Buggs for Borderland Beat
Segment 2
Members of organized crime in Mexico spend millions of dollars to corrupt government officials. These criminal organizations see this as an investment in their drug trafficking enterprise. It is the price of doing business in Mexico. The expensive bribes they pay gets them protection, access to sensitive information, targeting of rival cartels and assistance to move their drugs north.
The corrupt government usually will ask the cartels to keep the violence to a minimum to avoid attracting attention. No one does it better than the Sinaloa cartel. But not everything always runs smoothly. Many times, this is not possible due to conflict within cartels and the fight from cartels for position of power.
In 2008 people started to notice that the Felipe Calderon government was not targeting the Sinaloa Cartel as he was other cartels. High level leaders of the Sinaloa cartel had to be sacrificed to give a perception that Sinaloa was not being favored. It is believed that several high-ranking members of the Sinaloa cartel had to be surrendered.
It is said that Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel Villarreal, Alfredo Beltrán Leyva El Mochomo and Gonzalo Inzunza Inzunza El Macho Prieto were a few high-level capos that were surrendered by the Sinaloa Syndicate. Except, the arrest of El Mochomo caused major problems for the CDS and the federal government.
A bloody war like never seen before.
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The war started on a Monday, January 21, 2008. On board Hummer vehicles, and with heavy artillery, more than 300 elements of the Special Forces Aeromobile Group (GAFE) of the Mexican Army, positioned themselves in the area of a residence located in the Burócratas community in Culiacán, Sinaloa. An anonymous call had told them that the youngest of the Beltrán brothers, Alfredo, alias El Mochomo, was waiting at that address for a shipment of money on an outstanding settlement from some of his Colombian associates.
Near dawn, a gate opened. A white BMW van came out with four men on board. The team of elite military commandos blocked their way. The men in the vehicle surrendered without firing a single shot. Inside the vehicle was El Mochomo while inside the house military officials recovered $900,000 in dollars, 11 expensive watches, an AK-47 and eight handguns.
In the news of the arrest of El Mochomo was presented as the most important arrest carried out by the government in the war against drug trafficking that Felipe Calderón had carried out. El Mochomo would be extradited to the US.
The arrest of El Mochomo caused immediate panic from federal police agencies that were receiving brides to protect the Beltran Leyva brothers. The BLO led by the Beltran Leyva brothers had corrupted the highest level of that federal institution by paying monthly bribes of between $150,000 and $450,000 in dollars. These bribes were supposed insure that officials of the highest level were to provide leaks of sensitive information to the BLO.
That day of El Mochomo arrest, several high-ranking officials were very nervous. They had received reports that El Mochomo was going to be arrested by the military but could do nothing to avoid it. They expected the leadership of Arturo Beltrán to call them to explain why Alfredo was arrested.
Hector Beltra leyva "El Hache," was upset with El Grande over the arrest of his brother Alfredo Beltran Leyva. Sergio Enrique Villarreal Barragán, El Grande, was a former Mexican federal police officer who worked as a lieutenant for Arturo Beltrán Leyva. He got his name El Grande ("The Big One") because he is 6 feet 7 inches tall. El Grande was extradited to the United States on May 23, 2012, and may possibly be serving as a "protected witness" for the DEA.
Although El Grande was not directly responsible for the security of El Mochomo, he oversaw the cartel relationship with the federal government and the arrest caused suspicion for El Grande.
Hector Beltran was resting at his home in Morelos when he was told about the arrest of El Mochomo and became so upset that he took out a firearm from inside his waist and started shooting up to the ceiling while his escort looked on very nervous. He smashed a bottle of wine that was on top of a table against a European table that had been a gift from the Panista governor Marco Antonio Adame Castillo. Hector Beltran requested the immediate presence of his most trusted man, El Grande. He was brought in all the way from Puebla in a helicopter from the state police of Morelos.
With his eyes red from anger and anguish, Hector Beltran Leyva requested a quick explanation why his brother was arrested. He reminded El Grande about the millions of dollars in bribes that the cartel paid to ensure the protection of his family from many levels of the government. There was a clear understanding that his family would not be touched. Hector Beltran requested that El Grande conduct a complete thorough investigation to find out who they had to kill.
El Grande started making phone calls to his contacts with the PGR. He spoke with Captain Fernando Rivera of the PGR. He arranged for a meeting in the city of Mexico to get the information on the arrest Alfredo Beltran Leyva in Culiacan. El Grande told him that Arturo Beltrán Leyva was pissed off, very pissed off. Captain Rivera promised to give him a detailed report of the operation no later than the next day.
The next day captain Rivera met with El Grande in a restaurant on Avenida Reforma and the captain was also in the company of commanders Menton Silia and Roberto Garcia. Rivera ordered the commanders to gather the information immediately in less than 24 hours. El Grande was given the names of the supposed “snitches.” He was told it was two agents of the ministerial police in Sinaloa. Their prompt death was surely assured.
