Badiraguato: this is the cradle of drug traffickers where López Obrador met Chapo’s mother

Last Sunday the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, made a working tour in the state of Sinaloa where he supervised infrastructure progress.

López Obrador arrived to the municipality of Badiraguato, cradle of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, to verify progress in the construction of the highway that connects this district with the municipality of Chihuahua, Guadalupe and Calvo.

This place is located in the Sierra Madre Occidental, four hours from the state capital and is not easily accessible.

The Mexican president traveled three and a half hours from the emblematic arch that announces the arrival in this municipality to go to the junction built by the Ministry of Communications and Transportation (SCT) and that it will communicate for the first time the states that make up the so-called Golden Triangle.

This region, where the states of Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa converge, is known for planting marijuana and poppy, a precursor to heroin; It is, therefore, the cradle of drug traffickers.

“We wanted to come here because this is a very important path, you already know, it is to communicate Sinaloa with Chihuahua, Badiraguato with Guadalupe and Calvo, with Parral, it is a very important, complicated interstate highway, because it is the Sierra Madre Occidental, ”the federal executive said in a video.

Seven months ago, federal forces tried to arrest Ovidio Guzmán, son of “El Chapo”, in the streets of Culiacán, however in the face of the reaction of organized crimeThe federal security cabinet chose to release the boss’s son and stop what would be a massive bloodshed.

Along the way, which was opened for the President of the Republic, you could see makeshift surveillance posts, empty, chairs that looked at both sides of the road and covered with black plastic blankets.

This time there were no people occupying them, but it could be presumed that they were inhabited by vigilantes who serve to the Sinaloa Cartel.

“They may have been warned that the president was coming and so they are not there. But on a normal day it is common to see them watching these parts, “said one inhabitant.

Badiraguato is the cradle of drug traffickers, Caro Quintero is one of his “favorite children ”along with“ Chapo ”Guzmán; up to this place the federal president was to supervise the historical work that Sinaloa and Durango will communicate.

On the way to reach the supervisory junction, the federal president passed through a gap that led to two roads, one of which led to La Tuna, the town where the capo’s mother lives, about five minutes away.

On Sunday night a video was circulated on social networks, where the Mexican president is seen approaching a truck and greeting a lady, who was identified as the mother of Guzmán Loera.

“Yes, I greeted her. Our adversaries, the conservatives, also made a scandal. I went to the supervision of a road that we are building from Badiraguato in Guadalupe y Calvo, It is a very important road, and the road is so far under construction ahead of a town called La Tuna and the lady lives there, and she went to the explanation about the road and was told she was there and wanted to greet me and I got out of the truck and greeted her.

She is a 92-year-old lady and I already said, the fatal plague is corruption, not an older adult who deserves all my respect, regardless of who her son is. And I would keep doing it. Sometimes I have to shake hands, because that is my job, to white-collar criminals, who have not even lost their respectability. So how can I not give it to a lady? How am I going to leave my hand out? It hurts me to do that, indicated the Mexican president.

“I ask the lady to understand me, and that we have nothing to hide, and there is nothing that can embarrass us, neither she nor me, she has every right, as a mother, to defend to his son, he has every right to do so and I have the obligation to listen to all Mexicans, so the moment I give them the letter, he tells me of the first effort that was made that was not successful, and he asks me now that she wants to see her son, that she could not see him ”he explained.

The letter, written on a typewriter, begins with a greeting.

“Dear brother in Christ:

First of all, I wish to thank you for your intervention on the letter that we delivered on your first visit to Badiraguato, Sinaloa last year, and I would like to inform you of the following.

Our lawyers José Luis González Meza and Juan Pablo Badillo They are in direct contact with those whom you designated for the repatriation of my dear son, Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, that is, the Secretaries of the Interior, Foreign Relations, Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General of the Republic, where all the evidence was provided where it is clear that my son was illegally handed over to the government of the United States of America, nothing would make me and my family happier to see him where he should be, in a prison in Mexico “, it is read in the letter that is written in capital letters and misspellings.

The so-called “Golden Triangle” has historically been the area of ​​operations of the Sinaloa Cartel

Badiraguato has historically been a place of pilgrimage for the Sinaloa Cartel and also for large crops of marijuana and poppy, an element to produce heroin.

López Obrador is the first president to visit Badiraguato, a land where in addition to Guzmán Loera was also born other famous drug traffickers such as Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Arturo Beltrán Leyva, founders of the extinct Guadalajara Cartel.

At the end of last February López Obrador announced The Sembrando Vida program in the Golden Triangle region, located in Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua, will be expanded to 100,000 hectares.

“The Golden Triangle is a stigmatized region, But people are working, producing and have always been forgotten, marginalized; As part of the strategy that we are applying to calm the country, we are attending to these always abandoned regions, “said the Mexican mandate.

He added that the expansion of the Sembrando Vida program helps create jobs in areas of the country that have remained neglected.

The so-called Golden Triangle of Mexico is an area in northeast Mexico, identified as a growing area for marijuana and poppies. The area includes Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa, an area dominated since the late 1980s by the Sinaloa Cartel, led by El Chapo Guzmán.

What is the Golden Triangle and where is it?

It is also known for being the area where several of the world’s most dangerous and wanted drug traffickers have been born.

The Golden Triangle region includes the Sierra Madre Occidental, where the roads are few and the ones that are difficult to travel.

The United States began calling the area like this in its official reports on drug trafficking. in the late 1970s. US authorities compare the region to the area with the highest opium production, consisting of Burma, Laos and Thailand.

For decades it has been not only the sanctuary of the Sinaloa Cartel that Guzmán leads, but also one of the highest concentrations of crops of marijuana and especially of poppy, essential for the production of heroin.

Before being captured, Guzmán Loera had an extensive security corps that according to specialist Edgardo Buscaglia, a researcher at Columbia University, operated with three security rings and up to 300 armed guards.

There was a time when most of the heroin production was consumed by the United States. came from Colombia.

But with the fall of Colombian cartels in the mid-1990s, that market was gradually taken over by Mexicans, many of whom located their crops in the Sierra Madre Occidental.

According to the United States government, almost 50% of the heroin consumed in his country is produced in Mexico.

And most of the crops are in the area controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel in the so-called “Golden Triangle”, according to reports from the Mexican National Public Security Commission.