SEATTLE — As a Mexican cartel associate crept in the shadows inside a California home waiting for the chance to kidnap a man over a drug debt, police rushed in.
The would-be kidnapper darted out the back door without anyone spotting him during the 2020 incident and called his boss, Cesar Valdez-Sanudo, head of a large-scale West Coast drug ring supplied by the infamous Sinaloa Cartel.
He struggled to catch his breath while describing how police foiled his plan to snatch debtor Fausto Paz, in a scheme concocted after a "bruja"— Spanish for "female witch" — mistakenly accused Paz of stealing drugs.
Cartels sometimes consult with brujas, pronounced brew-hah, in Mexico and the U.S. to predict betrayals and cast spells to ward off police and drug rivals.
In recent drug cases prosecuted in federal court in Seattle, drug traffickers for the two super cartels — Sinaloa and its rival, the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, or CJNG — sought guidance from brujas. In one incident, the bruja nearly exposed an undercover police officer.
A brujo or bruja, long a part of Latin culture, historically has conducted readings, provided advices and performed hexes on enemies for customers ranging from criminals to jealous spouses.
A curandero (pronounced "coor-un-deh-row") is a healer more widely used by law-abiding citizens seeking mental, physical and spirit wellbeing. In current times, brujas and curanderos sometimes crossover and provide dual duties, performing spells, readings and cleansings, said Robert Almonte, a retired El Paso Police deputy chief.
"Cartels use brujas to put hexes on their enemies and sometimes that enemy is a police officer, prosecutor or judge," Almonte said.
There is no universally followed training or guidebook, so each bruja and curandero may use different methods, to include tarot card readings, candles, branches — and even rum and eggs.
Almonte, a Mexican-American and former U.S. Marshal for the Western District of Texas, consulted with a brujo, or male witch, last year in Mexico for research he applies to his current job — training U.S. officers on cartel culture.
Almonte said the brujo in Catemato, in the southern state of Veracruz, rubbed an egg on his body and detected evil spirits, instructing Almonte to keep an amulet in his pocket for protection. The amulet, or lucky charm, featured a hexagram, or six-pointed star.
Almonte also has consulted with brujos in Texas, Arizona, Utah, Nebraska and New York. Some rubbed lotions on his body, tapped him with branches and spit rum on him to chase away negative energy, evil spirits and demons. One broke an egg open and said a dark speck in the yoke indicated an evil presence that necessitated a cleansing.
Almonte, who is Catholic, said many Christians and professionals consult with curanderos, but not brujas. Curanderos are often altruistic, discounting or bartering with those who can't afford to pay in order to provide help, which may include casting a love spell or blessing on the recipient's health, crops or business.
Cartels use both. Sometimes the bruja or curandero lays hands on the drug trafficker and the vehicle used to smuggle the drugs in an attempt to cast a protective spell to ward off police and thieves.
In Paz's case, he truthfully told cartel associates that police had pulled over his white Dodge Ram on Nov. 10, 2020, after he crossed from Oregon into Washington on Interstate 5, a popular drug corridor. Police searched the Ram and a black GMC Sierra it was hauling on a trailer, seizing 34 packages of meth totaling more than 47 pounds, according to court records.
When Paz told drug ring leaders the drugs — worth about $150,000 — were seized as evidence, one of the leaders consulted with his "godmother," referring to a bruja, according to court records. The bruja erroneously deduced that Paz stole the drugs with plans to sell them in secret and pocket the money.
Following the bruja's prediction, Sanudo ordered one of his underlings to snatch Paz from Paz's home in Ontario, California, 37 miles east of Los Angeles.
Sanudo instructed the kidnapper to "get the [expletive] wires, cables" to hook up Paz's genitals to a car battery, shocking him until he revealed the location of the missing drugs, prosecutors allege in a memo lobbying for a hefty prison sentence.
A retired supervisor for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration who worked in Mexico said this is a common cartel torture tactic.
Agents based in Tacoma, Washington, were conducting wire taps on Sanudo and members of his drug ring when they heard of the kidnapping plot and urged Ontario officers to rush to Paz's house to give him an official receipt to prove that police had taken the drugs, said Luke Brandeberry, a Kent Police detective who worked on the case headed by a DEA task force.
It was a very close call, with officers later learning the kidnapper had been hiding in the house. Investigators believe Paz would have been tortured and likely killed, all because of the misinformation of the bruja.
Brandeberry himself could have been harmed or worse based on another bruja's 2020 prediction.
In this incident, when a Hispanic drug ring associate consulted a bruja, she pointed to a meth customer, saying "the white boy is betraying you" as a cop or snitch.
Brandeberry had gone undercover for a DEA task force to buy meth three times from a courier, a Pierce County woman who made local deliveries for the drug ring with the protection of a muscular male driver.
But before the courier could alert drug ring leaders, the bruja changed her opinion, advising: "... I read the candles wrong, it's your people," referring to a betrayal by someone within the drug ring.
"If you get burned as an undercover, you're not gonna know until it's too late," said Brandeberry, who no longer works undercover.
"It was a close call, a really close call."
In another case, a bruja offered guidance for Alan Gomez-Marentes, a supervisor with CJNG, a dangerous Jalisco-based cartel blamed, along with the Sinaloa Cartel, for the bulk of deadly fentanyl smuggled into the U.S.
CJNG sent Marentes, a cartel supervisor in Mexico, to the U.S. to take over the West Coast drug ring and get it in line after too many customers dodged their drug debts. His network also starting losing loads of drugs during police traffics stops and raids.
"He consulted a bruja to rid him of the evil spirits that were ruining his drug business," Brandeberry said.
Marentes followed the bruja's instructions to wear an amulet pendant around his neck, to remove his clothes and cleanse himself in a local river. Investigators believe he likely performed this cleansing near his home in the Green River.
Marentes pleaded guilty last year to drug trafficking charges in federal court and is awaiting sentencing in Seattle.
Paz, who was nearly kidnapped, is serving a four-year sentence for trafficking Sinaloa Cartel drugs.
Sanudo, the drug ring leader, pleaded guilty last year to drug trafficking, gun and money laundering crimes, which prosecutors allege included laundering more than $1 million. The DEA led the investigation against him, unearthing stashes of drugs — including two kilos of fentanyl pills ― mostly hidden underground throughout Sanudo's 10-acre property in Arlington, 46 miles north of Seattle.
When police arrested Sanudo after he spent two hours gambling at the Snoqualmie Casino, investigators found a gold-plated pistol with a bullet in the chamber that had been within Sanudo's reach inside his red Infiniti sedan, along with two more loaded firearms and a homemade silencer.
He had told drug ring associates he planned on confronting one of his underlings over a drug debt.
Sanudo is now serving a 15-year sentence in a federal prison in Central California.
Almonte believes cartel members and associates, even from within prison walls, will use phone calls, letters and emails to continue seeking readings and hexes from brujas.
