The wife of imprisoned Mexican drug baron Hector
Beltrán Leyva was arrested on Tuesday, cutting short her efforts to revive the
Beltrán Leyva cartel, the infamous trafficking group her husband once led.
Mexico's federal police released a statement
that said Clara Elena Laborín Archuleta was captured the northern city of
Hermosillo. Laborín Archuleta — a.k.a. La Señora — was reportedly organizing an
incursion into Acapulco, an area that was once the unquestioned turf of the
Beltrán Leyva cartel. Her name has appeared in dozens of "narco
banners" and messages left around the southern resort cityover the past
year. The city's homicide rate has spiraled, turning Acapulco into Mexico's
most dangerous municipality in 2016.
A source associated with the Independent Cartel
of Acapulco, the group that has held sway the city in recent years, said La
Señora's effort to retake control was backed by an alliance with the growing
Jalisco New Generation Cartel. He said the current turf war began after she
tried and failed to negotiate a takeover on a visit to Acapulco, where she was
reportedly guarded by a squad of Jalisco hitmen known as Los Rusos.
When Laborín Archuleta was detained on Monday,
she was allegedly caught with two kilos of cocaine and firearms. Her arrest
came just under two years after her husband, known as El H, was taken into
police custody, a development that was widely assumed to be the final nail in
the coffin for the once-mighty Beltrán Leyva cartel.
El H and his three brothers — Arturo, Alfredo,
and Carlos — belong to the generation of traffickers from the Pacific coast
state of Sinaloa that rose to prominence in the 1980s. The brothers worked
closely with their cousin, the legendary Sinaloan trafficker Joaquín "El
Chapo" Guzmán, until 2008, when the brothers blamed Chapo for the arrest
of Alfredo. The dispute triggered a war that involved the retaliatory killing
one of Guzmán's sons.
Carlos Beltrán Leyva was arrested in December
2009, and Arturo, the family's reputed leader, died in a Scarface-style
shootout with navy special forces a few days later. The chaos caused the cartel
to fracture, and it appeared destined for irrelevance by the time Hector was
detained in 2014 in a seafood restaurant in the tourist town of San Miguel de Allende.
Talk of a comeback gathered steam in the past
year, particularly after El Chapo was recaptured in January. Some Beltrán Leyva
offspring have also reportedly been seeking revenge on El Chapo's organization
while he awaits extradition to the US. One of Alfredo's sons was reportedly
involved in attacks in June near the Sinaloa village where Chapo built his
mother a mansion, and where the Beltrán Leyvas also spent their childhoods.
Reference: Vice.com
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