Shadow of Los Rusos Is Seen In The Death of Sunshine Antonio Rodríguez Peña

Everyone has an opinion when asked about Sunshine Antonio Rodríguez Peña. A fishing leader, activist, and political prisoner, others see him as an aspiring politician and even an influencer. However, others portray him as a shadowy, sinister, and even multi-tentacled criminal. the two sides of a coin converge in a controversial character who assumed a leading role at the international level by leading a fight for the liberation of the Upper Gulf fishery and with the activist group Greenpeace, a restriction that is about to turn 10 years old next April.

On Saturday, March 8, when everyone was getting ready to receive the possible onslaught of the International Women’s Day protests, attention was diverted to a corner like many in the Independencia neighborhood, where 40 rounds from 9 millimeter caliber weapons hit Sunshine Rodríguez Peña, who had no chance to take refuge or protect himself; when he realized what was happening, the assassins had already unloaded their weapons and were leaving the place. His body was left lying on a sidewalk, just behind one of the coolers where he preserved the shrimp and fish that he usually sold on that corner.

María Elena Andrade Ramírez, attorney general of Baja California, quickly ruled out that it was an issue linked to politics, fishing or activism and reinforced the line of organized crime, a recurrent discourse to minimize and politically justify crimes throughout the country.

Andrade Ramírez said nothing more, but hours after the crime, Gastón Eduardo Parra Aispuro, brother of Óscar Parra Aispuro, alias El Tecolín, was murdered. He is considered by members of the Security Roundtables for the Construction of Peace as one of the leaders of the criminal structure known as the Cartel del Mar, dedicated to the trafficking of totoaba, now aligned with the criminal structure of La Chapiza.

He is more related to the protection and extraction of fentanyl, as the port of San Felipe is one of the few drug routes still governed by the Sinaloa Cartel faction linked to Ivan Archivaldo and Alfredo Guzman Salazar, sons of former mafia boss Joaquin Archivaldo “El Chapo” Guzman Loera.

Sources consulted on security matters come to the same conclusion: the only criminal group capable of perpetrating a series of crimes of this nature and getting away with it is the structure of Los Rusos.

This is the most obvious and where the investigations are directed. Specifically, intelligence reports point to a man nicknamed El Grillo, cell leader under the orders of Cipriano Alfonso Peralta Cázares and/or Alfonso Peralta Medina, known as El P1 and/or Ponchito de la Lima, Ruso’s man of war. However, other versions bog down the case.

Rodríguez Peña is the third fishermen leader murdered in Baja California in recent times, highlighting the murder of the businesswoman and president of Canainpesca, Minerva Pérez Castro, and the affiliate of the same Chamber, Servando Valenzuela Nakato, both in Ensenada.

THE MURDER OF SUNSHINE

“Good morning friends, good morning (just there). We still have marquetas (shrimp) of 500, 600, 700 and 800 pesos, friends. So let us come here at Río Presidio and Víctor Rosales”, commented Sunshine Rodríguez Peña, with a fairground entertainer’s tone with which he intended to encourage his followers on Facebook to buy seafood, where he also commented that they would be offering specials on Women’s Day.

The former president of the Confederation of Coastal Fishing Cooperatives didn’t imagine that this would be his last media appearance, nor that his invitation was the perfect announcement for the assassination to surprise him.

The clock had not yet struck noon on Saturday when the attack took place. The crew members of a white pick-up truck stopped in front of the Pringles King hamburger store and quickly descended to head towards Sunshine, who was unable to react to the swift attack.

The shooters were precise, as practically all the rounds hit his torso.

The forensic report states that some shots were upward trajectory, others downward, which suggests that they continued firing while he was falling and even while he was on the ground.

A total of 40 shots were taken from the floor, which caused 83 wounds of different types in the body of the fisherman leader, whose autopsy lasted more than seven hours. In addition to showing the viciousness with which the attack was perpetrated, it also shows the precision of the shooters at the moment of opening fire against him.

Both the Dodge Ram and another white KIA were involved in the attack. However, the chase became foggy.

