Los Aquiles untouchable by Authorities

Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Zetatijuana article

Subject Matter: Los Aquiles, Baja California
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required

According to authorities in the Security Counsel, the head criminals, integrated into the violent cell of the Sinaloa Cartel, Los Aquiles, are 23 in number, of which five, of the third and fourth level, are detained, one was assassinated, three have detention orders and 18 have impunity.

Reporter: Zeta Investigations
There is an organogram that identifies 23 persons.

There is a criminal cell called Los Aquiles headed by Alfonso Arzate Gracia and his brother Rene. The photographs, the names, the details of their members, all are known to the Operational
Forces of The State Council for Security of Baja California.

In the list appear 22 men and 1 woman, only in the case of one of them, is there no photo as he has never been detained.




According to information of the authorities, all of the cell members of Los Aquiles are responsible for homicides, kidnapping, transit of drugs from Mexico to the United States and sale of drugs to drug dealers in Baja California towns, principally in the coastal zone.

The rise of these criminals on the criminal scale has been rapid, and has been based on the quantity of homicides that they are free to commit. " By daring", a high ranking Security official responded to Zeta, at the time forming his fingers into a a gun with a firing motion- when asked why it was that Raul Miranda Ordaz "El Alejo", a car thief in 2010, converted into the armed wing of the Sinaloa Cartel group identified as "Los Aquiles" in 2015. (Otis: Arturo Beltran Leyva started off as a car thief, so the question is moot).

After revising the systems of information of the prosecutors, Zeta was informed that up until today, only three members of this cell have orders of apprehension against them.

The leader Alfonso Arzate has one pending for kidnapping and his second level bosses, Alfonso Lopez Rodriguez "El Chino" and Dalia Rodelo "La Prima", for their participation in the assassination of the Director of the Institute for Sport, Arturo Hachadur Kaloyan in December of 2013.

Traffickers and killers

Another member, Gonzalo Javier Rivera Camarena was riddled in a double homicide that occurred on 19th of August of 2015 inside a Pizzaria in a commercial plaza, located in the North Zone of Tijuana, and five more are detained for various homicides: Moises Martinez "El Saico", Jesus Arellano Hernandez "El Negro", Gerardo Guizar "El Rulas", Jose Arias Medina "El Sotol" and Lucre Cerda Pacheco "El Cuate Malo".

The 18 with Impunity

Starting with the Arzate Garcia brothers, according to local authorities, abandoned the State months ago, but they control the trafficking from various locations in Sinaloa and Jalisco.

The brothers Alfonso and Rene also have properties in their name in Tijuana, which were exchanged or given as a donation to their wives, so they may be protected in case of assurances.

In one document, one could know that "El Aquiles" and his wife made these administrative processes from Mazatlan. Meanwhile the official partner of "La Rana", lives in Tijuana and has a series of businesses in commercial plazas of the city.

As for the leaders of the second level, authorities have identified 8:

*Raul Miranda Ordaz "El Alejo"

*Julian Alfonso Lopez Rodriguez "El Chino"

*Dalia Rodelo "La Prima"

*Leonardo Pena Peralta "El Turbo"

*Victor Miguel Aguirre Saenz/ Victor Manuel Aguirre Saenz "El Dorado"

*Pedro Abelardo Arzate Garcia "El Mostro"

*Juan Jose Perez Vargas "El Piolin"/ "El JP"

*Eduardo Gutierrez Sandoval "El Barny"/"El Gordo".

Of these eight, the only one the authorities have no identified physically is Gutierrez Sandoval, who they have proportioned information in respect of his criminal activities, from the State and Municipal Police - their criminal servants that have been arrested and liberated are: Baltazar Ocho Fierro "El Balta", Victor Hugo Mejia Lopez "El Griego" and the newly captured one Marco Carrillo Grande "El Marlon", (Otis: see link to article on his capture by BB reporter J).

"El Alejo", thief to Cell Boss

Mentioned as the intellectual author of the quadruple homicide  in El Palenque Poker of Ensenada, on 23rd of January 2016, and of homicide and intent to kill various traffickers from the Cartel Arellano Felix in Tijuana, Ensenada and Rosarito, Raul Miranda Ortiz doesn't have a detention order against him.

According to information of the Council of Security, he supports the Sinaloan's against the CAF in the struggle in Ensenada, Tecate, Rosarito and Mexicali.

 In Tijuana he has total freedom, but his zones of major control area: North Zone, Obrera, Sanchez Taboada and Libertad Colonia.

One of his first captures was registered in January of 2010, with photographs taken by journalists in San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, when they detained him on Avenida Sonora.

 They presented him as part of a gang originally from Mexicali dedicated to car theft. The apprehension was made by the Group of Attention for Crimes.

In April of 2013 in a press conference the then Secretary of Security in Tijuana, Alberto Capella, informed that the citizen Raul Miranda had been captured together with Agnis Tapia for their participation in the double assassination of Alberto Pacheco and Orlando Duran in a taqueria in the Fraccionamiento Los Alamos, that they offered the Police 25,000 dollars to be set free and that hey had confessed criminals for the Sinaloa Cartel even though before they had been members of the Cartel Arellano Felix.

