- NAME
- El Sindicato del Norte
- TYPE OF ORGANIZATION
- Criminal Cartel
- LOCATION
- Tijuana, BC, Mexico with influence throughout northwestern Mexico and southwestern U.S.
- ASSOCIATED CHARACTERS
- El Jefe
- Billy de Pacas
- Joaquín Papaqui
- ABOUT
- El Sindicato del Norte (the Northern Syndicate) is a loose association of several organized crime factions operating primarily in Baja California and Sinaloa, Mexico. The group slowly coalesced in the power vacuum left by the killing and capture of the Arellano-Felix brothers and the subsequent demise of the Tijuana Cartel. Some of the old cartel’s lieutenants are active as factions within the new Syndicate, but without enough power to dominate. So the Syndicate functions as an uneasy truce between several factions from across Tijuana’s criminal underworld, some old, some new.
- One of these faction heads is known as El Jefe, a shadowy figure of whom little else is known. El Jefe’s faction controls drug and human trafficking in the northeast border areas of Tijuana, along with much of the trafficking channels through the legitimate routes through the official border crossings.
- Within El Jefe’s faction, Billy de Pacas and Joaquín Papaqui operate as smugglers under the guise of truck drivers for the Syndicate-controlled Muebleria Santiago, a furniture manufacturing company that distributes into the United States.
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