Five Killed in a 150-Mile Long Gunbattle

All photos courtesy of Nuevo Día newspaper

Clearly, someone had insisted on murder.

Four people died in a sporadic gunbattle that
stretched for more than 150 miles, ending in Hermosillo, Sonora,
yesterday. An entire family was targeted, heavies from Sinaloa that’ve
been working the Arizona-Sonora-Sinaloa corridor for years.

El Imparcial
was reporting four dead, including a Sinaloa man gunned down with
AK-47s. The battle started in Nogales. Two U.S. citizens, one, the
Arizona brother of a high level trafficker for the Sinaloan cartel
boss, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, were arrested. The second was driving a
Kansas City licensed Ford Explorer.

One police officer died in the attack, though I don’t yet know the level of his involvement.

Alejandro López Martínez is the brother of Luis López, El Topo, The
Mole. Known for his narco-tunnels that ran under the U.S. port of entry
at Nogales, El Topo was taken out in late ‘04, a shot to the head in a
crowded restaurant. Wanted in the U.S., his case was closed six months
after his murder, several-ton coke trafficking charges.

Here’s another tie of the fibers:

Nuevo Día
is reporting that the target was Oscar Jaime Valenzuela, alias El
Empanada. Valenzuela served as bodyguard to Francisco Labastida, the
former PRI governor of Sinaloa.

And, the paper reports, one of the wounded gunmen is the brother of a high-level Federal Preventive Police official.

Twists and turns and more twists this morning.

Here’s another, just a tickler from the files to think
about. There’s another “El Empanada,” whose name bears a striking
resemblance to that of Oscar; his name is Jaime Palma Valenzuela.
Pesadito, pesadito, that one.

Back in the day, he and the Beltrán brothers were
running a group of renegade soldiers from the Mexican Army’s Guamúchil
base in northern Sinaloa. Like, back when Labastida was governor. An
exposed narco-battalion caused an uproar back in ‘02 in Guamúchil when
soldiers were discovered to be flying dope for the Beltráns and Palma
Valenzuela. It’ll be interesting to see if the hunch is sound and it’s
the same guy taken out in Hermosillo yesterday.

Called down to a favorite guy in Hermosillo a few
moments ago and he’s cleared something up for me. Jaime, the right one
or otherwise, was murdered in Nogales. His son was wounded in the
Hermosillo attack; a 33-year-old pregnant woman riding in his car was
shot and killed.

El Imparcial is now reporting the armaments, typical stuff and lots of it, five AK-47s, two AR-15s, a host of frag grenades and .45s.

What’s really interesting is the whereabouts of El Barbas, Arturo Beltrán Leyva.

His brother, Alfredo, was arrested in Culiacán last January at the hands of 300 soldiers.

As a reader points out, last Friday, Beltrán Leyva sent a message to the military and police in Culiacán:

“I am the boss of the plaza and this is only the
beginning. There is this and there will be more for what happened to El
Mochomo.”

A second: “Little lead soldiers, federale straw-men, this is the territory of Arturo Beltrán Levya.”

Makes me wonder if he reads T.S. Elliott; you know, that poem, “The Hollow Men”:

We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men/ Leaning together / Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! …