Men purporting to be members of the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) have released a video denouncing the February 27 Tonala, Jalisco attack in which 11 were killed, 10 of whom were construction workers.

In the video, which bears no CJNG insignia or the group’s markings, seven alleged CJNG members armed and dress in black stand in a white room. The spokesperson accuses the Jalisco Attorney General of attempting to botch the investigation by suggesting that the victims were caught in a crossfire. They then accuse individuals known as “El Loco,” “El Primo,” or “El Marino” of orchestrating the attack.

The attack left eleven people dead, and two others were injured in La Jauja neighborhood in Tonala, Jalisco on February 27. Ten of the victims were construction workers who were awaiting payment when they were gunned down on the sidewalk in Emiliano Zapata street. Another individual was found dead inside the home where the attack took place, and two more were injured, including a child under the age of five and a woman.

According to witnesses, the attackers arrived aboard a black Ford Explorer and two other vehicles when they opened fire. The three cars fled towards the University of Tonalá. Authorities reported that over 70 shell casings were found on the scene and added that a motive for the attack is not yet known.

Jalisco recorded the third-highest number of homicides in February 2021, with 220. Since January 2020, the state registered 2,495 murders, according to the daily reports from the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC).

Juan Pablo Quintero Martínez, known as “Pablito,” nephew of Rafael Caro Quintero, was arrested in the municipality Atizapán de Zaragoza, State of Mexico. He was arrested in the Rancho Blanco neighborhood over the killing of an individual in Mexico City last November. He will be investigated in connection to other federal crimes.

His uncle, Rafael Caro Quintero, known as “El Narco de Narcos” and one of the Cartel de Guadalajara’s founders, is on the United States Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) most wanted list. Caro Quintero is wanted by the US for the torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena in 1985 and trafficking. He spent 28-years in a Mexican maximum-security prison and was released after the court concluded that he was tried improperly. The DEA is currently offering USD 20 million for information leading to his capture.

Caro Quintero now heads the Cartel de Carborca in Caborca, Sonora, which is embroiled in a war against the Cartel de Sinaloa (CDS) faction led by the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, collectively known as “Los Chapitos” in Sonora.

The war between the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) and Ismael el “Mayo” Zambada’s faction of the Cartel de Sinaloa (CDS) in Zacatecas continues heating up after the two rival groups reportedly clashed in Valparaíso. At the moment, the number of casualties is not confirmed.

On Monday, two were killed, and ten were wounded after clashes erupted between presumed members of the CDS and the CJNG in Jiménez de Téul, Zacatecas, near the border with Durango. It is unclear what group, if any, the casualties were members. The clashes were reported between 19:00 and 20:00 hours in the village of El Carrizo. According to Ruth Medina, the head of the Durango Attorney General’s Office (FGJD), the clashes are believed to have occurred between the rival CDS and CJNG cartels. In a separate video, a convoy of CJNG men were reportedly in transit to Valparaiso to reinforce their men.

According to the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC), Zacatecas recorded 132 homicides in February 2021. Since the start of the year, six police officers have been killed.

Since the beginning of 2020, the state has documented an increasing rise in violence as the cartel wars intensify. Between January 2020 to February 2021, Zacatecas recorded 1,346 homicides, though figures could be much higher as the war between the CJNG and CDS faction of Ismael el “Mayo” Zambada intensifies.

The state is a highly coveted transit point for drug trafficking, especially fentanyl, due to two crucial federal highways that connect it to the US-border states of Tamaulipas and Chihuahua. According to the state Secretary of Public Security, up to 90% of homicides in Zacatecas are linked to organized crime. Within the last decade, the CDS, Cartel del Golfo (CDG), Cartel del Noreste (CDN), CJNG, and Los Talibanes, a cell allied with Los Zetas, have been vying to take control of the state.

A federal judge has issued an arrest warrant against former Nayarit governor Roberto Sandoval Castañeda and his daughter, Lidy Alejandra Sandoval López, for money laundering and links to organized crime. The Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) will request the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) to issue a Red Notice for their arrest. This is the second arrest warrant issued against the former governor. In May 2019, he was placed on the U.S. Kingpin List for corruption and accepting bribes from the Cartel Jalisco Nuevo Generacion (CJNG).

According to a federal investigation, during his tenure as governor of Nayarit, from 2011 to 2017, Sandoval Castañeda and the former Nayarit State Attorney General Édgar Veytia were associated with illicit activities, including kidnapping, extortion, dispossession, robbery, threats, illegal enrichment, and homicide. The investigation also cites that the former governor’s daughter paid for three properties in cash while reporting insufficient income.

