THE BORDER REPORT

Here's a story I did on the situation in Tubutama for the Nogales International. By now, the entire border world, from Nogales, Sonora, cops to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to the radio stations to me, now know that a convoy of some 30 vehicles pulled into Nogales late Wednesday night. Everybody seems to know this except the Calderón and Padrés Administrations, apparently. According to a source at the FBI, nobody's sure whether the convoy is there to back the Sinaloans who got stomped trying to take out Gilo in the hills or whether these are Gilo's reinforcements. I anticipate they are reinforcing the Sinaloa Cartel and I'll tell you why. The Mexican government and the Sonoran State Police have chosen to stay out of the fight in the hills; yet we know for a fact that Gilo, Hector Beltrán Leyva's man, has clashed with the Army. According to a Border Patrol intel report, the Army clashed with Gilo on June 12 – and I think we can safely presume they lost that battle since Gilo is still there a month later. It has been said in the past, by people smarter than I, that Calderón is focusing his efforts on Sinaloa's rivals, including Beltrán Leyva, Barbie, and the Zetas. Depending on whom you choose to believe, the Mexican government is doing so either to A) finish off the smaller cartels to bring peace to the country or B) because they are in the pay of the Sinaloa Federation. What's going on in Nogales right now is a great example of this. The Army and the state police have left the convoy alone and they've been there some 36 hours now. This suggests the Calderón Administration is letting the Sinaloans finish the job for them. Or try to, anyway. From what people are saying, the convoy has been driving around Nogales all morning. In the July 1 battle, the Sinaloans were backed up by the locals, Sinaloa loyals including Felix the Ice Cream Man, Raúl Sabori and Nini Beltrán but it's been said on this website that the outsiders took the lead on that attack and that's why they failed so badly. Here's what one Nogales resident said: "Good to know the locals can hold their own against those pushy outsiders!" To be fair, the road up to Tubutama can be tricky to find ...(here's a hint, Tubutama is to the west). Someone buy them boys a map.

THE BORDER REPORT

Justice Department officials in Arizona are now saying the tally of the dead in northern Sonora is 21, and possibly included in those, Raúl "El Negro" Sabori Cisneros. Meanwhile, a source within CISEN, the Mexican intelligence agency, and a cartel familymember I talk to in Tucson are both reporting at least another ten dead in Altar, Sonora. The hospital in Caborca, the closest hospital to the area, is filled with wounded. My guy in Tucson says an additional 40 people were wounded, enough that the wounded in Altar are being taken to houses to recover, there's simply no room for them in Caborca. A clarification, and perhaps some of you can help the rest of us with this. My guy here says that the fight isn't with the Zetas, that El Gilo and Mr. Ice Cream Man, Felix Paleteros, are their own drug syndicate in Tubutama and the Altar/Sasabe/Caborca boys answer to the Sinaloa Federation. Is that the breakdown I need to be looking at? If the high number of dead is true, it's curious. Tubutama, Sonora, is a small town nestled in the hills between Nogales and Sasabe, just south of the U.S. Mexico border. If you were looking at a map of Arizona, it'd be south of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. The Sinaloans and the Zetas have engaged in a battle in this area for some time, now. The Zetas are stranded in the hills; the Sinaloans are not allowing resources to enter the area. Last week, in fact, the public safety director, Gerardo González Méndez, and the town treasurer, Sergio Vázquez Díaz, were gunned down outside of Nogales. A law enforcement source in Nogales tells me the two were driving back toward Tubutama with a drum of gasoline (there is no gas station in those hills between Nogales and Sasabe). His belief was that the Sinaloans had killed the two men for helping the Zetas. I was in Altar and Caborca the past few days on assignment and saw convoys of Mexican Army deuce-and-a-halfs surrounding the highways in to Tubutama. An official at the local garrison in Sasabe recommended I not travel towards Tubutama because of the frenetic violence that has grasped the region. The Sinaloans have a three-truck checkpoint sitting at the Sasabe-Saríc highway crossing. While all this is going on, of course, there's the question of the weekend's Fourth of July festivities in Puerto Peñasco. Now, Peñasco sits a good two hours from Tubutama, and no, nobody's targeting Americans who don't deserve it, so there's no reason to make this about traveling Phoenicians. What I'm trying to ascertain is whether the twenty murders actually happened in Tubutama last night or whether it's merely a panicked chisme coming out of Hermosillo. On a side note, frankly, I find the situation a little pitiful. Cells from two "powerful" cartels are fighting over gasoline. If the most powerful cartel in the Western Hemisphere can't roust a group of thugs sitting in a mountain town, the question must be asked, is anyone wielding influence south of the line? It all falls in line with what some readers have noted: that last week's killing of the musico, Sergio Vega, was an accident because he was driving the same color Cadillac as El 18. Again, poor intel. The cartel wars are deteriorating to the level of stray dogs fighting over a chicken bone. **UPDATE – Guess it ain't no chisme anymore. Gracias, comadre, por el tip. Te la pago con un seis de Tecate bien heladas la proxima vez que nos veamos.

