Cartels’ meth war bloodying once-peaceful state in Mexico

MEXICO CITY — In the central Mexico state of Guanajuato, the color of the meth or the markings on the package in an addict’s pocket may determine whether he lives or dies. “It is a brand concept based on the label, more than the color, which isn’t always present.” In either case, the battle now pits the two most powerful drug cartels in the hemisphere against one another for control of the state — an industrial and farming hub that has attracted gangs for the same reason it has lured auto manufacturers: road and rail networks that lead straight to the U.S. border. “They will go into a store, a warehouse, a tire repair shop and kill everyone, destroy the location, toss in a hand grenade.” The Santa Rosa de Lima gang expanded into drugs after a start robbing freight trains and stealing fuel from government pipelines — an activity that drew especially heavy attention from a government furious at the loss of revenue. With police closing in on him in July, Santa Rosa cartel leader José Antonio Yépez Ortiz — known as “El Marro,” or “Sledgehammer” — made a desperate plea for an alliance with the Sinaloa cartel to fend off the Jalisco group, currently Mexico’s fastest growing and most violent criminal organization. But “the arrest of El Marro led the Sinaloa cartel to intervene in Guanajuato, to prevent Jalisco from taking control.” “We had had a war between two cartels, and unfortunately now a third cartel has entered the conflict.” Huett, the state security commissioner, said Santa Rosa and other local gangs provide the larger outside group with “firepower, the manpower, even with experienced criminals, killers, in order to confront the Jalisco organization, to contain their expansion a bit.” It also sends weapons and money — as well as its own operatives.