“Ivan” for Borderland Beat
José Noriel Portillo Gil was allegedly murdered by his own people after a meeting between the Salazar clan and the Gente Nueva de Agua Prieta faction in Choix.
The fate of Jose Noriel Portillo Gil, “El Chueco,” the alleged murderer of two Jesuit priests and a tour guide in Chihuahua, was decided in a meeting between the Salazar clan and the Gente Nueva de Agua Prieta faction, a group that controls the north of the Tarahumara mountains, loyal to the armed wing of Rafael Caro Quintero and Ismael El Mayo Zambada.
According to several sources, the meeting of zone chiefs was called to settle the differences between them, and was held at the crossroads of Camino Real, in Choix, which is a stagecoach crossing from El Fuerte to Alamos, Sonora, 2 kilometers away from the border of the latter state. There they discussed the losses of the business, finding José Noriel responsible, who was sentenced to death.
Last Thursday, March 23, the governor of Chihuahua, Maru Campos Galván, affirmed that since the murder of the two Jesuit priests, operations in the sierra were intensified, eradicating the illegal sale of beer, reducing illegal logging and extortion of mining company suppliers, so that Chueco’s group’s income had been reduced. “Income was impacted, which forced him to reduce his field of action until he took refuge in the neighboring state,” he said.
On Saturday, March 18, El Chueco was found murdered on a dirt road that leads from the community of La Viuda to the Picachos syndicate, in the municipality of Choix. This road forks with the old Camino Real, where the conclave of crime bosses was held.
JESUIT PRIESTS. The victims of ‘Chueco’.
The body of Portillo Gil, who had been promoted by the Salazar clan since 2016, had nine bullet impacts in the chest, caliber 7.62 millimeters for AK-47 and the coup de grace. Twenty-two shell casings were found at the scene. Authorities said that El Chueco had been killed at least 24 hours before he was found.
Prosecutors found nothing on the clothes of the lieutenant of the Salazar clan. Not a single trace that would give away who he was. The clothes, a pair of green pants and a gray T-shirt, black tennis shoes and an empty tactical vest, were clean. For this reason, even though he was one of the most wanted and his head had a price tag on it, nobody identified him.
The authorities transferred Portillo Gil’s body to a funeral home in Los Mochis, where it remained for three days. On the fourth day, Tuesday, March 21, his two sisters arrived and recognized him. The news went national. El Chueco had been murdered in Sinaloa.
El Chueco’s sisters said he was a cattle rancher and farmer. They did not talk about the accusations against him. Nothing about his alleged authorship of the crime of Jesuit priests Javier Campos Morales and Joaquín César Mora Salazar and tourist guide Pedro Palma, on June 20, 2022 in the town of Cerocahui, municipality of Urique, Chihuahua.
They said they had not heard from their brother for years, and that just a year ago he broke off all family contact and isolated himself. He was born in Batopilas, but was a resident of Bahuichivo, in Chihuahua.
They said they learned of his whereabouts when they saw a photograph in a digital media of a man’s body lying on the ground. They were referring to the police photograph of the discovery of a person on Saturday, March 18 on a dirt road in the Choix mountains, at the entrance to a ranch.
Last Thursday evening, the sisters testified and claimed the body of their brother, they provided blood samples which when analyzed corroborated the affinity, but the body was not handed over to them because they lacked complementary evidence, having already complied with the documentary evidence, revealed the State Attorney General’s Office.
That same day, the Prosecutor Sara Bruna Quiñonez Estrada pointed out that an investigation file for homicide is already being followed to establish who or who was responsible for depriving him of his life.
“The conventional procedure was carried out, which is, to have him declare before the Agent of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, to show him the body. Elements of the Attorney General’s Office of Chihuahua were also present in these proceedings. In the process the sister recognized him as her brother, of the name already mentioned, also, a second sister came and in the same terms she said that it was this person”.
On the hunt for ‘Chueco
After the murder of the two Jesuit priests and the tourist guide, the government of Chihuahua together with the Sedena deployed an operation in the sierra to hunt Portillo Gil. The authorities put a price on his head: 5 million pesos for those who provided “truthful, efficient and useful information” that would lead to his capture.
The authorities tightened the siege on El Chueco, and began arresting people close to him. On June 23, three days after the triple crime, drugs, weapons and a property in Urique were seized. A day later, Portillo Gil’s grandfather and uncle were arrested in the municipality of Batopilas and a long gun with 70 cartridges was confiscated.
On June 26, after receiving a report of Chueco’s presence in the town of Guachochi, two other people were arrested and firearms and tactical equipment were seized, and hours later, four members of Gente Nueva were arrested.
Two days later, the military intercepted a passenger bus and seized 9 kilos of drugs. And on June 29, almost 6,400 cartridges and more than 20 grenades and weapons were seized in Urique.
At the end of July, three men were arrested, among them Chueco’s cousin. And the authorities had already dissected the entire Gente Nueva criminal structure under his command: 34 identified collaborators, from hawks and family members to hitmen and plaza chiefs in small towns were captured, 42 different firearms, 28 vehicles and diverse tactical equipment were seized, but there was no trace of Portillo Gil. He remained in hiding for two hundred and seventy-two days, until his body was found in Choix, more than 3,000 kilometers away from where he allegedly murdered the two Jesuit priests.
The Sedena File
The Spanish newspaper El País pointed out that documents hacked from the Sedena by the Guacamaya group reveal that the Armed Forces had been following Portillo Gil’s steps since at least two years before the Jesuits’ crime.
Military intelligence had identified Chueco as the head of the Gente Nueva criminal group, the armed wing of the Sinaloa Cartel, in the Chihuahua community of Urique, the municipal capital of Cerocahui, the site of the murders.
The 96-page report presented in August 2020, to which El Pais had access, states that El Chueco and his people “maintain control of drug trafficking and sales, as well as kidnappings, extortion, extortion, extortion, illegal logging and executions, among other crimes”.
The report also noted that the criminal group had infiltrated and controlled local police forces. “Criminal groups have made inroads into the public security forces, which, when they are outnumbered and/or outgunned, choose not to carry out actions against them, as well as through threats.”
The Sedena believed that the drug lord controlled the planting and sale of drugs in Cerocahui and that he was involved in the “transfer of drugs to the state of Sinaloa”.
Article published on March 26, 2023 in issue 1052 of the weekly Ríodoce.