Ensenada: 6 executed, banner goes up, signed "Cartel De La Rana"

                     6 executed, banner goes up from "Cartel De La Rana"

El Sauzal Ensenada:

In 1997, 20 members of a family were murdered in El Sauzal, on the orders of Ramon Arellano Felix, during the last years of the CAF's control over Tijuana.  Gunmen, said to be drunk, and high on cocaine, descended on a family residence, and executed all the members. 

This was considered the most savage and brutal killing of it's time, making news reports nationally in the United States.  The homicide rate in Tijuana during that time, was around 300, which is 5 times less than what it is now.

Now, in the shadow of that former bloody massacre, in which children and women were murdered, over a families unpaid debts, the drug politics of Ensenada, and the Baja corridor have spilled over, in the new, chaotic, frenzied style of violence which is now commonplace. 

In the classic red and white styled letters often used by CTNG/CJNG in Tijuana, the banner was hung near a vacant lot, and leaves a lot of questions in it's wake. The banner is roughly translated to "The plaza is mine now, CJNG, CAF, and Cartel De Sinaloa fuck your mother from Cartel De La Rana"

La Rana, unless there is a new one operating inthe Baja region, is Rene Garcia Azarte, the brother of Alfredo Arteaga Azarte, El Aquiles, who has been on a long run, as El Mayo's point man in Tijuana, surviving year after year, since 2010, after a 120 ton marijuana seizure in Tijuana, which was the result of a dispute between Jose Soto Gastelum, El Tigre, Aquiles, and El Boxer. 

Aquiles was said to have brokered an alliance between the people of Fernando Sanchez Arellano, and Sinaloa, and responsible for the return of El Mayo Zambada's niece, who was kidnapped by Juan Sillas Rocha, in September 2010.  La Rana and his brother prospered beyond Tijuana, and have yet to be captured, though they are both under indictment in San Diego, named alongside other Tijuana plaza bosses, Los Antrax, and Ismael Zambada, and his sons. 

Los Aquiles, have held a presence across Baja for years, including Rosarito and Ensenada, if La Rana flipped, he is only announcing it in Ensenada, not Tijuana, or Rosarito, the former of which is much more valuable territory, which is unlikely. 

The banner looks like the kind of disinformation used to create chaos and heat up the plaza, usually a dispute between retail cells, rather than Sinaloa based traffickers.  If it is to be believed, La Rana has turned on his brother, or broken apart, and the Sinaloa Cartel.  The banner also mocks CAF and CJNG, though does not use the CTNG moniker more commonly used in Tijuana. 

In the eastern part of the city, 6 bodies, faces wrapped in adhesive tape were found in a subdivision of the city.  They were bound at the feet and wrists.  There is no connection, but the two incidents point to a dispute between retailers in Ensenada, which has had many arrests of plaza bosses, from CAF and Sinaloa in 2016 and 2017.  Some of the arrests were related to a 2016 shooting at a cock righting event, in which Sinaloa gunmen attempted to execute a CAF retail cell leader, killing three, and injuring at least a dozen.  

There have been 450 killings in Baja California in 2018, with at least 350 plus occurring in Tijuana, where the violence has become so commonplace, 5 people killed in a day is no longer a shock, but a headline, seen multiple times a week.  Last year, there were multiple occurrences of bodies being dropped across the vast county of Ensenada. 4 bodies in an early morning fog, in the stillness of the countryside farm areas, was one I write about, but there were others.  

After almost 10 years, I start to hear voices of old cliches about the drug business, about things changing but staying the same.  I start to wonder what kind of tape was used, duct, or electrical, and not who really hung the banner, or ordered the killing.

Link to 1997 story in LA Times: http://articles.latimes.com/1998/sep/18/news/mn-24019

Sources: AFN Tijuana