San Juan de Ocotan, Zapopan, accompanied by the directors of the State and Preventive police departments, Alejandro Solorio Arechiga and Fernando Andrade Vicencio, respectively. There, the letter claims, the public officials met with crime leaders such as Juan Jose Esparragoza, "El Azul", "El Matriz" and Nacho Coronel. ...continues on next page

The accusations were denied by the public official.

That month -- March, 2009 -- the Mexico Attorney General investigated the reasons the State Attorney General's office had released Carrasco Coronel, since he was linked with kidnappings, the murders of businessmen and confrontations with other criminal groups.

Suspicions over the release of the detainees were obvious, given that the state prosecutor himself, Tomas Coronado Olmos, asserted that the detainees had been turned over to the Attorney General's office, but these persons never reached the PGR offices.

During the confrontation that took place at dawn Saturday in Sanalona, another suspected drug trafficker with the last name of "Meza" was also picked up, sources with the Third Military Region told Riodoce. But they didn't specify whether they were referring to Javier Carrasco Meza, the same individual who was also caught in Atlajomulco.

The level of "El Changel"

Blessing or curse, the truth is that, with the fall of his bosses, "El Changel" took over large operations of drug shipments from South America, intended for delivery to the United States as well as for selling in the Guadalajara metropolitan area.

On August 9, 2012, Sedena (Mexican Army) reported the arrest of one of Carrasco Coronel's operatives in Tapachula, Chiapas. The Sedena disclosed that on August 7, 2012, Mexican Army Special Forces carried out a precision operation in Tapachula, Chiapas, and detained Sergio Armando Barrera Salcedo, "El Checo", suspected of transporting cocaine and precursor chemicals in Mexico for the Pacific Cartel.
 

Sergio Armando Barrera Salcedo,  Sedena reported in a communique, received drugs shipped from South America and transported them across national territory, therefore, a precision operation was carried out in Tapachula, where Salcdeo Barreras and six other persons were detained. Also seized were one hundred kilograms (220 lbs) of cocaine, 1.5 kilos of crystal, seven long firearms, two short firearms and communications equipment.

According to that same report, Barrera Salcedo, "El Checo" or "El Chiapaneco", began his criminal activities in Huatulco, Oaxaca, under orders of Ismael Zambada Garcia and was in charge of receiving each month, by sea, two tons of cocaine shipped from South America.

 

The communique explains that in 2008, after Joaquin Guzman Loera and Arturo Beltran Leyva broke up, the latter individual took control of the plaza through Martin Gerardo Hernandez Esparza, "El Kalimba", who, under the command of Arturo Beltran, expelled Salcedo Barrera from Huatulco, which forced him to hide in Guadalajara, Jalisco.

"Currently -- said Sedena--, he works with the permission of Jose Angel Carasco Coronel, aka "El Changel", "leader of the Pacific Cartel" in Jalisco and Colima,   as well as (permission) from Nemesio Oceguera Cervantes, leader of the "Jalisco Nueva Generacion." cartel.

Lineage annihilated

A day after the death of Ignacio Coronel on July 29, 2010, in Guadalajara, the Army, in a supposed firefight that took place in Rinconada de los Novelistas, on the west side of Guadalajara, killed  Mario Carrasco Coronel, "El Gallo", nephew and presumed successor of Nacho. He was the brother of Jose Angel, arrested Saturday, January 18, in Sanalona.

When they killed Mario, "El Changel" took over part of the criminal organization that his uncle had left when he died. That's when the so-called "Nueva Generacion" was created, a criminal group that immediately went to war with the "Zetas" to defend the plaza.

Only Martin Beltran Coronel, aka "El Aguila", was left above him. He was arrested in May of 2011.  From that moment, "El 0-5" was left in charge of operations of the Sinaloa Cartel in Jalisco, although the power of the Coronel family was much faded.

In January of 2010, before the death of Nacho Coronel, other relatives of the capo had been captured: Ernesto Coronel Pena, Juan Jaime Coronel and Juan Ernesto Coronel Herrera. And a few days later, on the 18th of that same month, several individuals were captured  in the Chapala area, among them Coronel's area operator, Gael Carbel Aldana.

Another event that marked the Coronel family's most convulsive period was what happened in Puerto Vallarta. On April 3, in Bahia de Banderas, Nayarit, the son of the capo, Alejandro Coronel, only 16 years old, was abducted ("levantado").

His body turned up incinerated. Three days later, in Tepic, more than 100 armed men picked up a dozen persons who hours later were found dead in San Jose de Castilla, Jalisco municipality, Nayarit. Ten men were found incinerated and four more bodies killed with a coup de grace (shot to the head).

This accentuated the war between the Nacho Coronel forces and the Zetas, which would continue after Nacho was killed by the Army.

On November 23, 2011, three pickup trucks were abandoned in the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco, with 23 bodies inside. They were found in the Glorieta (traffic circle) of the Arcos del Milenio, very near the Expo Guadalajara, where the International Book Fair is held every year.

On May 9, 2012, another 18 persons were murdered and dismembered and their remains left on a highway close to Guadalajara.

The eighteen heads, extremities and other body parts showed up this Wednesday in two vehicles in a location known as Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos. Eleven of the bodies had been frozen to preserve them.

The slaughter, it was speculated, was in response to the murders committed last Friday in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, where 23 mutilated bodies were found some days before.

According to the authorities, in one of the pickups there was a narco message signed by the Zetas and the Cartel del Milenio (Millennium Cartel), who are allies in Jalisco, where they are fighting against the capos of the Sinaloa Cartel: Joaquin "el Chapo" Guzman, Ismael "el Mayo" Zambada and Jose Angel Carrasco Coronel, "el Changel", who they accuse of receiving goverment protection. 

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