THE BORDER REPORT

A high-level official in the U.S. Border Patrol was removed from his position after carrying on an affair with a subordinate's wife. The official, one of the highest-ranking agents working along the Southwest border is apparently facing reassignment elsewhere. Infidelity doesn't seem to be a punishable offense in the Homeland Security Department but lying to investigators who ask you about it, apparently is. Naming the guy would be no fun, so let's just leave it at that. Messy, messy, messy but that's how we like it here.

THE BORDER REPORT Is La Barbie, Edgar Valdez Villareal, dead? The rumor's been circulating for about two hours now. Thank you, Doroteo Arango, for bringing the chisme to our attention. Here is the rumor (ni descartado hasta el momento) que murio el Muñeco. But another rumor has been circulating, that Barbie was arrested which is equally rich. Both rumors have him in Taxco, in the state of Guerrero, where 15 gunmen were killed in a gunfight earlier today. Mexican media have sources in the area telling them the gunmen worked for Barbie so it's entirely possible that the rumors started there. We will see. (Photo, courtesy, anonymous source.)

THE BORDER REPORT

Is a founder of the Juarez Cartel now in talks with the Sinaloa Federation to take over Ciudad Juarez? It's a chisme that's come across my desk recently, and if true, opens the way for some fascinating negotiations for the border city.

Gilberto Greñas Ontiveros was released from Jalisco's Puente Grande prison in 2007 and since that time, hasn't been the least bit shy in making his new-found freedom known to the world. After his release from prison he immediately returned to El Paso and Juarez, successfully suing the city of Juarez for the return of one of his properties. It had been appropriated after his arrest in 1986 and sits between a woman's hospital and the Hotel Lucerna, about five minutes from the border. Inept American law enforcement agencies don't seem to realize he's been walking free for the past three years, of course. This is their latest information on him: "Presently incarcerated in Mexico, allegedly due to be released at an unknown time." Sweet Tapdancing Christ, either update your information or pick up a Mexican paper. With his mop of hair, he looked like what an old FBI source used to call "one of those ranchero fucks" but he also had a penchant for the high end lifestyle in Juarez, keeping a Rolls Royce in the garage of his mansion and a tigress named Viviana. He kept a lion as a pet in prison, the stories go, scaring holy hell out of the cellblock's other occupants. Maybe just one of those tales that persist about some of Mexico's older drug figures, maybe not. (Photo courtesy, DOJ.) Like so many of his successors, Greñas fell because he let his temper grab hold and brought unwanted attention onto himself (he did that by threatening to shoot an El Paso newspaper photographer then kidnapping the guy and beating him for ten hours ... ) I don't know how close Amado Carrillo Fuentes and Greñas were but it doesn't appear he and Vicente Carrillo held much mutual affection. Last year, Ontiveros' son was found murdered, floating in a canal in Juarez. It is said that Los Aztecas murdered the young man because he'd been passing information to the Sinaloa Federation. If that ends up being true, it would explain much behind this latest rumor. I can almost hear the corrido now: La Revancha del Viejo, perhaps? If Greñas is indeed being considered to take over Juarez for the Sinaloans, he'd actually make a great transition. His two ex-wives continue living in the area and he lived most of his life in Chihuahua; this suggests a strong familial connection with the state's authorities. And as a founder of the Juarez Cartel, this is a man who proved himself capable of maintaining the city's drug trafficking infrastructure. Was having a cup of coffee with an old Customs Enforcement source who used to work in El Paso in the nineties and brought up the possibility of Greñas as Juarez's new border dawg. "I like that......he would be a good choice," he says. We will see.