MEXICO.- The birth of the little Anthony Tadeo Nunez Trejoaffectionately known as Teo, coincided with a macabre change in criminal organizations: his bet on fentanyl.
He was barely a few months old when the National Guard noted that in methamphetamine seizures there was already fentanyl, in 2018; He was taking his first steps off the ground and without crawling when on highways 54 and Panamericana 45 that cross his home state, Zacatecas, he confiscated the first five kilos and six months later…
ohNine hundred and seventy grams of this opioid in stone, with a purity of 97% in the municipality of Fresnillo!
The little one was born with a bad star: the fentanyl erawhere Zacatecas has a key position in the country; today, he is missing.
Became one more victim than thousands of people in the country whose whereabouts are unknown; more than a thousand in Zacatecas, a key entity for trafficking the synthetic opioid whose potency is described as 50 times greater than heroin.
Theo He was reported missing on December 20. in the Chaparrosa community, belonging to the Villa de Cos municipality, but it was not until a week later when drew national attention when the inhabitants of the place blocked the community to demand the search and the appearance alive.
The small does not appear yet but the State Attorney General’s Office investigates the crime as “kidnapping.”
OTHER CASES
zacatecas It borders eight states: Aguascalientes, Coahuila, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Nayarit, Nuevo León and San Luis Potosí, it has 58 municipalities and They are crossed by two important federal highways with more than thousand 300 kilometers.
The geographical position is part of the priority interest of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel in the dispute over the region: both because of their intercommunication and because fentanyl laboratories have also been established.
Ismael Camberos, former secretary of public security, explained to the local press that in 2019, one year after the first fentanyl seizurethe Sinaloa Cartel reinforced its presence in a large part of the state and, a year later, the CJNG placed narcomantas in 17 municipalities simultaneously “As of today, the state of Zacatecas is represented by the CJNG”, he reported.
That was almost four years ago. Teo was two years old and the family had no idea that the geographical position would play against the investigation to locate the child because the Organic Law of the production forces the public ministries to act only in their jurisdictions.
If a crime is committed in an entity other than the object of the crime, the ministerial police should rely on their peers for research and, where appropriate, arrest of those involved. In theory this allows to have a minimum order in the chases; in practice, it becomes a bureaucratic labyrinth between public ministries.
Unless there is political or social pressure, as in the case of little Teo, who is currently being sought in the municipality of San Luis Potosí, where he was presumably transferred after his disappearance, or from other high-profile cases like that of a missing American together with his fiancée or that of a former famous musician in the town.
IMPUNITY
Of the four most prominent cases in December, neither have a happy ending. The ministerial searched several homes in Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí without success or trace. youThere is also no news about the disappearance of the teacher from AguascalientesDiana Laura and her friend Jesús, which occurred on January 6, in the municipality of Villa García.
The others two crimes were cleared up, but with a dramatic outcome: death. The first is related to the US citizen and the second to the 37-year-old musician from Los Románticos de Zacatecas, Raúl Calderón.
December 25 Daniela Marquez31, was traveling with her fiancé Jose Melesio Gutierrez, a 36-year-old Ohio-based Hispanic architect who had come to visit her. she accompanied them Viviana Marquezsister of Daniela and her cousin Irma Paola Vargas.
They traveled the federal highway 23, between Zacatecas and Jalisco, when they disappeared near the town of Víboras, in the municipality of Tepetongo. That month, 17 more people disappeared in that region, adding up to a total of 1,157 disappearances in the state.
The U.S. Embassywho has prohibited its citizens from traveling in the region, took notes and, in the last hours, had an answer:
The Zacatecas attorney general, Francisco Murillo, confirmed that the bodies found in days gone by correspond to the three women disappeared on December 25: they were identified by their relatives. To corroborate the identity of the architect, his relatives will travel to Mexico.
With respect to body of Raúl Calderón, lawyer and former bassist of Los Románticos de Zacatecas It is known that he was found lifeless in a building in the capital of Zacatecas where he allegedly lived, but the finding caused outrage: how could he disappear on a highway and appear at his home?
It was known that he was traveling from Jerez to Zacatecas on federal highway 54 and lost track of him near the municipality of Villanueva. The Zacatecan authorities have not confirmed the causes of deathNor have they denied the unofficial versions that he would have died of alcoholic congestion and for which the family denounced that he was revictimizing himself.
“The public ministries across the country are extremely overwhelmedlight years away from the problem: we are talking about million-dollar criminal organizations in front of precarious investigation offices in municipalities that sometimes do not even have computers, that work in spaces of one square meter with thousands of accumulated files”, highlights the lawyer Javier Ramírez, from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
“Many of them have been left behind! investigations against the kings of fentanyl!”.
For the international consultancy Insight Crime, Zacatecas has become the new victim of the macabre war waged by the main cartels for the production of synthetic drugs. Before that, it was for the control of huachicoleo in Guanajuato. Or to squeeze the avocado growers of Michoacán or the tourist sector in Quintara Roo or the border crossing through Tamaulipas.
Whats Next?he wonders.
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