On November 9, 2024, armed men stormed a bar in the Mexican city of Santiago de Querétaro, releasing a blind spray of long arms bullets. Customers have plunged under tables, overturning bottles and towel racks. Disco lights have danced ceiling, illuminating the carnage that takes place with an incongruous party.
The alleged target of the attack, a regional leader of the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – Cjng) Appointed Fernando González Núñez, has been shot. Nine other revelers were killed in the cross -fires. State authorities blamed a local gang called the Santa Rosa cartel of Lima (CSRL) for the massacre and linked it to a violent conflict on the fuel flight, known in Mexico Huachicol.
This is the second episode of a mini-series detailing the changing dynamics of the fuel flight industry of several billion dollars in Mexico. Read First part here.
The dramatic display of brutality underlines how fuel flight has become a catalyst for some of the worst violence in Mexico. While Huachicol has spread to one of the country's largest criminal economies, it has also become one of the deadliest, citizens, police and oil workers caught in the reticle.
Money Easy
Huachicol is a criminal economy particularly subject to violence. The fuel flight gangs must use force to control the territory near pipelines and other oil infrastructure in order to access the fuel supply. Gazon disputes generally trigger conflicts between rival groups.
Once the territory is secure, the potential benefits of Huachicol are high. Many pipelines from Mexico carry ready to use fuels between refineries, storage facilities and export terminals. Unlike crude oil, criminal groups can sell stolen fuel without the need to treat it.
“Everything you withdraw from these pipelines is immediately fungible,” said David Soud, an expert in fuel flight to the Atlantic Council's thinking group. “The only obstacle to the entry is to obtain the expertise to press the pipeline and the basic infrastructure to move the fuel. You can earn money very quickly. ”
See also: The high gas prices make the fuel flight profitable in Mexico
Huachicol species finances the growth of criminal groups thanks to a violent territorial expansion and the development of corruption networks. Fuel flight networks regularly pay for security forces to close their eyes, and sometimes even hire them in the form of an additional muscle. In June, for example, the security forces arrested eleven members of the state police in Guanajuato who work As armed guards for a Huachicol gang.
Civilians in the cross fires
Most violence linked to fuel flight are concentrated in the central states of Mexico. These areas are close to large expanses of the country's pipelines, key oil infrastructure and large population centers that provide lucrative black markets for stolen fuel. The Huachicol groups attack each other to grasp the territory of rivals with access to the best hot spots of fuel flight.
Criminal groups also release violence against civilian populations to sow terror and send messages to competitors. In September 2024, six people were kidnapped in the state of Puebla. Security forces finally located Their corpses, thrown into fire vehicles near the city of Santa María Xonacatepec, and attributed violence to a conflict between two rival gangs of Huachicol.
The same month, the Barredora, a tabasco -based fuel flight gang and would have once led by the head of state security, kidnapped the local businessman César Anaya from his home to San Martín Texmelucan in Puebla. A video Later, he surfaced on social networks showing Anaya Menotté and seriously beaten, warning fuel flight groups to stay away from the region. His beheaded body was found a few days later outside a nearby Walmart.
Criminal groups have also frequently attacked oil workers and security forces. For example, in January 2023, fuel thieves attack Members of the military and national guard who helped employees of the Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) state company repair broken pipelines in Cuautepec in Hinojosa, the municipality of Hidalgo which has been the most targeted by the Huachicol gangs in recent years.
The security forces were also accused to perpetrate the extrajudicial killings themselves. On March 1, 2019, four people from the city of Santa Rita Tlahuapan were found dead and partially buried in a highway in the state of Tlaxcala. One day earlier, the victims had been detained and accused of having stolen fuel by members of the Mexican navy. Twelve security officials were then accused of aggravated homicide and a Pemex employee who guided the police said they witness They bury the bodies. The Mexican navy said that civil servants had acted “their own will”.
State capture and CJNG
The fuel flight contributes to an increasing security crisis in Tabasco, a state rich in oil on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico which illustrates the vast scope of violence linked to Huachicol.
The expansion of the CJNG in the state has divided local criminal groups; While some allies, others have retaliated, leading levels of violence to new heights. Between 2023 and 2024, the homicide rate increased by 260%, compared to 9.4 murders per 100,000 to 34.1, according to data from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública – SESNSP).
See also: Empire of the CJNG fuel theft in the remedy for sanctions from the American treasury
High -level officials would have directed part of the violence. In September, the authorities of Paraguay captured Hernán Bermúdez Requena, Tabasco security chief between 2019 and 2024. Military documents obtained and shared with the journalists by the collective of Hacker Guacamaya in 2022 in 2022 noted as a function, bermúdez directed The Bardora group dedicated to extortion and fuel flight. A former federal police official named Ulises Pinto, detained on July 23, was a second commander.
Bermúdez used his power and Barredora to consolidate the territorial hold of the CJNG on the Huachicol Hotspots of the State, including by ordering the execution of the managers of Huachicol working for rival groups, according to Guacamaya documents. He may also open lucrative markets for fuel stolen by the group. Under its alleged leadership, the group offered 180,000 liters of illicit diesel per week to support the construction of the Maya train, a national flagship infrastructure project defended by the government of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, although the agreement was not completed for logistical reasons, according to the subject of the subject statement By Mexican Mexican anti -corruption outfit against corruption and impunity (Mexicanos contrasts corrupción y impunidad – MCCI).
In December 2023, a violent crack broke out in the Bardora itself, making the group divide in two; A faction was combined with the CJNG, and the other launched a brutal resistance campaign. In the days that followed, Bermúdez narrowly escaped an assassination attempt and resigned from the government of the state. He was arrested in Paraguay and extradited to Mexico in September.
Violent rehearsal
The climbing of violence in Tabasco has reflected insecurity in other regions caused by the flight of fuel, such as Guanajuato, where CJNG growth has long frightened local criminal groups, including the CSRL.
A “war” between the CJNG and the CSRL began in Guanajuato in 2017 and coincided with a quadrupling of the state of the state, which remains high today. In 2024, the state recorded 62.4 murders per 100,000, the second highest rate in Mexico. The state is crisscrosing with pemex pipelines and key oil infrastructure strongly targeted by criminal groups.
Huachicol fueled the growth of CSRL lightning and funded the assault on violence. At its peak in 2020, the gang stoled up to 1.5% of the oil produced by Pemex, generating between $ 800,000 and $ 1.2 million per day for the group. Successive security operations against the captured leaders of the CSRL, but have so far failed to weaken the group, and the group is still a major engine of violence in Guanajuato.
In recent years, the CSRL, partly funded by the support of groups outside the State which are also rival at the CJNG, has increased their use of tactical terror against civilians as a territorial tool, according to security analyst David Saucedo.
“They don't only kill the leaders (criminals); they also kill citizens to send a message of strength,” saucedo told Insight Crime.
In 2024, the prosecutors linked the CSRL to the assassination of Gisela Gaytán, a candidate for the town hall for the city of Guanajuato de Celaya, the first day of her campaign. And in May, the members of the group opened fire to the participants of a religious event in San Bartolo de Berrios, killing six in a central place. In the hours that followed, the city was bundled up with banners signed by the CSRL.
“We have arrived,” said.
Star image: Mexican army soldiers are custody of an entrance to the Pajaritos petrochemical complex in Coatzacoalcos. Credit: AP
