The Clandestinity of Death in Culiacàn, Sinaloa

 "Char" for Borderland Beat

This article was translated and reposted from RIODOCE 

WRITTEN BY: MARTÍN GONZÁLEZ

NOVEMBER 22, 2023

The south of the city is the area that organized crime prefers for the abandonment of corpses.

In Culiacan, the clandestinity of death is in the south, where the lack of video surveillance and police cameras are favorable to organized crime for the abandonment of corpses without much concern.

Sectors such as El Ranchito, the road to La Casa del Lago in La Primavera and the junction of Giovanni Zamudio Boulevard with La Costerita are, for now, clandestine cemeteries with unburied bodies.

According to newspaper archives, in the last five months of 2023, at least 47 bodies have been dumped south of Culiacán.

The data collected indicate that there is a mobility of death, since from being La Primavera one of the sites of continuous abandonment of murdered people, this practice has moved to the sector of El Ranchito and now to the junction of Giovanni Zamudio-La Costerita Boulevard.

Almost always in the south

An expert from the State Attorney General's Office, who requested anonymity, said that the discovery of corpses is more frequent in the southern part of Culiacan, where there is a high incidence rate.

"It is the southwestern area where there is a lot of activity right now. The area there, next to La Primavera, along Giovanni Zamudio Boulevard, has a lot of homicide activity. More than anything like the place where the bodies are found..." he said.

Unlike the southern part of Culiacán, he acknowledged, in the north this practice is carried out to a lesser extent.

The abandonment of corpses, he said, is due in part to the lack of vigilance and the geography of the terrain.

"In the north we don't go as much, (in the south) there is a very high rate. There is a lot of activity in the southwest zone. On one side of the dirt road that goes to La Casa del Lago there is a lot of activity... Many times these are places that crime has defined or because of geographic issues or because there is no surveillance," he said.

Other sites

In the southern part of Culiacán there are other neighborhoods and subdivisions that have been taken over by organized crime as "clandestine dumps" for corpses.

Among the neighborhoods with these practices are La Costerita and Miguel de la Madrid, and the subdivisions Urbi Villas del Sol, in the Barrancos sector, Punta Azul, Rincon Santa Rosa, Colinas del Bosque, as well as Capistrano and the Piggy Back.

Outstanding cases

On May 5, 2022, Enrique Ramirez, columnist for El Debate and founder of the news portal Fuentes Fidedignas, was found murdered and emplayed in one of the streets of the El Ranchito neighborhood, a homicide that still remains unpunished.

And on June 26, 2023, two people were found murdered and handcuffed, with a considerable amount of fentanyl pills left on them, on the side of La Costerita, at the access to the dirt road that leads to La Casa del Lago, in the La Primavera sector.

JAVIER LLAUSÁS

Ranking at risk

Despite the Culiacanazo version 2.0, this year Culiacán came out of the ranking of the 50 most violent cities in the world, according to the Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice, AC.

But Javier Llausás Magaña, director of Construyendo Espacios para la Paz, is concerned that the homicide rates in the capital of Sinaloa will return Culiacán to that ranking.

"In homicides we have had ups and downs. We have a pressure between 7 and 8 percent with respect to last year. It is not higher than 2021, but it would break the favorable trend we have had for the last seven years and that helped us get off that list of the most violent cities," he explained.

Llausás Magaña was confident that both society and government will do their part to prevent any acts of violence in the remainder of 2023 and maintain the favorable trend to continue out of the ranking of the 50 most violent cities in the world.

"If the trend continues like this we run the risk of returning, but I am confident that we will work together, society and government, so that Culiacán continues that favorable trend that we had worked on and had achieved in the last five years," he emphasized.

Homicides on the decline

According to the monthly report of the State Public Security System (SESESP), there has been a 13 percent decrease in the crime of intentional homicide in the state from January to October 2023, compared to the same period in 2021.

According to SESESP statistics, as of October of this year there were 450 intentional homicides registered against the 517 perpetrated in the same period of 2021. But this is a misleading comparison, since the number of intentional homicides rose from 491 in the first year to 521 in the second, thus showing an increase concerning 2022.

Deprivation of liberty is on the rise

The monthly report shows that the crime of deprivation (of liberty) registered an upward trend of 4 percent in 2021.

In these 10 months, it indicates, there are 828 reported cases of deprivation of freedom against the 796 that were presented in this same period of the previous year.

Article published on November 19, 2023 in the 1068th edition of the weekly Ríodoce.

Source: RIODOCE 

CULIACÁN-SINALOA📍