The emergency call from people who were at the scene didn’t last long in coming and the authorities were immediately alerted, however, the passivity with which they responded to the report was questionable.

One of the first reports was that the victim of the attack was a woman and that it had occurred at Calzada Independencia and Río Presidio, that is, 23 streets apart in the same neighborhood.

The response of the authorities was lukewarm, nobody arrived. Minutes later the version began to spread that the victim was Sunshine Rodríguez Peña and that he had died in the attack; after that, the police frequencies were silenced and all information was given privately.

The director of the Municipal Police, Luis Felipe Chan, announced that at the beginning there was a series of confusing information about the incident, which benefited the assassins in their escape. It wasn’t until after an hour later that it was reported that one of the vehicles, the KIA, had been tracked towards the East Zone of the city, but the lapse of time was too long, the trail of the unit had already vanished.

The State Attorney General, Maria Elena Andrade Ramirez, rejected the information and showed the call sheet to prove that the C5 hadn’t made any errors, which opens the possibility that the disinformation had come from another point.

It should be noted that the instruction to all security forces in the state was to suspend breaks and to be prepared for the 8M operation from early in the morning, that is, there were more police than usual on the streets and on duty.

The operation was disastrous and allowed the criminals to escape from an extremely busy area, with a slow vehicular flow, narrow streets and large potholes, besides being surrounded by main roads that -in theory- have government surveillance cameras, as well as stores, this road has a large number of businesses.

THE HYPOTHESIS

Prosecutor Andrade didn’t have many certainties at the time of her statement, but she discarded that it was an issue linked to his activism and pointed towards a case related to organized crime.

To every question he answered that “all lines of investigation were open,” making it clear that they were not certain of anything. Days later, on Governor Marina del Pilar Avila Olmeda’s morning newscast, she commented that they were dealing with organized crime disputes in relation to the violent situation in San Felipe and defined the three incidents as direct attacks.

Versions gathered from the port of San Felipe and those from Mexicali are totally opposite, but the main line points to the fact that hitmen from Los Rusos, a group led by Jesus Alexander (Alejandro) Sanchez Felix, the armed wing of P1, killed Sunshine in an area operated by Junior Antonio Astorga Lopez, and hours later they also killed Gastón Eduardo Parra Aispuro, who was imprisoned for five years accused of the murder of a soldier in San Felipe. He was acquitted in this case because the two witnesses didn’t show up to testify and the judge dismissed the video evidence, according to him- it wasn’t legally extracted from the cameras of the Rockodile bar.

Sunshine Rodriguez Peña was considered a risk for Los Rusos in Mexicali. María Elena Andrade said that Sunshine and Gastón Eduardo were friends and the latter was identified as a member of his brother Óscar’s structure, linked to La Chapiza.

The then Sea Cartel was backed by “Chapo” Guzman’s sons, and San Felipe became – for many years – one of the two routes for fentanyl trafficking. When the Gulf of Santa Clara, in Sonora, was taken over by Los Rusos, the seventh municipality became a strategic point for the Guzmans, as shipments of M30 weapons arrived by pangas and were transported to the Valle de la Trinidad area through trails and roads from San Felipe.

The logic of killing Sunshine for Los Rusos was to eliminate a political and operational figure for the benefit of their friends who are part of La Chapiza, which even had a presence in Mexicali, which, by the way, didn’t want to ally with Los Rusos to help them enter the port. The two blows severely affected the Sea Cartel in San Felipe.

Relatives of the deceased said that he frequently received threats because of his political activity, but in none of these cases were complaints filed with the state prosecutor’s office.

Curiously, sources in San Felipe say that days before the murder, Oscar Parra Aispuro had an intense discussion with Sunshine Rodriguez Peña, derived from the purchase of fish from the port’s residents, as the latter offered to buy curvina, shrimp and clams for sale outside the port.

As has happened in municipalities such as Ensenada, a large part of the seafood distribution industry is co-opted by criminal groups and Parra himself allegedly claimed that Sunshine’s idea affected his legal business, following a discussion he threatened him to stop buying the product and sell it in Mexicali.

