Guanajuato Is Burning With ‘Houses Of Terror’, Cocaine And Armed Minors

The Secretariat of Security and Peace in Guanajuato estimates that there are about 60 thousand houses of terror in the state.

In Guanajuato, the CSRL and the Santa Rosa Lima Cartel operate, mainly 

—”Do you want to know what a house of terror really is?” — asks Julián and laughs, showing me his teeth that look like yellowish grains of corn, an ochre tone due to cigarettes, the only thing that calms him when he has exceeded his cocaine consumption. 

It happens to him all the time: he inhales to the limit of tachycardia and then smokes desperately to return to the calm that precedes another pass.

“We call them houses of terror,” he says and bursts out laughing again. Or panic rooms for those who come from the United States. They told me that they called them that because the bad mood here tortured people. All these houses smell horrible. I say that’s what fear must smell like. And once abandoned, they become ‘points’ to consume whatever you want, whatever you bring,” explains Julián, 32, while nervously looking at the police patrolling the Historic Center of León.

How many drug points are there in Guanajuato? 

The Secretariat of Security and Peace in Guanajuato estimates that there are about 60 thousand panic houses throughout the state: abandoned or about to collapse buildings that organized crime snatched from their owners to turn them into torture houses or refuges for drug buyers with addictions.

Most of them are in León, but they have also been found in Salamanca, San Francisco del Rincón and Irapuato. Anything goes in a house like this: snorting to the point of death, killing someone to get a dose, selling one’s body for a gram.

“Look, this is the house I go to,” says Julián, showing me the gallery on his phone. On the starry screen you can see a corner with two windows barely covered by curtains as thin as paper and a cracked floor. “Did you see that red stain? It’s blood,” he explains with a mixture of pride and fear. “They smashed a friend’s head because he didn’t want to share.”

The most commonly used drug in a panic room, Julián thinks, is crack, a solid form of cocaine that is smoked to obtain a faster and more intense, albeit brief, feeling of euphoria. 

Also used are nevaditos — traditional cigarettes from which the filter is removed to replace it with crack — coca paste, basuco, coca diluted in water or in lines mixed with bicarbonate. 

“Other drugs are also used, of course. Weed and whatever you want. But cocaine is everything. It’s the queen.”

Cocaine has already positioned itself in Guanajuato

Julian is a dealer who knows Leon like the back of his hand. If he didn’t sell drugs, he would be an extraordinary tourist guide.

He knows every corner of the city thanks to his motorcycle and his wide client base: he sells to shoe entrepreneurs, students, teachers, housewives, drivers, deported migrants, farmers, micro-entrepreneurs, senior citizens, doctors and teenagers. He is a privileged witness of how cocaine has gained ground in his city and throughout the state.

The National Guard has made more than 620 thousand cocaine seizures in recent years in the state (EFE).

His personal experience is confirmed in the National Guard’s responses to requests for information from citizens. For example, the corporation reported 620 cocaine seizures between January 2020 and April 2024.

The state where the most drugs of this type were found was Guanajuato with 515 seizures, that is, 83% of the seizures nationwide.

And of those seizures on Guanajuato soil, 328 occurred in León, Julián’s birthplace and the center of his drug business. Then in Irapuato, San Francisco del Rincón and Salamanca.

In a distant second place nationwide is Jalisco with 40 cocaine seizures, then Sonora in third place with 13 seizures; Quintana Roo and Michoacán are in fourth and fifth place, respectively.

“Guanajuato, like many central states, has a serious drug use problem derived from the fact that many people who went to the United States and returned to Mexico brought with them addictions to substances that were previously only consumed outside the country.”

“In addition, it is a state with a high presence of criminal groups,” said Alberto Guerrero Baena, a consultant on security and violence issues. “It is a nerve center where not only cocaine passes through: it has cemented its position here.”

Between the “four letters” (CJNG) and terrorism

There are questions that a reporter interested in violence should not ask a member of organized crime. Less so if he is in Guanajuato, but Julián, relaxed by a nevadito that smells of any cigarette, reveals it without there being a question in between.

