'El Chapo' And His Sons Planned To 'Kidnap' Galilea Montijo To Betray Arturo Beltran Leyva

"Char" for Borderland Beat 

This article was translated and reposted from MILENIO

The 'Mini Lic' says that the drug lords explored paying half a million dollars to the TV hostess to "put" Arturo Beltrán.

/ Special contribution by Anabel Hernández for MILENIO

The singer of corridos tumbados Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija, better known as Peso Pluma and world-famous for songs like 'Ella baila sola', along with Televisa's star hostess Galilea Montijo, are part of the list of friends and romantic partners that Sinaloa Cartel bosses have collected in the world of show business, but in these two cases, such dangerous relationships put their lives in danger.

The singer of corridos tumbados Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija, better known as Peso Pluma and world-famous for songs like 'Ella baila sola', along with Televisa's star hostess Galilea Montijo, are part of the list of friends and romantic partners that Sinaloa Cartel bosses have collected in the world of show business, but in these two cases, such dangerous relationships put their lives in danger.

This was revealed in an exclusive interview with the author of this report by Dámaso López Serrano, alias Mini Lic, who for more than ten years was part of the Sinaloa cartel's leadership, considered the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world. Today López Serrano is a cooperating witness for the U.S. government.

Dámaso López Serrano is the son of Dámaso López Núñez, alias El Licenciado, who for years was El Chapo's right-hand man and helped him run his criminal empire. 

In 2018 Mini Lic pleaded guilty to trafficking tons of cocaine, methamphetamines and heroin in the Southern District Court of California and, after five years in prison, the friend, partner and then rival of Los Chapitos breaks his silence and talks about the friendships of the criminal organization's bosses in the world of show business, including his own.

He admits that during the time he was part of the Sinaloa cartel his main vices were alcohol and squandering money hiring the most famous musical groups. In his constant interaction he found that many artists mimicked the world of drug trafficking.

"When you have money and you have bought everything, what is left to buy? the will of the people," says Mini Lic by way of explanation.
He points out that Peso Pluma, who swept the Billboard Latin Music Awards in 2023, is one of the closest friends of the sinister Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, alias Nini, head of security for Los Chapitos and who is on the DEA's most wanted list. 

For information leading to the capture of this individual, the anti-drug agency is offering a reward of three million dollars.


López Serrano, a former associate and compadre of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, El Chapo, says that Nini receives direct orders from Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, El Chapito. Mini Lic describes Nini as a deranged man who murders for pure pastime.

In his early days, the close friend of Peso Pluma, in order to demonstrate to the Sinaloa cartel his talent as a killer, used to walk the streets of Culiacan in the early morning hours and randomly kill workers or athletes passing by on the streets.

 Why Galilea?

"We did know that Galilea Montijo had a relationship with Arturo Beltrán Leyva: the same intelligence reports that the government gave us told us so," says Mini Lic.

In the books Emma y las otras señoras del narco and Las señoras del narco. Amar en el infierno, revealed for the first time the long sentimental relationship between the TV hostess and the drug trafficker Arturo Beltrán Leyva, better known as El Barbas or Jefe de Jefes, who for many years was one of the main capos of the Sinaloa cartel. Montijo has denied this link, but now Mini Lic fully confirms it.

He claims that when El Chapo saw the government intelligence documents he held a meeting where he proposed giving a bribe of half a million dollars to the actress to set a trap for El Barbas and assassinate him.

'Peso Pluma' and 'Nini'.

"This goes for you Peso Pluma, refrain from presenting yourself on Oct. 14 (sic) because it will be your last presentation for being disrespectful and loose tongue, you present yourself and we will break your whole mother," said a message written in scarlet letters on white banners hung on three bridges in the border city of Tijuana. They were signed by the Jalisco Cartel - New Generation. Days later the singer cancelled his presentation.

Peso Pluma does not hide his tendency. Last June, his video with the Argentinean Bizarrap was released, in which he appears with clothes so heavy that they look like Christmas trees, displaying long guns. In one of them she clearly paid homage to the Sinaloa Cartel. Although he propagates these types of messages, he is one of the most listened to singers on Spotify in Mexico.

