The plazas
The plazas
The brand is Morena. The party that governs is the Green Party. The machine that appoints the prosecutor, the chief justice, the budget and the tourist corridor's mayors is green. And every cartel operates on that board: who charges each plaza, whom the U.S. Treasury has already sanctioned, and what level of proof each name carries.
This is the second of three parts of the Quintana Roo File. In the first we showed the machine: the window that collects, the land grab with legal paper, the money leaving. Today we show the operators and the territory: which group runs each plaza, which businesses are targeted, what the U.S. Treasury has already designated inside the state, and where all of that meets the political power of Morena, which governs nearly every municipality and the state itself. In part three we reach the government of Mara Lezama with the documents the first two parts' information requests are already producing.
A plaza is not a place. It is a criminal concession: the right to collect in a territory. They collect on the drugs sold, the bar that opens, the taxi that runs, the lot that gets titled. When two groups fight over the concession there are shootings and the plaza makes the news. When a single group controls it, there is silence. That is why a drop in homicide without a drop in extortion does not describe peace. It describes a monopoly.
This chapter is built on two kinds of sources and nothing else: United States records, Treasury designations and Justice Department indictments, and the acts of Mexican authorities themselves, arrests and attributions made on the record by the state prosecutor and the federal Security Cabinet. No attribution on this site is ours. Every one has an institutional owner.
And a correction to the political map everyone repeats. Morena is said to govern Quintana Roo. That is the brand. The machine is another. The Green Party (PVEM) holds the presidency of the state Superior Court, the governing board of Congress and eight seats, the Finance Ministry since 2022 per records from the very week of the inauguration, the only corridor municipality it governs alone, the legislative seat that launched Playa del Carmen's mayor, and the federal district covering the entire Riviera Maya. Whoever decides if a detainee walks free, who audits, and who collects the prosecutor's budget does not wear Morena's maroon. They wear green. This file proves it piece by piece in the Spanish chapters 06·C, 06·D and 06·F, separating what is on the record from what is still an information request.
The plaza is not on the tourist map. It is on the sanctions list.
Morena supplies the governor and the brand. The Green Party supplies who prosecutes, who judges, who pays and who governs the corridor's sea gate. The two cabinet and Congress pieces are recorded as attributions by political columns from September 2022, level D, and were converted into a request for the coalition agreement. The other five are electoral record and official bulletin. Open the appointment chain (ES) →
Part two of the Quintana Roo File, narrated. Seven minutes with the five findings and the state's paradox.
The state prosecutor's office, appointed by a government with a Morena brand and a Green Party machine, itself admitted five organizations collecting in Cancún's hotel zone alone. Each row says which group, in which plaza, who asserts it, and with what level of proof. Without a source, the row does not exist.
| Group | Attributed plazas | Who asserts it | Anchoring fact | Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CJNG · Los Cuinis | Playa del Carmen, Cancún | U.S. Treasury (OFAC) | Xaman Ha shopping center and Grupo Segtac designated as a financial network since 2015; in 2025 the State Department designated CJNG a foreign terrorist organization | B · Designation |
| Caborca Cartel · southern stronghold | Chetumal, Bacalar, Othón P. Blanco | Yucatán prosecutor · official case sheets | Arrest in Mérida of Jorge Luis Toledo Cruz, El Toledo, December 2024, identified as plaza chief in Chetumal; official sheets place clandestine airstrips and light aircraft in Othón P. Blanco and Bacalar | C · Attributed arrest |
| Caborca Cartel · push north | Tulum, Playa del Carmen | Federal Security Cabinet · U.S. Treasury (OFAC) | October 12, 2023: a man identified as José Gil Caro Quintero, El Pelo Chino, arrested in Tulum and released by state investigative police, confirmed by reports citing the federal cabinet and denied by the state; 55 days later OFAC named him as an operating associate of a designee | C · Documented case |
| "Cártel de los Chiapanecos" · alleged FGE-Caborca pact | Playa del Carmen | Anonymous post, Alerta Roja Playa del Carmen, July 1, 2026 | The text attributes to a "narco-prosecutor" deals with Caborca under El Pelo Chino, the handover by investigative police of a leader named Irving Montalvo to a rival group, and the collapse of control over extortion in Playa. No document, no author, no evidentiary value: logged as an allegation and converted into information requests (Montalvo's case file if it exists, extortion files in Solidaridad) | D · Anonymous allegation |
| Sinaloa Cartel · Los Chapitos | Benito Juárez, Isla Mujeres, Playa del Carmen, Puerto Morelos, Lázaro Cárdenas | Quintana Roo prosecutor | Arrest of Arturo Misael, El Guamúchil, June 1, 2026; the prosecutor attributed him as the main driver of violence in those five municipalities, part of El 15's structure | C · Attributed arrest |
| Hells Angels MC · transnational network | Cancún | Federal Security Cabinet · Interpol | May 2026 arrest of Denis Ivziku, Menace, alleged transnational logistics operator working out of Cancún, wanted by Interpol | C · Attributed arrest |
| Villas del Sol extortion cell | Playa del Carmen | Quintana Roo prosecutor · municipal police | Nine arrested on July 13, 2026; ballistics link one weapon to six attacks on bars and restaurants; alleged leader: Miguel N, El Kilo | C · Documented operation |
| CDS vs CJNG dispute | Tulum | Regional coverage citing prosecutor attributions | Arrest of Ángel Yair N, Sombra, retail drug sales in Tulum; the plaza dispute is regional press's reading of prosecutor facts | D · Line under verification |
| Bhardwaj network · human smuggling | Cancún, declared headquarters | U.S. Treasury (OFAC) | Designated a TCO on October 30, 2025 with 15 Quintana Roo names: the leader, his wife, a businessman who per Treasury bribed officials, and a former state police officer with access to Cancún airport since 2020 | B · Designation |
| Grupo del Pacífico | Cancún, hotel zone | Quintana Roo prosecutor, to CONNECTAS | The prosecutor confirmed five organizations collecting in the hotel zone and attributed to this group control of 2 of 11 public beaches in 2022 | C · Prosecutor attribution |
| Los Rojos | Cancún | FGE · La Palapita case file | The 2022 arson file records the business paid Los Rojos first; Magdiel N, a former police officer alleged to work for Sinaloa, was arrested over the case | C · Documented file |
| Barrio 18 and neighborhood cells | West Cancún | CONNECTAS regional investigation | The split of collections in Villas Otoch Paraíso among local cells, with minors as collectors, appears in the 2022 investigation using state police data | D · Journalistic record |
| Gulf Cartel | Nightlife, corridor | Federal presence records | Appears in federal maps of groups with a state presence; no specific operation attributed at this cutoff | D · Line under verification |
| Los Pelones | Cancún, Tulum | State authorities, historical cases | Arrests of El Fefe in Tulum and El Chaparro in Cancún, attributed as the group's leaders in the northern zone | C · Attributed arrest |
The organization the Caro Quintero family inherited has had a name at the U.S. Treasury since 2000 and a criminal case in Brooklyn since February 2025. This is what that federal record already says, and what Quintana Roo still does not explain.
