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LA CIÉNEGA, Mexico  — Barreling down the highway at 100 mph, a convoy of state police vehicles blew through speed bumps as it entered a small town in the Sonoran desert. Blasting over them was hell, but Alejandro Sánchez knew that slowing down was too risky: Here, locals call them “death bumps,” because reducing your speed gives cartel snipers a better chance of taking you out.

Sánchez and the officers protecting him had left Hermosillo, the capital of the state of Sonora, before sunrise on June 23 and by 7 a.m. had arrived in Altar. There’s not much pedestrian traffic because the town sits in the heart of a cartel war zone, and anyone who walks the streets risks being caught in crossfire.

Still, it was a place to gather reinforcements, so the convoy stopped under the town’s welcome arch and officers wielding AR-15 semiautomatic weapons found high ground to watch for threats. Within minutes, four more patrol trucks raced up to join the security detail.

Their destination: a gold mine. Sánchez, the officers knew, was key to the mine’s future and keeping it out of the hands of a major cartel.

For three years, Sánchez had worked to revive the mine, encountering corrupt officials and cartel operatives. He once had to dive for cover during a firefight. But now he was close to resuming operations at the mine with deposits worth billions.

“Let’s go!” Sánchez said. And they were off.

A cigar lounge in Newport Beach

Four years ago, Sánchez was enjoying a Cuban cigar in an elegant cigar lounge in Newport Beach when the manager introduced him to a friend, Nicah Odood, who had a problem. The manager knew Sánchez had contacts in Mexico — top businessmen and politicians. Maybe he could help.

Odood was partial owner of a gold mine in Mexico that had been taken over by the four sons of the notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Odood wanted to hire Sánchez to be his fixer — to persuade the police and military to drive out the sons known as “Los Chapitos.” Sánchez declined. He had no interest in mining and no experience confronting the Mexican underworld.

But Sánchez did have a personal connection to Sonora, where the mine is located. He was mostly raised in an orphanage in Hermosillo.

Odood then made an offer: Help reclaim the mine and the orphanage would reap 1% of the profits.

“The orphanage really helped me a lot in many ways,” Sánchez recalled. “And it just dawned on me, ‘What is it that I have done in return to repay them?’” He told Odood he’d do it. Sánchez set to work in January 2022.

“I thought it would just take a few phone calls and the problem would be resolved,” he said. By his own admission, Sánchez went into the job incredibly naive. What Sánchez didn’t realize was that the mine lay in the path of a key narcotics-trafficking route into the United States, and that taking back the mine also meant cutting off the Chapitos not just from the gold, but millions in drug profits.

The orphanage

Sánchez was born in 1971 in Mexicali, Baja California, to the maid of a wealthy banker. As a single mother, she couldn’t afford to raise him, so she sent him first to an orphanage in Mexicali, but she didn’t like how he was treated there. Then the wife of the banker recommended the Kino Institute in Hermosillo, where Sánchez’s mother sent him when he was 5.

At the orphanage, Sánchez was especially fond of the prefect, Francisco Fimbres. “He gave me that affection that I was lacking because I never had a father figure,” Sánchez said.

When Sánchez’s mother couldn’t afford to buy him shoes, Fimbres would give him a pair. Fimbres taught him how to pray the rosary and Sánchez remains a devout Catholic. From Fimbres and other teachers, he developed a strong sense of right and wrong.

“He was strict with me,” Sánchez recalled. “But not as strict as with the other kids.”

It was a painful time in Sánchez’s life. He felt abandoned by his mother and didn’t know his father. He was lonely during those years, especially when the other boys left to visit relatives. Sometimes, Fimbres would invite him over for dinner, and Sánchez remembers the home-cooked meals vividly. Fimbres’ wife made the best wheat tortillas and black beans.

It was during those summer breaks when Sánchez missed his mother most. She sometimes visited him in Hermosillo — or had him come to Mexicali, where she then lived. But such visits were rare.

The priest had told him he could talk to God in time of need, so the boy would walk down to the chapel, kneel in the pews and ask why he couldn’t be with his mother. God didn’t give him an answer. Still, it felt good to talk to someone about it.

His mother later married an American citizen, and when Sánchez was 17, she secured U.S. citizenship for herself and her son.

