El Chayanne of Drug Trafficking: From Hostess Heartthrob to Multiple Murderers in La Marquesa

From 5:00 in the morning, the police of the State of Mexico go almost blindly, barely guided by the narrow light of hand lamps, searching for corpses in the blackness of the early morning. Until 6:30 a.m., with dawn breaking over San Isidro Tehualtepec, in the vicinity of La Marquesa National Park, they find what an anonymous complainant had promised them: a pile of corpses. There they are, crammed in a bowl of earth, 24 bodies.

All are young men, with marks of torture, shot in the temples or back of the head by .38 Super, .45 and 9 millimeter caliber weapons. Some are naked, others only barefoot, some more bound hand and foot, and a few lie with their limbs spread open. The state police didn’t know it at dawn on September 12, 2008, but the youngest of the victims, Abraham Cinta, was 14 years old when they tormented him for hours until he was murdered. It’s an unprecedented massacre, less than two years into the “war on drugs” declared by President Felipe Calderon.

The discovery quickly reached the national media, whose newsrooms in Mexico City are located some 30 kilometers from the crime scene. Due to the brutality of the images, the international press joins the coverage. The Attorney General of the Republic, Eduardo Medina Mora, feels the pressure from abroad and mumbles that the dead are related to organized crime. A settling of scores, he repeats every time he is questioned, in order to close the file on the multihomicide.

But the relatives of the 24 deny that version. None of the dead have ties to any cartel and as proof they offer the media a glimpse of their precarious homes in the most impoverished regions of Veracruz, Oaxaca, Puebla and Hidalgo. “Do you think that if they were narcos, they would live so fucked up?”, Avelina Cinta questions in front of local media, while waiting for the coffin of her nephew Abraham in San Andres Tuxtla, where he is buried today next to his cousins Santos, Pedro and Angel. Neighbors and friends demand that the federal government rectify: they were all teenagers, good men, not criminals.

A month later, in the country’s capital, the arrest of a little-known hitman contradicts the authorities, confirms the families’ claims and, incidentally, reveals the most aberrant aspect of the crime: the rottenness in the soul of the protagonist of this story, Gerardo Álvarez Vázquez, known as El Chayanne.

Twenty-four masons tricked into building drug tunnels

Víctor Hugo Martínez Rocha, El Rocha, head of gunmen for the Sinaloa Cartel, was killed in a federal operation in October 2008 and immediately sought to become a protected witness in order to reduce his prison sentence. In exchange, he collaborates with the authorities to solve the La Marquesa massacre: he assures that the 24 were contacted by the cartel in different parts of the country so that, without knowing each other, they could build drug tunnels. None of them knew who their employer was or the details of the work; they wouldn’t know that until they reached the border with the United States, which never happened.

According to Martinez Rocha, the 24 left their communities excitedly for a project that, they were lied to, would pay them handsomely. In order not to exhaust them with a direct route, they all stop at a house in Huixquilucan, State of Mexico. And that’s where it all goes to hell.

Just a few months earlier, the Beltran Leyva brothers had split from their partners El Chapo and El Mayo and, in search of new territories, settled on the outskirts of Mexico City. A Beltran Leyva spy protecting the Mexico State plaza observes these 24 foreign men enter a house and mistakenly thinks the worst: that they are enemies infiltrating their bosses’ new terroirs, so he warns the local boss, Oscar Garcia Montoya, alias El Compayito, of the false incursion.

El Compayito, a sadistic and unscrupulous guy, personally goes to the house in Huixquilucan. He breaks into the house and surprises the 24 people. He interrogates them all violently, using the pressure methods he learned from Guatemalan Kaibiles and Mexican Marines. After hours of psychological terror, he is convinced that none of them are criminals, but rather deceived bricklayers, according to the statement he will give to the authorities after his arrest in 2015. None of those questioned represent any risk. That would be enough to stop bothering this group, but this foolish man makes an unexpected decision: although they aren’t enemies, they must all die, because they have already seen his face.

Worse still: El Compayito determines that the 24 will die slowly, punished for a fault they didn’t commit. Because yes, because he wants to, because he damn well feels like it.

