A man’s body was found with a narco message signed by the Cártel Santa Rosa de Lima in Colonia Tres Guerras in Celaya, Guanajuato on Sunday, April 9, 2023. The day after, a video showing another body with a message on similar paper found outside Celaya.
The body was found around 4:00 p.m. on Manuel A. Camacho street on the corner with Avenida Constituyentes, reported narco blog Valor por Tamaulipas.
The message is mostly illegible because of blurry photos, but the words “Marro” and letters “CSRDL”, as well as the logo of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel can be seen.
On Monday, April 10, a mans body was found on the Libramiento Celaya highway outside the city. Video taken from a slow moving car shows the paper is the same as the message left on Sunday, but no text is visible to confirm.
“Marro” refers to José Antonio Yépez Ortiz alias “El Marro” (The Sledgehammer”, who lead the CSRL for several years until his capture in 2020. He is currently serving a 60-year prison sentence in the Altiplano prison in nearby Mexico State.
Under the text is the logo of the CSRL, with has crossed sledgehammers inside a triangle. The sledgehammers refer to El Marro, while the triangle alludes to the “triangle of huachicol” (fuel theft), the region the criminal group operates in, according to the Small Wars Journal. Some variations of the logo have skulls, the state of Guanajuato, or a slightly different acronym.
While violence in Guanajuato has been trending downwards since a peak of 5,083 in 2020, El Universal noted that homicide trends are up 21% in 2023, comparing the period of January to March. Guanajuato remains the most violent state in Mexico since 2018, due to a brutal cartel war between the Cártel Santa Rosa de Lima (CSRL), and the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG).
