Arrest and killings of armed wing of CDS credited with reduction in Sinaloa homicides

A little over two months have passed since the arrest of Sinaloa Cartel capo Joaquín 'Chapo' Guzmán Loera was captured in the port city of Mazatlán. Following his arrest and eventual incarceration in the Alto Plano federal prison, Sinaloa has seen sporadic violence associated with an 'adjustment of accounts' among criminal elements of the Sinaloa underworld. While there has been much speculation about attempts by rival members of the remnants of Juaréz Cartel, allied with former Sinaloa compadres the Beltrán Leyva Organization, to make inroads into Sinaloa Cartel territory, every sign points to realignments within the Sinaloa organization itself.

On March 15 things began to heat up in Mazatlán itself, when 5 men were gunned down at a seafood restaurant called Barracuda’s.Then, while police were pursuing suspects linked to the attack at Barracuda's, they came under attack, leaving two officers shot dead.  Marcos Joel Osuna Rodríguez and Pilar Valentín Osuna were detained, suspected in the attack that left 5 men dead.

The men are thought to be members of one of the Sinaloa Cartel's 'armed wings', such as Los  Ántrax. Under questioning by federal authorities, they implicated the entire Mazatlán police force as having been under the control of 'El Chapo'. Following these events, the police chief of Mazatlán, Pablo Andrés Hernández Lizárraga, was suspended and disappeared before he could be arrested.

The rest of the Mazatlán continues to operate under a cloud of suspicion, although the state police commander for Sinaloa, Jesús Antonio Aguilar Íñiguez aka Chuytoño, declined to make any arrests.  Chuytoño himself was under an arrest order prior to his appointment by Sinaloa governor Mario Lopéz Valdez, Malova, accused of complicity in the death of Rodolfo Carrillo and as a protector of the Sinaloa Cartel's top leaders. 

 The death of 'El Jaguar'

At the end of March of this year, a convoy of Army and state police came under fire outside Navolato, leaving 4 dead sicarios. Apparently, they put up a valiant fight, firing off hundreds of rounds from high powered automatic rifles and tossing fragmentation grenades at the soldiers. However this was not enough to save Germán Ceniceros Ibarra, 'El Jaguar', from a violent death, along with three of his gunmen.

Who was this 'Jaguar'? Germán Ceniceros Ibarra was a former chief of the municipal police in Navolato, the stronghold of the Carrillos and the home of matriarch doña Aurora Fuentes López. Doña Aurora always believed that Germán Ceniceros Ibarra was responsible for the 2008 kidnapping and murder of her son, José Cruz Carrillo Fuentes, younger brother of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, El General. He was found murdered, along with his brother-in-law, José Antonio García Lara. Her daughter-in-law personally identified Andres and Germán Ceniceros Ibarra as being among the military command arrived with 15 armored Humvees and kidnapped the men. This precipitated a violent war between the Carrillos and the Sinaloa Cartel, unprecedented since the murder of Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes four years prior.


In the following months, no less than 15 officers who had been with the Navolato municipal police would turn up dead. Germán Ceniceros Ibarra ,'El Jaguar', disappeared from his position, while 49 of the 84 officers with the municipal police resigned their positions. Two police commander who were cousins of 'El Jaguar', Jorge and Héctor Javier Lizárraga Ceniceros were found murdered the following year.

At the time of his death, Germán Ceniceros Ibarra was riding in a black Hummer H2 on the road from Culiacán to Navolato. It is unknown if the armed confrontation with military forces was a chance even or not. It has been alleged that Ceniceros Ibarra was chief of sicarios for Dámaso López Núñez, 'El Licenciado',  in the areas of Navolato and Eldorado.

The Murder of 'El Bravo'

At the beginning of this month, reports surfaced that Manuel Alejandro Aponte Gómez 'El Bravo', reputed to be head of security for Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, had been found dead, along with 3 other men. The bodies showed evidence of torture, were bound with duct tape, and dumped on a farm. There were allegations that Dámaso López Núñez, 'El Licenciado', was cleaning house and getting rid of potential rivals. It had been stated in alleged comments made by Carlos Manuel Hoo Ramírez, 'El Cóndor', arrested with Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, that there was a possibility of a war between 'El Bravo' and 'El Licenciado'. What is more likely is that 'El Bravo' was done in by his own people for failing to protect the boss, and was tortured to make sure he was the source of information that led to 'El Chapo'. 

On April 3rd of this year, a shootout occurred outside Culiacan, at the campo 'El Diez' and the Sinaloa state police detained 10 men. The Sinaloa Attorney General, Martín Robles Armenta, decided to turn the men over to federal authorities with the PGR [federal prosecutor's office] where the case if being handled by SEIDO, the organized crime division of Mexico's Attorney General.

It has now been reported that the detained men, who have not been identified, are members of 'Los Chimalis', an armed wing of the Sinaloa Cartel based in Villa Juarez, a town located outside of Culiacán, in between Navolato and Costa Rica, in Navolato municipality. Martín Robles Armenta has not stated this is the case, but he has said that the arrest of a major part of this gang, along with the seizure of an arsenal of weapons, has reduced crime in this part of Sinaloa.

It's hard to say how many of these arrests and killings by police are part of the 'settling of accounts' following the capture of Sinaloa Cartel capo Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, because historically, the Sinaloa state police have almost always been in the pocket of organized crime. One thing is certain, and that is the fact that there has been a major changing of the guards in the area along the Sinaloa coast, south and west of Culiacán. This area, stretching from Altata to Eldorado is an important smuggling area for boats coming in and out of Sinaloa, with myriad bays, inlets, and beaches to conduct operations, without of surveillance from local residents, who are firmly under the thumb of the Sinaloa Cartel.

This is the area where the family of Dámaso López Núñez, 'El Licenciado', has long enjoyed a local fiefdom, long before 'El Licenciado' secured a place in the Sinaloa Cartel hierarchy with his aid in the escape of Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán from Puente Grande prison in Jalisco. His father, Dámaso López García, was a municipal manager from Eldorado, a position guaranteeing political patronage, before he passed away in 2009. His brother, Adolfo López Núñez, who is also identified by military intelligence as an organized crime figure associated with the Sinaloa Cartel.