Grupo Sombra, A Criminal Organization That Grew During The Government Of Cuitláhuac García In Veracruz

The Grupo Sombra announces itself as a split from the Gulf Cartel and has social programs.

Mexico learns for the first time about Grupo Sombra, the criminal enterprise that has expanded the most in the last six years in Veracruz, when a handful of hitmen take photos with residents of Tuxpan and Poza Rica and force them to upload them to their social networks.

Women must smile at the camera and hug these armed and masked men; men are required to raise their thumbs in approval. Everyone must post a comment of thanks for the forced gift of frozen turkeys and soft drinks for the 2017 Christmas dinner.

“This dinner was sponsored by Grupo Sombra Special Forces,” reads the flyers that the gunmen hand out along with the food. They all travel in unlicensed vehicles that travel freely through these two municipalities between December 23 and 31, their nights of presentation to society.

What cartel does Grupo Sombra belong to?

Grupo Sombra announces itself as a split from the Gulf Cartel. Criminal renewal with a social perspective. They claim to be good Samaritans with the appearance of assassins who act under three principles:

Purge Veracruz of Los Zetas and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

Sweep away common crimes—such as kidnapping and rape—in exchange for impunity to commit federal crimes.

Do the social works that the government doesn’t want to do

Its birth occurs as the end of the PAN administration of Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares approaches and a federal congressman named Cuitláhuac García takes a leave of absence from his seat and announces his candidacy for governor of Veracruz. He also promises to have a social outlook, eradicate the cartels and fill the authority vacuums.

Grupo Sombra campaigns as if it were a political party, but with no intention of going to the polls on July 1. In April and May 2018 they give away toys on Children’s Day and appliances on Mother’s Day; the other four candidates for governor do the same, but with more intensity the favorite in the polls, is the candidate from the Morena political party. 

It’s a competition to see who offers more: food, clothing, food supplies. The rebels of the Gulf Cartel even overcome the situation of election day and copy the DN-III plan of the Mexican Army to help those affected by the floods of October.

By December 2018, Cuitláhuac García was sworn in as the constitutional leader of his state and the Grupo Sombra consolidated its position as the most important criminal cell in northern Veracruz.

Both coexist as an elected and parallel power. Neighbors have high expectations of both, but the days of asking for trust, shaking hands and posing for the camera are over. They will soon show their true face.

Grupo Sombra operates with extreme cruelty

In Veracruz, crime reporters who have become accustomed to not putting their names or surnames in their stories say that Grupo Sombra takes its identity from a macabre idea: to be invisible, but always present. Like ghosts that move in the night. And that just as they give gifts with one hand, they cut off heads with the other.

Only a few months before the 2018 election, Grupo Sombra carries out an important campaign event: it uploads to social media the interrogation and decapitation of a woman who identifies herself as Commander Paty, alleged head of Los Zetas and leader of kidnappers.

The criminals take pride in the virality of the murder: it is their way of affirming “to the people of Veracruz” that their promises will be fulfilled.

And in the second half of the year they claim responsibility for the murders of several men and women whose bodies are abandoned in public roads, parks and beaches in Tuxpan and Poza Rica. Their trademark is the use of black garbage bags: this is how they turn their victims into shadows. The propaganda of horror is justified as the purging of the plaza. 

By 2019, acts of charity are becoming less frequent and barbarity more common. A murder claimed by Grupo Sombra draws the attention of the press: from the message next to the body, it seems that the murderers recognize that there is an agreement between criminals and authorities to give them the north of Veracruz. And that the deceased violated that pact.

“If we had already divided the towns as men… this is one of the first calls, if you are going to enter the territories that belong to us, don’t be surprised that we do the same. Are we men or children?”, write the crime journalists.

Murders in Veracruz during the Cuitláhuac García government.

The Cuitláhuac García government has accumulated around 550 murders in its first 100 days in office. A little more than five a day. And Grupo Sombra is responsible for a large number of these homicides due to its staunch defense in the northern part of the state.

The position they have chosen on the map is one of the most coveted in Mexico.

They have located themselves in a region with a high presence of Pemex pipelines, ideal for stealing gasoline; also, on the Gulf migrant route that goes from Guatemala to Tabasco; and, most importantly, at the gateway to Tamaulipas, the last state before reaching Texas, the United States, the largest drug market in the West.

