From My Cold, Dead Hands Indeed
Jan 29th, 2008 | By Michel Marizco | Category: General News, Organized Crime, Politics
Email
Facebook
Twitter 
Post to Delicious 
Stumble This Post 
Buzz This Post 
Digg This Post
THE BORDER REPORT
Mexican Army personnel searching homes of the Sinaloa drug lords in Caborca, Sonora, this week, also searched the tomb of a dead drug lord, looking for weapons, I'm told.
Sadly, I cannot tell you whether they actually found weapons. But what I am told is that during the search, soldiers entered the tomb of Don Octavio Paez Quintero, the 62-year-old drug lord who once controlled the city of Caborca, and, vicariously, the routes leading up to the Tohono O'odham Indian Nation, the smuggling towns of Altar and Sasabe, and the Altar Valley southwest of Tucson.
Paez was gunned down in late April 2004, early in the morning, downtown Caborca. He was shot 14 times. There's never been a solution to his murder, of course, but sources within the federal drug investigative agencies believe that he was murdered by Los Numeros, the narco-trafficking organization that controlled the Arizona-Sonora border for the Beltrán Leyva family.
Paez was known as somewhat of an old-style narco-trafficker, a legitimate cattlerancher and horseman who invested some of his profits back into the city. Los Numeros at the time were building up their control in Agua Prieta, Nogales and Sonoyta; I guess he wasn't playing ball.
Three years later, and someone in the military intel units must have heard something. I understand that soldiers entered the capilla built in his memoriam and searched for weapons. I don't know if they exhumed the corpse to look in the coffin or not.
Madres, en que tiempo vivimos.
-- Michel Marizco
