| More information: | - In 1986, at the age of eight, Borromeo and his family fled El Salvador's civil war and moved to Los Angeles, California, shortly after the earthquake that destroyed much of the capital that year, according to the gang member himself, interviewed by the author of this investigation in December 2012 at the Ciudad Barrios prison.
- In Los Angeles, he worked as a mechanic with his stepfather, nicknamed “Diablo,” and suffered severe bullying, to the point of being stabbed inside a school, according to his own account.
- In 1989, three years after arriving in the United States, he joined the Hollywood Locos clique under the nickname “Diablito” (Little Devil), because his stepfather was nicknamed El Diablo (The Devil). He was only 11 years old, according to the gang member himself.
- From an early age, Diablito devoted himself to stealing on the streets of Los Angeles, according to what a former MS-13 member of Honduran origin, known as Maldito, told the author of this investigation.
- At the end of 1991, he returned to El Salvador fleeing justice after committing a drive-by shooting from a moving car, in which more than one person was injured, as shared with the author by a veteran gang member based in California nicknamed Colas.
- When he arrived in El Salvador, he went to live in the San Felipe neighborhood of Ilopango, in San Salvador, where his mother had a house, according to Moreno, a gang member who was kicked out of the gang by Diablito in the 1990s.
- In that community and those around it, he was seen as a novelty because of his “cholo” appearance and his style of dressing in baggy clothes like Californian gang members. He used to wear Ben Davis pants and T-shirts, bandanas, and Nike Cortez sneakers. He worked as a driver's assistant on a minibus on route G.
- He inhaled glue, a habit with a bad reputation among gang members of Californian origin, as documented in an image by U.S. photojournalist Donna DeCesare. Over time, MS-13 would prohibit its members from inhaling glue.
- When he arrived in El Salvador, the Mara Salvatrucha-13 did not exist, as he himself recalls. “When I returned, the neighborhood (the gang) itself did not exist. There were several of us from the neighborhood, several. They came from all over. We always got together on weekends, in different places, Santa Ana, San Miguel, Ahuachapán. For a while, you had to cross all of El Salvador just to go and see a comrade you knew was there,” he told the author.
- Between 1992 and 1993, when gang member José Mauricio Solano Menjívar, alias Ozzy de Coronados, was deported to El Salvador, Diablito resumed his gang life; Ozzy founded the first Salvadoran clique, called San Sívar Locos, which Diablito helped to consolidate, according to his own account. Diablito recruited several family members to join this clique, located in the San Felipe neighborhood, according to another gang member from that time, known as Cásper de San Sívar. The group's first illegal activity was selling drugs.
- Diablito expanded the gang’s presence in Soyapango and Ilopango, as he used to frequent the neighborhoods of Las Margaritas, Alaska, Apulo, La Selva, Valle Nuevo, Proyectos, Prados, and San Luis, according to Moreno, one of the first members to join the San Sívar Locos por Diablito.
- In 1994, he was studying at San Martín School, later renamed Salvadoran Technical Industrial School (CETIS). At that time, there was animosity between students from technical schools and national schools. They were involved in increasingly violent skirmishes on public roads. There, he was also called Diablito, according to a former gang member nicknamed Drogo.
- He studied up to ninth grade, according to a police profile conducted in 2015.
- In 1994, he supported the creation of new cliques, such as the Big Gangsters and the Márgaras Locos, in the Las Margaritas neighborhood, according to his former gang member Maniaco. He also founded the cliques Criminal Gangsters, Soya Criminals, Big Crazy, and Delgados Little Psychos, according to the Salvadoran Attorney General’s Office.
- By then, Diablito was already a moral authority in the gang and exercised his power from the San Felipe neighborhood in Ilopango. “We all reported to him. Some of these homies didn't like it, but most of us followed Diablito. This guy was and is firm and upright compared to others,” says Moreno.
