The Fight for the Golden Triangle

The Fight for the Golden Triangle

The commandos dropped from Chihuahua but bring Sonoran connections. They belong, according to confidential police reports, to the triad formed by the Beltran Leyva and Carrillo-Zetas coming to dispute the Sinaloa cartel's control of the production areas for ​​marijuana and poppy that are the richest in Mexico.

Malova was elected as an option for change. During the campaign, his speech focused on two issues: insecurity and corruption. A year and four months after assuming the governorship, the administration of Mario López Valdez has not only committed gross acts of corruption through purchases without bidding, payment of "fees" to employers who supported and privileges for the "friends" . Neither could he solve the serious problem of insecurity that afflicts the state for decades.

Here are the numbers. Last year, the first of his administration, there were 1914 intentional homicides-an average of 5.24 daily crimes-and in the first four months of 2012 , 511 murders have been committed.

Dozens of police have come under fire and the drug cartels have increased the femicides, vehicle theft, rape, theft from shops ...

The change is now, read his main campaign slogan. But the change did not come. The violence stems a day in the north and one in the south, or in the center, on the coast or in the mountains.

Last week was brutal. Only two events, one in the Sierra de Choix, upstate and one in Estacion Bamoa, Guasave, officially there were 36 dead, including three soldiers and a policeman.

But the governor says that criminal violence is a reaction to government actions.

A command comes from Chihuahua

One night before Friday April 27 when he began a battle in the town of Choix, near the Golden Triangle, which so far has left 23 dead according to official count, the villagers began to be reported to each other via cell or radial, the arrival of a "force the government" to the area.

It was believed, according to testimony gathered by Ríodoce, that the operation belonged to the Joint Urban Operations Bases (Bomu), preventive task force composed of soldiers, federal police, state and city in Sinaloa and came into vogue during the administration of Jesus Aguilar Padilla (2005-2010).

But it was not and still no one can explain where the convoy entered the mountains of Sinaloa, now divided between groups that previously were of the same clan.

Confidential reports of corporations assume that they did from Chihuahua and on two fronts, the towns of Urique and / or Morelos, to the region of Bacayopa, Choix.

The goal, according to the same reports, was to attack the rancho of El Potrero Fierro, where they aimed to eliminate Adelmo Núñez Molina, known by the nicknames of Lemo, the Lord or the 01, and that after the murder of Mario Bejarano Sepulveda, and cousins ​ Narciso Chavez Cleotilde Sagaste Sagaste Cabrera (15 February 2012, The Pichol, Choix) reaffirmed as the foreman of production of narcotics for the Sinaloa cartel.

The fact is that being in the Potrero de los Fierro Bacayopa various criminal cells met the Mexican army and there began the morning of Saturday 28 April, one of the bloodiest clashes that have occurred in Sinaloa in recent memory, which to date has yielded 23 dead, including a soldier and a municipal police officer.

Old scores

The main hypothesis of the police forces is that the attack was allegedly perpetrated by the triad formed by the Beltran Leyva brothers-Carrillo-Zetas, to control the main sources of marijuana and opium gum in the area.

According to narcomensajes left at least two dozen executions and beheadings, of which the military has taken due note, from 2010 to the most recent Good Friday, 2012 Núñez Molina Adelmo has been targeted by the alliance of the Beltran Leyva brothers because they considered him a traitor to Alfredo Beltran Leyva, the Mochomo, who pledged allegiance after the boss had given him all the support before being apprehended in January 2008.

It is not the only criticism that Lemo's clan switched sides, as Fausto Meza Isidro Flores,el Chapo Isidro, head of the Mazatlecos and maintaining control of illegal activities in the municipalities of Ahome, Guasave and a region of El Fuerte, Sinaloa, claims that Lemo attempted to assassinate him on the beach Las Glorias, Guasave, in April 2012.

It even warned in coldblooded narcomensajes his accomplices left: the Salazars betray him and join him to take control in the Golden Triangle.

In late April 2012, and after an operation of federal and state police forces that caused the collapse of the command Bravo, which operates for Mazatlecos in El Carrizo, Ahome, Sinaloa, two members of this group, Edgar Padilla Rabago, alias Masiaquita Duarte and Francisco Rosario, aka Chayo Loco, said they had co-opted people of Sonora and gaining ground and positioning in that state. They referred to members as the Salazars, although they were not identified.

According to military intelligence reports, the conflict that led to the war in Choix is ​​the production of marijuana and its transfer via Nogales, Sonora, with the approval of Adam Salazar Zamorano, held in Queretaro on February 5, 2011.

Under camouflage

Taken by surprise, ranchers were not opposed to trespassing their territory. However, after the passage of some hours, the locals were watching the mistakes of the command of "government" that had arrived in vans cloned from state and federal police.

They noted that under the camouflage was hidden denim and the flag of the sleeves and breasts were not the national flag, in addition to the armaments carried were not the conventional weapons carried by federal police, but characteristic of drug hitmen: rifles AR-15 and AK-47.