In June of 2015, 10 alleged criminals were detained including Lucre and Marco Cerda Pacheco, they identified "El Alejo" as their criminal boss. In July of the same  year, Miranda was signalled as the intellectual author of the assassination of Eufrosina Alvarado Sanchez, a woman of 65 years old and mother of Alberto Avila Alvarado "El Chacal - detained on  7th of may of 2015, and member of the Cartel Arellano Felix

Video Recording of "El Turbo" in armed attack

Leonardo Pena Peralta "El Turbo", the authorities have located in the criminal world as a killer for hire between the years 2007 - 2011. killers detained in this same epoch commented that sometimes they killed for Fernando Sanchez "El Ingeniero" and sometimes for Eduardo Garcia Simental "El Teo", who headed the internal was in the Cartel Arellano Felix.

In 2011 the Police found him with the Sinaloa Cartel, in charge of a team of Sicarios. At this moment he is head of retail drug sales in the North Zone.

In his public appearances, the authorities identified him as the subject that heads a cell of killers that went into the restaurant Carl Jr. of Soler on 11th of December 2014, in order to kill Giovanni Valenzuela "El Diesel", which was captured on video, outside the hamburger joint they attacked him with gunfire, but he escaped. 12 days before, the same Valenzuela and other friends were shot at while they eat and chatted in the restaurant Cabanna de Paseo in Chapultepec.

El Chino detained with arms in an attack on a functionary

Julian Alfonso Lopez Rodriguez "El Chino" was presented as a criminal by the Municipal Police on the 4th of August of 2012, the previous night he had been captured in the Obrera Colonia in the company of two deportees and a minor, the Police confiscated a .45 caliber pistol.

According to the Police report, they captured him after he a woman gasoline attendant in the Obrera Colonia, Primera Seccion, and they accuse them a allegedly responsible for homicides occurring in this zone.

In March of 2013 "El Chino" was picked up by the Police forces as responsible of the assassination of a youngster on the 9th of March in the bar "Ruta 6", located in Calle Sexta of the central zone of Tijuana, he was detained as a minor, and said that the order for the death had been given by a man identified as "Chapito".

Actually in this organagram he is one of the heads of drug sales in the Obrera Colonia, though they indicate that he also has residences in the town of Rosarito.

"La Prima" in the homicide of "Hacho"

According to the Ministerial investigation of the PGJE, after the capture of Dagoberto Molina Valenzuela in January of 2014, they could clarify the criminal that participated in the assassination of the Director of the IMDEP on 16th of December of 2013.

One of the participants was Julian Alfonso Lopez Rodriguez "El Chino" and the other Dalia Rodelo "La Prima".

Rodela had formed part of a previous investigation of the PGJE in July of 2013, when during an internal struggle in the Sinaloa Cartel, her partner Arturo Vazquez Hernandez had been shot while being captured in possession of arms in the Playas de Tijuana delegacion. This man was assassinated a few weeks later.

According to intelligence sources she operates at the criminal partner of "El Chino".

"El Dorado" switches to the United States

The first capture of Victor Miguel Aguirre Saenz/ Victor Manuel Aguirre Saenz "El Dorado", was carried out by the Frontier Patrol of the United States in December of 2008 after being arrested in a house used to traffic persons in San Diego. At that time they informed that Aguirre had previously been deported for the same crime.

In May of 2013 the State Preventative Police reported the capture of Victor Manuel Aguirre Saenz, who was in the company of Guillermo Trujillo, the two were arrested in a vehicle in Calle Ermita of Tijuana in possession of cocaine and marijuana.

One of his actual functions is to control the sale and transit of drugs for the North Zone.

"El Piolin" from drug dealer to alleged assassin

The Mexican - American Juan Jose Perez Vargas "El Piolin"/ "El JP" was detained by the State Police in April of 2010 in possession of 15 grams of cocaine, 5365 dollars, and 13,310 pesos in the Sanchez Taboada Colonia, Jose Sacramento Garcia Navarro, said that he was buying drugs.

In a public interview for the authorities, he said that he crossed drugs into the United States with his cousin contact in the Sinaloa Cartel.

The same year after being detained again by the State Preventative Police for crimes against health and possession of firearms, and by the Municipal Police of Tijuana for vehicle theft.

In December of 2011, he was newly detained by the PEP in the San Agustin Fraccionamiento, this time in possession of a firearm and bullets for the FN 5.7mm pistol known as Mata Policias because of its ability to penetrate body armor, he was with Francisco Adrian Sanchez Rios, who also was carrying a firearm. They were presented with five other people and " three bales of marijuana, a bag with 34,133 US dollars in and various vehicles.

Of these leaders of the second level, of whom we have little official public information is Pedro Abelardo Arzate Garcia "El Mostro", coordinator of drug trafficking in Playas de Tijuana and Eduardo Gutierrez Sandoval "El Barny"/"El Gordo" operator in the East zone of Tijuana.

"El Mostro" despite having the same surname as the ringleaders of the cell, the Group for Coordination does not provide any proof of kinship, but as a trusted friend, a killer that prefers to use his hands, brought from Sinaloa to start the struggle against the remnants of the Arellano Felix Organization.Of "El Barny" they only have statements of his alleged accomplices already mentioned, "El Griego", "El Balta" and "El Marlon", identified by the Council for Security as in the third level and the same rank as Israel Orozco "El Punisher".

Orozco and Mejia Lopez "El Griego" have been detained as presumed responsible of homicides between 2013 and 2015, and the two have been set free.

In this third level of the organigram the following also have been identified, Roberto Carlos Hernandez Montalvo "El Pollo", detained by the Municipal Police of Tijuana in November of 2014 with drugs and guns but was set free; Baltazar Ochoa Fierro "El Balta" and Jose Luis Martinez Hernandez "El Secre", who without problems obtained his no prison antecedents card three months ago.

Original article in Spanish at Zetatijuana