“El Marro”, responsible for terrorizing the state in recent months, and placing it among the most violent in the country, with 15 percent of the national total of homicides, according to information provided by the president of the republic, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has been arrested. José Antonio Yépez Ortiz, was captured two days after his 40th birthday, on Aug. 2, 2020.

 

Now, the State Attorney General’s Office is putting together an investigation against him, and everything indicates that he could be moved to Almoloya de Juárez, State of Mexico, where CEFERESO number 1, known as the Altiplano, is located, today.

 

In the early hours of 2 August, state and federal authorities announced the capture of Yépez Ortiz, leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel, who is allegedly responsible for vehicle theft, cargo transport, stock trucks, drug trafficking, kidnapping, murder, extortion and huachicol in the state of Guanajuato. Both levels of government expressed in the media and social networks that it was a joint effort. During the arrest, a woman from Apaseo, El Alto, Guanajuato, who had been kidnapped by the group, was released; five other men were also captured.

 

Regarding the capture, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the cartel had grown, making Guanajuato the most violent state, due to “complicity with municipal and state authorities,” he said. “Already SEDENA and the Guanajuato state government, achieved the arrest, which is important. We must continue to address the causes that generate crime, we must and will support young people so that they do not get hooked up with these groups, that there is no corruption or impunity.

 

The president also declared that there was no dividing line between government and crime, because “criminals dominated, they were in charge of municipal governments, and they also had influence in state governments, in the federal government”. As an example, he spoke of the former Secretary of Public Security during the six-year term of Felipe Calderón; Genaro García Luna (imprisoned in the United States, accused of providing protection to the Sinaloa Cartel) “pretended to fight crime, but only those who had no agreement with the government,” the president said.

 

It was last year when Yépez attracted the attention of society and the government at different levels, as the person responsible for the violence in the state of Guanajuato, and since then attempts have been made to capture him, including searches in the municipality of Santa Rosa de Lima, the cartel’s main point of operation, and where one of his “mansions”, other buildings, jewellery, weapons, and cars were secured.

 

Yépez has also been linked to narco-blockers – cars on fire – on March 11 in several municipalities of the state, as well as the June 20 attacks with cars and burning on different roads, after his mother, María Eva Ortiz, and other members of the criminal group were captured. Later, on July 1, he was also linked to the execution of 20 people in a rehabilitation center in Irapuato.