Then they sounded the alarm and organized the defense of the area, with war breaking out on Friday night April 27 from residents who operate for the Sinaloa cartel and the group that had just arrived.

Entrenched in the hills and gorges, they ambushed them, forcing outsiders to scatter, although several were left there. In the shootout, warring civil groups called in by phone were told of the shooting, rushing to the rescue of the private military force and police patrols.

The command was thus caught in the crossfire, deciding to fight against security forces in a place known as San Simón Potrero de los Fierro. In the first skirmish preventive police Héctor Ruiz Germain Villas was killed.

The army sent reinforcements. In the counter narco, co-pilot of a military helicopter was shot down and died. Then the military offensive was increased from Chinobampo, El Fuerte, to Yecorato, Puerto Las Casas Viejas and Tatemas, forcing the gunmen to go back to the mountains.

At 06:00 am on Saturday 28, the soldiers spotted what appear to be three patrols: a military Hummer, a pick-up of the Federal Preventive Police and other State Preventive Police. These turned out to be cloned and armored. That day, elements of the army killed at least four suspects in the Potrero de San Simon Fierro.

One day later, on 29, nine civilians fell to confront armed soldiers near the Mimbres village, also in Choix. On Tuesday May 1 seven bodies were brought down from the Sierra.

The military reported to the Sub "C" of Criminal Procedure of the PGR also patrol found two rifles cloned Barrett 50-caliber machine gun, 15 AK-47 rifles, an AR-15 rifle, eight guns, 118 magazines and 5,823 useful cartridges.

The shooting continued until Wednesday, killing according to official preliminary investigation 4/2012, 21 people, including 19 civilians and four injured unknowns: two soldiers and two municipalities. The attorney general said the dead numbered 23.

However, according to the locals, there are still several bodies hidden in hillsides and ravines by rugged terrain can not be rescued.

Operations task of the military forces have retreated to the command to San Vicente, Chihuahua. In his escape, the gunmen have shot individuals have taken hostages, stripped and robbed food units.

The Justice Department said Friday that most of the men who died in the shooting of senior military in uniform type and at least four were from the states of Sonora and Chihuahua.

From Choix are 19 offenders, four of them located on Saturday April 28, five on Sunday April 29th, four on Monday April 30 and six on Wednesday May 2, all dressed in military camouflage uniform with similarity."

Were identified Leopoldo Hemeterio, Rabago Espinoza, residing in Palomas, Chihuahua, Ramon Samaniego Ruperto Rodriguez, Navojoa, Sonora, Ignacio Aguirre Boguén also Navojoa and Alfonso Chavez Chaparro, 22, originally from Cascate Morelos, Chihuahua.

This is not new: mayor

Juan Carlos Estrada, mayor of Choix, acknowledged what the top of the Sierra is facing. Criminal groups who are fighting for the planting of narcotics fight inch by inch.

"We will not hide, because this has been our history. It is not a new phenomenon, dating back decades and whose combat and solution is the responsibility of the federal government. "

"What is surprising now is the intensity of armed conflict where civilians are in the middle."

Estrada said that as a municipal authority he shall ensure the tranquility of the town, but left to the federal government to combat organized crime activities.

He acknowledged that a week of fighting caused mountain villages to be abandoned and that some services are temporarily suspended. "They are not going to leave, because once the situation is conducive social assistance will be needed.


Bamoa the fire that spreads

Sinaloa had not yet digested the news about the fighting in Choix, when Wednesday 2 May violence broke out in a village of just 6,000 inhabitants, where 80 percent of the business is concentrated on one street.

Ten gunmen and two soldiers were killed in a clash that lasted two hours and began when the military were passing in front of a motel where gunmen were staying. Three other military members were injured.

The facts

It was dawn when the Señora prepared to raise the curtains of her business, located in the heart of Estacion Bamoa, an ancient community guasavense that in recent years was held by the Beltran Leyva brothers, now in alliance with the Carrillo Fuentes and Zetas.

As much as she was pushing to raise the curtain, the shopkeeper could not move it an inch. When she got it to upload, the first thing she saw was a black boot, a pair of green camouflage and the barrel of a FAL. And then a voice imperative: Tuck and lock yourself!

She was then ignored, not knowing that out, a few millimeters of her face, the soldier crouched in the wall and pointed to the hotel Macurín. A minute later it seemed that the town was going to explode.

She was petrified. Her daughter, of two years, also froze, clutching her leg. Agonizingly long seconds passed before they took refuge in a room at the end of the building. The same happened with other merchants in the area located on the corner of Jesus Garcia and Benito Juarez.

And after the initial shock and after two hours of prayer as God gave them to understand, in his words, tenants poked their heads and saw the wreckage, walls and glass punctured by bullets, a van on fire, bodies lying in the street. And felt the pervasive plague of burning flesh, the smell of gunpowder, police and soldiers running to and fro. Dozens of patrol of all corporations.