Veytia was arrested in San Diego in March 2017, and in 2019 was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of drug trafficking and offering protection to the H-2 Cartel. Veytia reportedly provided the H-2 Cartel, led by Francisco Patron Sánchez, operator for the Beltrán Leyva Organization in Nayarit, with protection in exchange for monthly bribes. He also directed other corrupt Mexican law enforcement officers to aid the cartel beginning in 2013 and used them as back channels to receive and send messages to Patron Sanchez.

In November 2020, an arrest warrant was issued against Sandoval Castañeda on charges of embezzlement, improper exercise of official duty, and accepting bribes from the CJNG, Los Cuinis, and the Cartel de Los Beltran Leyva in exchange for favorable court sentences. The Ministry of Finance’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) froze 42 bank accounts linked to the former governor totaling over a billion pesos (over USD 59 million).

He remains on the run. If charged, he could face up to 20 years in prison and could be required to reimburse the state upward of MXN 20 million (USD 980,000), according to judicial officials.

Eleven people were killed, and two others were injured in an armed attack in the La Jauja neighborhood in Tonala, Jalisco, on Saturday. According to ministerial authorities, ten of the victims were construction workers awaiting payment when they were gunned down on the sidewalk in Emiliano Zapata street. Another individual was found dead inside the home where the attack took place, and two more were injured, including a child under the age of five and a woman.

According to witnesses, the attackers arrived aboard a black Ford Explorer and two other vehicles when they opened fire. The three cars fled towards the University of Tonalá. Authorities reported that over 70 shell casings were found on the scene and added that a motive for the attack is not yet known.

The bodies of the victims will be transferred to Forensic Medical Service pending their official identification.

Jalisco recorded the third-highest number of homicides in February 2021, with 220. Since January 2020, the state registered 2,495 murders according to the daily reports from the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC).

After nearly 12 hours of work, a collective of relatives of missing people named “Standing Until I Find You” and “A Light On My Way” reported discovering the remains of 19 people in clandestine graves in Celaya, Guanajuato. The collectives reported their discovery in the community of Sauz de Villaseñor on February 20, and warned that the gravesites could be bigger than that discovered in Salvatierra last year that contained the remains of 79 people.

The groups reported arriving at the site after receiving an anonymous call. They then alerted the Guanajuato Attorney General’s Office and municipal police. The following day, the collectives gathered again to begin exhuming the sites, now accompanied by two additional collectives, “Until We Find You” and “Project Search.”

One member of the collective reported that the municipal police threatened to arrest her and demanded that she reveal where she received the information. The other members of the collective accused Guanajuato’s state and local authorities of being uncooperative, hostile, and incompetent in assisting them with processing the site. Once pressed to exhume the remains, the authorities exhumed the remains in a way that made them “totally inadmissible [as evidence],” a member said.

Since 2021, 250 homicides have been committed in Guanajuato. Territorial disputes between the Cartel Santa Rosa de Lima (CSRL) and the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) have made Guanajuato the most violent state in Mexico for over a year. In 2020, Celaya and León had among the highest recorded homicides in the state, and at least four municipalities in Guanajuato rank among the 15 deadliest in the country. The war between the rival cartels originated in 2017 after the CJNG encroached on the CSRL’s fuel theft monopoly in the state and attempted to cement its control over a faster route to its northern trafficking routes. The main conflict area was dubbed the “Bermuda Triangle,” which encompassed Apaseo El Grande, Leon, Salamanca, Irapuato, and Celaya.

Ignacio Sánchez Cordero, a Municipal Secretary of Development and candidate for Mayor of Puerto Morelos, was assassinated on Wednesday in Quintana Roo. Sanchez Cordero was eating at a café in the Pescadores neighborhood when a gunman shot him in the head and fled. He was transferred to a private hospital, where he later succumbed to his injuries.

Sánchez Cordero was running on the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM) ticket for mayor of Puerto Morelos.

On Thursday, the Quintana Roo Attorney General’s Office released a composite sketch of the perpetrator and requested any information leading to their capture. Quintana Roo prosecutor Óscar Montes de Oca stated that three or four people were involved in the attack, and at this moment, it is unknown if the attack is related to organized crime. Montes de Oca added that the candidate sought protective detail from the Public Ministry when he initiated his campaign, though he did not complete the application process for it.

