Links to 12 stories (7 from Mexico alone) documenting examples of official government collusion with organized crime.
Over the past month, I managed to add 69 stories with the tag “Organized Crime” to my database of Latin American security-related news and reports.
Breaking deep, corrupt links and collusion between governments and criminal organizations must be at the core of any strategy to weaken organized crime and make people feel safer. Despite that, of the 69 articles, just 12 (7 from Mexico alone) documented examples of official collusion with organized crime. They are linked below.
Chile
As Chile arrests more gang members, the race is on to stop the prison system from becoming a new command nucleus for organized crime. Preventing corruption is going to be a key part of that effort.
“Criminal organization and state corruption are two sides of the same coin,” said Fernando Guzman, a judge who has made regular visits to Santiago I. “It is impossible to build a powerful criminal enterprise, with significant profitability, without an alliance with some state agencies.”
There have been some isolated cases of corruption among the police force and prison guards.
Colombia
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) has forwarded copies of investigations to the Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Court of Justice and Case 08 of the same JEP so that the respective judicial processes can be carried out against a major general of the Army, six State agents and three civilians, accused by Dairo Antonio Úsuga David, alias ‘Otoniel’, for their alleged collaboration with paramilitary groups.
Among those investigated by the JEP is Major General Carlos Omairo Lemus Pedraza, who was commander of the XVIII Brigade of the National Army between 2000 and 2003. According to the testimony of the former paramilitary chief, Lemus allegedly collaborated with the paramilitaries, allowing the expansion of these groups in the Arauca region. Alongside him are several former governors and officials such as Julio Acosta Bernal, former governor of Arauca, and Helí Cala López, former governor in charge of Casanare, who allegedly facilitated the presence and operation of the paramilitaries in their respective regions.
Other prominent names include Óscar Raúl Iván Flórez Chávez, former governor of Casanare, and Milton Rodríguez Sarmiento, former senator, both accused of alleged participation in the consolidation of paramilitary control in Casanare and their support for the AUC. Also mentioned are businessmen such as Andrés Rueda Gómez, former secretary of infrastructure of Casanare, and Sergio Hernández Gamarra, former rector of the University of Cartagena, who allegedly collaborated financially with the AUC in contracts that favored these groups.
… The collaboration of these state actors with the paramilitaries not only allowed these groups to increase their power in the regions of Casanare and Arauca, but also consolidated territorial control that led to multiple human rights violations. In Casanare, for example, political and business actors facilitated contracts and resources that financed the operations of the Centauros Bloc, while in Arauca, the AUC, with the backing of local authorities and members of the security forces, managed to consolidate their dominance to combat other insurgent groups and control the region.
Haiti
In Solino, Garry Jean-Joseph, 33, blamed the police for the ongoing violence. “I left with nothing,” he said. “The people of Solino do not understand last night, the conspiracy of the policemen and the Live Together (Viv Ansanm) soldiers.”
The resident described how at 2 a.m., a policeman in an armored car told residents to go home and that they would secure the neighborhood. However, shortly afterward residents could hear gangs invading. “The police delivered Solino,” he added.
Some officers with Haiti’s National Police have been long accused of corruption and working with gangs.
Mexico
Germán Reyes Reyes, the retired military officer accused of ordering the assassination of Chilpancingo municipal president Alejandro Arcos, served as a prosecutor for serious crimes from 2022 to 2024. In the new municipal administration, he was placed in charge of the Public Security Secretariat. His career in the state capital was cut short on November 12, when he was arrested by the National Guard and the Army. In the initial hearing, the Public Prosecutor accused the official of being part of the criminal group Los Ardillos. The judge evaluated the evidence and ordered preventive detention.
The following day the Army issued a communiqué distancing itself from the accused; however, it had endorsed his appointment as prosecutor when Lieutenant Sandra Luz Valdovinos was appointed attorney general. So far in Evelyn Salgado Pineda’s administration, the investigation of the crimes is in the hands of the Army. The results have been disastrous because most of the investigation files are not prosecuted, and high-impact crimes have increased in the state’s eight regions.
While the kidnapping of [top Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo”] Zambada has broken the order that existed around drug trafficking in Sinaloa, little is said about the conflict between Governor Rocha [Rubén Rocha Moya] and former university president [Héctor] Cuén, the genesis of the de facto state of emergency in Culiacán.
… Then comes 2021. Cuén, more astute than Rocha, sold Morena on the need for an alliance with PAS [a local political party] and agreed that Rocha would be the gubernatorial candidate in exchange for him being appointed Secretary of Government or Senator. Several local media published that the elections had been won with the help of Zambada and the Guzmans, who threaten opposition politicians and move people around. Once the governorship was pocketed, Rocha offered him the Secretary of Health.
The newly elected mayor of Chilpancingo, Mexico, had appointed Germán Reyes as the man who would safeguard his city.
But on Tuesday, the Mexican authorities arrested Mr. Reyes, a retired military officer and former prosecutor, accusing him of ordering the mayor’s brutal killing in southwest Mexico last month in a case that had already shocked a nation reeling from widespread violence against local politicians.
