Sedena Focuses on El Guano

"Mica" for Borderland Beat

In the past three weeks, there have been a lot of attacks led by the government on El Guano, along with new intel detailing the powerful brother of El Chapo. 

Sedena focuses on El Guano, Chapo Guzmán's brother - El Sol de México
El Sol de Sinaloa

CULIACÁN. On at least two occasions, Aureliano Guzmán Loera, El Guano, has escaped operations launched by the Armed Forces in the Sierra de Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua, known as the Golden Triangle. The last time the hunt against him was reactivated was just a month ago when military elements set up a fence in the municipality of Tamazula that failed.

Since 2016, the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) has prepared a map of the areas of influence and the key men in the criminal structure led by El Guano and his nephew Iván Archivaldo, an investigation that was detonated as a result of the ambush of a military convoy that left five soldiers dead and 17 more wounded in the north of Culiacán.

According to documents hacked by the Guacamaya collective, the Army deployed a significant number of troops in the urban center of the capital in October of that year, dispersed operations in the Golden Triangle, identified the criminal structure in the service of the Guzmáns and arrested 23 people, most of whom were released due to endemic corruption in the FGR Delegation in Sinaloa.

The command of the Third Military Region asked to manage before Quirino Ordaz Coppel, who would assume the governorship on January 1, 2017, the change of all the staff of the FGR Delegation due to severe indications of complicity with crime, which revealed the way to operate to investigate organized crime in the country.

El Guano became a priority target for the Armed Forces after the capture of his brother Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán in January 2016.

From that year, Aureliano unleashed bloody revenge in the old region of Badiraguato, on the borders with Durango and Chihuahua, broke alliances, reorganized groups, armed their cells, which fought those of Alfredo Beltrán Guzmán, El Mochomito or El Dos Banderas.

Military intelligence monitored the battles of El Guano in the mountains, where he was persecuted after the capture of La Tuna by the Beltrán cells in June 2016.

On September 30 of that year, a convoy of soldiers suffered a skirmish in San José del Llano, on the way to La Tuna, where Julio Óscar Ortiz Vega, El Kevin, was injured, was being transported to Culiacán in an ambulance of the Red Cross of Badiraguato.

Upon reaching the height of the residential Espacio Barcelona, on the international road Mexico 15, the convoy was brutally attacked with bullets, resulting in five soldiers dead and 17 injured. The Sedena activated the onslaught. The Operations file in the state of Sinaloa, dated November of that year, gives an account of how the military identified all the sectors controlled by the Guzmán cells, all of them involved in one of the worst massacres against the Army.

In the northwest sector of the city was Los Güeros Ranas, commanded by Luis Alfonso Murillo Acosta, killed in February 2018 in the Loma de Rodriguera; then in the area of Valle Alto there was Teodoro Millán Rojo, with the group of Los Teo; on the side of Los Angeles were LosDavidsillos, in charge of the Aguaruto prison.

Los Rinos in the area of Chapultepec and Tierra Blanca, Los Chimalis in the south of the city, as well as Los Ninis, led by Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas and finally Los Ántrax, at that time commanded by Eliseo Imperial, Cheyo Ántrax, in the eastern part of the capital.

Of the leaders identified at that time, in addition to El Güero Ranas, Francisco Zazueta Rosales, Pancho Chimal, was also killed in April 2017, a month after escaping from prison, and Jesús Rodríguez Dueñas, El Rino, who died of Covid-19 in September 2020.

La Sedena identified the Guzmáns as the masterminds of the ambush, and Pancho Chimal, Güero Ranas, Teo and Cabo, as the material culprits, also positioned El Caballo as the logistical coordinator of said aggression against the military.

The day after the attack, the Army deployed almost 400 elements in the urban area and arrested 17 people in a first wave, seized weapons, grenades, houses, and 52 vehicles.

The Sedena report warns that among the detainees, the FGR released Jorge, El 90, Cristian Fernando, Wilfrido, and Armando, Sponge Bob Square Pants. They also released Cristian, El 300, El Oso, and El Buitre, those arrested by the Navy.

Regarding the releases "for lack of elements," the commanders reported endemic corruption in the FGR Delegation. The tab says "Involment of authorities."

"SEIDO staff has detected signs of involvement of officials of the PGR Delegation in Culiacán."

The modus operandi of this symbiosis was to return drugs insured by the military to the criminals, "simulating their destruction with other similar substances."

They also found that the staff refused to carry out investigations under the excuse of fearing reprisals, in addition, agents of the FGR leaked information from judicial processes to the lawyers, who advanced with key data with which they managed to free their clients.

"Close affective relationship between defense lawyers and the personnel of the Federal Investigative Police (they shake hands and hug each other)", and thanks to these friendships, the criminals had facilities and evidence for the judges to rule in their favor.