The end of Narco-mansions, the new life style of the Mexican drug capos

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

Subject Matter: Narco's and their homes
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required

Narco's are now keeping a lower profile. They have left behind their great mansions to buy more discrete homes, generally in private sub-divisions.

It has been some years that one could pass through the streets of Mexican cities like Zapopan, in Jalisco, Culiacan in Sinaloa, where it was emblematic to encounter huge mansions constructed in a peculiar manner, without a defined style, but with expensive materials like marble and grand columns.

The popular voice said that in the these houses lived the big drug capo's, who in the 80's, 90's and the start of this century gave free rein to their wealth by building these types of mansions.

That fashion was not exclusive to Jalisco and Sinaloa. In 2014, citizens of the auto-defensas, who protected themselves from criminal in the state of Michoacan, broke into four mansions of the leaders of the Knights Templar cartel, in which they discovered, swimming pools, Jacuzzis, designer clothes, huge columns, rooms with flat screen TVs, garages for large numbers of cars and extremely expensive furniture.

The apartment building where El Licenciado was arrested

 But now things have changed and narco's are seeking a lower profile. They left behind the big gaudy mansions to buy more discrete houses usually in private sub-divisions where they can blend in with common inhabitants.

This hypothesis is verified by the arrest of Damaso Lopez, El Licenciado, one of the alleged successors of El Chapo Guzman for the leadership of the Sinaloa cartel, in a luxurious apartment in a tower of condominiums in an upper middle class colonia in the countries capital city.

One of Alfredo Beltran Leyvas houses in Cuernavaca

Alfredo Beltran Leyva was killed in 2009, by the Marines also in a private condominium and not in a large mansion. (Otis: though he was nearly captured and wounded by marines in one of his large mansions, see above photo).

In the collective imagination, the images of these great mansions, such as that of Mexican nationalized Chinese Zhenli Ye Gon, arrested in 2007 for the sale of raw materials for the production of crystal meth are still fresh in the mind.

The businessman lived in a kind of palace in Lomas de Chapultepec, in the capital, one of the most expensive areas in Latin American to live. The decor included fine chandeliers, hardwood floors, and indoor swimming pool, a large garden, exclusive finished bathrooms and Jacuzzis, a luxurious gymnasium, plus 205 million dollars US in cash, which is remembered as the largest cash seizure in the history of the country.

Zhenli Ye Gons mansion

The times of narco mansions

An architect of the University of Guadalajara who asked to remain anonymous, relates that the houses of the last generation of narco's that lived in the Metropolitan area of Guadalajara like Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo of the extinct Guadalajara cartel, had huge exterior gates, decorative excess without artistic value, and a a series of walls that were not in harmony.

For them to have a great house with the greatest possible luxury was a dream come true, to show excessive money with power because they believed that the great and grandeur is powerful. Those giant rooms full of marble, the worst thing is that they built them with money corrupting authorities, builders and architects, by passing building regulations.

In Guadalajara, for a long time Caro Quintero was credited with owning a large house on the Americas and Pablo Neruda avenues, in the exclusive area of Providencia, but after being abandoned, they were demolished and are now vacant lots.

A few blocks ahead was another mansion that is attributed to "Don Neto", but no longer exists. After being imprisoned for 31 years in a high security prison, he left behind the times of the great mansions to move to an exclusive sub-division  of the Emerald Zone in the municipality of Atizapan, in State of Mexico.

House of Caro Quintero in Costa Rica, qualified as an Olympic Village

In Mexico, federal authorities seize narco-related properties and then auction them or keep them under guard. This happened with a 2297 square meter mansion of Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, of the AFO who in 1993 was seized a Spanish style property with arches and balconies in the municipalities of Tlajomulco de Zuniga, Jalisco.

The property remained for two decades under the protection of the Federal Prosecutor, but through a trial, Alicia Felix, recovered the property in 2015 to sell it months later for US$12,000,000.00, according to Zetatijuana.

In 2016 an analysis was published of registration records and it was found that only in Jalisco, the Arellanos spent 1.1 billion pesos buying 23 properties that together measure twice the size of the soccer field of Estadio Azetca (7140 square meters). Seven of these properties no longer belong to the family and rest were seized.

There has been an evolution from those houses of the 80's that were mansions with a lot of land where you could identify heavy narcos. Today I can tell you that they are more discreet, notes Juan Carlos Ayala, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa and one of the great connoisseurs of the cartels in the State.

The last traces of these great mansions are in Michoacan, with the extinct Knights Templar Cartel. At the beginning of 2014, the auto-defensas symbolically seized the mansions of their leaders Enrique Kike Plancarte, in the municipality of Mugica.

His excesses were captured by the French photographer Jerome Sessini and published in Time magazine.

A room in the house of Kike Plancarte

In the municipality of Paracuaro, they secured a mansion of a capo identified as El Botas. Here the autodefensas found rooms with rustic finishes, swimming pools and high ceilings, where he signed his signature to make clear exactly who owned the property.

Although narco's now live in more modest houses, they are not willing to give up their Jacuzzis, confirms the researcher and the architect.

A real estate expert who also wanted to remain anonymous said that almost all new sub-divisions that have been built in recent times have a jacuzzi, a convenience that customers demand, but that does not mean that everyone that buys here is a delinquent.

The terrace is another pleasure to which they do not want to give up, because for the capos. the jacuzzi is a place for them to relax and the terrace is also a space that serves for relaxation and to have in sight all the women that they take to their houses.

Another Knights Templar property

Somehow, Ayala said, the new bosses not only want to be more discreet, but have also changed their preferences, for them, having a big mansion is now not a status symbol.

What they are looking for now are designed branded things and luxurious items like cars for example. On the outside the houses look normal like anyone else's, but inside they are full of luxury and they still have those basements and false doors where they hide money and weapons.

Don Neto's new neighbourhood

They also seek to not make the mistakes of their predecessors, who with those large houses seized by the Office of the Attorney General, lost millions of dollars.

Such is the case of the house of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, founder of the Guadalajara cartel, but born in Sinaloa. He had a house in Culiacan in the San Miguel hills area that overlooked a stream where he had slides, but that was confiscated, then looted and now lies in ruins.

Ines Calderon Quintero, one of the great narcos of the 70's and 80's, had a house in the Guadalupe of Culiacan, which had three floors, canteen, billiards, pools, but was also looted to such a degree that the floors were destroyed.

They are left for the vandals, they become nests for addicts or dumpsters, instead of them being donated to some cause.

The architect says that they can not be put up for sale because of the series of false doors, and walls that seem to have no function, and other structures that make them not functional to live in or give them another use.

Original article in Spanish at Noreste