Mexico learns for the first time about Grupo Sombra, the criminal enterprise that has expanded the most in the last six years in Veracruz, when a handful of hitmen take photos with residents of Tuxpan and Poza Rica and force them to upload them to their social networks.
Women must smile at the camera and hug these armed and masked men; men are required to raise their thumbs in approval. Everyone must post a comment of thanks for the forced gift of frozen turkeys and soft drinks for the 2017 Christmas dinner.
“This dinner was sponsored by Grupo Sombra Special Forces,” reads the flyers that the gunmen hand out along with the food. They all travel in unlicensed vans that circulate freely through these two municipalities between December 23 and 31, their nights of presentation to society.
What cartel does Grupo Sombra belong to?
Grupo Sombra announces itself as a split from the Gulf Cartel. Criminal renewal with a social perspective. They claim to be good Samaritans with the appearance of assassins who act under three principles:
Clean Veracruz of Los Zetas and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
Sweep away common crimes —such as kidnapping and rape— in exchange for impunity to commit federal crimes.
Do the social work that the government does not want to do.
Its birth occurs as the end of the administration of the PAN member Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares approaches and a federal deputy named Cuitláhuac García obtains leave to separate from his seat and announce himself as a candidate for governor of Veracruz. He also promises to have a social outlook, eradicate the cartels and fill the voids of authority.
Grupo Sombra campaigns as if it were a political party, but with no intention of going to the polls on July 1. In April and May 2018 they give away toys on Children’s Day and appliances on Mother’s Day; The other four candidates for governor do the same, but with more intensity the favorite in the polls, the one from Morena.
It is a competition to see who offers more: food, clothing, food supplies. The rebels of the Gulf Cartel even go beyond the situation of election day and copy the DN-III plan of the Mexican Army to help those affected by the floods of October.
By December 2018, Cuitláhuac García takes office as constitutional leader of his state and the Grupo Sombra consolidates its position as the most important criminal cell in northern Veracruz.
Both coexist as an elected and parallel power. Of both, the neighbors have high expectations, but the days of asking for trust, shaking hands and posing for the camera are over. Very soon they will show their true face.
Grupo Sombra operates with extreme cruelty
In Veracruz, crime reporters who have become accustomed to not putting their names or surnames in their stories say that Grupo Sombra takes its identity from a macabre idea: to be invisible, but always present. Like ghosts that move in the night. And that just as they give gifts with one hand, they cut off heads with the other.
Only a few months before the 2018 election, Grupo Sombra carries out an important campaign event: it uploads to social media the interrogation and decapitation of a woman who identifies herself as Commander Paty, alleged head of Los Zetas and leader of kidnappers.
The criminals take pride in the virality of the murder: it is their way of affirming “to the people of Veracruz” that their promises will be fulfilled.
And in the second half of the year they claim responsibility for the murders of several men and women whose bodies are abandoned in public roads, parks and beaches in Tuxpan and Poza Rica. Their trademark is the use of black garbage bags: this is how they turn their victims into shadows. The propaganda of horror is justified as the cleaning of the square.
By 2019, acts of charity are becoming less frequent and barbarity more common. A murder claimed by Grupo Sombra draws the attention of the press: from the message next to the body, it seems that the murderers recognize that there is an agreement between criminals and authorities to give them the north of Veracruz. And that the deceased violated that pact.
“If we had already divided the towns as men… this is one of the first calls, if you are going to enter the territories that belong to us, do not be surprised that we do the same. Are we men or children?”, write the journalists of the crime news.
Murders in Veracruz during the government of Cuitláhuac García
The government of Cuitláhuac García accumulates in his first 100 days of mandate about 550 murders. A little more than five a day. And Grupo Sombra is responsible for a large number of these homicides due to its staunch defense of the north of the state.
The position they have chosen on the map is one of the most coveted in Mexico.
They have located themselves in a region with a high presence of Pemex pipelines, ideal for stealing gasoline; also, on the Gulf migrant route that goes from Guatemala to Tabasco; and, most importantly, at the gateway to Tamaulipas, the last state before reaching Texas, United States, the largest drug market in the West.
In 2020, a perfect storm helps them strengthen themselves in the state: an unknown virus that travels around the world and a state government that does not know how to react to a pandemic.
