The Guzmán brothers opted for an equally bloodthirsty security chief, ‘Panu’ will be Los Chapitos’ new guard.
Disloyalties, indiscipline and rearrangements. Los Chapitos have initiated a change of strategy to frustrate Mexico’s objective of arresting and extraditing them to the United States before the end of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s six-year term in office.
A military report to which MILENIO had access states that, after the arrest of Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, El Nini — Los Chapitos’ security chief — Iván Archivaldo, Jesús Alfredo and Joaquín Guzmán have chosen to place themselves in the hands of a person they trust with links to the old guard of the Sinaloa Cartel.
The Culiacan boys have reportedly appointed as their new security chief Oscar Noe Medina Gonzalez, alias El Panu, linked to the Tapia family of the Golden Triangle, who have experience trafficking drugs for Joaquin El Chapo Guzman and watching Ismael El Mayo Zambada’s back, the 75-year-old founder of the Pacific cartel who has yet to be arrested.
U.S. insists on extradition of ‘El Nini’.
El Panu meets the requirements for the delicate task of keeping Los Chapitos away from the Armed Forces’ grasp: he is young, but not as young as his predecessor – he was born in 1983 – agile, bloodthirsty and has command among the Chapito troops. His family is a top-ranking member of Sinaloa’s criminal clans that have stood out for operating under the radar and without attracting the attention of the national media.
In addition, Medina Gonzalez has another quality that led him to obtain the promotion that Jorge Humberto Figueroa, El 27, also wanted: he has learned to be discreet in times when Los Chapitos prefer to keep a low profile so as not to make a mistake that could land them in a cell on the other side of the Rio Bravo.
The criminal who wanted to be an influencer
“El Nini had been disobeying the instructions of his bosses, who asked him to be more cautious so as not to ‘heat up the plaza’. He drove around the Sinaloa capital in luxury vehicles and threw parties in the north of Culiacan. He would shoot bullets in the air and surround himself with women who could have been adversaries or ‘spies,'” says one of the authors of the military report.
Worse still: enthused by the fame and fortune of one of his closest friends, the singer of corridos tumbados Peso Pluma, he dreamed himself into two incompatible professions: criminal kingpin and influencer. Two masters that cannot be served at the same time.
In the document prepared by members of the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), there is a piece of information that demonstrates Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas’ desire to stand out: the day of his arrest, Wednesday, November 22.
El Nini allegedly relaxed his strict surveillance protocol – which included Culiacan transit police – because he was celebrating the release of a corrido with his criminal history that he paid to Los Tucanes de Tijuana, who have been linked to organized crime by former Tijuana Public Security Secretary Julian Leyzaola.
“El Nini asked for his own narco ballad when he learned that his compadre El Flaquito had a corrido made with Los Tucanes de Tijuana. He was very obsessive about Los Tucanes making the narco ballad, he wanted to see the lyrics, he wanted to hear the tune, he wanted to control everything. He really wanted to be famous and that’s not the way to do business”, says the source consulted.
The new song was premiered on YouTube last November 22, the day El Nini was arrested:
“This is how the story begins
of El Nini with El Chapo’s children
his actions took him step by step
step by step until he reached the top.
The corrido El Comandante 09 — another of Nini’s aliases along with El Chicken Little because of his boyish features — shows the overconfidence that Los Chapitos demanded of him:
“He is very brave, he doesn’t know fear
the commander was born very warlike
And although the government is looking for him
09 he parties big time.
Also the certainty that, in spite of his scandals and disobedience, a troop of daydreamers – men who flaunt the riches that crime can leave behind – would back him, as he backed Ovidio Guzman in the military operations Culiacanazo 1 and 2:
“They have wanted to grab and kill him.
They have sent marines and army troops after him
09 has his point men
In the heat of the moment they report the information
By the time they arrive, they are gone
Or they run into them firing bullets”.
“Cheers to the traitor!”
But it was not so. Marines and army troops, accompanied by elements of the National Guard, surrounded him without his security detail protecting him. His bodyguards, who were seen days before with high-powered weapons such as Barrett .50, R-15, AK-47 and rocket launchers, neither reported the information nor stopped the Armed Forces from firing bullets. Strangely, El Nini fell without resistance. For him there was no third Culiacanazo.
Nestor Isidro Perez Salas had a similar fate to that of another boss of gunmen who ignored the recommendations for restraint from the Sinaloa Cartel’s top commanders: Jose Rodrigo Arechiga Gamboa, alias El Chino Anthrax, who was betrayed by his “friends” after being fed up with his nouveau riche displays. He was arrested in 2013 by Dutch police in Amsterdam, despite having a false name, an extradition process followed that took him to the United States, from where he escaped while under house arrest, but as soon as he was located in Mexico in May 2020 he was murdered along with his sister.
The best evidence that Los Chapitos agreed with the fall of Nini is that another of his famous friends, the singer Natanael Cano, gave a concert that same Wednesday without any problems in the palenque of Culiacán, where a large part of the Chapitos attended. Instead of finding a tense or angry atmosphere due to the arrest of Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, military personnel dressed as civilians were happy to see him arrested and extradited to the United States.
“Cheers for the traitor!” shouted an attendant, according to what was noted by a Sedena element who was doing surveillance work. Immediately, applause and howls thundered. There was no need to specify who the disobedient one was: that Wednesday there was no other topic of conversation in Culiacan than El Nini surrendered in his underwear on the roof of a house in the Colinas de la Rivera neighborhood.
Another military officer, co-author of the report, affirms that El Panu personally ordered the Sinaloa Cartel troops not to impede the arrest and aerial extraction of El Nini. The instruction he gave was to save himself, if he really was as invincible as he thought he was.
“I’ll sum it up in one saying: you’re not supposed to shine brighter than the sun, that was unfortunately never understood by a guy who made millions of dollars in months,” says the consulted source. “There is a saying by Mayo Zambada that says: ‘ambition is not a good advisor’. That’s why, I say, they’re going with a profile like El Panu.”
To give up your life for Los Chapitos
El Panu became famous, without meaning to, on October 17, 2019. He was in the same house as Ovidio Guzmán, brother of his protégé Iván Archivaldo, when the Armed Forces surrounded the Tres Ríos subdivision in Culiacán to arrest El Ratón. The cameras installed in the military’s uniform captured the moment that immortalized him among the Chapiza mob: Medina Gonzalez placed himself between the military and Chapo Guzman’s son to protect him with his body, in case the order was to shoot him down, not arrest him.
I am El Panu, Ivan’s compadre,” he said.
I am also a friend of Chapo Guzmán
I am part of the team, you can trust me
For whatever is needed, I will always act.
This is how he is described in the corrido dedicated to him by the Sinaloa group Código FN. That maneuver of sacrificing himself for his boss, plus the orders he gave during the day to assassinate military personnel – if necessary – to stop the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán, have now led him to this new strategic position.
In the Mexican government, he is seen as a cruel and ruthless commander who doesn’t take risks if he suspects someone wants to harm the boys of Culiacan or ruin some business. Corruptor of municipal police and ambusher of the military, like El Nini he is guided by the principle to kill first, and investigate afterwards.
And in the US justice system, El Panu is also an important fentanyl trafficker to the south of New York, a buyer of military weapons and explosives, as well as a financial operator in charge of laundering Los Chapitos dirty money.
If the rewards offered by the US government serve to measure the importance and seniority of criminal leaders, then Los Chapitos have hired a more important security chief: three million dollars was offered for El Nini, while four million dollars was offered for El Panu.
A million dollars difference, in a plot of falls, promotions, betrayals and new criminal hierarchies.
