Duncan Tucker: Dead or Alive? Mistaken Identities in Mexico's Drug Wars Duncan Tucker - Vocativ
go to original March 10, 2014

The U.S. government offered a reward of $5 million for information leading to the capture of Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel.

GUADALAJARA - There are generally two routes out of the drug cartels for Mexican narcotics kingpins: arrest or a violent and untimely death. Some of the most infamous, however, can expect to be immortalized and live on through local folklore. Legends abound of supposedly slain capos who are back from the dead, or who have somehow evaded or faked their own death. Such is the level of public distrust in the Mexican government that few believe the official accounts of takedowns. Amid all the confusion, it can be hard to determine who’s dead and who’s alive.

In 2010, for instance, the government claimed that federal police killed Nazario Moreno González, the eccentric founder of the quasi-religious Familia Michoacana cartel. His body was never recovered, however, and vigilantes in the western state of Michoacán say that he was running the offshoot cartel, The Knights Templar, until he was killed in a shootout with federal forces in western Mexico early on Sunday.

Another drug lord supposedly felled in 2010, Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, is also rumored to be alive and well. Coronel was one of four leaders of the powerful Sinaloa Federation headed by notorious billionaire Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Known as the “King of Crystal” for his domination of the crystal meth trade, Coronel ran the cartel’s operations in much of western Mexico from his base in Guadalajara.

On July 29, 2010, more than 150 soldiers, backed by helicopters and armored vehicles, descended on Coronel’s luxury home in a leafy suburb of Guadalajara’s Zapopan district. The Mexican army said Coronel died from six gunshot wounds after resisting arrest, but forensic experts weren’t called to the crime scene until 17 hours later, and then they were strictly forbidden from discussing the autopsy with the press.

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