Sánchez would eventually settle in Newport Beach and study business administration at Rancho Santiago Community College, but he dropped out and hawked perfume, enticed by promises that he could get rich quickly. Sánchez soon realized he couldn’t make ends meet.

Disillusioned but undaunted, Sánchez determined he would one day live the American dream. And he did. He married the daughter of Cuban exiles and they had a son. An introduction from his brother-in-law led to a job with a company selling mortgages.

To his new job, he brought the discipline and perseverance he had learned at the orphanage. He rose through the ranks quickly, thanks in part to his personality; he can be firm and direct one moment, and crack a joke at his own expense the next. Eventually, he struck out on his own, representing U.S. companies launching ventures involving debit cards in Latin America.

Sánchez traveled to some of Mexico’s biggest cities and met powerful bankers, senators and tycoons as he promoted the debit cards. But until he joined the fight for the mine, Sánchez had not returned to Hermosillo in 38 years. The cartels weren’t so prominent back then. “Now you see guns, drugs. I didn’t grow up in this Mexico,” he said.

The gold and narco road

As Sánchez would learn, Spaniards discovered gold in 1771 in a desolate area 50 miles south of what is now Arizona. They called the place La Ciénega, a corruption of an Indigenous word and an incongruous name — the swamp — in a desert wasteland.

Though “mine” implies tunnels, the prospecting at La Ciénega took place over a vast area — about 14,000 acres — largely near the surface. The mine shut down in 1905 when it appeared the surface gold reserves had been exhausted, but later owners would try to extract La Ciénega’s hidden riches.

Odood, a real estate agent from California who had been investing in mining in Mexico for a few years, entered the picture in 2015. He negotiated with the mine’s owner to purchase mining rights to La Ciénega.

The region at that time was dominated by the Caborca cartel, run by the infamous narco-trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero, but soon, rival cartels were battling to control parts of Sonora. Los Chapitos invaded Caborca territory and, in time, more than 3,000 people would be killed in the war.

By 2022, when Sánchez agreed to help Odood, the Chapitos had forged an alliance with yet another criminal organization, the ultra-violent Deltas, famed for their paramilitary tactics and penchant for .50-caliber weapons firing rounds the size of cigars. The Deltas took the mine from a weakened Caborca cartel at gunpoint.

The Deltas also commandeered at least 200 ranches in the region, driving out families and transforming their homes into outposts and lookouts. They stole thousands of head of cattle, slaughtering some for food, selling the rest to fund their war. They now controlled not only the mine, but also a crucial drug-trafficking route to the U.S.

The general’s warning

Sánchez made his first trip to Mexico City on Odood’s behalf in 2022 and met with a few retired generals he knew from his business dealings. Over dinner in a wealthy neighborhood — he picked up the tab — Sánchez made his pitch. “I need you to connect me with the local general so we can kick these guys out,” he said. The generals weren’t so sure.

“You’ll not only need the Minister of Defense, you’ll also need the Marines,” one told him. The cartel forces, he warned, were “literally an army.”

“Holy moly,” Sánchez later recalled thinking. “So it’s not that easy.”

Sánchez traveled to Hermosillo, around 100 miles from La Ciénega, and saw a geologist who had worked at the mine. He was even more pessimistic than the generals.

But to Sánchez, there had to be a way. He was divorced by now and threw himself entirely into the project, spending most of his time in Hermosillo. He quickly built up a network of people who knew about the mine.

He next met the general who commanded the regional battalion, and persuaded him to provide a military escort so Sánchez could see the mine for himself. He brought along anxious shareholders who had invested in Odood’s project.

Sánchez and his team rode in a convoy of around 12 Humvees, accompanied by soldiers in tactical gear armed with high-powered weapons.

The convoy stayed away from the main base of cartel operations and, to their relief, faced no resistance. Perhaps the Deltas didn’t feel threatened, or didn’t dare defy the show of force. The investors walked around the property and a geologist collected soil samples.

Then, in November 2022, an apparent breakthrough. The husband of a powerful Sonoran politician introduced Sánchez to a top police commander over a steak dinner in Hermosillo. Sánchez laid out his conundrum.

“Don’t worry,” the commander replied. “I can take care of your problem for you.”

The next morning, the commander laid out the solution: All the cartel needed was a cut of the profits, and a percentage for himself, for the trouble.

Along with his deep-rooted belief in the rule of law, Sánchez had adopted a motto: Never negotiate with terrorists, and to him the Chapitos were terrorists.

