Martín Arzola Ortega

Martín Arzola Ortega (; – 31 July 2019), commonly referred to by his alias "El 53", was a Mexican convicted drug lord and former high-ranking leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). He worked under Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes (alias "El Mencho"), the former leader of the CJNG. Arzola Ortega began his criminal career in 1998 as a cargo truck thief and eventually joined the Milenio Cartel, the predecessor group of the CJNG. After several of his bosses were arrested and/or killed, he founded the CJNG with other defectors in the 2010s.

Arzola Ortega was responsible for leading a squad of assassins in multiple municipalities across Jalisco to fight off rival cartel groups. He used a network of police officers to gather intelligence and facilitate his drug-related activities. In 2011, he was arrested by the Mexican Federal Police and charged with drug trafficking, organized crime involvement, and possession of military-exclusive firearms. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2015, and was serving his sentence at the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1, a maximum-security prison in the State of Mexico. He was released in late 2018 after one of his sentences was overturned and he was credited with time served. In 2019, he was killed by a teenage gunman in Jalisco.

Early life and career Martín Arzola Ortega, commonly referred to by his alias El 53, was a born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, on . (His date of birth was calculated based on his age (34) at the day of his arrest, 15 July 2011.)

Arrest and imprisonment On 13 July 2011, the Mexican Federal Police (PF) arrested Arzola Ortega in Tlajomulco de Zúñiga following a large operative conducted by the PF in the Guadalajara metropolitan area that was launched to apprehend him.

On 28 March 2018, several inmates at Altiplano,Efn|Among the inmates who issued the complaint were Vicente Carrillo Fuentes of the Juárez Cartel; Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado of Guerreros Unidos, and José Noé Barajas Esquivel of the Knights Templar Cartel. The reasons for his release were not publicly known at the time, but federal authorities confirmed after his death that Arzola Ortega's defense team appealed the sentence when it was officiated. In 2016, a court ordered the case to be revisited. An appeals court magistrate rejected the judge's verdict in 2018 after considering that the PGR did not have sufficient evidence against Arzola Ortega, thus reverting the 24-year sentence. The only criminal charge Arzola Ortega kept was illegal possession of firearms, which was a four-year conviction. Since he had already been in prison for more than four years, he was released. Arzola Ortega was killed inside a Carl's Jr. restaurant in the Plaza Galerías mall in Zapopan. According to preliminary police reports, two assailants went inside the restaurant to kill Arzola Ortega, who was eating with his aunt and nephew. After killing him, one of the gunmen began shooting at the rest of the people inside the restaurant. The customers took cover under the tables while the gunmen shot at them. Several people were wounded in the attack.

María Luisa Aguirre Solís, the wife of Governor of Nayarit Antonio Echevarría García, was coincidentally eating with her two children in the same restaurant. When the shootout began, her bodyguards responded to the attack and killed one of the assailants. Jalisco authorities stated that the bodyguards killed the shooter to protect the lives of the people inside the restaurant.

On 9 August, Jalisco state authorities confirmed that the suspect killed in the incident had been identified as Bryan Alexander, a 17-year-old hitman employed by the CJNG, and that he was responsible for Arzola Ortega's murder. He was positively identified by his mother, who confirmed his identity to law enforcement.