September, 2017 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 89EL MENCHO Navarro says that by 2015, Sinaloa and
CJNG had reached an uneasy peace in
the city – dividing up corners, trafficking
routes and even corrupt officials, so that
they weren’t killing each other and bring-
ing down heat. (“They basically cut a trade
deal,” Mori says.) Tijuana was a microcosm
of the country as a whole: That summer,
Tomas Zerón, head of Mexico’s Agencia
de Investigación Criminal (the country’s
equivalent of the FBI), declared, “There
are only two cartels left in Mexico: Sinaloa
and CJNG.”
But a few months later, Chapo was ar-
rested. The fragile détente collapsed.
Since Chapo’s recapture in January
2016, Tijuana’s murder rate has exploded.
Last year it jumped an astonishing 36 per
cent; the city’s 910 homicides were an all-
time record. (By way of comparison, Chi-
cago had 762 homicides in 2016, and twice
the population.) Navarro’s colleague Rosa-
rio Mosso, the ZETA editor responsible for
tracking Tijuana’s murders, recalls victims
piling up as fast as she could count. “One
after another,” she says. “Hanging bod-
ies, severed heads.” This past March, the
killings hit a new monthly peak, with 121.
At its current pace, Tijuana will see more
than 1,300 murders in 2017 – another
record-shattering year.
Navarro says the situation isn’t as bad
as it was in 2008, when Sinaloa were bat-
tling the Arellano-Félix Cartel and civil-
ians were being kidnapped and murdered
in broad daylight. This time, at least so
far, the killing has mostly been confined
to Tijuana’s criminal population. “If you
look at who they’re killing, it’s drug deal-
ers,” Navarro says. “But once you’ve elimi-
nated your enemies, who’s next? Well, so-
ciety is next.”
Mosso, too, fears things will get worse
before they get better. “At this point, I be-
lieve the authorities have lost control,” she
says. “It’s not going to end until these two
groups sort out their differences, or one of
them takes over.” And she’s worried it will
be Mencho, who’s seen not as a folk hero,
but as a terrifying menace.
“CJNG have a level of violence we’ve
never seen,” says Mosso. “They set fire to
buses, or go out and kill entire villages. SoHadthewarbetween
CJNG and the military continued to es-
calate,there’sagoodchanceMencho may
have been captured or killed. Instead, he
caught a lucky break thanks to his old-
boss-turned-nemesis – El Chapo.
A federal investigator explains: “After
May 2015, Mencho had pretty much been
declared public enemy number one in Mex-
ico. But then on July 11th, what happens?
Chapo escapes. Obviously, the Mexican
government is embarrassed as hell. And
they shift all their resources back to cap-
turing Chapo. I think CJNG took that op-
portunity to re-evaluate their strategy.”
The cartel stopped ambushing police
and dialed back the violence. “They’re still
killing people,” the investigator says. “The
difference is, they’re killing their rivals.”
And right now, nowhere is this bloody
approach more apparent than in Tijuana.O
f all mexico’s drug plazas,
arguably the most valuable is Ti-
juana. Nearly all traffic into South-
ern California passes through the city, at
which point it’s an easy trip through the
western U.S. to Los Angeles, San Fran-
cisco, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, Chica-
go, or even Canada. Roughly $225 million
worth of narcotics is seized in the DEA’s
San Diego corridor each year – no doubt
just a fraction of what gets through. By that
measure, control of Tijuana could be a bil-
lion-dollar industry.
Up until a few years ago, the city was
firmly in the grip of the Sinaloa Cartel.
But starting around 2013 or so, CJNG
began to muscle their way in. According
to journalist Adela Navarro, their recruit-
ing pitch was simple: “Join us, or we’ll kill
you.” A captured cartel lieutenant who
fought against Mencho described a simi-
lar strategy: “Everyone who pushed dope
was kidnapped or killed,” the man said. “If
you were working, you started working for
him – otherwise, you’re gone.” (He went on
to add, “It’s a fucking war with no end and
no point.”)
Navarro, a striking woman with a no-
nonsense manner, is the editor of ZETA,
Tijuana’s award-winning investigative
newspaper. The paper is legendary for
taking on narcos: Its founding co-editor
Héctor Félix Miranda was murdered in
1988 for allegedly unmasking a cartel-af-
filiated businessman; his co-editor Jesús
Blancornelas was shot four times in a 1997
assassination attempt after publishing sev-
eral exposés about the Tijuana Cartel. Over
the door to the paper’s office, a cosy, cream-
coloured building on a tree-lined street in
central Tijuana, is a sign bearing ZETA’s
famous slogan: libre como el viento –
“Free Like the Wind.”people are afraid. The authorities have told
us, ‘If Jalisco takes over, then we’re all in
serious trouble.’ ”
For now, Mencho’s fortunes continue to
rise. There are signs he’s pushing deeper
into other Sinaloa-held territory, including
Baja California, Sonora and even Chapo’s
home state of Sinaloa itself. “The thing I’m
watching right now,” says Stratfor’s Stew-
art, “is the push up into Chihuahua” – the
Mexican border state that’s home to the
valuable El Paso-Juarez crossing. “Right
now, it’s kind of shared. But if [CJNG]
can shut off those plazas, cut off Sinaloa,
they can really damage their ability to
move dope.”
But there are also indications the noose
may be tightening. In December 2015,
one of Mencho’s brothers, alleged CJNG
financial boss Antonio “Tony Montana”
Oseguera, was arrested in Jalisco. CJNG’s
purported second in command – Men-
cho’s own son Rubén Oseguera Jr., a.k.a.
“Menchito” – has also been arrested and,
last December, was indicted in a U.S. fed-
eral court. Several top CJNG plaza bosses
have also been captured or killed. And in
March, Mexico agreed to extradite Men-
cho’s brother-in-law Valencia to the U.S.
under the same indictment in which Men-
cho is charged.
If Mencho were captured tomorrow, the
U.S. would likely request his extradition,
just as it did with Chapo. At that point it
would be up to Mexico whether to comply.
Mori, for one, hopes Mexico would: “There’s
this misconception among DEA agents
of, ‘I took $3 million off this guy, that’s
a big fucking deal’,” he says. “Trust me,
it’s not. That’s the cost of doing business.
The only thing these guys care about –
the only thing – is being extradited to the
United States.”
But the former DEA field agent doubts
it will ever get that far. “Mencho’s such a
killer,” he says. “I’d be sur prised if they cap -
tured him alive.”
In the meantime, says Mori, “we’re ba-
sically just searching for him”. Any op-
eration to take Mencho out is Mexico’s re-
sponsibility – the United States “can only
advise and assist, and hopefully work with
them on a bilateral operation. But suffice it
to say,” Mori continues, “at this point, we
haven’t had a lot of good opportunities to
nab him.”
Mori suspects Mencho is hiding in a re-
mote mountainous area somewhere, likely
in Jalisco or Michoacán. “I think he feels
safe and secure in that terrain he knows
well,” Mori says. “I think he’s extremely
selective about whom he talks to and with
whom he meets. I think he moves around
a lot, and I think he has near-unlimited
money and near-unlimited manpower.
And when you have those things, you can
hold out for quite a long time.”“CJNG has a level of
violence we’ve never
seen. They set fire to
buses, or go out and
kill entire villages.
People are afraid.”
[Cont. from 77]