Friday, October 5, 2012

Beltran Leyva Organization

As I discussed in the previous blog post (Renovatio), organizational names tend to come and go in Mexico.  For example, the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO) still call themselves by that name, with some pride. The US Government refers to it as Cártel del Pacífico Sur, the South Pacific Cartel. As far as I know, only the USGOV uses that name.
Wikipedia has this to say about the The South Pacific Cartel (Spanish: Cártel del Pacífico Sur), is a Mexican organized crime group composed of the remnants of the Beltran-Leyva Cartel. It is based in the Mexican state of Morelos. (Wikipedia)
The source cited by Wikipedia is misleading: The BLO have very little presence in Morelos, though you could say that at one point in time, they had a greater presence there. The BLO still retains a presence in Cuernavaca, Morelos and still has political stroke there. 

Today Hector Beltran Leyva makes his home in Estado Libre y Soberano de Nayarit (The Mexican State of Nayarit) and he oversees another cell in Northern Sinaloa (Guassave and Batamote) that is managed by Chuy Gonzales. Yes, it's true that Fausto Isidro Meza used to be the boss but he was displaced from that roll about a month ago. Today the combined strength in Sinaloa is no more than 600 fighters, down from several times that number six months ago.

Courtesy: STRATFOR - Circa July 2012
Though the bulk of the map above portrays wildly inaccurate information, the general territory (orange) that they lay out for the BLO is generally well done. 

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