Possible Sinaloa Cartel Feud Leaves 4 Mexicans Dead in Guatemala

"MX" for Borderland Beat

The victims, presumably Sinaloa Cartel drug traffickers, could have been killed after Mexican authorities seized 3 tons of cocaine in Chiapas earlier this month. 

A possible drug cartel feud in Guatemala left 4 Mexican citizens dead. The killing occurred in Nica, Malacatan, a rural community in San Marcos Department.

After residents reported a shooting, the National Civil Police of Guatemala mobilized and reached Nica, where they found the bodies of four people scattered on a property. All of them victims were executed with a coup de grace blow to the head.

The National Institute of Forensic Sciences (INACIF) in San Marcos has only identified three of the victims: Guillermo de Jesús Tovar Gómez (aged 28), José Luis García Gutiérrez (aged 42), and Eduardo Galaor Torres Vera (aged 43). The first two are from Comitan and the last one is from Tonala, two municipalities in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

Torres Vera was the brother of former Institutional Revoluationary Party (PRI) deputy Judith Torres Vera. She is currently a Public Security Department head in Puebla under Racial Lopez Salazar.

Investigators say that the four victims crossed the Mexican border into Guatemala last Wednesday via Suchiate River and left their two vehicles on the Mexican side. The route they took to get there is known as La Pedrona and is notorious for human smuggling.

At some point, the four victims were intercepted by an armed group and killed. In one of the vehicles, investigators found an ID card from Juan Carlos Gomez Roman, a resident of Comitan who works in the Ministry of Health in Chiapas. Authorities are unsure if this man was with the four victims, if he managed to escape, or if he was taken by the assassins.

Guatemalan authorities say that the local cartel in Malacatan is known as Los Melendez Merida, which has presence in parts of Central America and southern Mexico.

At least two of the victims have ties with Puebla Public Security chief Raciel Lopez Salazar.

The two vehicles had license plates from Queretaro and Mexico City. They were found abandoned in Tuxtla Chico, Chiapas.

Possible drug feud

Guatemalan officials believe that the mass murder may be drug-related and linked to a large cocaine seizure carried out by Mexican authorities two weeks prior.

On 10 March 2021, the Chiapas Attorney General's Office seized close to 3 tons of cocaine in Puerto Arista in the municipality of Tonala, Chiapas. Seven people were arrested: Pedro U., Leobardo R., Manuel I., José Natividad G., Oscar C., Daniel T., and Carlos C.

Investigators say the drugs were owned by the Sinaloa Cartel.

Intelligence sources from Mexico's Attorney General's Office (FGE) say that they were investigating two of the victims, Torres Vera and Garcia Gutierrez, for their alleged involvement in drug trafficking in Chiapas.

They are believed to have been part of a criminal group once headed by Gilberto Rivera Amarillas AKA El Tio and/or El Señor de la Frontera Sur.

Gilberto Rivera Amarillas was arrested in Mexicali in 1999, but he was quickly released due to lack of evidence. In 2004, two of his teenage children were killed in an attempt on his life.

Rivera Amarillas was born in Culiacan, Sinaloa, and controlled much of the drug trafficking operations for the Sinaloa Cartel in southern Mexico. Authorities say he was one of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman's leading operators in the area.

Rivera Amarillas frequently moved between southern Mexico and Guatemala. In June 2016, he was arrested at La Aurora International Airport in Guatemala and extradited to the US in February 2017. He died from a terminal illness five months later.

Sources: Proceso (1); (2); Tabasco Hoy; Diario del Sur; Palco Quintanarroense; Ante Todos News; La Prensa; GRC Noticias