“HEARST” and “Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat
One month ago, a U-Haul truck full of at least ten Sinaloa Cartel hitmen barreled into Toscana, a gated residential subdivision in the city of Tijuana.
Toscana subdivision was thought to be one of the safest places in the city, so safe in fact that it was where US diplomats chose to live with their young families.
The hitmen sped into the subdivision in the dead of night, on a mission to kill a cartel figure who was hiding out inside – but before they could reach him, the cartel figure’s bodyguards spotted them and a gun fight broke out.
The families of US consulate workers huddled inside their homes, as the hitmen battled outside their doors, just one or two houses away.
The US Consulate in Tijuana put out an emergency alert warning all government employees to shelter in place.
Eventually, the shootout ended, with no civilians seemingly harmed.
Mexican news agencies released the name of the intended target of the hit, writing that the cartel figure was attacked by the hitmen for killing a 7-year old boy.
This will be the story of that cartel figure – a man named Jaime Daniel Gutiérrez García, who goes by the criminal alias ”El Toro”.
But this will also be a story about how cartel propaganda works and how the Mexican media ecosystem often acts as a bullhorn to said propaganda – amplifying its reach while adding undeserved legitimacy to its claims.
This whole incident, the moving truck full of hitmen, the bullets whizzing past US consulate employees and their families at 4am, happened a month ago.
This should have been the biggest news story of the week, and yet this story never really gained traction in the media.
Why? Well, because almost no details about it were ever released by the Mexican government. The cartel groups seemingly exerted an utter chokehold on information – no different than what they are doing today in Sinaloa with Guano and Numeradas.
Some of the only concrete information ever released about the hit was the name of the target, Jaime Daniel Gutiérrez García, “El Toro”. So, that’s where we’ll start, by piecing together who this El Toro guy is.
Overview of El Toro’s Criminal History
In approximately 1986, a man named Jaime Daniel Gutiérrez García was born in the city of Culiacan, Sinaloa. At some point in time, he moved to Baja California and started operating within the cartel world, where he became known by the aliases “El Toro” and “El Cachis”.
When El Toro first caught the attention of law enforcement, he was working under the Cartel Arellano Felix (CAF) figure Ricardo Bozada Alvarado, alias “El Bozadas”, who, in turn, worked under Pablo Edwin Huerta Nuño, alias “El Flaquito”.
For a brief period in time there was a non-aggression pact between Flaquito’s group (which was a CAF & Sinaloa Cartel – Chapitos hybrid) and a cartel group led by Alfonso Arzate Garcia, alias “El Aquiles”, from the Sinaloa Cartel (CDS) – Mayo faction.
But in September 2019, the non-aggression pact dissolved and the two groups went to war over control over the port of Ensenada.
The port of Ensenada functioned as a key part of drug trafficking routes to Asia and it facilitated the movement of drugs produced in South America (like cocaine) to various selling locations in Asia.
According to La Silla Rota, the struggle primarily centered around the Ensenada port employees, who were reportedly being pressured to stop accepting the CDS – Mayo bribes they were already taking and to, instead, start accepting CAF-Chapitos bribes, enabling the group to expand their drug trafficking routes to Asia while officials “looked the other way”.
The war over the port went on for years but all that really matters for the purpose of our story is that in March 2020, El Toro’s boss El Bozadas was arrested by agents from SEIDO, the DEA and Interpol at the Mexico City International Airport.
(To read a more in depth coverage of this war over the port, please see this previous story.)
El Toro continued to work in Ensenada, acquiring businesses, and building up legal revenue sources.
Recent Cartel Activity Related to El Toro
Over the last few months, there has been a flurry of cartel activity related to El Toro, in both Baja California and Sinaloa. Unpacking these incidents is essential to understanding the attempted hit on El Toro.
January 7, 2024
A Botched Hit Leads to the Death of a Child
A family was driving a Jeep Rubicón in the Valle Alto neighborhood of Culiacan, Sinaloa, when hitmen in four vehicles opened fire on the Jeep. The father and mother in the Jeep were left uninjured but their son, Cruz Ricardo, was hit and he died shortly after at a hospital. Cruz was either 7 or 8 years old at the time of his death (reports vary on his age).
Toro’s cartel rivals later claimed that it was Toro who was behind this hit.
It’s important to make clear something which every Mexican media outlet has not acknowledged: somebody else in the Jeep was the real target of the hit (likely the father) and that person is involved, in some way, with a cartel group.
Cartel members are not organizing 4-vehicle hitmen squads in order to kill random little boys. It is tragic that an innocent child was killed but it is also inherently dishonest to represent this attack as if it was a shooting which affected a random Culiacan family.
The real target of the attack could be a cartel member or possibly a government employee, or even a businessman involved with a cartel group. But the identity of the adults in the vehicle has not been released officially nor reported unofficially by the press.
Any implication of motive or this being a hit was not reported by the press.
If you were to read the coverage of this shooting from the major publications like El Universal, Riodoce, Quadratin, and Milenio, you might come away thinking that this was just a senseless act of violence which targeted a family at random.
January 25, 2024
Series of Attacks on Properties Associated with El Toro & An Attempted Hit on a Cartel Lawyer
Then, a series of vengeance attacks against Toro began. At 3:30 am, hitmen threw molotov cocktails at two liquor stores (Licores Cardón 1 in the Bustamante neighborhood and El Cardón de la Baja in the Hidalgo neighborhood) in Ensenada. Both of these stores were owned by “a man close to” El Toro, according to Zeta Tijuana.
