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Juárez OCG

The Juárez OCG, often referred to as the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization after its current leader, is one of several complex criminal groups, in addition to the Sinaloa organization, whose high ranking members were originally connected to the Guadalajara OCG. Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo was the uncle of the Carrillo Fuentes brothers who helped introduce them to the business and prune them for the organization. Vicente Carrillo Fuentes eventually went to work with Pablo Acosta Villarreal, a trafficker with ties to many in the Guadalajara organization and a knack for using aircraft to smuggle drugs. The murder of U.S. DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena contributed to the break up of the Guadalajara OCG and left Amado Carrillo Fuentes and many other mid-level traffickers without a strict hierarchy to follow. When Rafael Aguilar Guajardo was killed in 1993, Amado took control of operations in Ciudad Juárez and positioned the Carrillo Fuentes family at the head of the emerging organization.During this period, the Carrillo Fuentes developed their principal area of operations along the junction between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. The group was considerably weakened by the death of its original leader, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who died mysteriously while undergoing an operation in 1997.

In the early 2000s, the Juárez organization, now headed by Amado’s brother Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, formed a loose alliance with the Sinaloa and Valencia OCG known as “La Federación”. The Federación began to breakdown in 2008 resulting in renewed conflicts between the Sinaloa and Juárez organizations for control of the Juárez-El Paso corridor.

The Juárez OCG had a longstanding alliance with the Beltran Leyva Organization, and has recently allied itself with the Zetas in an effort to hold off the aggressive challenge from the Sinaloa organization throughout the country, and especially in Ciudad Juárez.20 For many years, members of the Beltran Leyva OCG worked as hitmen and transporters for the Juárez organization. In Cuidad Juarez, the Juárez organization is increasingly relying on the Azteca Asesino youth gang and La Linea gangs as part of their ongoing efforts to retain control the vital Ciudad Juárez trafficking corridor.

It is believed that La Linea originated as a gang of corrupt state police officers from Juárez and Chihuahua. Small drug gangs such as La Linea serve as the enforcement arm for the larger cartel they are associated with. The hotly contested battle over territory has become increasingly bloody, as La Linea continues to carry out vicious attacks on behalf of the Juárez OCG.