“Morogris” for Borderland Beat (formerly “MX”)
Graphics by “HEARST”
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| Rogelio García García, alias El Roger, was also known by the code name Metro 1. He was known to have multiple aliases. Pictures of him were not available online prior to the publication of this report. |
You may have not heard of Rogelio Garcia Garcia (alias El Roger). But south of the US-Mexico border in the mid 1900s, El Roger was sought out by US and Mexican federal authorities for his role in the Gulf Cartel.
Little is known of him and few online sources cover his doings, but El Roger was an important member of the early Gulf Cartel under Osiel Cardenas, and a key player in Osiel’s consolidation as the top leader of Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas in 1999.
For this report, Borderland Beat interviewed El Roger’s family and traveled to the Mexican state of Tamaulipas to gather sources to piece together El Roger’s criminal and personal life. We hope readers enjoy reading through this newly-discovered piece of history of the early Gulf Cartel.
Early career
In the early 1990s, prior to starting his organized crime career, El Roger worked as a photojournalist for the Matamoros daily newspaper El Fronterizo. This newspaper was owned by a relative of Marte Martinez, a suspected money launderer of Gulf Cartel kingpin Juan Garcia Abrego. The job did not pay much, and he picked up an evening hustle as a bartender and security guard at Las Rocas, a bar which Marte also owned. With time he became closer to Marte and was hired as one of his bodyguards.
El Roger joined the Gulf Cartel circa 1995, a year before Gulf Cartel leader Juan Garcia Abrego was arrested and extradited to the United States. These were tumultuous times for the Gulf Cartel, which had been under the control of a dynasty for generations. With no clear leader or successor on the horizon once Garcia-Abrego was arrested, local criminal rings in Matamoros began fighting for control of the Gulf Cartel.
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Turf wars in Matamoros
The first vendetta recorded in Matamoros after Juan Garcia Abrego’s arrest occurred on 23 March 1996, when El Rafles went missing along with Mario Alberto Alanis and Mario Alberto Garcia (known collectively as Los Marios).
The killings continued and resulted in the death of Checo Gomez and his friend Francisco Pecina Montañez¹ in Valle Hermoso municipality two months later.
Near midnight on 20 August 1997, El Roger was nearly killed in a shootout in Matamoros. According to newspaper records consulted by Borderland Beat, several Gulf Cartel members met at the residence of a local drug trafficker named Jorge Omar Aguilar Gallardo (alias El Nene) to work on a truce.
El Chava Gomez and his men, including El Roger, agreed to meet with rival gang members affiliated with Matamoros drug trafficker Antonio Dávila Cruz (alias El Comandante and/or El Davila).² But the meeting did not go as planned.
When Chava Gomez and El Roger arrived at El Nene’s residence, they opened fire at El Davila’s men. El Davila, the intended target of the attack, was killed by gunfire; two members of the attacking group, El Roger’s friend El Trini and ex-police officer Meliton Montalvo Medina, were killed by El Davila’s gunmen.
Multiple of El Davila’s men were injured and taken into custody once responding police officers arrived at the scene, including his right-hand man Gudelio Campos Gonzalez (alias El Indio), Joel Alejandro Bermúdez Gonzalez, Ricardo Garza, Arturo Cuello, and Gerardo Campos Garcia.
El Roger, however, managed to escaped unharmed.
With time, he gain the trust of other members of the Gulf Cartel and climbed through the leadership ranks under El Chava Gomez’s group. By 1996 El Roger he was the third-in-command under Roberto Torres Martinez (alias El Muertero), one of Chava Gomez’s most trusted lieutenants.
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| Osiel Cárdenas Guillén became the top leader of the Gulf Cartel in 1999. El Roger worked under him, but both of them began to have disagreements once El Roger expressed interest in retiring from day-to-day operations |
El Roger’s Ascension
As covered in a previous throwback series by Borderland Beat, the first inner circle of Los Metros was formed by El Roger and members of the Tamaulipas State Police and the Matamoros Municipal Police around 1996. This was around the time that Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen had moved back to Matamoros after working as a police officer in Miguel Alemán.
Although El Roger was never a police officer, he was able to consolidate himself as a founding member of Los Metros due to his business acumen and underworld connections.
Through El Chava Gomez, El Roger met Osiel Cardenas and both quickly got along well. By 1999, El Roger decided to leave El Chava’s group and form his own ring. El Chava did not support El Roger’s decision and gave out the order to murder him. El Roger left Matamoros and sought refuge in Monterrey with Osiel Cardenas’s help.