At 4:20 am , the same hitmen threw molotov cocktails and fired shots at a luxury ranch owned by El Toro. This ranch is located in San Miguel, near El Sauzal, in an area just north of Ensenada.
Then, hitmen secretly surveilled the outside of a seafood restaurant in Ensenada called Villa Marina, waiting for 3-4 hours as a group of lawyers had a dinner meeting inside. When the group of lawyers emerged at approximately 6:30 pm, the hitmen opened fire on them.
The hitmen intended to kill a lawyer named Miguel Ángel Cortés Muro, however Cortés Muro ended up surviving the attack despite getting hit in the wrist, stomach and lower abdomen. A lawyer named Gabriel Agustín Fuentes Huesca, however, was killed. And another lawyer named Cristian Alejandro Espinoza Lucero was also shot, but he also survived.
So why did the hitmen want to kill that lawyer Cortés Muro?
Cortés Muro has represented a number of cartel figures. He used to represent the cartel figure Víctor Manuel Padilla Murillo, alias “El Chatarras”, who was involved in drug trafficking out of the port of Ensenada. Chatarras was involved in the same struggle for control of the port that involved El Toro and El Bozadas.
It’s important to note that El Chatarras was famously arrested by Mexican federal agents and later killed while in witness protection, allegedly by one of the federal agents working as his bodyguard. Many believe the agent was bribed into killing him by either El Flaquito or La Rana. More information on all of this in this previous story.
The only motive for the hit on Chatarras’s lawyer mentioned by Zeta Tijuana is an ongoing property dispute between the lawyer and Chatarras’s son.
It’s also worth noting that the lawyer representing El Chatarras significant other was shot to death in February 2022.
This whole attack on Chatarras’s lawyer may seem unrelated to El Toro, but it actually plays a key role in the unfolding events but. Zeta Tijuana reports that the exact same firearm used to kill Chatarras’s lawyer was used to shoot up Toro’s ranch according to ballistic tests done by state authorities.
This could mean the cartel group going after El Toro is the same group which wanted to kill Chattaras’s lawyer, which may give us some indication of who is going after Toro.
January 29
Sayed Villa Arce Killed in His Vehicle by CAF Hitmen
A man was shot dead inside his vehicle in Colonia Jalisco in Ensenada by cartel hitmen. The deceased was later identified as a man named Sayed Villa Arce. He was said to be 27 years old at the time of his death.
The vehicle used by the hitmen was identified by a witness and the same vehicle was found abandoned in the Morelos neighborhood. When the plates were run, police found that it was reported as stolen on January 25, 2024.
Zeta says the attack was perpetrated by a CAF cell active in Ensenada but it’s unclear why Sayed was targeted and which CAF figures he may have been involved with. Zeta also framed their coverage of this attack and some of the others as it being a battle between two CAF cells, which only complicates things.
February 8-9 2024
El Toro’s Cousin is Kidnapped, Beaten, Filmed, & Killed
El Toro’s cousin, a man named Jesús Héctor Gutiérrez Salazar, was kidnapped while he was running errands in Culiacán, Sinaloa, after he left work.
His cousin worked at Sinaloa’s Federal Environmental Protection Agency (PROFEPA).
A group of hitmen kidnapped Toro’s cousin and the cousin’s abandoned vehicle was later found in the Guadalupe neighborhood of Culiacan.
The hitmen beat up Toro’s cousin and filmed him confessing that Toro was the cartel figure behind the attack on the Jeep which killed the boy. The cousin has a number of bruises visible on his arms in the footage.
Footage of the cousin’s confession was published and posted on social media by Aquiles-associated sources like Gente de Tia Juana.
In the video, he said the following, as translated by Sol Prendido:
“My name is Jesús Héctor Gutiérrez Salazar. I’m known as El Jechu. I am a cousin of Jaime Daniel Gutierrez Garcia aka El Toro, the main partner of Lico Beltrán. My cousin Toro killed a 7 year old child. He was the son of Ricardo Beltran.”
We’ll return to the content of this statement later on.
The hitmen killed Toro’s cousin after filming the confession video. They rolled up his dead body in a gray quilt, wrapped it with tape and dumped it on a dirt road in Campesina El Barrio, in Culiacan, Sinaloa.
A strange children’s toy, a black and white robot dog, was placed on top of the dead body. The toy is manufactured in China and marketed in some countries as a “Zoomer Zuppy”. The symbolism of this toy being placed on top of the body is frustratingly unclear.
The governor later mentioned that the toy may be a message about Toro’s cousin being involved with “illegal animals”.
February 10, 2024
El Pitufo and His Two Sons Are Killed
Back in Ensenada, another alleged CAF figure was hit. Jorge Armando Meléndez Cervera, alias “El Pitufo”, was driving with his family on Mauricio Campo Street in Ensenada when his vehicle was shot up by hitmen. The attack left Pitufo, his 22-year old son, and his 14-year old son dead.
The only survivor from the vehicle was Pitufo’s wife, who was also the mother to Pitufo’s two sons. El Vigia reports that she had a nervous breakdown, likely due to having just seen her family murdered in front of her.
So who did Pitufo work for? Previous reporting suggests that Pitufo worked under Jorge Humberto Acosta Gallegos, alias “El Güero Leches”, who started out working under CAF but later began working under CDS – El Aquiles. Zeta Tijuana is currently referring to Pitufo as a CAF member but it’s unclear if Zeta is claiming he switched back to CAF again or if they are misreporting his cartel affiliation.
The murder of Pitufo’s 14-year old son garnered much less mainstream media attention than the 7-year old boy in Sinaloa.