Hitmen Force Police To Release Chuy Sierra's Men From Custody in San Fernando, Tamaulipas

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Cartel hitmen attacked the offices of the State Police (SSP) in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, in order to free recently detained cartel members who were being held in custody at the location.

The Breakout Operation

At roughly 3:00 pm on Saturday, March 26, 2022, four vehicles full of hitmen parked near the SSP office which is located within the city of San Fernando, in the municipality of the same name. The office is located near Abasolo and Margarita Masa streets in the Bella Vista neighborhood of the city. 

Approximately 20 hitmen exited the vehicles and approached the offices. A video alleged to depict the hitmen approaching the SSP office was uploaded to twitter and can be seen below. 

Video contains no graphic content.

Video Source: La Voz de Pueblo

The hitmen reportedly outnumbered the number of SSP officers present and they were able to subdue the officers under threat of death. The hitmen then forced them to release alleged cartel members who were being held in custody inside a patrol car. 

Four frames of the video alleged to show the break out operation.

Reports differ on how many detainees were taken from custody. El Manana alleges four were released, Excelsior alleges three while cartel twitter account La Voz de Pueblo alleges only two. Excelsior notes that “it is not known if those rescued could be accomplices or rivals of their group.” The hitmen then left the office and re-entered their vehicles along with the detainees.

Photo Source: Excelsior

Drivers said that shortly after the breakout operation at the office, they spotted suspicious vehicles stopping on the San Fernando-Matamoros federal highway, near the exit to La Joya. The hitmen allegedly commandeered a water truck and used it to block the highway. They also tossed out ponchallantas, which are metal tire puncture devices in order to block the law enforcement from easily following them as the hitmen continued to flee the area. 

Photo Source: Menny

A law enforcement dispatcher requested support from local security forces, but few groups responded to the request. The municipal police departments for Matamoros and Valle Hermoso reportedly agreed to send units to San Fernando however local military forces and the General Investigation Unit did not respond to the call. 

Nearly an hour after the breakout operation, the municipal police reinforcements are said to have arrived in the area.  Excelsior reports that they reached out to the SSP for more details and have received no comment in response. The SSP has not released a statement on their official Twitter or Facebook accounts as of the writing of this story.

Who Controls San Fernando?

In June 2021, Milenio newspaper reported that San Fernando municipality was controlled by the Matamoros faction of the CDG based on intelligence reports they received from the federal government. Other sources have reported that San Fernando is under the control of Zetas Vieja Escuela.

Zetas Vieja Escuela is one of the splinter groups that emerged from Los Zetas, much like the Northeast Cartel (Cártel del Noreste, CDN) however they have always seemed to self identify as Gulf Cartel group more than as a Los Zetas group. 

According to the same June 2021 intelligence report, ZVE and the Matamoros faction have an alliance so parsing which of the two groups actually controls San Fernando municipality may not matter nearly as much at a practical level. 

Who were the detainees?

Few details are available on any arrests that took place in the 24 hours leading up to this breakout operation. The SSP official Twitter or Facebook accounts did not make any public statements about arrests they had conducted recently. 

The only possible hint from a news publication about the identities of those in custody comes from El Mañana newspaper which writes that “Preliminarily, it was reported that a confrontation between armed civilians and police authorities had taken place on the road leading to the town of San Rafael, but no official report has been issued so far.” The article, however, is unclear if this confrontation resulted in the arrest of those who were later released or if this confrontation occurred after the breakout operation. 

Cartel news twitter account La Voz de Pueblo alleges that “presumably one of [those in custody] is close to Chuy 7”. Meanwhile another cartel news twitter account, Reynosa Codigo Rojo is alleging that it was Chuy 7 himself who was detained, along with others, in the patrol car. 

"Chuy 7" is one of the aliases of Carlos Roel Collazo Rodríguez, who also goes by the aliases of “El Chuy Sierra” and simply “El Collazo”. So, what do we know about Chuy Sierra? It is believed that he began his criminal career working under Los Zetas. He was arrested in the city of Monterrey, Nuevo León, by soldiers from the Army (SEDENA) in 2012, when he was 22 years old. 

During the time of his arrest, Chuy Sierra was identified as a member of a Zetas estaca, which is a military term that was often used by Los Zetas to refer to its hitmen teams, made up of about 4-6 members who would patrol in vehicles or act as bodyguards. 

Chuy Sierra is seen on the bottom, right-hand side. 

More than a year ago, Chuy Sierra was named as one of the ten most wanted men operating in the Rio Grande sector of the border by a joint team of Tamaulipas and Texas law enforcement. He was featured alongside other cartel leadership figures like César Morfín Morfín, alias “El Primito”, and Juan Gerardo Treviño Chávez, alias “El Huevo”, in billboards that were posted on both sides of the US-Mexico border.

Since at least 2019, it has been rumored that Chuy Sierra is the “Zetas” plaza boss for San Fernando municipality. It's likely that “Zetas”, in this case, is referring to ZVE.

In 2019, there were online claims that Chuy Sierra was working with Los Metros while others alleged he was working with Raúl García Martínez, alias "Escorpión 2". 

It's more likely that he's been operating in an alliance with the Gulf Cartel's Matamoros faction as there is longer term and more consistent evidence of ZVE and Matamoros working together in the northern region of the state. 

Some social media sources claimed at around this same time that Chuy Sierra was also the plaza boss of Mendez, Burgos, Cruillas, San Carlos municipalities in Tamaulipas. As well as China municipality in Nuevo León. 

 

During this time, Chuy Sierra was alleged to have a commander under him named Carlos de la Cruz/ Antonio Sierra, alias “El Pawa”, who operated in San Fernando, with hitmen such as “El Puma”, “Nico” and “Guero Camaron” reporting to him. They also alleged that Jorge Alberto Banda Delgado, alias “La Burbuja” was working as his accountant/financial operator. 

 

Updated 3/28/2022: Edited due to more prevailing evidence of a Matamoros alliance rather than a Los Metros alliance. 

*Note: El Manana alleges there were six vehicles with hitmen, Excelsior alleges four vehicles

Sources: Excelsior, El Mañana, La Voz de Pueblo, Valor por Tamaulipas, Tamaulipas RTC, Archyde, Evelyn Hernández, Menny

Region Control Sources: Milenio, Wikimedia - Baptiste's Map

Chuy Sierra Sources: La Prensa, Milenio, Lopez Doriga, El Universal, Poder Ciudadano Radio, San Fernando Zona de Peligro, Diario Digital Causa Probable, Frontera Codigo Rojo Noticias NL, David F. Marley