Following the capture of Sebastián Reynosa Sánchez, alias “El Quemado,” a leader of the Sinaloa Cartel (CDS) working for the brothers Alfonso and René Arzate of Los Mayos, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) launched a bloody incursion into Rosarito, increasing homicides by 325 percent in that municipality.
Currently, the conflict is being led by two individuals whom authorities from the Baja California Peace and Security Coordination Table have only identified by nicknames: “El Apa,” for the CJNG, who was an operative for Gerardo V. Vega, alias “El Gera” (killed on September 24); and both were operatives of Javier Adrián Beltrán Cabrera, alias “El Javi,” “Pedrito,” “El R4,” “Pit,” and/or “El Puma,” who currently operates in coordination with Diego Abel Miranda Rodríguez, alias “El Kateo,” of the Arellano Cartel. And below them, Pedro Amador Luna, alias La Pájara. On the Sinaloa side, along with the Arzate brothers, are GR or Gerber and Táctico, a man who, they suspect, “…is likely a police officer.”
The struggle between the Sinaloa Cartel traffickers (who have gained criminal power in recent years in the beach municipality) and the CJNG caused the number of violent deaths to rise from two in August to 17 in September. In addition, a dozen reports were made to emergency services about “shootings” or “gunfire” and “kidnappings,” incidents that ultimately turned out to be unresolved, as neither injuries nor bodies were found by the municipal police.
For investigators involved in the inquiries related to the clash between these cartels over the Rosarito route, the intense struggle began in April. They detailed that the criminals entering the area are mostly operatives of the Jalisco Cartel with criminal activity in the San Antonio de los Buenos district and the Santa Fe sub-district, who are now moving into the northern part of Rosarito, which borders Tijuana.
But that does not rule out that other CJNG killer-traffickers who commit crimes in different areas are also carrying out sporadic incursions into the beach municipality, as did hitmen working for Carlos Alberto Chávez Favela, alias el Chichí, on October 1 when they shot and killed Óscar Cristóbal Alanillo Robles, 32, while he was driving a white Tahoe truck, with license plate C44NWL1 and the logo of “Funerales Nueva Jerusalen” -directed in Tijuana-, around 2:17 p.m., on Pilar Valdivia and Balbino Obeso streets in the Ampliación Lucio Blanco neighborhood in Rosarito.
