Occupying the area with impunity and with local authorities bought and co-opted, in Ensenada, hitmen working for the brothers Germán, César, and Salvador Villavicencio Meza, known as Los Venados, are killing agents of the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE), money launderers for rival cartels, and traffickers from their own cell who are defecting to opposing criminal groups.
Dedicated to drug trafficking, fuel smuggling, and the trafficking of endemic species, with a criminal base on Cedros Island, and currently expanding into Guerrero Negro, Jesús María, Bahía Tortugas, and Mulegé in Baja California Sur, they operate in the southern part of Ensenada and in the Villas del Real, Chapultepec, and Punta Banda neighborhoods within the city limits.
As a cell of Los Mayos, a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, the Venados receive support from the group led by Leopoldo Lizárraga Ochoa, alias El Pantera, according to statements made to ZETA by authorities from the State Security Council.
According to investigations and witnesses, six years ago they personally carried out the murders. Salvador Villavicencio Meza (Presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of law. Article 13, CNPP) was seen on April 28, 2020, shooting Hiram Rivera, an agent of the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE). Days earlier, state authorities had urgently evacuated the official from Cedros Island after his life was threatened by the Villavicencio family.
Based on these accusations and other evidence, Salvador was arrested on June 20, 2020, but was released on May 27, 2023, due to lack of evidence.
Without facing legal consequences, the Venados struck again. On April 24, 2026, five men were sent to kill Miguel Ángel Pantoja Pantoja, the coordinator of the Homicide Prosecutor’s Office. They riddled him with bullets inside a State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) patrol pickup truck as he drove along Lázaro Cárdenas Boulevard in Ensenada. They also posted threats on social media and used a pistol and a rifle that had previously been used in 15 other homicides to ensure their message was clear, according to information provided to the weekly newspaper by investigators from the Attorney General’s Office and intelligence agents from the State Security Secretariat. Unlike the Rivera case six years ago, the Venados’ involvement in Pantoja’s murder is not documented in the case file. “Even within the Attorney General’s Office, they talk about it, but they don’t dare to officially declare it, and that’s no good,” warned an FGE agent.
