Acapulco: Caro Quintero and the daughter of Félix Salgado Macedonio

BY SANDRA ROMANDÍA for MILENIO

MÉXICO, May 03, 2021, (MILENIO).- The green mini cooper with black stripes crossed the Costera Las Palmas avenue, behind the luxurious La Isla shopping center, in Acapulco. The car had left the Mayan luxury housing complex. Inside the expensive sports car, the body of Fernando Delgadillo Hermosillo, alias “El Milko”, was bleeding inert. A woman, his companion, was transferred minutes before by ambulance after receiving a bullet impact that went through one of her legs.

Delgadillo Hermosillo could not survive the attack by armed men who shot him from another car in broad daylight and in the middle of the street. killing him right in the heart of Acapulco’s main tourist area, the Diamante Zone, which is supposed to be the safest area of the city.

The authorities reported that the victim was related to the sale and traffic of drugs and to the group of the Sinaloan drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora. But “El Milko” was not just any drug dealer. He was in Acapulco to coordinate a part of the new structure of Caro Quintero’s group, which in turn is part of the Beltrán Leyva heritage in the port of Acapulco, an area of ​​relevance as a “strategic stop” to transport drugs by sea, and also distribute it towards that tourist spot and warehouses in the Central de Abasto of Mexico City, inside shipments of coconut and mango, as well as shipments of fish and in double-bottomed trailer boxes.

For more than a decade, one of the criminal groups with greater control of Acapulco is the one left by Héctor Beltrán Leyva, the “H” of the Tres Caballeros, the group of three brothers from Sinaloa, now taken over by Caro Quintero and his nephews. Both the latter and the family left by Beltrán Leyva have unexploited land in some areas of the port, especially in the Diamante Zone, according to intelligence sources to which this columnist had access.

Some of the properties have been managed by the Alonso Piedra family, who officially present themselves as real estate entrepreneurs. Joaquín Alonso Piedra was arrested in 2016 for his links with criminal groups for money laundering by the SEIDO. He is the father of Iván Alonso Bustamante, husband of Evelyn Salgado, the recently designated candidate for governor of Guerrero representing AMLO’s Morena political party, and daughter of Félix Salgado Macedonio.

“Alonso Piedra and his son Alonso Bustamante have been under investigation for laundering large amounts of money from criminal groups which have been used to buy real estate. Ivan, Evelyn’s husband, has already been detained. Everyone in Acapulco knows of their ties with organized crime, it is not a secret” mentions a source who was in the area of ​​investigations of the Guerrero prosecutor’s office.

In 2016, Joaquín Alonso Piedra, alleged financial operator of the Beltrán Leyva cartel in Acapulco, was arrested along with his son, Iván David Alonso Bustamante, for money laundering.

But the Alonso family has had protection within the Guerrero state government over the years. The former president of the Superior Court of Justice in Guerrero Robespierre Robles Hurtado, exhibited in videos in a luxurious resort in Las Vegas, has been the head notary of the family, and in turn for the administration of the properties that are allegedly managed with name lords for the Beltrán Leyva.

Evelyn Salgado is little known in the local political arena. But she already carries the ties of his in-laws who, according to sources consulted, are very close to her father, Felix Salgado Macedonio.

Guerrero faces a crossroads anyway: on the one hand, the dark files linked to Morena’s candidate and, on the other, the PRI contender, Mario Moreno Arcos, who is also related to one of the most violent drug lords in the region, Onesimo, “El Necho” Marquina, leader of the Tlacotepec cartel.

Perhaps time will shed more light on the scope of these links between politics and drug trafficking organizations, but what is certain is that the people of Guerrero are facing difficult times in the next six-year term.

BY SANDRA ROMANDÍA for MILENIO

Source: Milenio