CHAR
JUNE 28, 2025
INFORMATION POSTED BY ZETA TIJUANA
WRITTEN BY: LUIS CARLOS SAINZ
Santiago Meza López, "El Pozolero," Photo: Archive
After an Appeals Court increased the sentence against Santiago Meza López, "El Pozolero," by five years and declared his sentence served, the Arellano Félix Cartel (CAF) member who dissolved more than 300 human bodies on the orders of Teodoro García Simental, "El Teo," has not been located in any of the country's prisons, according to sources consulted by ZETA Weekly, which followed the court ruling and the physical search for the butcher for three weeks.
The Twenty-Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Tepic, Nayarit, recently increased the aforementioned individual's prison sentence from 10 to 15 years for organized crime. However, the sentence has already been fully served by the inmate, who was detained in the Federal Center for Social Readaptation (Cefereso) number 18, in Ramos Arizpe, Coahuila, where prison authorities transferred him on August 4, 2020, from Cefereso 1, Altiplano, in Almoloya de Juárez, State of Mexico.
In the same second-instance ruling, the acquittal of the man who turned the corpses into "pozole (stew)" through the liquefaction process (water and caustic soda) was confirmed for crimes against public health involving promoting drug trafficking, carrying a firearm for the exclusive use of the armed forces (in two variants), and possessing cartridges also for exclusive use. These offenses were not found by the federal judge or the magistrates for which the original court found sufficient evidence to convict.
The so-called Pozolero, who also has the aliases "El Chacho" or "El Changuito", was sentenced for the first time on May 13, 2024 in the First District Court in Criminal Matters in the State of Nayarit, residing in Tepic, where the administrator of justice found him criminally responsible in criminal case 2/2023 (formerly 35/2009) for organized crime, in the hypothesis of participating in crimes against health, imposing a sentence of 10 years in prison, and sentenced him to pay a fine of 250 days of the minimum wage in force at the time of the commission of the crime, equivalent to the amount of 13 thousand 700 pesos.
However, the Pozolero's sentence is settled. "While it is true that the corporal punishment is increased here, the compurgation takes place on January 21, 2024, so we reach the same conclusion as the judge, in that the prison sentence imposed should be considered compurged, without it being necessary to order his re-arrest or release, as the original court has already done so. That court ordered his release for this reason, solely and exclusively in relation to the crime of organized crime," the judges warn.
Consequently, the judicial authorities sent the corresponding notice to the director general of Cefereso 18 "CPS Coahuila," based in Ramos Arizpe, Coahuila, requesting the immediate release of Santiago Meza López, "solely and exclusively with respect to the crimes indicated, for which he is being prosecuted in this criminal case 2/2023 of the index of this District Court (replacing case 35/2009), without prejudice to his continued incarceration in that penitentiary center for various criminal cases that may be brought before a different court, or for serving a sentence."
The inmate had pending charges in another criminal case in a Baja California District Court for kidnapping, the procedural status of which is unknown following the disappearance of that court.
THE CAPTURE
The arrest of Santiago Meza López along with another individual took place on January 22, 2009, by members of the Mexican Army at the Baja Seasons tourist complex in the municipality of Ensenada. The soldiers were warned that a party was being held there, attended by members of the Arellano Félix Cartel. From the cabin where they were staying, drug traffickers and gunmen could see a military unit passing over the highway and turning around at the return from La Salina beach. This put them on alert and they fled the scene in pickup trucks along the beach and then along the highway toward Tijuana.
Photos: Archive
Upon arrival, the soldiers, who were carrying out the 2007-2012 Comprehensive Combat Against Drug Trafficking program in coordination with the Federal Preventive Police, found two of the escaping vehicles stuck in the sand, and another vehicle was in the parking lot of some rented cabins, so they proceeded to search it. Meza López was sitting in the driver's seat in one of the pickup trucks, while the co-pilot abandoned the vehicle when he saw the soldiers arriving, but was captured after a chase. According to the arresting officers' report, the Pozolero was wearing a bulletproof vest and a green belt around his waist, with two fragmentation grenades inside.
In the vehicle linked to Santiago, the soldiers seized an HK91 rifle with a magazine loaded with 20 7.62 x 51 mm caliber rounds on the right side of the seat. and three more magazines, two of them with 20 rounds each and the other with 16 rounds of the same caliber. The other detainee was wearing a black bulletproof vest with two Kevlar plates attached. A 50mm Barrett rifle was found in the back seat, with one magazine loaded with ten live rounds and another magazine with eight rounds, all of the same caliber, on the floorboards. Meza was therefore charged with two counts of carrying a firearm for the exclusive use of the Army and possession of ammunition.
In another vehicle with border-border license plates, an individual wearing a bulletproof vest was in the driver's seat, holding a DSA ZM4 carbine loaded with a disc-type magazine with 91 5.56-millimeter rounds. In the passenger seat was a 16-year-old female minor. She stated that she was a sex worker and had been hired to provide services at the party. In the back seat, behind the passenger seat, an MP5 submachine gun with two magazines was found. One of them was attached to the weapon and loaded with 30 nine-millimeter cartridges, and the other with 26 twenty-six cartridges. These individuals were also arrested.