He thanked the commander and left.

A new owner

Sánchez would later learn that Odood was not the only one with mining rights to La Ciénega.

The other owner was Jonathan Cooper, a Colorado entrepreneur of diverse ventures who had bought into the mine in 2020. Cooper had kept a hands-off posture, leaving the Mexican side of operations to Odood.

By winter of 2022, Sánchez was becoming disillusioned with the project. Though the Chapitos controlled the mine, there was still planning and research to be done for when operations could resume. Bills went unpaid, Sánchez said, and his lobbying was getting nowhere. He decided to track down Cooper.

“You don’t know me, but I am working on your mine in Mexico,” Sánchez told Cooper. The operation was in disarray, he said, and most important, a cartel had seized the mine. Cooper had heard none of this.

At this point, Cooper and Sánchez believed they would be able to get on-site because the military seemed prepared to help. They just needed food and lodging at the mine to do it.

There would be much back and forth between Cooper and Odood, and before the year was out, the owner of the mining rights before Odood took them back. (Odood could not be reached for comment.) Cooper then bought the entire rights to the mine. He made Sánchez a part owner, and Cooper said he too would donate to the orphanage.

Sánchez soon discovered that he and Cooper shared a visceral disgust of corruption. Cooper had heard some police in Mexico were crooked, but he never imagined the government would ignore the takeover of a gold mine. What would it take to get the Mexican military to act?

A kilo of gold a day

As 2023 unfolded, it became clear to Sánchez that the military barracks near Hermosillo lacked basic technology needed to gather intelligence on the cartels, so the company donated 15 drones — at $15,000 each — along with night-vision goggles, satellite phones and even a large flat-screen for a war room.

Still, no progress. But one night in Hermosillo, over yet another of the meals expected for any business to be conducted, came a possible lead. A Sonoran politician told him he had arranged a meeting with the generals in charge of northern Mexico. On one condition.

“For the meeting to happen,” he said. “The generals will need a million dollars.”

Sánchez, furious, declined. He began to wonder if there were any clean officials in the country. By then, Sánchez had developed a network of informants who told him the cartel had strengthened its presence at the mine. About 50 workers were extracting up to a kilo of gold a day, guarded by 150 sicarios, or hit men.

In December, Cooper flew to Mexico City to see a Mexican entrepreneur who wanted to invest in La Ciénega.

He told Cooper he had done him a huge favor. The entrepreneur had spoken to cartel leaders, he said, and Cooper’s crew could move onto the mine immediately, provided he gave the cartel 15% of his profits.

“You don’t even need the military,” he said, beaming.

“I will absolutely not accept,” Cooper said.

“You’re an idiot,” the flummoxed entrepreneur replied. “This is how things are done in Mexico.”

The torture chamber

Again and again, just when it seemed Mexican authorities might intervene, complications arose. More demands for bribes. More equipment needs. More reasons not to act.

Troops couldn’t launch a raid that December because of Christmas. March 2024 was out because soldiers were needed to patrol beach towns filled with American spring breakers. But perhaps in April.

That month, Sánchez texted Cooper saying there was no money left for salaries and he was getting desperate. “I am right there with you, brother,” Cooper replied. “I am literally selling a part of my wine collection.” Already, he had taken a $600,000 loan, using as collateral a signed Michael Jordan jersey the basketball great wore when he played on the U.S. Olympic “Dream Team.”

This all played out as the Chapitos and their allies, the Deltas, battled other cartels to control Sonora. “You have six cartels fighting for territory plus fighting for your gold project,” Sánchez texted Cooper.

Near the mine was a hamlet, also named La Ciénega, and overrun by the cartel. At least one home had been turned into a torture chamber. Sánchez was with authorities when they later found bloodstains on the walls and pieces of fingers on the floor.

By June, Sánchez’s informants told him the mine was operating 24/7. Using more than 30 backhoes and bulldozers, miners dug up 1,500 metric tons of earth a day, leaving in their wake a trail of environmental destruction.

Dump trucks carried the soil to an immense sluicing operation, where water from two reservoirs washed away dirt to reveal gold nuggets.

“Just received news that the bad guys pulled in the month of April a little over 17 kilos of gold,” Sánchez wrote Cooper. “They are taking all your gold.” It was worth $1.4 million.

Then, Sánchez met an informant who changed everything.