The version was supported by several sources, but authorities believe that a crime like Sunshine’s could have been perpetrated in Mexicali by a group linked to La Chapiza, as they lack control of the plaza and don’t have the backing of police.

In other words, the fight could have happened, but those who pulled the trigger are related to Los Rusos, at least in preliminary investigations.

THE STRUGGLE IN SINALOA

While La Chapiza tries to enter Mexicali from San Luis Río Colorado and Los Rusos fight to take over the municipality of Sonora, in San Felipe there is another battle going on.

With the support of La Mayiza’s allies, such as René Arzate, alias La Rana, Los Rusos have been involved in fights and murders in Ensenada, which is why it is presumed that there is a base of operations of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada’s mob in the area of Plan Nacional Agrario, near San Felipe and a point known as El Colchón, on the highway to San Felipe, which connects to the highway that leads to Valle de la Trinidad.

San Felipe authorities have identified that gunmen arrive from this point to strike blows against the Sea Cartel. In fact, in November 2024, there was a story about the murder of Oscar Parra Aispuro in the back of a well-known funeral home called Monte Sinai, in the Los Arcos neighborhood. The version was quickly dispersed, but it was later confirmed that Parra was at this point and left shortly before the attack. A few minutes later a vehicle arrived and shot at the people outside the building.

On the same March 8 that Sunshine was murdered, Gastón Eduardo Parra Aispuro was killed in the same place where they tried to kill his brother. A day after the violent day, Julián Higuera Salgado and Francisco Israel Vargas Martínez were gunned down aboard a Nissan Sentra parked at Kilometer 176 of the highway to San Felipe.

Regarding this case, the version of the state prosecutor’s office is a criminal response to the attack of Sunshine and Gaston, but authorities of the Safety Tables consider that it could be an attack by Los Rusos, since it seems that both individuals made frequent trips from San Felipe and returned with drugs that they sold at the retail level in the Mexicali Valley. Los Rusos allegedly detected them and shot them, despite the fact that they didn’t belong to any criminal group.

The victims were identified as workers, at least one of them from the construction company Machaca, and when the murder occurred, both family and friends requested the support of those close to them to cover the funeral expenses.

Not far from this murder occurred the double homicide of Andres Mandujano Ramirez, 50 years old, and Alejandro Mandujano Ramirez, 42 years old, both sons of a former delegate of the port community, who according to security sources were identified as drug dealers for La Chapiza in San Felipe; both were gunned down in December 2024, allegedly by a foreign cell from San Felipe.

Regarding the attack against Gaston Eduardo, authorities didn’t identify anything at that point, but the company Sociedad Pesquera Aispuro is located there, which according to the Public Registry of Commerce (RPC) is owned by Gaston Eduardo Parra Aispuro and his brother Oscar; Brittany Parra Cuevas – Oscar’s daughter – Angel Ivan Soberanes Miranda and Yulissa Rene Garcia Fernandez.

The fishing cooperative runs in the family, as Yulissa is the niece of Juan Luis García Ruiz, alias La Yegua, the former head of the Sea Cartel, and Ángel Iván is married to another sister of Parra.

Both La Yegua, Sunshine and Gastón Eduardo were arrested in November 2020 along with Segundo Valenzuela and Enrique Sández, alias Kiki, for allegedly being part of organized crime, specifically totoaba trafficking.

From that moment on, both Enrique Sández and Rodríguez were considered activists, the former was attacked by military elements, causing him serious injuries; while the latter led several confrontations against the Greenpeace vessel.

It should be noted that Hector Javier Dagnino Lopez, brother of Jose Luis Dagnino, mayor of San Felipe, is the husband of Fanny Parra Aispuro, sister of Oscar Parra, which can be seen in the sale of a home located in the port of San Felipe in 2015 -Zeta has possession of this document, – it’s considered that the Parra’s have a political family link with the current mayor.

After this incident, security forces went to San Felipe to mount operations, but the main action they took was to remove surveillance cameras that were hidden in public places or homes of dubious appearance.

Sources: Zeta Tijuana, Ernesto Méndez, El Regional, Cartel Insider