THE BORDER REPORT

Or they never left.

Los Numeros, the southern Sonora crew of narco-trafficking brothers who acted as the strong-arm of the Beltrán Leyva family, are back in action. That's the song the little birds are singing.

Also known as Los Güeritos after the original four brothers of the Enriquez Parra family for nearly a generation, the group has been among the strongest narco-trafficking families to ever work Arizona and Sonora. They faded from thought over the past couple years but appear to be making a comeback. Certain events lead me down this path of thinking.

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THE BORDER REPORT

So Shorty finally made the big-time.

The five-foot-two Sinaloan gangster who, according to the FBI dossier sitting on my desk, was born on Christmas day in 1954, made it to Forbes Magazine’s top billionaires of the world.

Granted, at 701st place, he’s a little low on the list, tying with a Swiss oil baron and the granddaughter of the Campbell Soup inventor (And why they chose this homoerotic shot is beyond me.)

Shorty's worth $5 million to the Feds and the rumor is that his bounty's about to go up to $10 million. But what's he really worth?

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THE BORDER REPORT

I’ve noticed something really curious this past week and I’m not yet sure what it means, maybe nothing. Maybe everything. The top law enforcement officers from the three largest border cities in the Sinaloa Federation’s turf, have resigned, all within the past three months. Two in the past week, alone. In December, Tijuana’s public safety director, Alberto Cappella, quit his job, was pushed out really, after absorbing nearly a year of blame for Tijuana’s cartel woes. Two weeks ago, the city council in Nogales, Sonora, started pushing at chief of police, Arturo Ramirez Camacho. Last Friday, he quietly presented his resignation. Then Juárez’s chief Roberto Orduña Cruz, a crusty retired army major who used to eye me up and down with a scowl, resigned. In some ways, his case was the easiest to understand. Somebody, and I don’t know if it was Juárez or Sinaloa, La Linea or Gente Nueva, vowed to kill a cop every 48 hours until Orduña quit. A bad, bad move with an evil precedent for the city of Juárez. Orduña’s predecessor had fled to El Paso, a year ago. Orduña came in with the full backing of Mexico’s army. He offered 9,800 pesos a month and room and board to former soldiers with the campaign “Aún tienes mucho por lograr.” Critics decried his heavy-handedness, the militarization of Juárez. But the reality is, there wasn’t one. The military never gained control of the city. This week, Mexico City is sending up reinforcements, 5,000 strong. They won’t have any effect either. But violence is easy to understand, killing is easy to understand. Killing lacks the nuance of the stories that are harder to understand. The political machinations that determine control in old Mexico. I don’t care who is the controlling party in Mexico City. Or Washington, D.C. for that matter. The border has its own politics and the metropolitan governments hours away are getting schooled. I wrote about Nogales a couple of weeks ago, when the whisperings began about Camacho’s resignation. Nogales’ case is far subtler than the open death threats in Juárez or the juvenile blame game in Tijuana. In many ways, Nogales’ case is far older. The man being considered for the job in Nogales now is Juan Manuel Portillo Guevara. Portillo was the operations chief for the Hermosillo police department in 2004. His officers stopped a car with four men inside after a gunfight. One of those four turned out to be a high level member of the Beltrán Leyva’s operations in Sonora, Los Güeritos. The man, Daniel Enriquez Parra, gave a false name to the arresting officers then paid out an unknown quantity of cash and walked out the door. The case came to be known as the Cuarto Pasajero. The resulting criticisms of the Hermosillo police department led to dismissals, firings, interrogations, and then silence. I’ve always enjoyed the case because it was the first time Los Güeritos and the Beltrán Leyvas were discussed in polite society. By the time the story finished everybody was left with a healthy suspicion that the low-end cops who were fired had been working under the orders of somebody higher than themselves. Portillo, let’s be clear, was never charged. That’s not a surprise. He disappears for a few years, then quietly resurfaces as the likeliest candidate for the job of border police chief. It’s these old stories, the stories of twists and turns and manipulations and quiet patronage that are fascinating to watch. And ultimately, far more deadly than murder. But for the moment, the job of security jefe in northwestern Mexico’s three largest border cities remains open.  Now we watch and see who fills in.

