When María Consuelo Loera was born, in 1929, Emilio Portes Gil was president of Mexico. The Cristero war was ending, the PRI had not been founded, and opium trafficking was one of many businesses controlled by half a dozen networks of Chinese migrants settled in Mexico. Drugs were a footnote and the Golden Triangle—that impenetrable territory between Durango, Chihuahua and Sonora—was not yet the cradle that would see the birth of the names that would dominate drug trafficking in the following decades: Pedro Avilés, Ismael Zambada, Juan Esparragoza, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Rafael Caro Quintero, Joaquín Guzmán and a dozen others.
In ninety-four years, Doña Consuelo had time to see the business transform. He witnessed the triumph of the Sinaloans over the Chinese in the 1940s, the strength (and violence) of the State during the hard years of Cóndor, the exile of his sons and nephews to Guadalajara in search of the cocaine business in the eighties and the implosion of fragile alliances a decade later. Just as Luis González y González narrated the middle of the 20th century from San José de Gracia, Mrs. Consuelo Loera observed “the whole” of the history of national drug trafficking from her mansion in La Tuna, Badiraguato, a ranchería from which, in addition to the blue sky and the ocher mountains, small planes have been seen coming and going for fifty years. That has been the only constant.
María Consuelo Loera was born poor in a municipality that saw very rich men grow up. It's hard to imagine that her eldest son has conquered the cover of Forbes and that three more, very children, have died from malnutrition. Wealth is that size, poverty is that size. Ninety-four years is enough for several lifetimes.
Only a few things are known about Consuelo Loera's biography. As a child she did not know running water or electricity. She married an alcoholic and violent man; None of her ten children finished primary school, but the eldest received a doctorate at the age of fifteen in the planting and trafficking of marijuana and poppies. At the end of her life, say those who went to Tuna to interview her, Doña Consuelo dedicated herself to caring for animals, healing people and praying in an evangelical church where her son, El Chapo, he ordered it to be built in the town. In a ranch with a handful of houses there was mass at 10 and 1 every Sunday. So much prayer and self-denial did not serve to fulfill Doña Consuelo's last wish: to see her eyes, for the last time, her eldest son, imprisoned in a maximum security prison in the United States. She spent her last bullet on a letter written to the president that, in addition to being unnecessary controversy, served less than an Our Father begged without much faith.
The death of Consuelo Loera occurs at a time when at least two changes in dynamics in national drug trafficking are announced. The first: the displacement of traditional drugs by synthetic ones, which are much easier and simpler to produce. Little by little, but inevitably, the Golden Triangle will cease to be the center of gravity of drug trafficking in Mexico. Other mountains, roads and borders will take over the historical place where Consuelo Loera's children were born. The possibility of synthesizing fentanyl and methamphetamines in a few square meters will make the mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidental an unnecessary shelter. The small planes will continue to fly through the skies of Badiraguato, but they will be less and less relevant and their captains will have other surnames.
The second change is even more radical. Organizations dedicated to drug trafficking will be less and less supported by family relationships. The Zetas set the course some twenty years ago: violence and not consanguinity would be the foundation of criminal alliances. Until then, the drug business remained in the family, between brothers, neighbors, compadres and cousins who, sometimes, like Cain and Abel, betrayed and killed each other. With family at last. That model no longer exists, it belongs to the past. The Zetas understood this and the leaders of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) know it very well, a group in which place of birth and last name count for less than the desire to kill.
In more ways than one, María Consuelo Loera's grandchildren, Los Chapitos,—that triumvirate composed of Joaquín, Iván and Jesús Alfredo—represent an organizational model that dates back more to the end of the last century than to today's Mexico. They will last a few more years—that's for sure—but they are part of the world of yesterday. If they don't know, they should at least suspect it.
María Consuelo Loera will not have to see the end of the line. The imprisonment of the eldest son, the extradition of Ovidio Guzmán, the daily struggle of the Chapitos against the former friend Zambada, the CJNG attacks in several places in the country and the arrest of half a dozen high-ranking officials of the Cartel, including the group's security chief, The Nini, suggest that the end of the Sinaloa Cartel, at least as we know it, is around the corner. Most likely, it will end up imploding into several increasingly less solid cells with less professional leadership. Maybe they will be much more violent.
Doña Consuelo will no longer see that. Finally, her ninety-four years were not enough for her to tell the story of a business that—although it seems infinite—will change names and geographies. The person who will tell the end has not yet been born.
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