Updates from Tijuana

Updates from Tijuana

There has been no violent, cinematic aftermath in the wake of the arrest of El Inge, the fallen heir to the Arellano Felix name.  Fernando Sanchez Arellano went quietly into the night, headed for Mexico City, confirming to authorities it was Chino Antrax who killed his uncle, Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix, and refusing to cooperate further.  

The plaza of Tijuana has no true owner, loose groups and cells continue to push north, control, and spill blood for  the retail drug sale zones in the city, from Zona Norte, to Rosarito.  Names float through the pages of Zeta, corridos  played on both sides of the border, and in posters hanging in the border crossings.  Sinaloa this, CAF that, Los Cabelleros Templarios, CJNG, those

who operate independently, no one knows anymore.

The bodies pile up, in the streets of Eastern Tijuana, back alleys of Rosarito, Zona Norte, Zone Centro. Duct taped hands, wrapped in twine, sheets, blankets, blindfolds, signs of torture, bullets to the head, narco messages quickly scrawled on paper cheaper then the lives of the bodies they are pinned too. Variants on a theme of death, vengeance, business, and power.  People are taken from nightclubs, shot up in restaurants, and it call continues.  The stories make the paper, or the chismes whispered in Tijuana, and shouted in San Diego.  

Plaza bosses get executed for not leaving the city in a timely fashion, Inge goes down, La Rana comes back, no one knows anything.  Three men are found executed in a van, left running.  No one knows, but everybody does.

 The brothers of El Mono, Roberto Toscano Carlos Rodriguez, and Antonio Rodriguez, El Shrek and El Twi are arrested with guns and drugs.  El Mono is Luis Manuel Toscano, CAF's longtime strong hand in the Zona Norte, who has survived assassination attempts, and multiple arrests.  The drugs are sold as usual in bars like Hong Kong, where the sex trade thrives, and in nameless, faceless tienditas lining the streets, vendors old and young sell their wares, tiendero's sell theirs.

An alleged high ranking Caballeros Templarios leader is arrested in Playas de Tijuana, amidst reports of  masked gunmen checking cars as they entered the area.  Juan Carlos Alamaza Mendoza 'El Pillo', on the run from Michoacan, was hiding as a contractor, since late last year.  Allegedly he was planning to organize a cell in the city, his time in the city was financed by CT upper management.   Two months or so back, a man was found murdered with a note mocking the Michocanos who don't pay their piso.  

El Wacho and El Tavo are arrested in a Taxi Libre, carrying 10 wraps of heroin and a revolver, allegedly en route to kill El Danny, on the orders of La Rana.  The names are almost irrelevant, the drug addled pistoleros do not know why they kill, or whom they kill for, only who to kill.

  A large picture is not usually realized by those who kill and die in the war for Tijuana's retailed rug trade.  It is barely realized by us.  We can compile the names of the killed, or the killers, the make and model of the car, carefully count the amount of drugs and the way they are packaged, the markings on the kilos, the wraps on the bales, it's only tenuously real to us.  Only real to the ones whose husbands don't come home, or whose children are killed, brothers and sisters separated, high caliber weapon shells and toast of blood and whiskey, welcome to Tijuana. 

Sources: Zeta Tijuana, AFN Tijuana