Their future, they said, had been truncated. Years of effort went up in smoke in two hours of hell.

Outside, a soldier explained that the shootings and deaths were the result of an anonymous call, which revealed that at the hotel Macurín, armed men were stationed.

Upon arrival, he said, the soldiers were greeted with bullets, wounding five, of whom two died later.

When the soldiers repelled the attack, one of the civilians tried to escape in a Ford Lobo but was shot several times. The truck hit a Telefonos de Mexico pole, and caught on fire. The stranger's body was compressed to only about half a meter trunk height. A shapeless mass of charred flesh and bones was steaming on the irons twisted the cab between the front seats. The fire wiped the face of the skull and ashes became arms and lower extremities from the hip. He was unrecognizable.

The surviving gunmen, ten in total, barricaded themselves on a rooftop and others in hotel rooms, extending the contest for two hours. Were resting when they were surprised by the soldiers and sudden death.

The firefights forced the suspension of classes and of all activity in Bamoa. Traffic was suspened on the road from Guasave to Sinaloa. The roads to Palos Blanco, Maquipo, Leon Fonseca and Bamoa Village were closed to traffic.

Dozens of patrol were placed as barricades and some of them served as trenches. Residents were hostages in their own homes.

After the emergency passed, the dead were identified as a cell of gunmen in the service of Faust Isidro Meza Flores, El Chapo Isidro, and was led by former police preventive Omar Montoya Adrian Rubio, Chonte, and excompañeros, Oscar Manuel Montoya Lopez, Carlos Daniel Velasquez Terrace, Oak Juvenal Perez, José Alberto Fonseca and Luis Enrique Rocha Leon Leyva, 42, resident of Balbuena, Navolato.

The city police had been from Guasave.

Also killed Jose Leonardo Lopez Murillo, Luis Saenz and Jesus Gamez, as recorded in the investigation 21/2012 which is still in the Direction of Previous Inquiries in Culiacan.

In the shooting there were no survivors. All the gunmen were killed.

On site, the Federal prosecutors and prosecutors of the civil courts seized 14 rifles Barret including two, four pistols, 84 magazines and 600 rounds thousand, four vehicles (two shielded), uniforms and tactical gear.

After the surprise, the State Ministerial Police seized 13 municipal police officers assigned to transitions from the receivership surveillance of Bamoa, and the next day they were released by the prosecutor of the civil courts after testimony.

Among those arrested were also three civilians, one Araux Omar, deputy director of city sports for Guasave, and several hotel employees at Macurín, where the gunmen had taken refuge on Wednesday during the confrontation.

They were released the next day at no charge.

The arrest had caused a riot among police agents, who turned in their guns in protest and only resumed work on the condition that their comrades were released.

They claimed that when a state police commander is murdered, even in front of the unit he was assigned to and full of subordinates, no one is apprehended, either as witnesses or accomplices of the crime. They referred to the murder of Major Ivan Felix Palazuelos, head of the Ministerial Police in Guasave, shot three days before he arrived at his offices in the county seat.

No authority could claim that the shootings were connected with Choix or Bamoa. The attorney general of the state of Sinaloa, Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez, merely counting deaths and cartridges, arms seized, but did not advance any line of investigation into these events.

While Gov. Mario Lopez Valdez denied that armed clashes are a result of the state losing control of the mountains and valleys, as the government remains. By contrast, he said, these are reactions to criminal actions that the Government has been waging against organized crime. And in response to the armed provocations, Malova offered a renewed Operation Condor.

Lopez Valdez said that the operations will be deployed in San Ignacio, Badiraguato, Concordia and the municipality of Sinaloa, where the three levels of government will work to restore security required by people who inhabit the mountain areas of these towns.

Has collected

Military sources reported that they had gone to Estacion Bamoa after receiving an anonymous call that warned of the presence of armed men in a motel in town. True or not, the result of the confrontation was a pay back to the same criminal group that on the night of Jan. 29 ambushed an army patrol in the center of Guasave and killed three of its members.

Days after these events, the Mexican army announced the withdrawal of the Burrion a roadblock that had been installed months ago before the waves of violence that did not stop in the region. After the events of Bamoa, the checkpoint was re-installed.


Chronology

April 27: Armed factions fight at Potrero de Los Fierro, Choix.
April 28: soldiers kill four armed civilians in San Simon, Potrero de los Fierro, while a policeman and a soldier are killed.
April 29: nine armed civilians are killed by soldiers in Mimbres, Choix.
May 1: seven bodies are brought down from Sierra de Choix.
May 2: eleven suspected gunmen killed two soldiers at Estacion Bamoa, Guasave.

http://www.riodoce.com.mx/content/view/13453/

Sweet article. Was curious about finding out more of what happened. Sounds like the Beltran/zeta/carillos were basically running for their life.