THE BORDER REPORT

Take a look at this video interview of José Vázquez  Villagrana, El Jabáli, for a moment.

Captured last month in Mexico City, Mexico’s Ministry of Public Safety presented the clean-cut 40-year-old Jábali, a drug lord from Santa Ana, Sonora, sporting a turtleneck sweater. The interview bothers me for many reasons, not the least of which are his wild admittances about what exactly he did for a living and for whom. Jábali claims to work for the Sinaloa Federation, but some people I had an opportunity to speak with over the past few days say he actually worked for the Juárez Cartel, not Sinaloa.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Vicente Zambada Niebla’s extradition went off without a hitch through Brownsville-Matamoros, yesterday, surprising some of us that the son of El Mayo, Ismael Zambada Garcia would be tossed to the Americans so easily.

But it’s his charges that interest me.

El Mayito is wanted in the United States in two separate federal court cases, one in Illinois, where he was sent yesterday; and the second in Washington D.C. That case is sealed but in short, it is the beginning of the case against the present-day Sinaloa Federation, Operation Trifecta.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Nogales, Sonora, is becoming the testing ground for our power restructuring theory in Mexico’s cartel wars. The Sinaloans started making their move on the city Monday, amidst concentrated gunbattles and two grenade attacks that have left at least eight dead and 24 wounded. Will Chapo Guzmán be able to take the town?

Mexican law enforcement sources in Hermosillo say the Sinaloans have finally come north to take back a city they had held only tenuously for the past two years. They’re using a local northern Sonora gang, Los Jabalí, to do it.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Okay, so El Muletas, Raydel López Uriarte goes down. The top figure of the Sinaloa-backed crime family in Baja California was arrested this morning in La Paz, Baja California Sur.

Last Thursday, his sister, Diana Lopez Uriarte, was kidnapped as she left a supermarket in Tijuana. News reports from the area observed that it was a heavily armed commando that took her down around noon. In keeping with our seemingly shared rampant cynicism, I wonder a little if her kidnapping didn’t lead to Muletas’ arrest today. Actually, I wonder a lot.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Maybe. And, being Mexico, maybe not. The interview looks clean, blaming El Viceroy, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes for the massacre of 16 youth in Juárez last Saturday.

As many of you already noticed, this transciption from juarezpress.com lays the blame solely at the feet of Joaquín Chapo Guzmán. And, as many of you have also noticed, it just seems too simple.

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