Estanislao Campuzano

Estanislao Campuzano is presented as a major figure in Santa Teresa’s cartel, a name that links the city’s criminal hierarchy to wealthy business families and to the suspected serial killers. The novel’s account gives him influence and reach, but carefully distinguishes that asserted power from proof of his personal participation in particular crimes.

Position in the Criminal Network

Campuzano is described as the superior of Fabio Izquierdo, a narco associated with the Uribe brothers. Izquierdo is said to have once led the Hermosillo narcos and later to have created drug-transport routes connecting Santa Teresa with Sinaloa, Oaxaca, Michoacán, and Tamaulipas. The account also reports that Campuzano was Antonio Uribe’s godfather. These claims place him within overlapping networks of kinship, patronage, and drug trafficking rather than presenting the cartel as an isolated criminal organization.

The Uribes’ family and business connections show the scale of the world around Campuzano. Pedro Uribe owns more than one hundred cargo trucks transporting goods from maquiladoras in Hermosillo and Santa Teresa across the border at frequent intervals; his brother Joaquín owns hotels in Sonora and Sinaloa and a chain of coffee shops in Santa Teresa. Their sons, Antonio and Daniel, move among the children of wealthy families, police officers, and narcos. The reporters are told that Antonio and Daniel are the Santa Teresa serial killers, and that both are protégés of Izquierdo, who in turn works for Campuzano. The chain of reported association makes Campuzano a figure behind the suspects’ powerful social environment, but does not itself establish his role in their alleged murders.

Reported Gatherings and Allegations

Campuzano’s name also enters the account of parties at narcorranchos, remote estates where Kelly Rivera Parker organized gatherings. According to the testimony collected by Loya, the parties brought together wealthy and influential guests, including banker Salazar Crespo and businessman Sigfrido Catalan, as well as Fabio Izquierdo and Sergio Muñoz Otero, the boss of the Nogales narcos. Loya believed those two cartel figures were present at some of Kelly’s parties and said Campuzano sometimes attended, though not often.

The narrative marks the limits of this account: Loya had assembled testimonies and reports of drunken conversations and brothel talk, but evidence of the kind a court would recognize was lacking. Some people said Campuzano did not attend; others said he sometimes did. His alleged presence therefore remains uncertain, even as the range of guests and the connections among them suggest how criminal, business, and social circles could converge at the ranchos.

A Border City and Its Criminal Economy

The city that frames Campuzano’s influence is depicted as expanding rapidly, with industrial parks and maquiladoras surrounded by poor neighborhoods and a landscape crossed by highways and the US-Mexico border. Its economy combines factories, low unemployment, a cocaine cartel, migration, and infrastructure strained by population growth. That juxtaposition gives the cartel’s power a material setting: legitimate trade and industrial production coexist with drug routes and criminal patronage, while the border enables goods and people to move through a region where responsibility can be difficult to pin down.

The reported network around Campuzano is thus more than a list of underworld names. Cargo transport, maquiladora commerce, family wealth, political and social standing, and narcotics routes appear in close proximity. The text does not establish that Campuzano personally directs each operation or crime; instead, it presents him as a powerful node in a system whose influence is visible through protégés, alleged godparent ties, and the recurring presence of his lieutenants.