…State prosecutors on Tuesday announced the arrest of Mr. Reyes, 46, the city’s security chief, on a charge of aggravated homicide, saying he colluded with a local criminal group to abduct and assassinate the mayor.
The implication was that Reyes – who was also a former military officer who, according to his official resume, retired with rank of captain in the military justice system – had somehow worked in collusion with the gang.
That would suggest that at least one of the two warring gangs fighting for control of Chilpancingo controls, intimidates or works with officials there.
If Reyes is convicted, it would also be a stinging rebuke for a policy adopted by cities across Mexico of hiring retired military officers for top local police jobs, on the assumption that they are less prone to corruption.
It was also revealing that state detectives had to rely on federal forces—soldiers and the National Guard—to make the arrest, suggesting they may not have trusted state and local police who would normally carry out such tasks.
Heyman Vázquez, a Catholic priest who works in Ciudad Hidalgo, along the Guatemalan border, said criminal groups in southern Mexico have gone so far as to set up checkpoints along the main highway in an effort to identify migrants. “The authorities are involved,” he said about the kidnappings, adding that there’s a blurry line between the authorities charged with protecting migrants and the cartels exploiting them. “You never know who you’re talking to,” he said.
The Mexican government didn’t respond to requests for comment on allegations that organized crime has set up checkpoints along the highway in southern Mexico or that kidnappers may be collaborating with officials.
Ciudad Hidalgo Mayor Elmer Vázquez claimed to not know anything about migrant safe houses operating in the area and said his town always looks after migrants.
But Rev. Vázquez (no relation to the mayor), who has spent two decades defending migrants, said the prosecutor’s office, National Guard, special prosecutor for crimes against migrants do nothing even when crimes are reported.
“They are colluding with organized crime and, of course, they make it look like they’re doing their jobs,” he said.
In the specific case of Guanajuato, the attacks against police officers have been concentrated in the Laja – Bajío area, which is under the control of the Jalisco Cartel – New Generation (CJNG) and is disputed by the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel (CSRL).
In an interview with MILENIO, public security consultant David Saucedo said that in the region, also known as the Huachicol Triangle, it is the criminal organization founded by José Antonio Yépez Ortiz – alias El Marro- that is fighting public security corporations.
According to documents from the National Defense Secretariat (Sedena) leaked by Guacamaya Leaks and cited by the consultant, the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel had managed to infiltrate municipal and state security agencies and even the National Guard, from whom they received protection and support to escort tanks of stolen fuel leaving the Salamanca refinery.
With the CJNG’s violent incursion into Guanajuato municipalities and the so-called Industrial Corridor, the criminal organization currently headed by members of El Marro’s family has taken on the task of attacking security corporations that are not aligned with them.
“The Santa Rosa Cartel does control some municipal police in the state of Guanajuato but others do not. Others are out of their control and that is where they have launched a combat strategy, especially in Celaya which is their economic capital and where they carry out kidnapping, extortion, fuel theft and above all drug dealing activities,” explained David Saucedo in an interview with MILENIO.
Thus, the attacks on police officers that have been reported during 2024 in Celaya would be related to the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel since, in the consultant’s words, “it is one of the few police forces in Guanajuato that does carry out this activity of combating organized crime”.
To combat security corporations, the criminal organization headed by José Antonio Yépez Ortiz has assigned deserters from the Colombian Army, as well as members of the Grupo Escorpión of the Gulf Cartel with whom they created alliances to stop the advance of the CJNG.
(For more about ex-Colombian military personnel working with cartels in Guanajuato, Mexico, see this May 2023 report at Mexico’s El Universal from Héctor De Mauleón.)
Peru
In a hearing held this afternoon before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Peruvian judge and member of the Latin American Federation of Magistrates Oswaldo Ordóñez alerted the international community about the permanent political attacks against the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Judiciary, and made a report on all the laws in favor of organized crime and corruption approved so far by the Peruvian Congress.
… The magistrate recounted all the laws approved so far in Peru in favor of organized crime and corruption by the Congress dominated by Fuerza Popular, Peru Libre, and APP, together with other satellite blocs.
“This parliamentary majority and the Executive Power have enacted laws that modify the statute of limitations; that cut the terms in the processes of effective collaboration; that prevent the seizure of goods or materials used in illegal mining; that exclude all political parties from any criminal responsibility; that promote impunity for terrorists and ex-military; that oblige raids to be carried out with the presence of the raided person’s lawyer, and establish a new typification of the crime of organized crime”, he commented.
The magistrate commented that this new regulatory framework “has generated the exponential growth of crime and insecurity, putting the entire population at serious risk”.
Venezuela
Environmental leaders and activists agree that improving the situation for Venezuelan wildlife requires a fundamental shift in the government’s modus operandi. The government must cut ties with wildlife traffickers and actively prosecute cases of trafficking.
Cristina Burelli, founder of conservation NGO SOS Orinoco, says a lack of institutions and rule of law create favorable conditions for wildlife trafficking in Venezuela. “The only way to combat wildlife trafficking is by strengthening institutions, but that’s not going to happen under the Maduro regime. So unfortunately, until there’s a change of government, I don’t think there’s going to be any change [for wildlife],” she says.
“It has created a situation in Venezuela where nobody really cares,” she adds.
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