Rivera told El Grande that from 11 o'clock onwards, the special forces of the army would no longer be present, and that only 11 agents of the Federal Investigation Agency, AFI, would remain on scene to provide security. He told El Grande that with the delivery of one million pesos for AFI's, as well as three million that would be to pay off Fernando Rivera and his people, it would be possible to get the cooperation of the security detail and allow an armored truck to break into the gate to give them access to the facility.
After El Grande gave the information to his boss, Hector Beltran ordered El Grande to take immediate action to rescue his detained brother. El Grande gathered about 100 men, that came from different parts of the country to the city of Mexico, to carry out an assault of the headquarters where El Mochomo was being held. But El Grande ran into some problems.
The top bosses of the Beltran Leyva clan; Joaquin Guzman Loera El Chapo and Ismael El Mayo Zambada refused to authorize the rescue attempt. They explained that the conditions were not right for a rescue attempt. They further explained that Mochomo would have to be sacrificed. The assault had been planned for midnight on January 24th but in the end, it did not take place because El Mochomo was transferred to the federal prison Puente Grande.
The refusal of El Chapo and El Mayo to help secure the freedom of Alfredo Beltran prompted bad blood between the Beltran brothers. This caused the breakup of the two factions. This would be the start of the bloody war between the BLO and the Sinaloa Cartel. This is when El Grande brought up the notion that perhaps the people responsible for the arrest of El Mochomo were attributed to El Chapo Guzman and Mayo Zambada.
It is believed that in the drug trafficking business where there is a blood alliance, it is virtually indestructible. El Mochomo was married to a cousin of El Chapo. But Arturo Beltrán felt that the blood alliance had been broken. From now on he was going to have to be killed or arrested, for he did not care anymore of the consequences. El Chapo and El Mayo knew that this would result in a war with the BLO but they accepted the risk. They just wanted to move on. They either did not want to bring heat from the federal government or perhaps they were working another angle with the top levels of the federal government, or both.
Then, there was the rumor that the El Chapo had made a deal with the highest levels of the federal government that he would deliver El Mochomo in exchange for the release of his son, El Chapito. At the end of April 2008, the same month that El Chapito was released, a shootout occurred in Culiacán. A house which allegedly belonged to the children of Arturo Beltrán, was targeted by elements of the Federal Police, supported by municipal police. Five sicarios and two ministerial police agents were killed during a fierce battle.
Arturo Beltrán accused the feds of serving as an armed wing for El Chapo and ordered his people to kill any federal police officer wherever they were found. He placed narcomantas in which he wrote: "Policemen, soldiers, so that it is clear to you, El Mochomo continues to reign. Atte. Arturo Beltrán Leyva." And also: "Warrying Soldiers, little federal police forces, this place is the territory of Arturo Beltrán."
By the end of April of 2008 there was blood running down the streets of Culiacan after the demons were unleashed, causing a string of confrontations that in a month alone resulted in 1,156 executions.
Arturo Beltrán assassinated the regional director of the PFP, Édgar Eusebio Millán. Millán was ambushed and killed when he arrived at his parents' house in a building located in a community in Guerrero. Although only a handful of people had access to the itinerary of Millán, the information was leaked from within the PFP to the BLO.
The real revenge for Arturo Beltrán came on May 8, 2008. Five SUVs loaded with sicarios surrounded a vehicle carrying Edgar Guzman, another son of El Chapo, in a parking lot in Culiacán, Sinaloa. Edgar Guzman was executed. Five hundred gunshots were fired along with a grenade deployed from a grenade launcher. In addition to the execution of Edgar, a nephew of the drug trafficker, César Loera, was also killed.
In Culiacán the evil rage was unleashed. The local media did not dare to report the news. They only did it two days later, attributing the information to newspapers and news agencies in Mexico City. Borderland Beat was the place where some information could be obtained. The blood of the son of El Chapo was still fresh on the ground when the cries from the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel pledged that he would erase the name of Arturo Beltrán from the face of the earth.
The murder of El Chapo's son was part of the same MO that killed the police chief Millán. Millan had been the "brain" of the secretary of Public Security, Genaro García Luna, in many anti-drug operations. His death caused a change in the upper level of the structure of the PFP. Genaro García Luna replaced Millan with an old friend with whom he had collaborated closely while working with the AFI. It was Gerardo Garay. But as things happen in Mexico from time to time, Garay only lasted a few months in that position. Commissioner Garay was accused of serving two masters: the Beltrán Cartel and that of El Mayo Zambada. A judge ordered him to be formally apprehended in October 2008.
In December of 2009, Inspector Edgar Enrique Bayardo, who was a protected witness, was killed at a Starbucks in Mexico City after he had confessed of colluding with organized crime by allowing infiltrations to the agency, tapping telephone calls to benefit specific cartels, allowing cartel operators to interrogate captured adversaries, and then presenting the arrestees as "as achievements of the PFP."
