Los Ántrax
enforcer gang of the Sinaloa Cartel
Los Ántrax is a large enforcer unit and hit squad for the Sinaloa Cartel, a major crime syndicate based in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. The group was led by the drug lords Jesús Victoriano (alias "El 20"), José Rodrigo Aréchiga Gamboa (alias "El Chino Ántrax"), René Velázquez Valenzuela (alias "El Sargento Phoenix"), among others, and they are responsible for a number of homicides and for providing armed security services to Ismael El Mayo Zambada. The gang operates in the capital city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, where its members conduct homicides and violent attacks. Los Antrax is the Sinaloa Cartel's largest and deadliest enforcer unit.
Etymology
The name of the group is inspired from the bacterium spores anthrax, although the Sinaloa state authorities have never officially recognized the group's existence.
History
Los Ántrax worked as the security force of the drug lord Ismael El Mayo Zambada (now arrested), who leads the Sinaloa Cartel along with Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán (now also arrested). Several homicides have been attributed to the gang, which was led by a drug trafficker named Rodrigo Arechiga Gamboa (El Chino Antrax), who died on May 15, 2020, and his right-hand man Jesus Peña (El 20). Peña escaped from a prison in Sinaloa on March 16, 2017, with four other suspects, including alleged Ántrax member Rafael Guadalupe Félix Núñez (alias "Changuito Ántrax") and Juan José Esparragoza Monzón, son of Juan José Esparragoza Moreno.
Tubutama, Sonora shooting
A fierce gunfight between members of the Sinaloa Cartel (with the backing of Los Ántrax) and the Beltrán Leyva Cartel (with the support of Los Zetas) left about 30 dead in the town of Tubutama, Sonora in northern Mexico on 1 July 2010. The drug gangs clashed just a few miles across the international border from the U.S. state of Arizona – an area notorious for being a smuggling route for narcotics and human trafficking.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Los Ántrax” is enforcer gang of the Sinaloa Cartel. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ántrax, enforcer and gang, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Los Ántrax” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.