THE BORDER REPORT

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Para esta hora, todos han escuchado la noticia: Agentes de la DEA estadounidense detuvieron a 750 integrantes del Cártel de Sinaloa, La Federación.

Pero no es eso lo que los trae por acá, ¿verdad? Por supuesto que no. Entonces, echemos una miradita a lo que NO se está diciendo sobre el caso.

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THE BORDER REPORT

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You've all heard the news by now I'm sure, 750 members of the Sinaloa Federation taken down by the U.S. Feds.

It's been the talk of the border all day, but that's not why you're here, is it. Hell no. Let's take a look at what the Feds are not saying. That is always so much more interesting. In brief, and I'm citing the U.S. Attorney's Office's statement here, "Operation Xcellerator has led to the arrest of 755 individuals and the seizure of approximately $59.1 million in U.S. currency, more than 12,000 kilograms of cocaine, more than 16,000 pounds of marijuana, more than 1,200 pounds of methamphetamine, more than 8 kilograms of heroin, approximately 1.3 million pills of Ecstasy, more than $6.5 million in other assets, 149 vehicles, 3 aircraft, 3 maritime vessels and 169 weapons." The investigation started because the Feds lost a guy by the name of Victor Emilio Cazarez Salazar. Cazarez is a top-level trafficker who controls Mexicali for the Sinaloans. He was indicted in 2007 and is a fugitive. Unfortunately, the Americans used the wrong name to identify him. His real name is actually Victor Emilio Cazares Gastélum, 45 years old, born in Guasave, Sinaloa. Cazares is the brother of The Empress, remember her? Sure you do; Blanca Margarita Cázares Salazar, La Emperatriz, money launderer for the Sinaloa Federation from the 1990s, when Amado Carrillo died, to now. The Empress is an ex-girlfriend of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, lives in Culiacán, Sinaloa. Her son was murdered along with Joaquín "Shorty" Guzmán's son in an attack in that city last spring. Now you remember! At the time, people blamed Arturo Beltrán and the Leyvas for the killing, saying it sparked the current drug war, breaking the Sinaloa Federation and decimating Sinaloa and Sonora. Then the rumors came out, and they're still being heard, that it was El Mayo who went after Guzmán's son. I called Washington a little while ago but the Justice Department's office says they're not releasing the names of those arrested. With a little help from un compá, we're a little bit closer to unraveling this mess. The Feds can't spell, so when they filed the indictments against The Empress's brother, they spelled his name Gastellum, don't ask me why. The indictment was filed and sealed by a U.S. District Court in California in February 2007. Happily, it's no longer sealed. Let's see what it says. The indictment was filed against "El Licenciado" Cazares Gastellum, Jose Oscar del Castillo Gallardo, Carlos Cuevas, Sergio Kaiser, Santos Fabian Rocha, Carlos Valle, Miguel Angel Cardenas, Jose Ismael Urquiza, Luis Eduardo Alvarez, Karlo Humberto Armenta, Gilbert Vasquez, Octavio Amezcua, Rosario Garcia, Gaspar Puentes, Arturo Guardado, Elisa Valenzuela, Tony Ramos, Arturo Fontes and Roberto Daniel Lopez. In brief: del Castillo is Cazares' son-in-law and negotiated multi-ton cocaine load shipments to the U.S. Carlos Cuevas: Ran the show in Imperial County and was the Mexicali connection for the Sinaloans. Santos Rocha: Was in charge of packing the cocaine in cars to get it past U.S. Customs at the ports. One of his best ideas seemed to be throwing down a row of sandbags in a cross-border canal and using that as a road to run loads across. I don't know why the Feds never noticed a row of sandbags sitting in the water, but alright. Miguel Cardenas and Jose Urquiza: Acted as the look-outs for the load vehicles. Octavio Amezcua: Was in charge of the marijuana loads. Charging papers from the Justice Department show that the Cazares family controlled 19 restaurants, hotels, maquiladoras, radio stations, and import companies in Culiacán, Tijuana, Guadalajara, and Mexico City. That fine newspaper, Zeta, uncovered a little more on Cazares last year, when reporters found that he was receiving federal welfare benefits from the Mexican government for three hundred head of cattle in Badiraguato, Sinaloa. I'll add more information as this case continues to unravel. I'm working on gathering some of those 755 names. Sále.