San Diego: Sajid Emilio Quintero Navidad "El Cadete" pleads guilty, a legend dies.

El Cadete pleads guilty 

For years his name was barely above a whisper, in the corridos they play in Sonora, in cities and small towns across the state.  They knew Cadete's name in the mountains, the hills of Tubutama, Sonora, where in June 2010, a running gunfight and ambush, was a full scale battle for control of the region.  

Cracked glass and bloody suburban car seats, X painted onto the windows, men died with rifles in their hands, under the Sonoran desert sun, the body count was said to be 50.  It was probably more.  Gunmen threw the fallen into trucks and cars, corpses, evidence, and buried them in the hills they were defending.  The hills still belonged to the Beltran's after that day.  Maybe they still do.

They knew Cadete's name in Ciudad Obregon, way down in Sonora, on the border of Sinaloa.  Obregon, known from the days of Amado Carillo Fuentes, and the old guard of narco traffickers.  They say Cadete gave the order on Tito Torbellino, a singer executed in early 2014, as Cadete's faction went after Los Salazar, a longtime family allied with Sinaloa.  Adan Salazar Ramirez, son of Don Adan, 48, was dropped off, dead, in front of a funeral parlor in Navojoa, Sonora in May 2016.

In August 2014 Quintero Navidad was listed by the United States by the OFAC as a kingpin and major trafficker.  Charts and graphs illustrated his network, and any businesses were banned from engaging in commerce with the US.  In this world, when you end up on the OFAC blacklist, your days are likely numbered.  There is a federal indictment waiting for you, if you are picked up in Mexico. 

But, Quintero Navidad, didn't fall.  He is a cousin of Rafael Caro Quintero, who a year earlier in August 2013 was released from a Mexican prison.  The US demands his capture.  Quintero Navidad is said to be of the alliance between Beltran-Leyvas, of whom no brothers who bare the family name are free, and Caro Quintero. 

Caro's own alliances are ever shifting and hard to decide, it depends on who you believe.  Some say Caro Quintero along with Tito Beltran, Damaso Lopez, and CJNG, were in an alliance, whose power move was the kidnapping of Ivan Archivaldo and Alfredo Guzman, a sweaty summer night in August 2016.  Gunmen some dressed in shorts, and wearing sandals, carrying long rifles, rushed La Leche, during a birthday celebration and escorted the Guzman brothers to waiting SUV's. 

Caro's self published interview, in a small house in the mountains of Sinaloa, says he, Mayo, and Chapo Guzman are friends, and he is retired, and wishes them no harm, only to be free, having paid his debt.  The US doesn't believe this, and places Caro Quintero at the head of a vast money laundering and drug trafficking network, centered on dozens of real estate and businesses in Jalisco. 

Last summer, the same month Damaso Lopez Serrano, Mini Lic, turned himself into federal officials in Calexico, Chapo Trini Olivas, the partner of Quintero Navidad was eating in Zapopan, Jalisco, hot dogs and tacos Sonora style.  Trinidad Olivas Valenzuela, had been a wanted man for years in Sonora, where he allegedly ordered and sanctioned dozens and dozens of killings, warring with rival factions, backed most often by Sinaloa.  It was said Chapo Trini was independent.  But, he answered to someone.  

That night, under the lights and smell of roasting beef, and hot dogs, gunmen arriving in an X6 and Mercedes Benz, executed Chapo Trini, his wife and young daughter, 7, were shot, but survived.  El Chapo Trini's name had been hot,  appearing on banners in Sonora, called a murderer, linking him to Navidad Quintero, alleging his responsibility in massacres, the killing of Tito Torbellino. 

Months later, in October 2017, El Cadete, 36 years old, stepped from the shadows of corridos and narco mantas into the light, and turned himself in at the San Ysidro point of entry, in Tijuana.  He was brought to San Diego, on a number of trafficking charges, conspiracy to import, conspiracy to distribute upon importation, and money laundering conspiracy.  The indictment links him to the Rafael Caro Quintero trafficking group, and the Beltran-Leyva trafficking network.  Also, links him to Mayo Zambada.  

He pleaded guilty today, to all charges, the same as Damaso Lopez Serrano, last month.  He faces decades in prison.  But, this may not be his fate.  Only time and after many sentencing delays will this be known.  Some secrets may never make it out of the rooms in the MCC, some may.  His uncle is still a fugitive, which burns the insides of federal law enforcement.

He is again in the company of similar men, some younger, perhaps less serious, than the elusive Sonoran traffickers, who never posted on instagram, or opened a Twitter again.  They spoke with bullets and executions, tit for tat killings, blood splayed all over concrete, faces of hardened men, who made their fortunes in Sonora.

Sonora remains a battlefield, of feuding warlords, who answer to their bosses, relatives, cousins, uncles, further south. Sometimes anyway.  Clans of families who have trafficked across the Sonoran border for 60 years remain in power.  

El Cadete becomes another legend to die, or to become real.  He will serve out his sentence, and likely never return to the mountains of Sonora, or the luxury of Mexico City.  They may still play his songs, every so often, and not in the wrong place.  But among friends and those sympathetic, they will toast, and play his song.  Finish their drinks.  

Sources: US Attorneys Office Southern District of California Press Release