In an unprecedented turn of events, Osiel Cardenas killed El Chava in 1999, earning his notorious alias El Mata Amigos (The Friend Killer). This consolidated him as the top leader of the Gulf Cartel. El Roger would become the second-in-command under Osiel Cardenas soon thereafter.
Downfall and betrayal
El Roger reportedly worked as one of the plaza bosses in Reynosa and Matamoros. His problems started, however, when Osiel Cardenas began to distrust him.
The exact reasons for his fallout with Osiel are unclear, but El Roger’s family told Borderland Beat that El Roger’s problems with Osiel started when El Roger express interest of “retiring” from the Gulf Cartel. El Roger had already made a fortune during his tenure and wanted to simply move drugs across the border, pay his dues, and no longer be involved in murder.
Osiel Cardenas, however, opposed El Roger’s decision to retire from the day-to-day operations. Both often got into heated discussions, to the point where El Roger would no longer answer Osiel’s phone calls. This angered Osiel, who was known for his paranoia and short temperament.
One of El Roger’s henchmen, Juan Carlos de la Cruz Reyna (alias El JC and/or Tango 36), was secretly working as an informant for Osiel Cardenas. El JC would inform him of El Roger’s drug contacts, his purchases, his whereabouts, the money he made in his plazas, and what he said when Osiel was not around.
A few days before El Roger was killed, a man known as Chuy Espino (alias Comandante Negro) stopped by at El Roger’s house to tell him that Osiel Cardenas was planning to kill him. El Roger did not believe him, and due to the previous disagreements that El Roger had with Chuy Espino, he kicked him out of his house.
Osiel Cardenas later called El Roger and told him that he wanted to work out a truce.
“Let’s be business partners and equally divide our earnings”, Osiel told El Roger, who agreed.
Osiel asked El Roger to look for an available safe house in Matamoros to coordinate a drug delivery. He told him that they would meet there to talk about the peace agreement and new partnership.³
El Roger organized a large party for Osiel in a quinta (estate) near Seccion 16 neighborhood that was known as Punto Caballo (Horse Point). All of Osiel’s top lieutenants attended the party, including some of El Roger’s business partners and family members.
During the evening Hector Manuel Sauceda Gamboa (alias El Karis and/or El Caris) approached El Roger and told him that he overheard several Zetas members at the restroom saying that they wanted to kill him that evening, but that they decided not to because there were too many people at the party.
“We were going to kill [El Roger] today, but a lot of people came to the party. Tomorrow is better”, El Karis told El Roger, quoting exactly what he heard.
But El Roger ignored the warning.
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Death
The next morning, on 20 May 2002, El Roger went home and took a shower before heading to a meeting with Osiel. This was the last time most of his family saw him alive.
He headed to the meeting with his brother Roberto Carlos Garcia Garcia (alias El Titino) and his nephew Roberto Vega Garcia (alias Beto Vega). El Roger wanted to go to the meeting alone, but his brother and nephew told him that they would go with him. They drove El Roger’s Black Grand Marquis and headed to the house near the Middle School La Técnica 4. When they arrived, El Roger got off the vehicle while El Titino and Beto Vega waited inside.
As soon as El Roger walked into the house, he was shot dead with a bullet through his head by El JC, who was waiting for him at the door. Beto Vega and El Titino were hearing music inside the vehicle but heard a gunshot coming from inside the house.
Then they saw El JC, Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez (alias El Coss) and Victor Manuel Vazquez Mireles (alias El Memeloco) walk out of the door while other Zetas gunmen came out from the adjacent houses. The men did not notice that El Titino and Beto Vega were inside the vehicle because it had tinted windows. But when one of the gunmen opened the passenger door, they killed El Titino while he was surrendered on the ground.
Beto Vega managed to kill El Titino’s murderer and barely escaped the incident alive. He was shot three times on his leg and buttocks while jumping across the fence of a nearby school. He played dead for several hours before calling his family and fleeing to the United States. The Gulf Cartel found out he was alive and wanted him dead to cover up the incident. Beto Vega never returned to Matamoros.
El Roger’s wife received a phone call that morning from an unknown individual confirming that her husband had been murdered and that they had taken his body to an undisclosed location.
Investigators were never able to locate El Roger’s body. But protected witness Francisco Alberto Vázquez Guzmán (codename Rufino) told federal agents that El Roger’s and El Titino’s bodies were burned at a cartel camp owned by El Memeloco known as Punto Milpa.⁴
¹ Other offline sources refer to him as Francisco Pecina Montaño