The informant and the sex workers

The informant was an ex-military commander who had developed his own network of informants. Their tips had helped authorities arrest various drug traffickers. Introduced to Sánchez by a law enforcement official, the informant said he would turn his attention to La Ciénega.

“We’re going to totally eliminate the cartels,” he told Sánchez. “Trust me.”

The informant began sharing intelligence that Sánchez passed on to Sonoran state police.

By then, an enterprising police chief, Víctor Hugo Enríquez, had taken the reins of the state police at the behest of the governor of Sonora, Alfonso Durazo. The governor, who has made a broadside effort to reduce crime in his state and attract U.S. investment in the region, brought Enríquez on board to root out drug traffickers and restore safety for the hundreds of ranchers near the mine.

Enríquez got to work, taking down drug lords, one after another, sometimes guided by information Sánchez passed on from the informant.

He was soon texting Sánchez about cartel strongholds, sometimes attaching Google Maps images of buildings marked with red crosshairs.

“The base for the Deltas armed forces,” he wrote to Sánchez of a site near the mine. “They’re the top target. There are five sicarios here, armed with .50-caliber Barretts.”

The informant’s secret weapon: sex workers the cartel had brought to La Ciénega pueblo to service mine workers. He paid the women $100 each to learn all sorts of things: names, where cartel members lived, what cars they drove. The Chapitos had installed a furnace, the sex workers said, to melt the gold into ingots.

One sex worker identified the mine manager as Erick Cabrera, who also led a special forces team for the Chapitos. His wife managed the gold shipments to the states of Jalisco and Sinaloa, the sex workers said. In September, the informant sent Sánchez a video of Cabrera, dressed in a military-style uniform, firing a Kalashnikov. After squeezing off 10 rounds, he flashes a peace sign.

The informant also sent Sánchez a video of a Cessna landing on a rudimentary airstrip near the mine. It was dropping off AK-47s and picking up a load of gold bars.

The informant provided more information on yet more targets, firing off dozens of texts in the space of a few minutes. “I expect you’ll act on it as soon as possible,” he wrote.

Within days police arrested a Delta assassin, who filmed himself smoking a joint and wearing a gold chain from which hung a gold-encrusted Saint of Death, who is believed to provide safe passage to the afterlife.

Three days later, police arrested two more sicarios. But the informant became increasingly impatient for the military to act.

“You have to move faster,” he wrote Sánchez.

The raid

By the fall of 2024, the Mexican government finally agreed to move on La Ciénega. The operation would involve scores of troops, similar to U.S. Marines, and more than 100 Sonoran police.

“I am preparing everything for the move-in,” Sánchez texted Cooper. “Waiting for another helicopter to arrive from the south.”

On Sept. 24 officials told Sánchez the operation would launch the next day at 2 a.m.

“Safe journey, my friend,” Cooper texted. “Amazing job getting us here.”

Sánchez tried to get some sleep, but it was a fitful rest. At 1:30 a.m. he donned a uniform to blend in with the troops and joined the 70 tactical vehicles, patrol trucks and armored vehicles.

The governor ordered that Sánchez be taken in an armored truck. The convoy took off, accompanied by two helicopters — one of them a Black Hawk — and a T-6 Texan warplane.

The forces blasted through the mine’s front gate and agents jumped out of their vehicles, weapons drawn. They fanned out across the property, searching a small cave for a weapons cache and cautiously casing sleeping quarters. But there was no bloodshed, no sicarios — just a few frightened dump truck drivers.

Sánchez would later learn why the mine was nearly deserted. The Chapito in charge of the mine, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, had been tipped off. Guzmán is a top target of U.S. law enforcement, which learned he had called the mine manager, from his hideout, around the time Sánchez was putting on his uniform.

“The government’s coming with everything it’s got,” Guzmán said. “Don’t confront them. Get out.”

Sánchez texted Cooper that the mine was once again his.

The reveal

The governor established a police base, with 30 officers and an intrepid commander at the helm. Word spread to Cooper’s investors and new capital started rolling in. That evening Cooper texted Sánchez. “Just got $40k committed.”

Two weeks after the raid, the informant approached Sánchez. “It’s time to sit down with the jefes,” he said. The bosses. Sánchez was confused.

That’s when the informant revealed that he had been working for the Salazar cartel. “It’s time,” he said, “to pay the new bosses in exchange for security.”

