“Char” for Borderland Beat
This article was translated and reposted from INFORMADOR.MX
Image created by HEARST
Teocaltiche: the tunnels of the Sinaloa cartel
By: Isaack de Loza
Today, Teocaltiche belongs to the Sinaloa cartel. This criminal group had an impressive boom during the six-year term of Felipe Calderon, since he decided to launch a “War on Drugs” that he pushed in an unbridled manner, and which in turn allowed empowering some of the main security commanders in Mexico.
In this administration, the Ministry of the Interior (Segob) had established that the main operator of the cartel previously led by “Chapo” Guzmán in Los Altos de Jalisco was Mario González Martínez Jr., to whom his subordinates gave the code names “M.G.” or “El Flama,” and who since 2015 became one of Joaquín Guzmán Loera’s closest and most trusted men.
However, control of the municipality is fiercely contested by the New Generation cartel. That is the reason why the Los Altos region and the excessive violence in that place have monopolized a very important space in the national media.
Mario, “El Flama”, was the reason why the Grito de Independencia in “Teocaltiche” was suspended this year, as he was killed during an armed attack in a bar, along with five of his men, hours before Mayor Juan Manuel Vallejo attempted to start the ceremony.
But while the organizational chart is being restructured, because that is the logic of the narco, the evidence we have seen in recent days in Teocaltiche bears the signature of “Chapo”.
The evidence is already public and is his video surveillance strategy, which even connects with homes whose owners have been forced to allow themselves to be connected to the narco networks. It is in the safe houses with dozens of monitors to keep an eye on patrol cars and suspicious people. It is in a castle/event hall full of weaponry. It is in the cameras hidden among trees that monitor everyone who enters by road.
And, above all, it is in the recently discovered network of tunnels that, cynically, connects the areas of operation of organized crime with points very close to City Hall. There, under the nose of the elected authority. Of the authority that protects. The one that “takes care” of a people that resignedly stays in their homes when the sun goes down.
No one can forget that “Chapo” and the Sinaloa cartel have been the main architects of this stealthy subway infrastructure, which serves both to transport drugs to the United States and to escape from the proximity of the authorities.
In his column “Don Mario’s tunnels in Teocaltiche”, published on October 9 in El Informador, journalist Jaime Barrera revealed that the narco’s passageways were discovered after a detailed review of the security and video surveillance farms.
In reality, those tunnels have been there for years. The novelty is that now they were used by organized crime to hit and run. To equip themselves and flee. That is why four video surveillance rooms have been discovered and not a single person has been arrested.
In those points, the police found galleries that connect with the main avenue of Teocaltiche, with a self-service store, with a multipurpose room and even with a stream.
Just like this: right under the nose of the City Hall. Right next to a weakened Municipal Police that today is questioned because some of its members are accomplices and consumers of crime.
The tunnels of the Sinaloa cartel are its signature, its seal. But, above all, a frank mockery of a chocolate country from which the narco can erect its castles in the air and its subway escape routes, either under a high-security prison, on the border with the United States or next to a City Hall that belongs entirely to a de facto government for which no one voted.
isaac.deloza@informador.com.mx
TEOCALTICHE, JALISCO
SINALOA CARTEL LEADERSHIP STRUCTURE IN THE HIGHLANDS OF JALISCO