The news spread like wildfire a couple of months ago. Elmer Canales Rivera, alias Hollywood Crook, one of the leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha leadership, had been detained in Mexico, under total secrecy and an air of mystery. Not much was known about how he was captured. It was known about his extensive criminal history, his links with the Mexican cartels, that he was one of the key men in the negotiations between the gangs and the Government of Nayib Bukele and that the United States wanted his head for acts of terrorism. The arrest was on November 8 in Chiapas, in southern Mexico. It was not until a week later that the United States Department of Justice published a statement, in which it was briefly stated that El Crook, a member of the so-called “Twelve Apostles of the Devil” (the Mara's governing body), had already He was in US custody after being handed over by Mexican agents at Houston International Airport.
The capture of El Crook was a scandal, because it was assumed that the Bukele Government had already captured him in El Salvador in June 2021. Prior to the arrest, the US authorities had doubts about his whereabouts and took as true the versions that he had He was irregularly released in November of that year, awarded after being an indispensable element in the negotiations that the gangs held with senior officials of the Bukele Administration.
The court documents of the case in the United States revealed that gang members were allowed to enter and leave prison with total impunity and the Salvadoran press assured that they lived in luxury in one of the most exclusive areas of the capital, despite the fact that Washington had requested his extradition on multiple occasions since an Interpol red card was in force. At some point, the gang member had to hide and flee, first to Guatemala and then to Mexico. The White House did not hold anything back when stating that there was a mafia pact in El Salvador that had hindered El Crook's arrival in New York, where the Prosecutor's Office wanted to put him in the dock.
When they discovered that the United States was on El Crook's trail, Salvadoran authorities began their own manhunt in an attempt to regain credibility with Washington and deny that they had made an agreement with the criminals, according to research published by The lighthouse this Friday. The report tells the story of a gang member identified as Rafael Eduardo J, alias Rafa either The Chafawho saw a golden opportunity when “the Salvadoran Government embarked on a desperate race to recapture Crook and return him to El Salvador before the February 2024 elections.”
Always according to this investigation, Rafael was in contact for months with Inspector Raúl Eduardo Reyes Escuintla, head of the Elite Division against Organized Crime and known as Boss Ivan, and convinced him that he could organize a kidnapping operation to catch Elmer Canales Rivera in Mexico. Rafa told him that the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG), one of the most powerful criminal groups in the world, could help the Bukele Government to carry out the capture and that a group of coyotes (human traffickers) had information to track him in the territory. Mexican. In exchange, the gang member, who was a fugitive from justice and was hiding in another Central American country, received thousands of dollars in “per diems” and achieved the release of his sister, imprisoned for being his relative under the laws provided for in the regime of exception that Bukele established at the beginning of 2022.
Rafael is not just any gang member. He is a veteran who reached the highest echelons of the Barrio 18 gang and had a place at the negotiating table with some of the most feared criminals and the most powerful politicians in the truces that other administrations in El Salvador agreed to with the gangs. He sat with senior officials of all stripes, from the left and the right, and became a spokesman for his own enemies. With the experience of a good businessman, El Chafa put a price on Crook's capture: “One million dollars for the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, 250,000 dollars for Barrio 18 Sureños and 50,000 dollars for him,” he publishes. The lighthouse.
But it was all a hoax. “Rafael never involved his gang, he never came into contact with the CJNG, he never went to Mexico and there were never any gangsters discussing the price of a kidnapping. What he did do was come into contact with this newspaper and with US authorities,” states the Salvadoran media, which bases its investigation on audios obtained from the conversations between Rafa and Chief Iván, the gang member's own confession and judicial documents that verify the story.
The Salvadoran Government paid thousands of dollars to the gang member and shared classified information with him to try to capture him, according to the investigation. “My uncle [Crook] I was in Miraflores, Chiapas; But since he is restless, he went to Guadalajara, there he is. Tell that to the boy [Rafael]”, reads one of the messages that Inspector Reyes Escuintla sent to the gang member's sister on October 1, practically a month before El Crook was captured. Her relative had to report to another high-ranking member of the Salvadoran Police to stay on the radar of the authorities.
Rafa gives a detailed account of how he deceived the police chief and told him what he wanted to hear. “Apart from the J [Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación] I was talking to people about ourselves (from the Barrio 18 Sureños gang) from the area where I am and where he [Crook] “It also moves,” is heard in one of the recordings shared by the gang member himself.
Rafael dragged his feet when they asked him to give details about the whereabouts of Canales Rivera or when they asked him for specific dates to deliver progress on the mission entrusted to him. “Half time I have travel expenses, I have my sister away, I start to sit with these people,” he said in that conversation. El Chafa's deceptions were credible because for years the authorities in the region have documented the links that exist between the gangs of El Salvador and the most powerful Mexican cartels, whether the CJNG, the Sinaloa Cartel or Los Zetas. This is stated in the judicial file of El Crook and other members of the Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, in the United States.
Previously, El Salvador's elite corporation against organized crime had canvassed migrant traffickers, who dominate the routes of criminal groups in Central America, to find El Crook. But most were reluctant to collaborate. It was one of these coyotes, as they are known colloquially, who contacted Reyes Escuintla with Rafa. “The fear they have is that El Crook is going to speak to the United States and take this entire Government,” said Kevin Genovés, a trafficker who was also recruited for the failed conspiracy and who complained that the Bukele Government He gave practically everything Rafael asked for, while he gave the traffickers nothing. The coyote made the accusations in a video published on social networks in November 2023. A month later, Genovés was captured in El Salvador and no more was heard from him, he says. The lighthouse.
The pact between Chief Iván and Rafa was blown up when the media reported the arrest of El Crook in Mexico. That same November 8, the gang member's sister fled Salvadoran territory to avoid reprisals. El Chafa and his sister entered a protection program of the United States authorities that same month, according to the investigation.
El Salvador will have elections on February 4 and Nayib Bukele is the big favorite. The president will seek reelection thanks to a ruling by the Supreme Court of Justice, controlled by ministers close to him, which revoked the ban that was in force and that forced him to wait 10 years to repeat in the Government. Despite the scandals, accusations of corruption and repression, controversial agreements with gangs, the persecution of the independent press and the country's authoritarian turn, the president boasts an approval rating of around 90%.
The day El Crook de Hollywood fell in Mexico, Bukele limited himself to sharing a emoji with a winking face. Three weeks later she obtained a license to undertake her electoral campaign after leaving her personal secretary in charge of the Government. If she obtains more than 50% of the votes, there will be no need for a second round and her re-election will be consummated to be president until 2029.
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