In 2020, a perfect storm helps them strengthen themselves in the state: an unknown virus that travels around the world and a state government that doesn’t know how to react to a pandemic.

Control in the northern part of the state

It is March 2020 and Grupo Sombra returns to its origins: it forces its social base to publish photographs with its hitmen with their faces covered and long weapons loaded on their chests. This time they are not Christmas dinners, but food pantries in the midst of food shortages due to the concern caused by Covid-19.

There is another difference that seems subtle, but it isn’t. The criminal organization no longer only distributes “aid” in the north of Veracruz, but can be seen in municipalities such as El Higo, Pánuco and Tempoal, in the Huasteca Alta, bordering Hidalgo, where they deliver cheap food with the discreet surveillance of municipal and state patrols, according to the local press.

In each bag there is a photocopy: “This is for the people of our town. You are not alone, we are with you. Sincerely, Grupo Sombra.”

While Governor Cuitláhuac García minimizes the cases and even invites people to visit the state’s beaches “100 (people) at a time to avoid contagion,” Grupo Sombra takes control of the health crisis

He imposes curfews, punishes those who hold meetings with blows from the baton, and distributes masks stolen from hospitals, according to the report “Observations on Human Rights violations during the health emergency” prepared by the Ministry of the Interior (Segob).

By April 2020, the pollster Arias Consultores places the Morena member as the worst of the 32 governors in handling the pandemic; on the other hand, the criminals, with the help of Veracruz police and local chieftains, gain a social base, even distributing supposed vaccines at the end of the year.

The then bishop of Tuxpan, Juan Navarro Castellanos, in a Christmas meeting with local reporters questions what he sees: —is organized crime a rival of the government or are they part of the same group?

Six years of impunity

In 2021, Grupo Sombra definitively breaks a promise to the people of Veracruz. He had done it before in some regions and at certain times like Christmas or New Year, but now it seems that his bosses have been ordered to turn the exception into the rule: charging protection money under the false pretext of financing the resistance against the CJNG, Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel.

Revenge against those who refuse takes the murders to the next level: they appear dismembered, hanged, even burned alive. On social media, there are anonymous reports of land theft and roadblocks on highways.

Kidnappings are also accelerating to send messages of horror and Veracruz is on its way to first place nationwide in kidnappings, according to the civil organization Alto al Secuestro.

The suspicions of Veracruzans about a criminal agreement to allow the metastasis of Grupo Sombra find answers in October 2022, when the hacker group Guacamaya Leaks leaks thousands of secret documents to the media and one of those, prepared by the National Defense Secretariat (Sedena) classified as “extra urgent”, indicates that:

Governor Cuitláhuac García supported the entry of the Cartel del Noreste into the entity and that his security cabinet provides protection to this split of Los Zetas.

Grupo Sombra is made up of members of the Cartel del Noreste, since both have the same origin: the Cartel del Golfo, founded in Tamaulipas in the 1930s, and who innovated in the criminal world with gifts to win the affection of the people they would later subjugate. 

For example, its former leader Osiel Cárdenas Guillén became famous in Matamoros for celebrating Children’s Day every April 30.

The supposed official protection, then, also benefits Grupo Sombra. The response of the Morena governor is to reject the observation made by the federal government that he supports and to ask that his own party colleagues investigate him. No file is opened in the Attorney General’s Office (FGR).

It doesn’t help his defense that eight months earlier, in February, the state leader had celebrated the arrest of five alleged members of Grupo Sombra in the municipality of Álamo. Ten hours later, the prosecution dropped the charges and the state police watched them walk free. The message of no impunity is falling apart.

A report from the Sedena in the previous federal administration, to which MILENIO had access, establishes that Grupo Sombra grows with the administration of Governor Cuitláhuac García, who will leave office on November 30.

The criminal cell that in 2017 had a presence in just two cities, today spreads across the northern, center and southern part of the state. To put it mildly, it is attributed with murders, kidnappings, gasoline theft, fee collection and even cattle theft in 52 municipalities, that is, in 24% of the territory. A quarter of Veracruz is under its boot.

Its expansion is so large that it has even spawned new armed wings. One in particular worries the inhabitants of the north of the state, who best know these false philanthropists: they are called the Nueva Mafia Veracruz. It is the son of Grupo Sombra that is preparing to take the next six-year term by storm.

Sources: Milenio, El Blog del Narco