This Is How Celso Ortega Rosas, The Father Of Los Ardillos, The Cartel With Alleged Political Connections In Guerrero, Was Assassinated.

Mica for cartelinsider.com

On January 26, 2011, a group arrived at the door of Celso Ortega Rosas’ house and shot him at least five times. His body was left lying in the street, but he did not die there. He passed away in a hospital in Tlanicuilulco, located east of Chilpancingo, Guerrero. His nickname was “The Squirrel” and he was the father of brothers Bernardo, Jorge Iván, and Celso Ortega Jiménez. The last two are known as the main leaders of “Los Ardillos,” one of the criminal groups responsible for the wave of violence in the region. They have also been accused of having ties to members of the Morena party.

The organization of “Los Ardillos” was present in all national media when a video of the meeting between Celso Ortega Jiménez and the mayor of Chilpancingo, Norma Otilia Hernández, was released. She first denied the recording, but later admitted that it was real but “altered”: “It was a coincidence”, said the mayor and requested to wait for the investigation of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to deny that it was a political-criminal pact. The meeting allegedly took place in July 2023 in the community of San Martín, in the municipality of Quechultenango.

Six months later, Celso’s name once again made national news when he appeared in an interview for the Latinus portal, where he spoke about the alleged delivery of money for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s campaign in 2006. At that time, the current leader of “Los Ardillos” was operating -according to his own words- for the Los Zetas Cartel, although journalistic reports from that time link the criminal group as a breakaway faction of the Beltrán Leyva.

Once again, the name “Los Ardillos” made headlines in national media due to the violence that erupted in Chilpancingo and caused several days of paralysis as a result of clashes with “Los Tlacos”. The conflict came to an end in mid-February when leaders of both groups in the region reached a “non-aggression pact” and agreed to “respect” each other’s territories. Extortions did not stop, but the violence decreased.

Ortega Rosas, the father of “Los Ardillos”, was 65 years old when he was murdered. At that time, the leader of the PRD party in Guerrero, Misael Medrano Baza, condemned the crime against the father of the former mayor of Quecultenango, Bernardo Ortega Jiménez. He also stated that he was unaware if the attack was motivated by a political conflict during the electoral period.

In addition to being the mayor of Quecultenango, Bernardo has been and currently is a local representative for the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution), and according to his statements made in July 2023, he has had no contact with his family for at least 15 years. He stated that their activities have strayed from the legal framework.

If the words of the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) deputy are true, even in the death of his father, he did not see his brothers, of whom Celso was reportedly arrested in 2008 and accused of the murder of two federal agents, whose bodies were found in August 2007.

In his interview for Latinus, Celso Ortega Jiménez did not mention his brother or his arrest, nor the alliance forged between the Beltran Leyva and Los Zetas in the Tierra Caliente region of Guerrero and Michoacán after the separation of the former from the Sinaloa Cartel (2008). What he did talk about were alleged political-electoral agreements with Morena to “appoint” deputies and mayors in the region during the 2021 electoral process, the same year in which Evelyn Salgado Pineda assumed the governorship of Guerrero. Her family is suspected of having other agreements with organized crime.

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Mica

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