And he chooses his favorite executioner, the protagonist of this story, Gerardo Álvarez Vázquez, who carries out the task with extreme cruelty and with an objective in mind: that his name and photograph reach the mainstream media, according to the file PGR/SEIDO/UEIDCS/359/2010 to which DOMINGA had access. 

He is obsessed with being famous. He will do anything, even massacre 24 innocents, if it’ll make his name immortal. Years later a maxim of life will come true for him: be careful what you wish for because it can come true.

El Chayanne moved drugs across the U.S. Pacific

Gerardo Álvarez Vázquez (1965) is a Guerrero criminal from a Sinaloan family, 186 centimeters tall, with angular features on a hard face, as if carved in stone. He liked to be known as “El Chayanne” since 1987, attracted by the hit song “Fiesta en América,” which he plays over and over again in his home in Chula Vista County, San Diego, California. There, he established his headquarters as a distributor of methamphetamines for the Sinaloa Cartel in the United States at just 22 years old.

He also likes being called “El Cantante,” as if it were a stage name and not a criminal alias. He moves drugs across the US Pacific coast, generating profits for the Amezcua Contreras brothers and, later, for the Beltrán Leyva brothers when they were part of the Sinaloa Cartel. Meanwhile, he dreams of having a star on the Walk of Fame in Los Angeles and being loved by beautiful and famous women.

But Gerardo Álvarez has no artistic talent. At least, not outstanding ones. He doesn’t sing, dance, or compose songs, although he tried a couple of times in the recording studios that abound in California, according to the file compiled by the Mexican government and supplemented by DEA data. All he has left is that innate flirtatiousness that, years later, would land him in Mexican celebrity magazines.

He himself insists he has a “star”: he was arrested and released in 1995, 1997, and 2003 as a small-time drug dealer. Each time he was arrested, he paid off a corrupt authority and was released on the street. Nothing extraordinary until that last release, which turned out to be the worst: certain that even stars were fading, Chayanne decided to live life to the fullest and become a celebrity, even if it was for all the wrong reasons.

‘El Chayanne’ soon becomes a patron of strippers 

In 2004, El Chayanne receives a promotion in the Sinaloa Cartel that changes his life forever: the Beltran Leyva brothers order him to take charge of the Mexico City and Cancun airports. The new assignment not only increases his power in the organization, but also brings the Guerrero native closer to a long-cherished dream: to be in a position where he can — and should — mimic a wealthy businessman.

Gerardo Alvarez seems to detest his poverty-stricken origins in Guerrero. All he has left is to hide behind brand-name clothes and fancy dark glasses, which give him an enigmatic appearance. For his new stage as a high-flying drug trafficker, who must justify a daily presence on airstrips and runways, he builds another version of himself and asks to be called El Ingeniero as well, even though he never complained his basic education.

Soon enough, he makes a lot of money. More than he would have earned as a simple smuggling pill dealer. So he starts investing in his passion: young, beautiful and ambitious women.

According to the file filed with the Attorney General’s Office, El Chayanne became a silent partner of several table dances in Mexico City, Mexico State and Cancun, such as the now defunct Exxess and Douss. Not only are they extraordinary establishments for laundering money due to the common use of cash, but he is treated like a celebrity there: the doors open at the snap of his fingers, the champagne bottles never stop being served and the bills “pay themselves”. The best part, for him, is that the dancers line up to meet him and ask for his support in getting them on the road to show business.

Chayanne becomes a patron of young people who see table dancing as a necessary stop before a career in television. The protected witnesses who put together his case narrated that he is a splendid drug dealer: he pays for surgeries and cosmetic repairs to his “girlfriends” who keep him company, when they aren’t at some casting audition trying their luck.

At the height of his mafia power, he boasts that one of his girlfriends is Alicia Machado, crowned Miss Universe in 1996, and that he even has a daughter with her. He boasts about that relationship because it portrays his progress: he, born in nothingness, now has everything, including the love of the woman who was considered the most beautiful woman in the universe, a relationship that the Venezuelan actress and hostess has rejected.