Control in the north of the state
It is March 2020 and Grupo Sombra returns to its origins: it forces its social base to publish photographs with its hitmen with their faces covered and long weapons loaded on their chests. This time, it is not Christmas dinners, but food pantries in the midst of food shortages due to the concern caused by Covid-19.
There is another difference that seems subtle, but it is not. The criminal organization no longer only distributes “aid” in the north of Veracruz, but is seen in municipalities such as El Higo, Pánuco and Tempoal, in the Huasteca Alta, bordering Hidalgo, where they deliver cheap food with the discreet surveillance of municipal and state patrols, according to the local press.
In each bag there is a photocopy: “This is for the people of our town. You are not alone, we are with you. Sincerely, Grupo Sombra.”
While Governor Cuitláhuac García minimizes the cases and even invites people to visit the beaches of the state “100 (people) at a time to avoid contagion,” Grupo Sombra takes control of the health crisis.
He imposes curfews, punishes those who hold meetings with blows from the baton, and distributes masks stolen from hospitals, according to the report “Observations on Human Rights violations during the health emergency” prepared by the Ministry of the Interior (Segob).
By April 2020, the pollster Arias Consultores places the Morena member as the worst of the 32 governors in handling the pandemic; on the other hand, the criminals, with the help of Veracruz police and local chieftains, gain a social base, even distributing supposed vaccines at the end of the year.
The then bishop of Tuxpan, Juan Navarro Castellanos, in a Christmas meeting with local reporters questions what he sees: —is organized crime a rival of the government or are they part of the same group?
Six years of impunity
In 2021, Grupo Sombra definitively breaks a promise to the people of Veracruz. He had done it before in some regions and at certain times like Christmas or New Year, but now it seems that his bosses have been ordered to turn the exception into the rule: charging protection money under the false argument of financing the resistance against the CJNG, Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel.
Revenge against those who refuse takes murders to the next level: they appear dismembered, hanged, even burned alive. On social media, there are anonymous reports of land theft and roadblocks on highways.
Kidnappings are also accelerating to send messages of horror and Veracruz is on its way to first place nationwide for kidnappings, according to the civil organization Alto al Secuestro.
The suspicions of the people of Veracruz about a criminal agreement to allow the metastasis of Grupo Sombra find answers in October 2022, when the hacker group Guacamaya Leaks leaks thousands of secret documents to the media and one of those, prepared by the National Defense Secretariat (Sedena) and classified as “extra urgent”, indicates that:
Governor Cuitláhuac García supported the entry of the Cartel del Noreste into the entity and that his security cabinet gives protection to this split of Los Zetas.
Grupo Sombra is made up of members of the Cartel del Noreste, since both have the same origin: the Cartel del Golfo, founded in Tamaulipas in the 1930s, and who innovated in the criminal world with gifts to win the affection of the people they would later subjugate.
For example, its former leader Osiel Cárdenas Guillén became famous in Matamoros for celebrating girls and boys every April 30.
The alleged official protection, then, also benefits the Grupo Sombra. The response of the Morena governor is to reject the observation made by the federal government that he supports and to ask that his own party colleagues investigate him. No file is opened in the Attorney General’s Office (FGR).
It does not help his defense that eight months earlier, in February, the state leader had celebrated the arrest of five alleged members of Grupo Sombra in the municipality of Álamo. Ten hours later, the Attorney General’s Office withdrew the charges and the state police saw them walk towards freedom. The message of no impunity is falling apart.
A report from the Sedena in the previous federal administration, to which MILENIO had access, establishes that Grupo Sombra grows with the administration of Governor Cuitláhuac García, who will leave office on November 30.
The criminal cell that in 2017 had a presence in just two cities, today spreads across the north, center and south of the state; At least, they are accused of murders, kidnappings, gasoline theft, extortion and even cattle theft in 52 municipalities, that is, in 24% of the territory. A quarter of Veracruz is under their thumb.
Their expansion is so large that it has even spawned new armed branches. One in particular worries the inhabitants of the north of the state, who know these false philanthropists best: they are called La Nueva Mafia Veracruz. It is the son of Grupo Sombra that is preparing to take the next six-year term by storm.
Source: milenio
