Gangster ‘El Marro’ caught
Concern over powerful Jalisco drug cartel moving in on Santa Rosa de Lima turf
MEXICAN police and military forces arrested the leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima gang that spread violence through north-central Mexico and fought a years-long bloody turf battle with the Jalisco cartel.
The armed forces and officials in the state of Guanajuato said yesterday that they had captured José Antonio Yépez Ortiz, known by his nickname “El Marro”, which means “The Sledgehammer”.
Yépez Ortiz was unusual among gang leaders because he posted videos with emotional calls to his followers, including one in June showing him appearing to cry after several of his supporters and relatives were arrested. In another video around the same time, he threatened to join forces with the Sinaloa cartel to defeat Jalisco, Mexico’s fastest-rising drug cartel.
The turf battle with Jalisco turned Guanajuato, with its foreign auto plants and parts suppliers, into the most violent state in Mexico, with 2 293 murders in the first six months of this year. The Santa Rosa gang has been blamed for the July attack on a drug rehabilitation centre in the city of Irapuato in which 27 men were killed. But Mexico’s top civilian security official, Alfonso Durazo, said Yépez Ortiz would be charged with organised crime and fuel theft, not murder.
Yépez Ortiz had been hunted for years, and was caught along with five other suspects allegedly holding a kidnapped businesswoman. He was among Mexico’s most wanted suspects, trailing Jalisco cartel leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera and Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
His gang was not a drug cartel, but one that that grew up in a farming hamlet of the same name in Guanajuato state by stealing fuel from pipelines and refineries and robbing freight from trains. The Santa Rosa gang built a support network among residents by allowing them to take a minor share in the spoils of the robberies. But when authorities stepped up security around the trains and pipelines, the gang turned to extortion and kidnapping. The gang would move sector to sector, systematically demanding extortion payments from businesses like tortilla shops or car dealerships. However, the gang’s reign did not affect the major companies that have built dozens of plants in Guanajuato, attracted by investor-friendly policies and excellent rail and highway links.
True to his humbler circumstances, Yépez Ortiz was shown wearing a grey hoodie, ripped jeans and construction boots in official photographs distributed by the Guanajuato state government.
A mythology had grown up around “El Marro”, including the belief that he and a close band of supporters had been able to escape police for years by encouraging residents to build impromptu roadblocks to give him enough time to escape over dirt roads.
Guanajuato state Security Commissioner
Sofia Huett said earlier this year that the gang may have called itself a cartel, but largely operated only in Guanajuato, jumping from one illegal activity to another. Santa Rosa de Lima was the kind of local gang that the Jalisco has deftly taken over in the past in its relentless expansion across Mexico, co-opting gang members in a sort of franchise scheme. But the pugnacious Yépez Ortiz vowed not to let in the cartel from neighbouring Jalisco state.
It was unclear if the arrest of Yépez Ortiz would mean that Jalisco may now be poised to roll into Guanajuato as it has in so many other states. In July, the Jalisco posted a video that Mexican defence officials said was apparently filmed near the border of Jalisco and Guanajuato states showing about 75 Jalisco cartel gunmen dressed in military-style fatigues with a dozen home-made armoured trucks, an anti-aircraft gun, machine guns, 10 .50 calibre sniper rifles, six grenade launchers and 54 assault rifles.