EL NINI OR CHICKEN LITTLE & PESO PLUMA 

-Behind the story of 'Peso Pluma', what is there? Does he really have contact with Los Chapitos? -

"Yes, more than anything with Nini... he goes, they have communication, favors, like any favor. Whether it's like 'lend me a car', 'hit that one', because I tell you, sometimes musicians think they are something else (narcos) and don't understand that there is a barrier, that they are musicians, and others that are politicians or are drug traffickers.

"There are many who say 'I am a musician, but because I have a relationship with drug traffickers I can do what they do,' which is not right.

"In the beginnings of Nini, he asked me for work, he had a friendship with my secretary, he was a kid, he was skinny, skinny, he was a kid".

His secretary, Mini Lic continues, told him one day: "Hey, this little brunette says he wants to do whatever you tell him to do. But when I see him, he is like a high school kid. I don't remember how old he was, but physically, he was a high school kid! (...) He's kind of short and skinny, and he had the face of a child back then".

Nini offered himself as a hitman, but Mini Lic didn't want to hire him. "And then, to show his courage, he was in a pickup truck at four in the morning and he was talking to my secretary and he said, 'Hey, listen, so you can see that I'll do whatever you want me to do,' and he parked and you can hear the scream, because my secretary was recording. Hey, come here, what are you doing?' It was like a bricklayer or something because he said 'I'm going here to work'. Ah Ok', said Nini and started shooting at him and started the truck and said to my secretary: 'Did you hear? I just killed, and now I'm going to find three more'. My secretary told him 'they're going to kill you for doing that' and he said 'no, just so you can see, tell your boss so he can see that I'm brave, whoever they put on me...', and then he killed a doctor who was exercising, the same thing in the morning at about five in the morning. From then on I hated him".

-So you didn't hire him'

"No, Panu hired him.

EL PANU OR EL LOBO 

Oscar Noe Medina Gonzalez, alias Panu, is one of the main operators of Ivan, the leader of Los Chapitos. Like Nini, he is on the DEA's most wanted list and a reward of four million dollars is being offered for him.

"And whatever it is from everyone because I accept, they sent him to do things and he did them. And he said 'yes', he didn't ask why or how he just went and did it. Then Ivan pulled him along with him. Panu had already had a bad relationship with Nini because Nini got very rowdy and wanted to go around killing and Panu said 'no'.

According to Mini Lic, it was the leader of Los Chapitos who knew how to take advantage of Nini's killer instinct. Ivan was the one who told him, 'Come on, I'm going to hit you,' and Ivan grabbed him. I was still there. Ivan Archivaldo began by giving the criminal an army of 30 armed people, then 50 with armored vehicles. Now there are more than 100.

Lopez Serrano affirms that in a meeting in which he was present, Ivan summoned Nini and another member of the organization with whom he had had a difference and complaints against the hitman boss. The complainant had barely begun to speak to explain the problem when, in front of everyone, Nini shot him in the head. In the end, Ivan and 'Nini' ended up laughing.

In a report from the Secretariat of National Defense dated 2020, it holds the friend of Peso Pluma and his hitmen responsible for having participated in the attack that occurred on September 30, 2016 in which five military personnel were killed and 10 wounded, in addition to the violent actions that occurred to free Ovidio Guzmán, a member of Los Chapitos on October 17, 2019 in the so-called 'Culiacanazo'.

-And regarding these musicians who seem like narco minstrels, what role do they play? Why are they important? -

"The musicians, I speak for myself, each head is a world, for me, they were my weakness because that's how I catalog it, as a weakness and a huge expense! The musician I spent the most in a single payment was 250 thousand dollars, Joan Sebastian, for three hours. It was the baptism of my son, in 2012. Joan Sebastian had been Arturo's compadre, they told us that they liked him [Arturo] and Héctor Beltrán to play, just him and the guitar in a room, that's how he liked it when they were with a girl, with a woman.

"I had hired him before, in 2010, to play at his wedding party, but the singer canceled on him a week before. He told me that his musicians were from Texas and that because they had just killed Arturo in December 2009, that the government was watching them and that they had to take a plane to fly and that he had been told that the government was checking everything, where his musicians and he were moving."

