In January 2019, Santiago Meza Lopez was arrested by Mexican forces in the Baja Seasons Hotel in Ensenada. He was allegedly cooking seafood when the troops apprehended him and was too intoxicated to run. His crime? Well, let’s say that seafood wasn’t exactly his speciality. Meza has been dubbed ‘el Pozolero’, after the traditional Mexican meat and vegetable based stew, Pozole. Meza’s secret ingredient? Human bodies. That’s right, corpses dissolved in tubs of acid – Breaking Bad style.
Santiago Meza Lopez, aka el Pozolero, began work with the Arellano Felix cartel in 1996. He started off doing masonry work and taking care of the cartel’s horses. Eventually, he got caught up in the drug scene, converting into a dealer. Before long, his loyalty and dedicated work ethic earned him the promotion to ‘drug office keeper’, in charge of the surveillance of the cartel’s drug depots around Tijuana.