—“Why haven’t you asked me who I work for?”—he says when he is sure that no one is listening. —“Are you afraid?”—, and he laughs again. Fear amuses him, especially the fear of others. “Suppose I work for the four letters (CJNG). Try to guess which cartel.”

In most of the country, the four-letter cartel is the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), led by Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, El Mencho, but in Guanajuato it may be the CSRL or Santa Rosa Lima Cartel, the once powerful local criminal group that was led by José Antonio Yépez, El Marro, and that is now divided into several armed wings.

Both groups are fighting for control of drugs in the state against three other major rivals: the Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel and La Unión de León, which have turned Guanajuato into a mecca for intentional homicides with 10 a day last year alone.

The people responsible for the two car bombs that exploded on the morning of October 24 are also in any of these five criminal groups: one in Jerécuaro and the other in Acámbaro.

The damage to homes and businesses suggests an unprecedented use of explosives, much more lethal than the first car bombs the country saw at the start of the so-called “war on drugs.”

“I think that in Guanajuato they are aware of the serious problem they have: they have already crossed the barrier of terrorism, although the federal government doesn’t want to recognize it,” says Guerrero Baena.

“The federal strategy has been from top to bottom and I think that this doesn’t work in some states; I think that a key point is to work in the municipalities, especially in the southern area where it borders Michoacán. There, in that region, the majority migrate because of violence.”

—“What do you think, Julián, about the fact that violence in Guanajuato is now called terrorism?”—I ask him and, again, the laughter. This time he sticks out his tongue and makes the gesture of a madman, who learned from his brothers in the “panic houses” who are anesthetized by drugs. “Long live terrorism!” he shouts.

Minors with .38 caliber and 9 mm pistols

At first glance, Julián does not seem like a dangerous guy. Even when he wants to present himself like this, he tries so hard that his thug attitude seems false. Deep down, I think, he is a scared man, although he assures us that he is a careful guy, only he doesn’t bring his gun to our meeting. 

“If you saw me armed, you would think something else of me,” he says and smiles. “In the ‘panic houses’ you have to go in armed, because you never know who wants to steal your things. There are some who come in with a knife, a stick, even sticks. I bring my revolver and if I want, I can blow the head off whoever wants to take my things from me.”

Increasingly, he says, the “panic houses” are becoming meeting places to buy or sell a weapon. It is common for those who don’t have money to buy the daily dose of cocaine to offer a 9 millimeter gun or a .38 caliber revolver in exchange for a hit to ease the pain of withdrawal.

And increasingly, he says, it is minors who offer these transactions. Another consequence of the abandonment of these homes.

“There are already children of 10, 11 years old. Some do consume, they are all lost there, they even drool from so much drug. Others, I think, are sent by their parents to offer the weapons and that is how they get money. And there is always someone in the panic room who wants to buy one because with that one weapon they can go out to assault, kill and collect to get more drugs,” he says.

Again, his statements are confirmed by official data. In October of this year, a citizen asked the National Guard how many minors have been arrested for carrying weapons between 2020 and 2024 and requested that each arrest be detailed by age, entity and type of weapons.

The National Guard responded with a database of 122 minors under 18 years old who have been arrested for carrying a weapon in those four years. The youngest is just eight years old; Most of them are 17.

Michoacán came in first place in this black statistic with 29 teenagers arrested; and in second place is Guanajuato, tied with Sonora, with 23 arrested.

Irapuato is ranked as the municipality at the national level with the most minors arrested for carrying weapons: between 14 and 17 years old when they were apprehended by elements of the National Guard. Short, long and homemade weapons were taken from them.

“If you saw a ‘panic house’, if you slept there one night, you would realize that this all went to shit long ago. How are politicians going to fix something like this? I say that there is no remedy,” Julián perceives and shakes his head. “It is as if Guanajuato were one of those addicts, how do you get it back on its feet? There is no way, it cannot be done.”

I would like to tell him that there is a solution, although I don’t know it either. What I do know is that tons of cocaine, panic houses and armed minors are not the solution. And he laughs again, showing me his teeth and shaking his pack. Tonight, panic will break out in his head when he snorts cocaine until he almost dies.

Source: Milenio