Puerto Vallarta (PVDN) – A group of drug traffickers known as ‘Los Escorpiones’, one of many splinters of the Gulf Cartel, confessed that its gunmen had murdered two of the four American tourists kidnapped in Matamoros a few days ago. In an unusual way, this cell handed over those who it says are responsible for these events and asked society for forgiveness through a letter.
“We have decided to hand over those directly involved… who at all times acted on their own decision and lack of discipline,” the message reads.
While this message is unusual, the killings of American tourists and immigrants along Mexico’s northern border are not. Several of these crimes have been perpetrated by violent criminal organizations that are mainly engaged in drug trafficking.
In fact, more than half of the 225 homicides of US citizens that have occurred in Mexico since January 2019 have been in border towns that have a high influx of visitors from the United States, seeking low-cost cosmetic surgeries, nightlife, and the typical gastronomy.
In recent years, at least 122 Americans have lost their lives violently in Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, Matamoros, Nuevo Laredo, Mexicali, Ojinaga, Nogales, San Luis Río Colorado, Piedras Negras, and other places near the border, according to data provided by the US State Department.
In all these towns there are factions of the Sinaloa, Jalisco Nueva Generación, Juárez, Gulf, Los Zetas, and Northeast cartels. Its operators control a wide menu of illicit activities, including lucrative migrant smuggling, sex trafficking, extortion of local businesses, fuel theft, kidnapping, and the sale of firearms.
Some of these areas have been the scene of territorial struggles for more than a decade.
Since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took power in December 2018, at least 37 Americans have been killed in Tijuana and another 31 in Ciudad Juárez.
A total of 14 crimes occurred in the main tourist destinations in Mexico: Cancun, Mazatlán, Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco, Puerto Morelos, Playa del Carmen, La Paz, and Cabo San Lucas.
Tamaulipas is one of the six Mexican states to which the State Department advises its nationals not to travel “due to crime and kidnappings.”
That warning was not heeded by the four Americans who crossed into Matamoros from Texas so that a woman in the group could have cosmetic surgery. Around noon on Friday, March 3, they were shot in downtown Matamoros and then forced into a van.
The kidnapping generated an intense search, in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) participated until they found two tourists dead, another injured, and one more unharmed.
For these crimes, the authorities are targeting “Los Escorpiones,” a group made up of former police officers and soldiers who protected Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén, alias “Tony Tormenta,” who was head of the Gulf Cartel until his death in 2010.
Now it operates in Matamoros and it is believed that his hitmen thought that the Americans were enemies who had arrived in the city when armed confrontations were taking place.
Before that incident, two other Americans were killed in Matamoros in March 2019 and in April 2021, according to official information.
“Organized crime activity – which includes shootings, murders, armed robberies, vehicle thefts, kidnappings, forced disappearances, extortion, and sexual assaults – is common along the northern border and in Ciudad Victoria,” the State Department says about Tamaulipas.
“Criminal groups target public and private passenger buses, as well as cars that travel through Tamaulipas, often taking passengers and demanding ransom payments,” it adds.
What is considered the most dangerous place for Americans, Tijuana, is being disputed by cells from the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels and the remnants of the Arellano Félix clan, according to reports.
In recent times, a group from the Sinaloa cartel has been “the main generator of violence and murders” that have occurred in that city, the Baja California Prosecutor’s Office said when arresting the leader of the gang, Luis Adán, alias ‘El 500’ on Tuesday.
This capo and his 17 gunmen have committed more than 35 homicides, including an armed attack against a state investigative agent who died this week.
A few years ago, the Department of Justice (DOJ) affirmed that a cell of the Jalisco Cartel known as ‘Los Cabos’ had spread terror in neighborhoods of Tijuana and considered it responsible for more than 150 registered crimes in just six months.
Two of his victims are Christopher Alexis Gomez, 17, a football player and student at O’Farrell High School in San Diego, California; and Juan Suárez Ojeda, 18, who had graduated from Ingenuity Charter School, in the same city.
They crossed the border at the end of 2018 to visit a friend. The three of them went to Ensenada to eat and, when they were sleeping in an apartment in Tijuana, armed men arrived. They were forcibly removed from the house, kneed down, and shot in the head.
“The bloody reign of terror of ‘Los Cabos’ included the murder of two teenage US citizens in Tijuana,” said a statement from the Southern District of California of the US Attorney’s Office.
“’Los Cabos’ allegedly used unrestrained violence to ensure that the CJNG maintained the ability to traffic drugs through Tijuana,” the agency warns.
On the list of Americans riddled with drug trafficking are nine members of a fundamentalist Mormon community. These are three women and six children massacred in 2019 upon arrival in Bavispe, in the Sierra de Sonora.
They were traveling in a caravan from Arizona to their homes when they were ambushed and shot. The investigation shows that hitmen from ‘La Línea’, which is part of the Juárez Cartel, were ordered to shoot those who passed through that territory, in dispute with the Sinaloa Cartel.
To date, the Mexican authorities have arrested more than 30 people related to ‘La Línea’.
In an unprecedented case, a North Dakota judge ordered in mid-2022 that Vicente Carrillo Fuentes and the cartel he inherited after the death of his brother, a drug trafficker nicknamed “El Señor de los Cielos,” pay $4.6 billion to the relatives of the Bavispe massacre.
The beneficiaries are the Miller, Johnson, Langford, and Ray families, who sued them in 2020.
“Cartel members approached the vehicle after the attack began and fired at them from closer range, as evidenced by bullet casings located near and around the vehicle,” details a document written by Judge Clare R. Hochhalter.
The magistrate described that members of the LeBarón family had to remove the remains of his sister Rhonita and her nephews “piece by piece”, clean up the debris and prepare the burials. “The smells and what they saw because of this cannot and will never be forgotten,” concludes the judge.
Vicente Carrillo was sentenced to 28 years in prison for drug trafficking in 2021 and is serving his sentence in a maximum security prison in Mexico. The US government requests that he be extradited.
In Puerto Vallarta, it has been years since a reported murder of an American in the city, however, it is all too common for American and Canadian tourists to be reported missing with Puerto Vallarta being the last place seen alive.
Puerto Vallarta (PVDN) - 225 Americans have been killed in Mexico since 2019, according to US State Department records. Nearly half have been in border states . . .