"That's how he told me: 'I know there are going to be people [drug traffickers] at that party and I'd rather not ruin your event, you better excuse me, it's not for me, it's for you', he told me, 'I'm going, but what if something happens?'"

-Did he know what environments they were? -

"He and all the musicians know, they're all used to playing toe to toe with everyone.

-But then there are dead people. -

"Unfortunately. I have always disagreed with killing musicians, I think they are not to blame, but I also have to recognize that there are many musicians who take sides and not only do what they should do, which is just music, they do things beyond and improper. Everything, drug trafficking, messing with married women and illegal businesses".

Bribing Galilea to Eliminate Beltran Leyva

In the book Las Señoras del narco. Amar en el infierno, Celeste V, who was Arturo Beltrán Leyva's confidant and romantic partner, offered details of the sentimental relationship between the hostess Galilea Montijo and who was then one of the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel. Celeste assured that El Barbas gave Montijo, as a partner, a monthly payment of 200 thousand dollars.

As part of the reconstruction of his time in the Sinaloa Cartel, in which he was active from 2005 to 2017, Mini Lic reveals that Joaquín Guzmán Loera, his father and himself had in their hands intelligence reports from the Mexican government revealing the sentimental relationship that Beltrán Leyva, El Barbas or Jefe de Jefes, had with Montijo.

Although the TV star has consistently denied the relationship revealed in the aforementioned book and in Emma y las otras señoras del narco, Mini Lic confirms the existence of the official reports and the Sinaloa cartel's plan to use Montijo as bait. The episode narrates the profuse mix between show business and drug cartels, and its consequences.

-Did you get your hands on these intelligence reports? -

"Intelligence reports said that Arturo had a relationship with Galilea Montijo, that they frequented each other, in what I remember in Cuernavaca and Acapulco. Also in the reports I saw, they mentioned musicians that played for Arturo, such as Sergio Vega, who I remember seeing in that paper, because as far as I remember, they all played for him! It was a war, we paid for information and I imagine that he also received information from us that the government gave him.

Mini Lic also reveals that Guzmán Loera "wanted to offer 500 thousand dollars to Galilea to put Arturo in his place".

 -Did 'El Chapo' want to contact Galilea? -

"Yes. We were in a meeting and El Chapo said that who could get to contact Galilea to offer her 500 thousand dollars to put Arturo Beltrán on (...), another one who was there, who knew Arturo and who had seen Galilea said 'No!, Galilea is not going to pull, she earns more with Arturo', not in one payment but in the long term, and he said 'she's not going to do it, Galilea won't do it for 500 thousand dollars, maybe if he threatens her maybe she will, but not for 500 thousand dollars'.

El Chapo and his associates thought of intimidating the famous hostess so that she would betray her partner, but in the end they found another way to eliminate him.

The marriage proposal to Galilea

"Arturo liked to boast that he had taken Televisa by storm," says López Serrano, referring to the various actresses who had a relationship with the capo. "So he's like every man, he liked to brag about his trophies. Like a hunter likes to show off his trophies in his room, the head of a moose, a bear, or a tiger, Arturo was a hunter of women," he explains, reflecting the macho mentality that prevails in the world of drug trafficking in Mexico.

"What I was told by Arturo's nephews and Arturo's escorts, that of all the women in the show business who were with him, the friendliest was Galilea, that she treated everyone well, she greeted them and was friendly and chatted with everyone. There were others who were very special and didn't even say hello or good afternoon, but Galilea did get along with everyone and had a relationship with the gunmen," recalls Mini Lic, who at the time was already a leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.

"A person who worked closely with Arturo told me that Arturo proposed to Galilea that he wanted to get married but Galilea said no, because of her career, she had to leave her career I think, and she said no".

-Did you know if Arturo Beltrán Leyva gave her money? -

-What his nephew Saltiel told me is that Galilea arrived with an empty bag and that he did look at it, that when she left it was full of money.

He claims that Saltiel, son of Alfredo Beltran Leyva, alias Mochomo, lived with Arturo. "Saltiel was at the inn where Arturo was almost captured; that was the last time he saw him. He was going to be my compadre, with me he was the one he counted on for everything," said Dámaso López Serrano.

Source: MILENIO