Valparaiso, Zacatecas: The Hellish War Between CDS And CJNG

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

Valparaíso became in recent weeks the nerve center of the "war" between the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación cartels, which has left almost a hundred dead and caused the forced displacement of many families.

The recent history of the municipality of Valparaíso shows the degree that armed violence reached in Zacatecas since last year, when a CJNG convoy arrived in that municipality and proclaimed the beginning of its offensive to subdue other criminal groups. 

In this region, armed civilians install illegal checkpoints, threaten and murder health workers and cause them to stop caring for the population of communities and ranches, as well as numerous families leave their homes in an attempt to escape the shootings.

A dozen vehicles, labeled with the acronym CJNG and with men carrying large caliber weapons, broke into the municipal capital of Valparaíso on the night of April 21, 2020 and parked for hours in front of the Municipal Presidency.

The inhabitants of this municipality remember that this is how the wave of violence began in this eastern region of the state. "We are the absolute mob of Lord Mencho!" shouted the armed civilians, who videotaped themselves to send a threatening message to their rivals. The videos taken by them and by some residents circulate on social networks.

Valparaiso become in recent weeks the nerve center of the "war" between the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels (CJNG), which has left almost a hundred dead and caused the forced displacement of many families, who leave their homes in the communities of the mountains for fear of being victims of the constant confrontations.

With the arrival of the "Jaliscos", as the inhabitants name them, the murders of alleged members of rival groups began and the climate of terror in the communities of the mountains. "On the roads they began to put checkpoints, they asked you where you were going, they checked your vehicle," says Juan, a merchant from the municipal capital who, like others who share their testimonies, ask for anonymity.

State public security authorities confirm that six months ago insecurity began to worsen and with it the wave of violence, when gunmen from the Sinaloa Cartel broke into the municipality and began a fierce dispute with the CJNG over the routes to Nayarit, Jalisco and Durango.

In San Juan Capistrano, a mountain community of 399 inhabitants, they do not forget the afternoon of last June 23, when "the gunfire began to be heard towards the mountains." Thus began a bloody battle outside the town that lasted until the early hours of the 25th. Gunmen from the two aforementioned cartels clashed with grenades and high-powered rifles.

The government of Zacatecas reported that at 3:00 p.m. military personnel, National Guard personnel, state police, investigation and experts from the State Attorney General's Office arrived at the place, who collected 18 bodies and dozens of weapons, in addition to finding three vehicles, one of them burned.

The Secretary of Public Security, Arturo López Bazán, declared that it was an ambush. Members of the Sinaloa Cartel circulated on social networks a video in which they presume to have killed 43 CJNG hitmen. A resident of San Juan Capistrano says: "I think they were more dead, the shooting was very ugly.

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