When questioned by the arrestees about his activities, Santiago Meza López stated that "he was an executioner or 'pozolero,'" and when asked what he meant, he stated that he placed the bodies of the executed people in a drum with water and caustic soda, leaving them there for approximately 24 hours or more, until they completely disintegrated. He also stated that he worked for Teodoro García Simental, known as "Teo," that he was paid $600 a week for these jobs, that he had been working with the organization for approximately nine years, and that he had executed approximately 300 people.
THE CONFESSION
Although he could not be charged with any of the murders perpetrated by the Arellano Félix brothers' criminal organization, Santiago Meza López's simple membership in the criminal group, under the tutelage of Teodoro García Simental as its hierarchical leader, mastermind, and perpetrator of the crimes, as well as his assigned role of disposing of the bodies delivered to him, could have been classified as organized crime. El Pozolero abandoned some victims on the streets and disintegrated others through a liquefaction process using a corrosive liquid based on caustic soda.
The way the cell led by Teo and of which Meza López himself was a member resembled a production line, in which the division of criminal labor was prominent. Some of the members deprived various people of their liberty, others provided security with the weapons they carried; Others monitored the scene and escape routes; still others guarded safe houses containing kidnapped people or drugs; others took the lives of those who didn't pay the ransom or belonged to rival groups, and there were others who disposed of the bodies by liquefying them.
At the time, the Pozolero stated that the people who carried the bodies of the dead "always had patrol-type escorts, which had panel-type trucks, where they placed the human bodies; that the declarant was with two people, and two more people were waiting at the place where they had a pot with the ingredients to make 'pozole' in the place known as 'La Gallera'. He also said that he didn't know the origin of the victims and that "the human bodies were always carried dead; They couldn't see their faces, since they all wore masks made of gray plastic adhesive tape, and when they put them in the pot or in the drums with caustic soda in water, they only cut the tape at the nape of their necks, without removing it completely."
In the grim account of the man who was paid $600 a week for the dismembered bodies, of which he invested $400 in supplies for that purpose, there is a passage in In this article, he claims that when he went on errands, in addition to work materials, he would buy four or five heads of garlic and a liter of cooking oil. Before beginning to dissolve the bodies in the chemical mixture, Meza would fry the garlic: "When the oil was hot, it began to smoke, and the smell of garlic was stronger than that of the caustic soda that emerged when the human bodies were being 'cooked' or 'pozoleando'."
Santiago joined the CAF in January 2000, as he recalls, primarily to guard a warehouse where marijuana was stored, although his later role for the criminal conglomerate was to dismantle the bodies. His immediate boss, at first, was Marco Antonio García Simental, known as "El Cris," who used the false name of Mario Alberto López Rivera, the older brother of Teodoro, José Manuel, and Eleazar García Simental. According to protected witnesses offered in the trial, the convicted man liked to say goodbye by saying he had "a pozole" pending to prepare.
Photos: Archive
Another criminal case facing the Pozolero as a co-defendant of Teodoro García Simental was case 140/2014 of the First District Court of Federal Criminal Proceedings in the state of Baja California for his probable responsibility in the commission of organized crime offenses for the purpose of committing kidnapping and illegal deprivation of liberty in the form of aggravated kidnapping. The formal arrest warrant was issued for both on July 31, 2014.
According to the case file, the events attributed to the criminals occurred on April 26, 2005, when they kidnapped a merchant who was arriving at his diaper store located on Manuel J. Clouthier Boulevard in the La Ciénega neighborhood of Tijuana shortly before 8:00 a.m. Upon getting out of an Avalanche SUV, the victim was deprived of his liberty by an armed group who took him to a property on Gato Bronco Boulevard in the Ampliación Guaycura neighborhood. After 65 days of negotiations, the kidnappers finally obtained a ransom of $267,000 and released the captive on June 29 of that year.
The kidnapping report was filed by a brother of the victim after receiving a call from an unknown individual using a Nextel radio belonging to his brother. In the message, he was informed of his relative's situation and the caller demanded that he pay two million dollars to release him. The voice, later recognized during the investigation, was Teo's. Although García and Meza's arrests occurred in different years, it wasn't until July 2014 that an arrest warrant was served on both of them for their alleged involvement in the events described.
After being formally detained, the public defenders appealed the ruling, which was later modified by a Unitary Court, but did not benefit Santiago Meza López and Teodoro García Simental. Teo's defense argued that there was insufficient evidence to prove his client's involvement in the crimes he was accused of, and that his material authorship of the events had not been proven; however, the victim herself recognized him as the person who took her radio to speak to her brother and demand the ransom. El Pozolero, for his part, allegedly acted as the intermediary in renting a house where the kidnapper was held captive; his whereabouts are now unknown.
