Tijuana: A man is hanged from a bridge, amidst wave of relentless executions

Tijuana: A man is hanged from a bridge, amidst wave of relentless executions 

The killings have surged since 2016, an infestation of violence and blood, public executions and murders, thousands of dead, morgues that cannot sustain the flow of bodies.  They are shot, stabbed, strangled, bruised necks and severed limbs, charred, burned, and disarticulated, severed limbs wrapped in black trash bags, eyes leering from a head, stuck in an plastic cooler or suitcase.  

For some the degradation and violence can be seen in a single image of a body twisting in the wind, hanged from a bridge, in the early morning hours, a stillness of the day, a lifeless body swaying slightly, silently.

This morning, in Colonia Villa Bonita, such an image was scene, and captured, by cameras, and burned into the memories of those who saw it.  A narco cartulina on the omnipresent butcher paper, brightly colored, sometimes yellow, sometimes green, sometimes white was pinned to the bridges support.  The contents were not revealed.

The eastern zone of Tijuana, and many other neighborhoods are ravaged by a multi tiered and complex array of local retail groups backed by more powerful outsiders, who send weapons and crystal, fueling the killings.  Various groups are backed by El Aquiles, La Rana, and elements of CJNG, along with CTNG.  Regional and local cell leaders lead groups of sicarios and tienderos, often filling the same role at different times.  

Across the city, in an upscale mall, Galerias Hipodromo, a man in his mid thirties in stylish joggers and leather sneakers heads to his morning workout.  He is refined in his leisure wear, beginning the day in the gym, as many head to work.  He is executed leaving the gym, the blood runs out of his head, onto the polished floors of the mall.  

He has a tattoo on his leg of a cross, and is known to the investigators as Pedro Ricardo Arce Fox, 37 years old, arrested in 2016 by the PEP, with two kilos of cocaine.  He is said to have worked for or in concert with Alfonzo Azarte Garcia, "El Aquiles", the elusive trafficker, who has been strong in the Tijuana plaza since 2010.  

Aquiles, and Juan Sillas Rocha, "El Sillas" who was arrested in 2011, after gunning down Israel Vergera Galindo, aka "El Marquitos", once terrorized the city in 2010, in the direct years following the horror of El Teo, La Perra, and Muletas, whose reign of bloodshed made international news, as bodies turned up burned, and 20 corpses without tongues were dropped by a school in 2008.  

Aquiles and Sillas threw bodies off bridges with taunting messages and left heads in coolers for each other's sicario's, mocking, challenging, defying.  Marquitos, survived the shooting, escaping from his hospital room, and going to work for El Aquiles, having previously been aligned with Fernando Sanchez Arellano, and Juan Lorenzo aka El Chan.  Marqutios was arrested in Mexico City in 2013, and was indicted in the same United States probe that ensnared Aquiles, Operation Narco Polo. 

El Dany

Arce Fox's career ended today, as he bled out on the floor, ambushed, betrayed, a mistake, or an unavoidable fate.  Many are stalked and killed in the gym, as they relieve tension, sweating and eventually bleeding on the same gym floor.  Issac Manuel Godoy Castro, El Dany, who was one of El Inge's top people in Tijuana, was arrested in 2009, during the bloody former years of Teo and Inge's war.  Dany was released in 2017, and executed in April of this year, his body slumped across workout equipment in a gym in the La Mesa district.

Yesterday, in Zona Rio, in an upmarket apartment building "New City", a man was murdered in the buildings gym.  Police say they are investigating.  The suspect in the Hipodromo killing was caught on camera, as he appears to conceal his pistol in his waistband.  He wears a long sleeve dress shirt, tucked in, and a black vest, white cap pulled down, the composite of business casual in Tijuana.  He would not have stood out in the crowd, as he walked closer to Arce Fox, before pulling the trigger.

The killings continue, reaching a grim total of 225 approx in the month of June, and July looks to surpass it.  Daily headlines count the totals, increasingly in articles detailing 9 killings in as many hours, or or other previously shocking sums.  Tijuana is listed as the 5th violent city in the world, as previous norms are erased, and entire neighborhoods are the stage for daily executions.  

They kill you in your car, they kill you in the gym, grabbing the kids from school, on the way to work, in your home, in your office.  Your body is left in the street, or stuffed in a suitcase, black hair dangling outside of the zippers, blood smeared across the canvas.  Your body is thrown from a bridge, rope abrasions on the neck, feet swinging softly in the light wind. 

Sources: AFN Tijuana, Zeta Tijuana 

http://zetatijuana.com/2018/07/regresa-el-horror-a-tijuana-un-colgado-y-asesinato-en-centro-comercial/

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