There is one fact the local narrative leaves out: when an alleged Caborca leader is arrested in Tulum and released within hours, the event does not die in Quintana Roo. It enters the orbit of a federal court in New York.
Rafael Caro Quintero was identified as a significant foreign narcotics trafficker under the Kingpin Act in 2000. Between 2013 and 2016 the Treasury sanctioned dozens of people and companies in his Guadalajara network, real estate firms and gas stations included. A federal indictment in the Eastern District of New York was returned under seal on January 20, 2017. And on February 27, 2025 Mexico expelled him to the United States: the next day he was arraigned in Brooklyn on a third superseding indictment, four counts, continuing criminal enterprise included, with the death penalty on the table. In July 2026 his defense was still litigating whether the jury will be anonymous. The trial is alive.
That record describes the Caro Quintero organization as a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. And here is the finding nobody had crossed with Quintana Roo.
The OFAC release designating the new generation of the Beltrán Leyva Organization records that Mario Germán Beltrán Araujo, indicted in the Southern District of California, "has worked with Jose Gil Caro Quintero." And it records something else: that in 2019, in Guerrero, Beltrán Araujo was arrested alongside Jesús José Gil Caro Monge and that both were released soon after by Mexican law enforcement. It is the same pattern Tulum repeated four years later: arrest, handover, release. Documented by Washington, not by this file.
Each with its level of proof. Those already published carry their anchor in the Spanish edition. The new ones belong to this chapter.
Oct 12, 2023: arrest, handover to four investigative agents, release within hours. Confirmed by the federal cabinet, denied by the state. Three agents detained, no known sentence.
02The facial report never publishedCThe prosecutor denied the identity with its own facial analysis. The full document does not exist in the public record. Open information request.
03The southern radio frequenciesDAnonymous claim: the prosecutor monitors the frequencies Caborca uses around Chetumal and does not act. Unverified. Converted into a request for logs.
04The investigative police commander's audioDRecording attributed to a Playa del Carmen commander in an alleged exchange with a Caborca member. It exists, it circulates, it has been neither authenticated nor denied.
05The Chetumal to Playa rotationDLead received: an investigative police commander posted to Caborca's stronghold would be rotated to the disputed plaza. Not asserted. The appointment is requested.
06El Toledo and the southern airstripsCDec 2024: the alleged Caborca plaza chief in Chetumal arrested in Mérida. Official sheets place clandestine airstrips and aircraft in Othón P. Blanco and Bacalar.
New. OFAC, Dec 6, 2023: José Gil Caro Quintero named as an operating associate of a designee, in an official U.S. government document.
New. Guerrero 2019 and Tulum 2023: arrest and release of the same operating family, the first documented by the Treasury, the second by the federal cabinet. Two states, one pattern.
Drag the year. Three lanes run in parallel: what Caborca did, what power in Quintana Roo did, what the United States did. The reading is in the crossings.
days since the Tulum release without a public sentence against the three investigative agents detained by the prosecutor's office itself.
days with Rafael Caro Quintero under prosecution in Brooklyn. Every day of that trial is a day a cooperating witness can name a Caribbean plaza.
This chapter's jurisdictional exit. The Kingpin Act, 21 U.S.C. § 1904, reaches anyone who materially assists a designated narcotics trafficker. It does not require the assistance to occur in the United States. A public official who facilitates the release of an operator of a designated organization enters the perimeter the Treasury already used against the Caro Quintero network in Guadalajara. And if that release had a price, bribery of a foreign official is a specified unlawful activity under 18 U.S.C. § 1956(c)(7)(B): every dollar that touches the U.S. financial system after that payment is laundering. The Sinaloa Cartel has been a designated foreign terrorist organization since February 2025; whether that reach covers the Caro Quintero faction is for the State Department to decide, not this file. The missing document is one: the case file against the three investigative agents, with its procedural status as of today.
Tulum released within hours a man whose family name already had an open trial in Brooklyn.
The same numbers from the previous chapter, now in motion. Every chart comes from the municipal crime database processed by us; none comes from a media outlet.
The English edition is being published chapter by chapter. Until it is complete, these chapters open in the Spanish edition: the live map with six layers, the 15 million file, the OFAC census, the timeshare crime, the extortion findings, Tulum's treasury, the Green Party machine, the directory with levels of proof, and the legal exit.