Life is good for El Chayanne. That’s why he defends every street in his territory with extreme violence: he’s not afraid to torture and kill anyone who dares to step in his zones of influence and want to ruin his dreams. That dark reputation comes with a nickname given to him by his enemies, one he detests, and which to his misfortune is the best known: they call him El Indio (The Indian).

His downfall becomes Genaro García Luna’s priority.

Chayanne is a particular criminal. He isn’t driven by money, but by the fame that comes with having wads of cash. He doesn’t want to keep a low profile, but to be known and wanted. He’s even encouraged by the thought that in the United States, some people are offering two million dollars for his capture, and he’s been frustrated for months because they can’t find him, even though he surrounds himself in bars and restaurants with women who appear as soap opera extras or hostesses in commercials.

In 2008, when his bosses the Beltran Leyvas split from the Sinaloa Cartel, he sees an opportunity similar to his rise to control the country’s main airports and asks to be in charge of the plazas in Mexico City, Mexico State and Guerrero, his homeland. He is granted this under the orders of Edgar Valdes Villarreal, La Barbie, and Oscar Garcia Montoya, El Compayito.

This is how he commits the massacre of the 24 bricklayers of La Marquesa. And in order to please his superiors, he kills dozens more, whose relationships with organized crime aren’t investigated before their deaths. It’s part of his bloodthirsty style: first he orders, then he investigates. The Mexican government’s profile of him states that his mere presence on the streets triggers a spike in homicides. His downfall becomes a priority for the federal Secretary of Public Security, Genaro García Luna, who is currently sentenced in the United States to 38 years in prison for having taken Chapo’s side in his fight against the entire Beltrán Leya organization.

So about eight kilometers from where the body of Abraham Cinta and the other 23 murdered bricklayers were found, the Army and Federal Police surrounded El Chayanne’s house in Huixquilucan, State of Mexico, and unleashed an operation at 4:00 p.m. on April 21, 2010.

Although the criminal boss has an arsenal in his home, and surrounds himself with 18 accomplices who watch his back, they’re all apprehended and easily disarmed. Fourth and final arrest of Gerardo Álvarez Vázquez is a success. 

The next day, the Mexican government shows off the detainee as a trophy of war: true to his style, El Chayanne isn’t seen in the typical clothes of a Sinaloan drug trafficker. On the contrary: committed to his profile as a businessman and gallant, he is portrayed by the press in a perfectly pressed white shirt, a black jacket and a neatly trimmed beard.

The Attorney General’s Office omitted one fact in that press conference: that the power of the recently arrested man was such that the house where he was arrested, his mansion, his center of operations for years, was only 300 meters away from the “Avila Camacho Residence”, a federal government building used by the Presidency of the Republic.

El Chayanne slept just steps away from President Felipe Calderon.

El Chayanne is on the list of drug lords to be extradited to the United States.

Since his capture, Gerardo Álvarez Vázquez has been trying to keep his “star” from going burning out. Injunction after injunction, appeal after appeal, he has sought to escape the ward of the most violent inmates at the Federal Social Readaptation Center 1 at the Altiplano prison, in the State of Mexico. His efforts ultimately collapsed in November 2024, when a federal judge upheld a 20-year sentence for organized crime against the Beltrán Leyva cartel leader.

According to that court ruling, he will be out in 2030, that is, at age 65, technically already a senior citizen. However, the current Mexican government is preparing a surprise for him.

Due to the fact that he is still has pending crimes with the U.S. justice system, which has already identified him as a member of a terrorist organization, his name is on the list of the next organized crime bosses to be transferred or extradited to the United States, following in the footsteps of the 29 criminal leaders who arrived in the U.S. in a surprise trip on February 27.

Then, his dream of being famous, of seeing his name in the newspapers and his photographs on US television would be fulfilled: El Chayanne or El Indio, the one who dreamed of fame and fortune, punished under President Donald Trump’s law. It will be a turn in the road: from the Walk of Fame to death row.

Sources: Milenio, Cartel Insider