Heating up the Plazas of Sonora

By Buggs for Borderland Beat

By numerous sources

There is still space

I have been in discussion with a lot of people from the states of Sonora and Chihuahua, who are talking about events related to cartel violence and operations. These people include citizens in the "know how," law enforcement, some military officers, and some governmental prosecutors. As anything coming out of Mexico, everything is hard to filter and most intelligence info is hard, if not impossible to confirm. 

I been in this business (reporting on cartel events) for a long time and know how difficult it is to find the truth. I have connections not just with Mexican law enforcement officials (LEO) but also LEOs from the US, mostly federal and/or detectives assigned to federal task forces  (I present in many LEO conferences throughout the United states and have met a lot of contacts). I also have a lot of family and many friends in Mexico, who always share information with me, mostly information coming out of the northwest states.

I have also heard the debates and people who have their own personal opinions about matters of organized crime in Mexico and the US. I find it amusing with the "fans" of some of the cartels, that defend their own fav cartels as if they were talking about some football team, and speak with bias, spewing a one-sided narrative. If it were not a serious matter, it would be comical at best.

One of the incidents of strong contention and debate is the  LeBaron massacre. I wrote a detail perspective about the massacre, that at some point I might publish, but there were so many holes, that new information was coming out even months after the incident.


During the release of the Borderland Beat book and after the Lebaron massacre on November 4, 2019, I was thrown back to the matter of reporting on the Mexican drug cartel, even though I was still talking to people and watching news about cartel activities in Mexico and the US. I never left, I just did not report it. I was instrumental in building the Borderland Facebook page into a 200,000 membership of followers that resulted in gathering exclusive information and media (pictures and videos) material from events happening in Mexico. Facebook closed the page after it got too big for them.

I also started a podcast with the help of some technocrat friends about the drug cartel, where we got to interview people that were directly involved in cartel activities only after they were vetted to get some confirmation of their validity. That also went under after we got threats and we became concerned about the safety of guests and/or staff.

Lately I have spent some of my efforts talking about some activity coming out of Sonora.

Let’s talk about the "Mulatos" mine in the municipality of Sahuaripa again, I mentioned it a few days ago in an article here on BB. It was robbed for the third time, but this time the armed criminals came in by air. More sophisticated and an operation that needs more planning and financing. It screams as robbery assisted by high level operatives.

It has been reported in the past, and most of you are familiar with it, that there have been recent robberies of different mines in the bordering states, that security felt transporting ore on the roads was getting too risky. The Alamos Gold company decided to hire a small plane to transport the valuable cargo. Except the cargo was stolen by criminals that landed in a small plane themselves, a cessna 206. The heavily armed commando flew away with the cargo into the Sierra de Chihuahua horizon, never to be seen again.

Well, I was told by a source from the federal government that they had already identified the suspects. It was none other than your typical suspects, Ever Gonzales Bournes, alias "El Aguila" and his brother Victor Noe Gonzalez Bournes alias "El 500." They are supposedly members of La Linea of the Juarez cartel, but things are so fluid in Mexico, with things always changing, who knows who they affiliate with now-a-days.

Get this, they also claim that perhaps, the two suspects have aligned themselves with Rafael Caro Quintero, which we find strange since Quintero has been affiliated with the Cartel de Sinaloa (CDS). They said that the precious metal was sold in the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco.

The notion that the Bournes brothers who are part of the "La Linea" would forge an alliance with "Rafael" might be farfetch, but stranger things have happened in Mexico.  Remember La Linea has been credited with being responsible with the attack on the LeBaron family, where 9 members were killed, including children and women.

Where are the arrests?

Where are the news conferences of potential suspects?

We have seen a recent increase of violence in the towns of Yecora and Tesopaco, Sonora. Then there was the attack in Madera Chihuahua, where they burned down an entire town and abducted (a levanton) entire families who have not been seen to date. Madera also saw the encounter (a topon) between members of Los Juguar and La Linea (or was it an ambush?), although some people are arguing that both cells have formed an alliance. One thing is for certain, there is a lot of bad blood flowing in both states and it has become very unstable for anyone that might get caught in the middle of this mess.