During his morning press conference on Thursday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) stated that all candidates in the June 6 elections will receive protection and that the government will monitor if any organized crime syndicates are meddling or intervening in the elections. “When there are elections, organized crime and white-collar crime get involved, they get to finance campaigns and take sides in favor of candidates because they want to have control in the municipalities and the states,” said AMLO.

Governors will be elected in the following 15 states: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Nayarit, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, Sonora, Campeche, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas.

The Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC) reported that it had not received any judicial order to release Jesús Héctor Palma Salazar, known as “El Güero Palma, one of the founders of the Cartel de Sinaloa (CDS), despite multiple outlets claiming the founder would be released. Federal authorities confirm the news is “false.”

The SSPC confirms that Palma Salazar remains in the Altiplano prison.

Earlier today, Jalisco Prosecutor Gerardo Octavio Solís confirmed they had received an official email from the Social Rehabilitation Directorate of the Federal Security Secretariat ordering Palma Salazar’s release and inquiring about any pending cases. Octavio Solís reportedly responded to the requested information via the same email. He added that information is confidential.

Palma Salazar worked as a hitman for Cartel de Guadalajara founder Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, known as “El Padrino” or “El Jefe de Jefes.” After meeting Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, he founded the CDS alongside El Chapo.

In 1978, the Arellano Félix brothers ordered Venezuelan trafficker Rafael Clavel Moreno to kill Palma Salazar’s wife and children. Clavel Moreno shipped the wife’s decapitated head to Palma and threw his two children off the Puente de la Concordia bridge in Venezuela. The hit on Palma’s family was later attributed to Félix Gallardo.

He was arrested in 1995 and extradited to the United States in 2007, facing a 16-year sentence. He was released in 2016 for good conduct. That same year, he was re-arrested in Mexico on two counts of homicide. He has yet to be charged and remains in the Altiplano maximum-security prison.

The Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) has formally requested the Chamber of Deputies to oust Tamaulipas governor Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca for links to organized crime, money laundering, and tax fraud. According to a 90-page dossier acquired by the newspaper Milenio, the accusations relate to campaign financing from the Cartel del Golfo (CDG) since 2004. The investigation was reportedly started by the Finance Ministry’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) on November 24, 2020.

The dossier reportedly includes information that “Cabeza de Vaca’s family has managed to amass a great millionaire fortune with 30 hidden properties in Texas, United States.” It adds that in 2019, the governor declared MXN 6.6 million (USD 300,000) income to the Tax Administration Service; however, the UIF’s investigation revealed his income amounted to nearly MXN 43 million (USD 2 million).

Accusations against Cabeza de Vaca for possible links to organized crime have been levied for years. In September 2019, when several CDG banners, referred to as narcomantas, appeared in different areas of Reynosa, threatening the governor and his brother for “breaking promises.” The banners accused the governor and his brother of having received more than MXN 15 million for their campaigns in exchange for allowing the CDG to operate freely.

In December 2020, the Proceso magazine reported that the UIF had filed a complaint against the governor with the FGR for laundering millions of pesos. In August 2020, he was investigated by the Special Deputy Attorney General for Organized Crime Investigation (SEIDO) for alleged operations with illicit resources from criminal groups.

In September 2020, Oscar Balderas reported that a classified document dated June 17, 2015, from the US Consul General’s office in Matamoros, Tobin Bradley warned of a possible meeting between Cabeza de Vaca and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The document states that according to a file maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Cabeza de Vaca met with Genaro García Luna in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California, in February 2012, the same time that El Chapo was in the city.

In response to the accusations, Cabeza de Vaca stated, “I want to be very clear, these complaints that are being presented to the Chamber of Deputies [did not occur by chance], they are the product of a political persecution directly from the National Palace (…) if there is any crime that I have committed, it is probably the fact of not having submitted to this federal government.”

José Fernando Aguirre Barreras, known as “El Güero,” an alleged operator with the Cartel de Sinaloa (CDS), was arrested in Mexicali, Baja California, in possession of nine long weapons, narcotics, and tactical equipment. Aguirre Barreras is an alleged member of “Los Rusos,” an armed wing of the Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada faction of the CDS.

Aguirre Barreras was arrested on Monday by officers with the State Security and Investigation Guard (GESI) during an operation in the Miguel Alemán neighborhood. He was detained in possession of nine long arms, magazines, four ballistic vests, 400 grams of meth, and 5.9 kilos of marijuana.

“Los Rusos” is led by José Alexander Sánchez Félix, known as “El Ruso,” who remains at the center of deepening internal friction between “El Mayo” Zambada’s faction of the CDS and those loyal to ”Los Chapitos,” the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.