Portrait of a Cop-Killer and Top Narco Operative

Authorities Nab El 300, Thought to be Part of the War Against State Police

El 300 in September 2017

Various news agencies have reported the capture of Rene Gerardo Santana Garza, aka "El 300," in Aldama, Chihuahua, by federal agents.  La Polaka claims the arrest was made by the Mexican Navy, other sources vaguely refer to federal authorities as having apprehended him.  Yesterday a clarification was issued to the effect he had been captured almost by accident at the Chihuahua International Airport as a police agent spotted a car he was in that was behaving suspiciously (see story in Borderland Beat).  He is thought to have been the major player in the war against police that has left at least 70 state police dead throughout the state in the past two years.  He was captured in September of 2017 but, inexplicably, released on bond on reduced charges, for about $250 (US).

His career as an Azteca gang leader parallels the gradual decline of the Juarez Cartel after the capture of Vicente Carrillo in the fall of 2014.  (For a summary of this history, published in Diario, click here) Up to that time the Juarez cartel outsourced much of its enforcement needs to a group called La Linea, composed of former state, municipal police officers, and maintained close connections with a prison gang operating on both sides of the border known as Los Aztecas.  During the violent war against the Sinaloa Cartel in Juarez from 2007 through 2010 the Aztecas were armed by La Linea.  Among other activities they fought to maintain territorial turf in the local retail drug market.  In this turf battle their major rivals were the Artistas Asesinos, and the Mexicles, associated with the Sinaloa Cartel.

It was a hard-fought battle for Chapo Guzman, since most of Chihuahua was dominated by the Juarez cartel, but gradually the Sinaloa cartel began to displace the Juarez cartel.  As this happened rifts within these organizations grew stronger.  Santana, for example, is said to have declared war on defectors from the Azteca gang to the Sinaloa cartel--a group calling itself the "vieja guardia"-- last year, unleashing a wave of violence ever since, exploding in April and May of this year.  The massacre of 13 persons at a picadero safe house last Summer (covered here) was related to feuding between these gangs.  This fall the wave of attacks on state police is said to have been supported principally by El 300 and his followers,.  At the present time police have identified eleven major operators between the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels, and El 300 was definitely one of them.