CDMX.- We already know that you are sending photos and videos. We already know that you are the one who is saying where we are”.
They were some commoners barely 20 years old, perhaps 22 the oldest, but they had squad weapons in their hands and they aimed at whoever approached the blockades.
The Sinaloa Secretary of Public Security reported that there were 18 in all of Culiacán, but to keep them active they burned dozens of cars.
“Your car must already be burned, don’t even look for it,” said one of the boys in La Presita, a town on the northern exit of Culiacán, where there are motels and a hotel where guests and three people sheltered. that their cars were taken from them outside this building.
In the faces of those boys you could still see that their childhood has not completely disappeared, the one that has been taking away the shine of the jewelry, the tickets, the drugs and the grips of the pistols with which they now point at those who They removed the cars.
“They caught the ‘Mouse’, that’s why they put us here, otherwise we wouldn’t have done anything to them,” said a young man who appeared to be the leader of that criminal group, of just five boys, who live in the towns around this hotel.
“We are not going to do anything to them. They only have to give them the car keys but we are not going to catch them young or old, because insurance does not cover them,” he continued while his gunmen assaulted the liquor bar in the hotel lobby and stripped the cars of the guests.
In that place were two children, sons of an employee, who saw how they pointed at their mother and her colleagues.
“We’re not going to do anything to you, just get the keys out.”
They caught Ovidio Guzmán López in an operation that began at dawn on Thursday, January 5, in the town of Jesús María, where he lived after he was surprised in the Tres Ríos subdivision on October 19, 2019, also a Thursday, by the way. .
That day he was released by order of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
That time the city came to a standstill with a war force superior to that of the Army, the National Guard and the Police that were in the capital of Sinaloa.
This time was different, it began at dawn with the operation in a town north of Culiacán, but that did not matter. Gunmen were everywhere, looting vehicles everywhere.
They were burned with courage, in revenge for the fact that now the son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was detained in one of the most vulnerable ways: while he was sleeping on the ranch where he was born and grew up.
Ovidio Guzmán was a complete unknown before October 19, 2019, but that changed when the United States government listed him as one of the priority criminals.
Suddenly, he became a man from whom a corrido was made, sung by important singers in the genre. He began to be recognized even with the logo of a mouse and started a drug dealing business with his brothers Iván and Jesús Alfredo.
They set up gringo-style marijuana dispensaries all over Culiacán, with all the paraphernalia in neon lights, social networks restricted to their acceptances, and with a large group of young men and women serving as drug dealers.
He gained a monopoly on drugs such as marijuana, crack and LSD, violently ousting all those street dealers.
These businesses are only the facade of an “industry” of illegal drugs that circulates to other countries, especially the United States, where the main consumers of synthetic drugs are, mainly methamphetamine and fentanyl.
The US government identified that Guzmán López has up to 11 fentanyl laboratories under his direction, today one of the most lethal drugs on the planet.
The dispensaries are just a tip of the iceberg of the drugs that are already on the streets and today it can be known that a large number of those are managed by Ovidio, since the same mouse logo is used on the labels, the one that it is seen in the video of his corrido, in caps, t-shirts and more merchandise.
There were 18 blockades, two state police officers were killed, two planes were shot at — one commercial and one more from the Army–, dozens of vehicles set on fire and looting of self-service stores throughout Culiacán.
“We wouldn’t be doing this if they hadn’t caught the boss,” said a 20-year-old boy, already without a hood on his face, who with a gun in his hand shouted that he wouldn’t hurt anyone inside this hotel north of the city, from where helicopters from the Secretary of the Navy could be seen flying through the sky full of columns of smoke.
The streets were left empty, with a stench of burnt rubber that was felt on the very skin. If fear has a smell, that’s how it should be, like burnt rubber, the kind that made a million inhabitants stay in their homes or shelter where the night guards spent.
That smell had only permeated the city in 2019 and it was believed that it would never happen again. The strategy was to bet on oblivion, so much so that after three years there has not been a single person arrested from that “black Thursday”, also called “Culiacanazo”.
“This time they did grab him from us,” shouted one of the boys who was waiting outside the hotel on the edge of the road that goes and connects with another towards Jesús María, where they arrested Ovidio Guzmán.
And suddenly dozens of members of the National Guard passed by, others from the Army and the State Police, all with rifles in hand and pistols at their waists. The noses of the hotel hid inside the lobby and the restaurant.
They barely left and outside a convoy mounted on a truck was already waiting for them. In the radios it was heard that inside the hotel there was a person who warned of the point as a refuge.
“We already know that it is you, that you are passing on the report,” they pointed out to this reporter who was sheltering in the hotel. “Take out the phone and open it.”
“We already know it’s you and look, if you don’t talk we’re going to kill you. We have the order and I have permission to kill you if it was you.”
And yes, from that hotel you could send messages, but the cell phone could not be “opened”.
“Put it on airplane mode or turn it off, because if we know it’s you, we’ll screw you.”
At that moment, a woman turned around and while she was crying, she asked to pay attention and save lives. That’s how it happened.
“Better go, leave everything and go walking.”
When leaving, a boy took my cell phone. I walked 200 meters, they caught up with me on a motorbike and they took my camera. A man arrived in a truck, trying to travel to a ranch, but they would not let him. I asked him for raite.
“We already took a picture of you, we already know who you are,” one of the guys on the motorcycle yelled, and they let me go.
I came home with my children and my wife. They welcomed me with a hug, the deepest and most necessary for my heart. My wife and I cried together for a large part of the afternoon.
The eldest of my sons asked me why there are bad people. I didn’t know what to say, it’s not as simple as telling him about the animals in the zoo or why it gets dark.
Inside me I only know that there are bad people because they decided so, because they grew up in a social context of pain and someone, even though they are children, decided to give them permission to kill.
