Mochomito Is Secretly Released; The Boss Is Expected To Return To Culiacan

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

The news caused doubts and fear more than furor: Jesús Alfredo Beltrán Guzmán el Mochomito has already been released, it was said.

Once free, the boss is expected to return to Culiacan to claim the empire left by his father, Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, El Mochomo, who was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a maximum security prison in the United States.

El Mochomito is the only boss who declared war on Aureliano Guzmán Loera aka El Guano and Los Chapitos, when several armed criminal cells went up to the Bacacoragua-LaTuna corridor to confront the Guzmán forces.

"I suppose he is going to Culiacan to align his business, and surely there will be many people who will support him, because his grandfather, don Neto, was very loved and respected in Badiraguato and also in Culiacán," recalls Pedro Guzmán, a marijuana farmer from the Sierra de Badiraguato, and who was one of the individuals who were held at gunpoint by gunmen from the Beltran Guzman during the seizure of La Tuna in June of 2016. 

According to the weekly Zeta magazine, the media that first published the news, Beltrán Guzmán was released from the Metropolitan Prison of Jalisco on Thursday last week, and apparently his release would have occurred at dawn, as happened with Rafael Caro Quintero, in 2013.

"In the same manner, that's how they let him go, as he says in Don Rafa's corrido," concluded Pedro Guzmán, contacted by phone for this note.

Unlike Caro Quintero, Mochomito does not seem to face drug trafficking charges in the United States, as this weekly magazine noted in the archives of the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ), although this doesn’t mean that the government of the neighboring northern country doesn’t require him. 

"There are cases or investigations to which no media or lawyer has access, because they are ongoing investigations and opening them to the public would be like alerting criminals to flee or be alert," Mike Vigil, former director of international operations at the DEA, told Ríodoce.

Vigil then regretted the behavior of the Mexican government, which releases prisoners at dawn, and without even informing the United States, as dictated by part of the bilateral collaboration protocol that exists between the two nations.

"It is difficult to know if this person is being requested by the United States because I am not in charge of that investigation, but the fact that he is released in the early morning, when no one can document the fact, lends itself to misinterpretations, and it’s the same thing as what happened with Caro Quintero, who was released in the middle of the night and without even notifying the United States government about what was happening, and that is why I see badly the way in which these types of prisoners are released, ”Vigil added.

According to documents from the USDOJ and the DEA, although Mochomito is one of the heirs of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, it doesn’t represent the strength that his father or any of his uncles had, including Marco Arturo Beltrán Leyva, although the fact of having a criminal network in charge, something that neither Emma Coronel Aispuro nor Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez, both accused of conspiracy for drug trafficking and currently imprisoned in the United States, had, shows a strong inconsistency regarding people who are accused in Mexico, and that at the same time reveals how damaged the bilateral relations between the two countries actually are. 

"I can tell you that relations are definitely damaged, and that is impacting both countries in terms of security, although definitely much more on Mexico," Vigil insisted.

The panorama is anticipated as difficult, especially considering that Beltrán Guzmán stormed the town of La Tuna in mid-June 2016, claiming the lives of at least ten Guano collaborators, and then began a terrible war in the Badiraguato mountain range, which not only cost the lives of dozens of victims never reported by the authorities, but also forced hundreds of residents to move from the mountains to Culiacán. 

As if that were not enough, the National Security Commission (CNS) pointed him out as the mastermind and material author of the kidnapping of Jesús Alfredo and Iván Guzmán Salazar, at the La Leche restaurant, in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, in August 2016.

He is also accused of being responsible for ordering kidnappings and homicides of some members of other antagonistic groups, including the Sinaloa Cartel. Despite all these accusations, Beltrán Guzmán was released.

Interestingly, Beltrán's freedom materialized after an investigation by the Jalisco State Human Rights Commission (CEDHJ) was revealed about the allegedly irregular visits of female prison inmates to men's prisons.

The Ombudsman of Jalisco documented that 14 of the 23 transfers to alleged sports events and rehearsals of plays for the inmates were made precisely to the Metropolitan Prison, where it was in the public domain that El Mochomito had led the so-called self-government for at least three years.

A past that weighs

El Mochomito was arrested on December 9, 2016 by elements of the Mexican army and the Mexican Navy in the municipality of Zapopan, Jalisco, along with four of his bodyguards, who were assured machine guns, fragmentation grenades, packages with more than three kilos of cocaine, ammunition, and two vehicles.

Beltrán Guzmán was brought before a judge, and after a judicial process of several months he was found guilty of all the charges against him. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, but thanks to a series of appeals and motions  filed by his lawyers, his sentence was reduced to less than five years after entering prison.

His story is bordered by the criminal world from the very top of the Sinaloa Cartel: his father, Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, married Patricia Guzmán Núñez, daughter of Ernesto Guzmán Hidalgo, half-brother of Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán.

Lost in the emporium of his uncles Arturo and Héctor Beltrán Leyva, the opulence of his father, the blessing and guidance of his grandfather Don Neto Guzmán, and a narco culture that absorbed him to the very mythology of the cartel, everything pointed him out as a successor to the faction that his father and uncles built.

Until the arrest of his father in 2008, and almost two years after the death of his uncle Marco Arturo, they hastened his promotion in the family business. In charge of the coordination for the production of drugs in the mountain area of Sinaloa, Beltrán Guzmán continued to prepare for the great jump, always from the guidance of don Neto, his grandfather.

Until April 2015, don Ernesto was kidnapped, tortured, and killed by an armed criminal cell in Bacacoragua, a community anchored in the Sierra de Badiraguato, 20 kilometers before arriving in La Tuna.

According to investigations of this weekly magazine, Ernesto's murderer was identified as "Cristóbal", alias El 02, - an old head of hitmen of Aureliano Guzmán, and the reason for the execution was because don Ernesto "was placing El Guano to be arrested by the government," according to 02 himself to Guano.

That incident was the trigger for El Mochomito to seek revenge on El Guano, and that is why he would have declared war on him, and then set up the Chapitos, in Puerto Vallarta.

These quarrels anticipate the increasingly latent possibility of a war that, as it can happen in Culiacan, can also happen in the mountain areas of Badiraguato.

"In itself, there is a lot of tension right now in Culiacan; if another war begins it will be more complicated for everyone," concluded a hit man consulted by Ríodoce.

Río Doce Mx