The salteño drug dealer René “Manudo” Guzmán was investigated in the last hours by the federal judge Carlos Vera Barros. He accuses him of being the organizer and financier of at least two shipments for a total of 484 kilos and 15 grams of cocaine seized by the Gendarmerie in March and December 2023.
Designated as the head of the “Acambuco Valley poster”, “Manudo” suffered the biggest setback of his criminal career on April 7, 2023, when he faced gunfire with gendarmes in an area from Santiago del Estero, very close to the border with Salta. That day he ended up injured and detained. Worst: They kidnapped a cell phone with sensitive content for the organization that shows that it was behind the smallest details.
The drug trafficker – also known as “El Grande” – has a demeanor that is scary and those who know him speak of his ferocity and fearlessness. “He is capable of killing traitors“sources of the case detailed to Infobae. This is a big fish in the reception and distribution chain.
It is likely that “Manudo” knew that this accidental capture would mark a great inconvenience for his business. It happens that one month earlier, on March 18, 2023, around 11:30 p.m., the Gendarmerie found at a checkpoint 400 loaves of cocaine, in 14 burlap bags, in the middle of a load of beans. It was at the General Lagos tollbooth on the Rosario-Buenos Aires highway. The truck had left the town of Campo Duran, in the province of Salta, stopped for 25 hours in Santiago del Estero and was destined for the Central Market of Buenos Aires, in Villa Celina.
To the trucker who was carrying the cargo, Juan Manuel Enrique Vizcarra “The parrots” – as the drug traffickers call the gendarmes – arrested him and They also seized a hot phone with valuable information.
Among the driver’s contacts, one stood out, listed as daniela2498martinez. It didn’t take the detectives too long to deduce that it was the drug boss. The organization often uses women’s names to mask their true identities.. It was a matter of time to cross-reference the data on that phone with the information found on the cell phone in “Manudo’s” possession.
In the conversations, the detectives found evidence about each of the stages of the operation behind the cocaine in the beans. “I am the boss of the three who were going down”, Guzmán presented himself in December 2022 to the people who provided him with the field where the drugs were to land, in Villa Nueva Esperanza, a town in Santiago del Estero.
In another conversation, he told a man of Bolivian nationality, identified as BNA, owner of the truck chosen to transport the white powder: “Could it be that we can take those little horses, several little horses there, you already know what I’m talking about…”. In the past, he had already used that jargon to refer to a shipment of cocaine, according to an investigation by the Gendarmerie, commanded by Juan Carlos Rengo Luna, in Salta. That case went to trial and resulted in eight convictions. But the band continued to operate.
According to the new file, in the hands of the prosecutor Matías Scilabra of the Narcocrime Office of the Complex Cases Area of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rosario and the assisting prosecutor of PROCUNAR, Martin Uriona, The vehicle with the load of beans and drugs that Vizcarra commanded recorded several crossings Bolivia. They believe that the maneuver had been carried out constantly and frequently, with the participation of other drivers, whom the gang captured.
“Hey, ñaño, are you far from Campana? From Rosario to Buenos Aires, how many hours are there? And when you passed, was everything fine, calm or were there controls? Because This unfortunate guy disconnected and doesn’t answer me“Hey,” the leader asked angrily. Carlos Oscar Suarezin charge of doing “tip” (people who travel in front of the transport with the cocaine to verify that there are no controls), on Vizcarra.
That contact happened on March 19, 2023. The truck driver, by then, was already handcuffed.
“He has to unload beans, beans he was carrying, is there no news? Didn’t you come in to see the news, there’s nothing like that?”, he insisted. “Two, three trucks have already arrived, they have arrived and that one has not arrived,” said the man without being able to bring solutions to his boss.
It is likely that “Manudo”, after kidnapping the cocaine, had to give explanations to “La Señora” and “Coya”, the couple who were waiting for the load and who had hired him for the transport.
“Manudo” knows very well the secrets of the area where the drug trucks pass through. His band even used a freehand map of route 46 in which the places without signal and neighbors’ houses that could give them connection if they needed it were marked. Also the Gendarmerie controls, from Salvador Mazza to Mendoza, Córdoba, Rosario, Buenos Aires and Neuquén.
On the device seized from the driver of the Vizcarra truck, they detected a number identified as “.”. That same line was saved on “Manudo’s” phone, but with the alias “Negro”, in reference to his brother-in-law, Nelson René Garzóna key player in the structure, dedicated to the security of the shipments, who was detained along with the leader during the confrontation with the gendarmes.
“He asks me for satellite, he asks me for signal amplification antenna. I don’t know what, a lot of shit is asking us; that the people in the range be connected, that is, a lot, a lot of protocol is asked of us; and asks one thing and asks another,” Garzón complained in a talk prior to the drug bombing that ended in the shipment of beans and which, they estimate, occurred between March 12 and 14, 2023, at some point in Villa Nueva Esperanza in Santiago del Estero. They were talking about another link in the chain that required guarantees.
“We manage the area, we know it. No, I don’t want to go out or walk around much anywhere, because due to the security issue itself, I have people who inform me,” he continued about the figure of some intermediary link.
Once the drugs descended from the skies in a small plane that landed on a clandestine airstrip and Vizcarra had arrived with the truck at the point marked by coordinates, “Manudo” ordered: “Try to get it to the bottom”. “He is already well settled,” his brother-in-law responded.
At the same time, detectives found exchanges in which the members of the gang make reference to “the irons” of the organization. “Hey, I tell you that I tried the product, I say that it has 20 to 30 k, you have given me much stronger than this,” he remarked. It is likely that they are talking about the submachine gun, with a magazine for that number of projectiles, with which “Manudo” confronted the troops.
The agents even found a conversation in which one of their sides, Ricardo “Charly” Obando He demanded the money he received in exchange for his services: collecting the drugs, transporting them to the place where they were loaded onto the truck and preparing them.
“I also found out that you were paying up to eight thousand dollars, culiao“, the drug trafficker told him. “There is what the risk is, nerd. You don’t pay more than the risk, do you understand me? There is no control there Charly, the risk is always there, but there is no control, there is nothing, that is why you pay what you pay, depending on the risk,” “Manudo” explained to him, as if he were the manager of a company.
On the cell phone kidnapped “Manudo”, The experts counted 16,806 imagesamong them, that of his brother-in-law carrying the submachine gun with which they confronted the gendarmes on April 7, 2023. They also found photos of a small aircraft on a clandestine runway, the burlap bags and bricks of cocaine.
“Shit, coca is beautiful, Bolsa. She muffled my face, idiot. Best of the best, idiot; It’s been a while since I’ve had my face cushioned like that”. This way, José “Chamucho” Canteros He told his colleague Esteban “Verdugo” Rodríguez that he had tried the narcotics he was transporting in his truck: more than 56 kilos of cocaine hidden in a load of bananaswhich was also destined for the Central Market.
The talk occurred on December 12, 2023, when “Manudo” He already occupied a bunk in the Ezeiza prison, a circumstance that did not prevent him from continuing to lead the drug network. The drivers did not know it, but they were being listened to by the Anti-Drug Operations Squadron of the National Gendarmerie.
On December 29, 2023, “Chamuco” was detained by the Gendarmerie at the checkpoint at kilometer 271 of national route No. 9. Inside the vehicle he was driving, they found the drugs in three cardboard boxes, hidden among the fruit. The discovery of a cell phone in the cell occupied by the drug leader, in a search carried out on January 11, did the rest.
