Who protects the Tepito Union?

Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from El Universal

                      

Two people died yesterday in Tepito from gunshot wounds. The police were alerted through the C2 Center: there were gunshots in Manuel de la Peña and Peña streets. Two people were lying in the street. There were more than 15 shells. The victims had been shot in the skull. Their ages: 28 and 41.

There was another shooting on August 25.

Two men fell dead and one woman was injured. The neighbors alerted the police. When the uniformed men appeared, two men had died. It was the same street: Manuel de la Peña y Peña.

Also in Manuel de la Peña and Peña streets two people were killed on August 18. It started on Sunday. It was close to eight in the morning. The victims were drinking beer. Someone arrived, took a gun out from their clothes and fired on them. The result: two dead and three injured.

 
The aggressor tried to flee and ran along some streets. Through the cameras, the police placed him in a neighborhood of Heroes de Nacozari. Inside there were weapons, scales, and bundles of wads of neatly arranged bills.

There was also a grid notebook that kept a careful account of household expenses. Rent, electricity, cleaning, "entres", and payments to the police.

Officials of Cuauhtémoc say that Peña y Peña is the border that separates the territory of the Tepito Union and that of the Anti-Union Force, the two criminal groups that dispute the control of the streets in the Historic Center.

Neighbors in the area say that there are about 30 criminal gangs operating nine blocks. They are gangs of drug dealers that apparently operate independently, although they are obedient to the same leaders: former inmates linked to drug cartels.

The protection they receive from local police authorities, they explain, "is not partial, but total".

In March 2017, David García Ramírez, El Pistache was arrested. He was accused of the murder, just outside the Gravity bar in Polanco, of a man named Carlos Páez Romo. He was also accused of the murder of a person outside La Terraza bar, on December 30, 2016.

The Pistache was identified as a leader of drug dealers in the Condesa, Roma and Polanco neighborhoods. Today he is free, however, and for federal authorities, Roberto Moyado Esparza, El Betito, has become his successor, leader of the Tepito Union detained by the Federal Police on August 9, south of Mexico City.

According to the PGR, El Pistache is in charge of the activities of the Union: drug dealing and "collection of derecho de piso in exclusive areas of the city."

A file from the Agency of Criminal Investigation indicates that "they ask the owners or managers of bars or restaurants of prestige the amount of 15 thousand pesos monthly, and sometimes 15 or 20 percent of the utilities." "In case there is a kidnapping, the requirement is above 500 thousand pesos," according to the information.

According to the file, as part of the "quota" the owners of bars and restaurants in this area are obliged to allow the Union's drugs to be marketed in their facilities.

The Criminal Investigation Agency ensures that Unión Tepito controls most of the escorts advertised on pages such as Zona Divas. They are also obliged to give a fee to the criminal group and "make contacts between the criminal organization and senior officials and businessmen."

PGR members and high officials of the capital government and even members that form part of the Senate of the Republic were found on the phone of an escort murdered in a hotel on Patriotismo avenue.

The PGR assures that in the capital government there are no investigation files or arrest warrants against the leaders of the Tepito Union. The information consulted by the columnist indicates, however, that "the meeting places of the leaders of the criminal group are well known": clubs such as "El Barezzito, Prince, Aria and La Santa"