Cartel War in Quintana Roo Leaves 60 Missing

Quintana Roo, Mexico — A violent dispute between the Cártel de Caborca-Mayiza and the Cártel de Sinaloa faction Los Chapitos-CJNG has bloodied the rural zones of the municipalities of Bacalar and Othón P. Blanco in southern Quintana Roo. Since the beginning of the year, the disappearance of at least 60 people has been reported across the various communities that make up the southern part of the state.

More than 12 communities in southern Quintana Roo are under the control of criminals. This year has seen reports of over 60 missing persons and the displacement of inhabitants who lived in this forgotten area of the state.

A Struggle for Illicit Control

Several social leaders have been executed in various towns after being caught in the middle of the criminal disputes and the support that narco-bands provide to locals. This violent settling of scores is driven by the struggle for control of diverse illicit activities, including the smuggling of chemical precursors, arms trafficking, control of clandestine airstrips for landing drug-laden planes, and the smuggling of liquor and adulterated tobacco, which is distributed throughout the country.

This rich and beautiful region of Quintana Roo has been forgotten by authorities at all three levels of government and is now besieged by organized crime, which has perpetrated mass murders, displacements, and unprecedented forced disappearances in the area.

"What is happening," says a source who worked in national security and is now a former state public official requesting anonymity, "is that there is a dispute between several cartels. For almost two years, a realignment of criminal groups has been occurring in the two southern municipalities of the state."

Shifting Alliances and Territorial Control

The group that controlled the territory, dominating the airstrips for unloading weapons and drugs, was the group of Los Coronel (referring to the criminal family comprised of Ignacio, Marina, Roberto, and Lázaro Coronel, among others), from the Los Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. However, the Caborca Cartel, led by José Gil Caro Quintero, nephew of Rafael Caro Quintero, has now burst onto the scene. Less than 15 months ago, he formed an alliance with the Mayiza faction.

Following that alliance between José Gil Caro Quintero and Ismael Zambada Sicarios "El Mayito Flaco," an alliance likewise occurred between La Chapiza, Los Coronel, and Julio César Moreno Pinzón "El Tarjetas" of the CJNG.

Los Coronel, the interviewee continues, controlled the zone for three decades and operated from the community of El Gallito, 90 kilometers from the center of Bacalar. It was there that members of the Caborca cartel went to pursue and assassinate their rivals.

"But they didn't just kill everyone they identified as members of the Sinaloa Cartel, or everyone with their last names, or their family members; they also killed, for example, the mechanic who worked for them. That is, there was a cleansing and persecution of everyone who could collaborate with them, which included several officials and former officials from the municipality of Bacalar," the source stated.

A Campaign of Violence and Displacement

They then swept through the surrounding areas and rural towns. "In the community of Miguel Alemán, 28 families had to displace at the peak of the violence, 28 out of, I don't know, 50 families that are there," the source said.

The Caborca cartel now operates from the community of Reforma, an hour from El Gallito and thirty minutes from the center of Bacalar, where they have clandestine airstrips to receive up to 10 small planes per week, loaded with drugs and weapons, most of which come from Venezuela and are manufactured in Russia.

However, Los Coronel have not yet lost control of five clandestine airstrips operating near the town of Miguel Alemán and other areas bordering Guatemala and Campeche.

The Caborca cartel has also installed checkpoints and deployed surveillance around the conquered localities. To illustrate the extent of their control, the interviewee gave an example: a peasant sold a plot of land and with that money bought a truck for his agricultural activities. Members of the Caborca cartel noticed there was a new vehicle, pursued him, interrogated him, and tortured him.

"They asked him who he worked for, where he got the money for the truck. And they didn't kill him because they played with him: they beat him with a wooden board and told him that if he guessed the type of wood they were hitting him with, they would let him live… And he guessed it. But they kept harassing him… so he fled," he abandoned his properties and finally took refuge in an unknown location, the source detailed.

Official Search Records and a Mother's Plea

This dispute has resulted in an increase in forced disappearances. Many of the victims' mothers are desperate because they cannot search for, let alone find, their missing children, as they are threatened by the criminals.

Faced with this powerlessness, one of them wrote a 50-page document—the little she has been able to do in her search for justice; a document of investigation, of what she lives, what she has seen, what she knows, and that she wishes she had never had to write.

To "bring to mind how a place of exuberant landscapes has become the cradle of disappearances," reads the first lines of the document, which she has shared with other searchers and in which they can all recognize themselves.

The mother states that the communities in Bacalar kidnapped by crime are Miguel Alemán, Melchor Ocampo, Río Verde, El Gallito, Zamora, Otilio Montaño, Nuevo Canaan, Nuevo Tabasco, General Francisco Villa, Jesús Martínez Ross, 18 de Marzo, and Francisco J. Mújica. They live under a curfew; they are ordered not to leave their homes at night or face the consequences.

She states that peasants live extorted, paying a fee to be allowed to go out and sell their products. Even the entry of teachers and grocery vendors is controlled for their circulation in the zone under cartel dominion. Local educational system workers themselves provide the cartels with a copy of the teachers' voter ID cards so they can enter the towns to teach in the area's schools. If this directive is not followed, the criminals beat anyone who violates it, including teachers and even the educational officials under their control.

In the case of grocery distributors, to allow their trucks to enter the occupied zones weekly, they have to hand over part of their products for consumption by the "narco troops" manning the access checkpoints.

The searching mother, in her document, also recounts the confrontations and violent events of recent years; she speaks of discoveries of burned or dismembered bodies in sascaberas (limestone quarries), in the jungle, and on rural roads; of murders of public figures like Román Guzmán González, a local politician, or Francisco Gandiola, a known cattle rancher.

In the area, they have also killed the sugarcane leader Evaristo Gómez and his two bodyguards, as well as the social activist Felipe Delgado "Felipillo," both killed in rural communities of Othón P. Blanco.

The final chapter of the document is dedicated to listing the active search records in Bacalar, which number 39 since the year 2020.

A Cry for Help

"This is a very basic analysis from the eyes of desperation, from the frustration of someone who had no professional preparation and is the cry for help from a community facing one of the periods of bloodshed and seizure of properties, culture, ways of life, and lives of entire families, refugees in the jungle, and others who saw their sons and daughters leave at the hands of gunmen and do not know if they will ever see them again. Nothing compared to the Spanish conquest suffered by the Maya during the period of Spanish colonization and the presence of pirates in Bacalar. Under the golden sun and the beautiful colors of the lagoon, under the murmur of the fauna, before the eyes of child witnesses, a clamor runs. Yes, a clamor: Enough already!"

The letter closes with a legend: "If you reproduce or share this, cite this author who searches tirelessly for their family member."