Güero Méndez’s Drug Organization

Güero Méndez’s Drug Organization is the Sinaloa-based rival of the Barrera organization in a struggle over La Plaza, the crucial local corridor for moving drugs. Güero Méndez retains a stronghold in Sinaloa, but his distance from the contested plaza leaves his organization vulnerable to rivals with local reach. Its fortunes turn on a practical question: whether it can keep product moving when the Barreras control the routes it needs.

Identity and Territorial Position

The organization is associated with Güero Méndez, who operates from Culiacán while seeking to control La Plaza. The Barrera organization presents itself as the local force in the contest: its leaders emphasize that they can act in Baja California and San Diego, while Güero is based in Sinaloa. The contrast is not just between two leaders but between a distant stronghold and control of the passageways that make a trafficking business viable.

Güero’s hold on Sinaloa does not give him easy access to other markets. Sinaloa is landlocked, and when La Plaza is closed to him, he must pay intermediaries to move product through Sonora or the Gulf. Those alternatives cost him, weakening his ability to sustain the conflict. The account portrays his diminishing resources as a consequence of that dependence, even while he retains authority in his home state.

The Contest for La Plaza

The Barrera side’s supply arrangement with the Orejuela brothers gives it a steady flow of cocaine from Cali and the resources to fight. Raúl Barrera makes the local dealers choose between the rival camps, casting allegiance as an either-or decision: Coke or Pepsi. The commercial labels turn a cartel war into a plainly legible test of loyalty, with no space for dealers to serve both sides.

The killings of dealers make that choice consequential. Alejandro Cazares, a San Diego real-estate investor, businessman, and drug dealer who had chosen the Barrera side, is found dead in his car in San Ysidro; Billy Brennan, another San Diego dealer, is killed in a Pacific Beach motel. The American police are puzzled by the Pepsi cans left with the victims. Güero’s organization retaliates against Eric Mendoza and Salvador Marechal, who had aligned with the Barrera side, and their deaths in Chula Vista are followed by further Barrera retaliation. For a time, burning cars become a visible feature of the conflict there.

The Barrera organization uses these reprisals to make a territorial argument: it can reach dealers in Baja and San Diego, whereas Güero cannot reach it in Tijuana. His failure to strike back is read as weakness, and his dependence on costly routes reinforces that impression. The organization’s contest for La Plaza is therefore waged through both targeted violence and a demonstration of who can operate locally without paying a rival or intermediary for access.

Routes, Business, and Renewed Power

The book places this struggle within a wider Mexican trafficking economy increasingly organized around transport. The Federación’s arrangement with the Medellín and Cali cartels pays Mexicans $1,000 for each kilo safely delivered to the Colombians inside the United States. Mexican operators move cocaine from Colombian suppliers to staging areas near the border, across the border to U.S. safe houses, and then back to the Colombians for processing. This is the broader logistics environment in which control of a plaza can determine whether a cartel moves product efficiently or pays others to do so.

Later, an attack on La Sirena signals that Güero’s organization may be stronger than the Barreras had believed. The attack uses federal police uniforms and identification, a deception Adán Barrera thinks must have required hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. He also understands the breach of a resort-town prohibition on violence as evidence that Güero feels confident enough to disregard the restraint. Adán wonders how Güero is moving product through La Plaza despite the Barrera blockade and whether political support, including support from García Abrego, has helped restore his position. These are questions and suspicions in Adán’s assessment, not confirmed explanations.

A border warehouse provides a concrete glimpse of the organization’s operations. Antonio Ramos and his troops search a building on the Mexican side of the border and find stacks of vacuum-wrapped cocaine and about a dozen of Güero Méndez’s workers tied up. Ramos notices that the workers keep looking toward a forklift in one corner and asks the manager for its keys. The scene establishes the scale of the stored product and the presence of Güero’s personnel, while leaving the forklift’s significance unresolved.

Political Context and Significance

Güero’s organization operates in a world where rival trafficking power is reinforced by political and financial leverage. The Federación is said to have helped the governing party steal the 1988 election after the vote-counting computers malfunctioned. In 1994, brokerage houses controlled by the Federación began buying government bonds just after a new president took office; the cartels then withdrew capital from the national bank, contributing to a 50 percent peso devaluation. After profiting from the crisis, the Federación agreed to return money to Mexico only in exchange for a favorable trade environment. These episodes describe the Federación, not Güero’s organization, but they establish the political landscape against which the struggle for routes and influence unfolds.

The organization’s story consequently makes territory more than a matter of borders on a map. A stronghold in Sinaloa cannot replace access to La Plaza, and a route can be worth more than the product carried along it. Güero’s changing fortunes—from apparent loss of access to signs of renewed capacity—show how local alliances, transport corridors, bribery, and political backing can shift the balance between competing organizations.