Sánchez thought back over his relationship with the informant. He had shared useful intelligence, but it was almost always about the Deltas or Chapitos. He rarely mentioned the Salazar cartel, one of the region’s oldest criminal organizations.

Thanks in part to the informant and his stream of tip-offs, the Salazares had regained territory they had lost to the Chapitos. The cartel wanted 15% of the mine’s profits.

Sánchez gave him a flat no.

The Salazares later sent a threat to Cooper through an intermediary: Give us a cut or else.

“I need you to relay the following message to them verbatim.” Cooper told the messenger. “Go f— yourself.”

The firefight

Though the Chapitos had surrendered the mine, they had not abandoned the region, so in November, about a month after the raid, the Ciénega base commander warned a convoy with six officers and Sánchez to stay alert as they headed toward a nearby ranch. “Keep your eyes peeled,” he radioed.

An officer prepared Sánchez for the worst. “If we get shot at,” he said. “Get out of the truck, leave the doors open and get behind the back wheel well.”

Minutes later they heard gunfire. The convoy stopped and fired back.

“Get out!” the officer yelled at Sánchez, who reached fruitlessly for his helmet. He had forgotten it. Sánchez jumped out and crouched behind the back left tire.

Sánchez heard a whistling sound pass above him, and 10 more after that. A sniper was firing a .50-caliber weapon, capable of taking down a helicopter, from a hilltop lookout.

When the shooting finally stopped, the commander had killed one sicario and captured four others. Two more sicarios fled in an armored car.

Return to the mine

On the day they blew through the “death bumps,” June 23, Sánchez’s convoy rolled through the mine’s front gate. The base police commander walked up to greet him.

“The narcos are terrified of this man. They surrender just looking at him,” Sánchez said, grinning as he put his hand on the shoulder of the chubby-cheeked cop. The officer chuckled.

That afternoon, the commander and officers went to scout lookouts still used by the cartel. On one hilltop they found empty tuna cans and .50-caliber shells strewn about a fire pit.

On some nights the Salazar cartel sent drones to surveil the base, and cartel members recently scrawled their acronym on a camp trailer.

The Salazares and other cartels continue to war on each other. The police patrol came across remnants of a recent battle — a truck and a Toyota 4Runner, both incinerated. Bullet holes riddled the vehicles. It was a crime scene no one would investigate.

There were about 30 workers preparing the mine for production, including a 17-year-old Sánchez hired from the orphanage. In the fall, Sánchez is sending him to college. Sánchez also hired a former valet from his favorite Hermosillo restaurant; it turns out the young man studied engineering and is a whiz at electrical work.

Another recent hire had just been deported from Phoenix, where he worked as a chef. He runs the mess hall.

Since the Chapitos were expelled, a number of ranchers returned to the area, but at least one refused. He doesn’t believe peace will hold. And he may be right.

In May, Enríquez, the relentless security chief, had resigned abruptly after a lack of coordination from other law enforcement agencies, according to people close to him. Days later, his replacement reduced the number of officers on the base from 30 to six, and then a month later ordered they abandon the mine base altogether. Sánchez staved off the departure with a call to the governor. Cooper is building a private security force to eventually protect the mine.

Mining recently resumed, and as new investors come on board, their contracts specify that 1% of their profits go to the orphanage.

A chapel without bells

In Hermosillo the evening after visiting the mine in June, Sánchez stopped at a convenience store on his way to the orphanage to buy the kids drinks and cookies.

The facility, once in immaculate condition, was now in disrepair. Funds had dried up, and it showed. The bathrooms smelled of sewer, and the boys used the same bunk beds Sánchez slept in more than 40 years before.

The chapel where Sanchez had prayed was gutted, and an iron gate blocked the entrance. Thieves had stolen the church bells.

Sánchez says he’ll work at the mine until the orphanage is renovated and funded. He’s doing it for the boys, but also for himself and a need to reconcile his past, both his indebtedness to the place, and the painful memories it stirs.

“We all have a mission,” he said, looking through the iron bars to the chapel. “Maybe mine is to find myself, close those doors to the pain and suffering that I experienced, and then continue on with my life.”

This article is based on government documents and extensive interviews with U.S. and Mexican government officials, mine workers, Jonathan Cooper and Alejandro Sánchez. Fisher is a special correspondent.