THE BORDER REPORT And Mexico, and I mean the State, is staying the Christ out of it. Thank you, first of all, to juanito, a reader here who helped set me straight on the players. (I'd like to add, as a friend in Nogales pointed out, who in the hell drives a Volkswagen Passat to a gunfight with the Beltrán Leyvas?) He's got it right, Felix the Ice Cream Man is with Raúl Sabori, Paéz Soto, Nini Beltrán and Los Jabalí, Jose Vásquez's boys from Santa Ana. Collectively, they're the Sinaloa Federation's syndicate along the Sonora border. And they're going against El Gilo, a man identified in an FBI report as Hector Beltrán Leyva's lieutenant in Saríc and Tubutama, that pocket of cerro between Nogales and Sasabe, just along the Sonora-Arizona border. It is significant that the U.S. intel agencies do not know his real name. (All photos, courtesy, Sonora State Police.) Gilo, according to the FBI, has 300 men stocked in that town and they're running out of resources. Last week, the chief of police and town treasurer from Tubutama tried to make a run for Nogales to buy gasoline; they were subsequently eliminated from the argument. On June 12, according to a U.S. Border Patrol intel report, Gilo scrapped with the Mexican Army in Cerro Prieto; taking no casualties. The Army backed off, not saying how many casualties they themselves took. Geographically, it's a rough area to get to; there is exactly one highway leading in, you come in from Magdalena de Kino or you come in from Sasabe or Altar. My apologies to those of you not from this area, it's late, I'm busy and I don't have time to explain these logistics. Suffice it to say that there are three entrances towards that mountain range, one from the east, two from the west. In that gunfight yesterday, the Sinaloa crew fucked up; there's just no other way to put it. Los Jabalí geared up with 30-50 SUVs and trucks, all marked with three X's on the windows. Gilo's people were waiting for them. According to the FBI, the Sinaloans ran into a roadblock, just a couple cars jamming up the road; enough to force the convoy to a halt. It was truly a stupid maneuver, in my opinion. Yeah, you had them cornered, Gilo's people are sitting stranded in a fucking mountain town for chrissakes. But the Sinaloans moved in linearly when they should have come in from all directions. Idiotas. Bear in mind that the Army did nothing during this occupation; they didn't move in on Gilo, they didn't move on the Sinaloans. From the FBI report: "Subjects report that the Jabalínas (sp) were forced to a stop on the highway when Gilo's group opened fire and sustained heavy casualties." The Sinaloans are supposedly waiting for 300 men to arrive from Sinaloa. Unfortunately for them, Gilo is also awaiting reinforcements. There's an old story in the Sierra, about a lion cornered by a pack of dogs and just how many of those dogs the old mountain cat defeated before he was taken down. Right about now, 48 hours after the killings, there oughtta be two groups coming in from Sinaloa; one from Culiacán, one from the Sierra, Los Mochis, maybe. 300 men, each side, about to fight it out for a mountain town. The FBI is filled with idiots who anticipate this is a mopping up of the Beltrán Leyvas. They ain't been able to do it yet. In fact, got smoked when they tried. No, no, mi estimado. One side is brimming, building up in the cities. But the other is quiet, watching, waiting. The dogs are howling; the cat's snarling. This will be a fight for the corridos to remember. Gonna be one hell of a Fourth of July. I'll be in Tubutama this weekend. Try and behave. Sále.

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

Sergio Vega composed some of my favorite narco-corridos in the genre. He had a great timing for crudeness and a strong sense of irony, especially in songs like "El Impostor de Malverde," the tale of an American CIA agent who took the place of Jesús Malverde in the Culiacán shrine only to end up dead in Colonia Las Quintas.

Last Saturday, Vega was summarily executed driving his red Cadillac to a party in Sinaloa where he was scheduled to perform. The gunmen, and this has the flavor of the old Sinaloa Cartel, killed him in front of one of his own promotional posters.

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THE BORDER REPORT

El Imparcial is reporting that Puerto Penasco's chief of police was gunned down last night along with his bodyguard. Police chief Erick Landagaray Macías took six AK-47 rounds and his bodyguard another seven. Both men survived and were taken to a hospital in Hermosillo. It's the third or fourth shooting in that area since last week; there have also been gun battles up the highway in Sonoyta. Last month, the government of Sonora grew testy with the State Department who had published a warning that armed men were running fake checkpoints on the highway from Sonoyta to Rocky Point. The state government and the American business community in Rocky Point, in their typical fashion, claimed the warnings were not true.

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