- He practiced some kind of satanic cult. He used to drink blood mixed with liquor as part of a ritual, Moreno recalls.
- In 1995, he was imprisoned in Tonacatepeque Prison, according to a former member with whom he shared a cell, nicknamed Psycho.
- He had several children with different gang members, according to what a former gang member currently in hiding in El Salvador told the author of this investigation.
- On July 27, 1998, his birthday, several gang members were celebrating a party at his house, with food, alcohol, and drugs, when someone warned Diablito that enemies were in the area. Diablito, along with Moreno, confronted them with gunfire. That same day, he was captured and sent to the Quezaltepeque prison for the double homicide of José Virgilio González and Roberto Carlos Hernández, in accordance with the indictment issued by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice on February 22, 1999.
- On January 18, 1999, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison by the Third Criminal Chamber of the First Section of the Center.
- On October 9, 1999, he escaped from Quezaltepeque prison with ten other gang members. That morning, he crawled through a 50-centimeter-diameter, 10-meter-long dirt tunnel that MS-13 members had dug from cell 19 in sector 1, which led to the back door of the prison, according to reports in La Prensa Gráfica and El Diario de Hoy on that date.
- Diablito returned to live in his home in San Felipe, Ilopango, with his girlfriend and children, and was watched over by gang members from different cliques. “Everyone there looked out for him, warning him when the police were asking about him. He always slept in different houses throughout the neighborhood, not because people feared him or he threatened them, but because people liked him,” Moreno says.
- In 2000, Diablito and several gang members were leaving a general meeting held at the home of gang member Perico, who lived near the Flor Blanca stadium, when the police tried to stop them at a checkpoint. Diablito, wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a firearm, confronted the authorities but was subdued, according to Moreno, who was shot in the jaw that day. When Diablito was recaptured, he had a false identity under the name Racson Mario Rivera Arias.
- That same year, he was sent to Mariona prison, where he had to submit to the power of José Edgardo Bruno Ventura, alias Brother, leader of the La Raza prison gang that controlled that prison. He was morally and physically humiliated by that gang to the point that they broke his arm, according to the book “El Niño de Hollywood” (The Hollywood Kid) by Óscar Martínez and Juan Martínez.
- “In a moment of carelessness, we ran to La Isla, isolation, a place for people who cannot or do not want La Raza within the general population. He managed to get there,” Moreno recalled. It was a small space measuring 25 square meters, where some prisoners with mental disorders had previously been held. There, for the first time, Diablito and members of MS-13 gathered among members of the same gang in a space exclusively for them.
- He was transferred to the Sensuntepeque prison and later to Ilobasco. In the second prison, he became a Christian for a time, two old gang members recall. “He became a Christian out of fear,” says Drogo.
- On February 20, 2002, after he had been transferred to the Apanteos prison, a riot broke out and the MS-13 members were segregated again, according to a report in El Diario de Hoy that day: “Two dead and 50 wounded in Apanteos.”
- While in isolation, they began to organize and hold meetings to structure the gang. Even members who were free attended these meetings called by Diablito, recalls José Miguel Rodríguez, alias Demon.
- In December 2002, he came up with the idea of having his gang mate Súper Abuela bring in a cell phone with a charger during a prison visit. The device was inserted into the anus of the gang member who volunteered. The cell phone was key to breaking down the barriers between prisons and the street, as documented in “El Niño de Hollywood”.
- In 2003, together with other gang members, they refined the hierarchical structure of MS-13 through the creation of “programs”: a group of affiliated cliques that report to a single gang leader, as former prosecutor Óscar Torres Medina, who was head of the Specialized Anti-Gang and Anti-Homicide Unit, explained to the author in 2013.
- He is the founder of the Hollywood program of MS-13, according to a confidential document from the Joint Border Intelligence Group (GCIF).
- In 2004, he was transferred along with several high-ranking gang members to the Quezaltepeque prison, where he formed the first gang leadership, La Ranfla Nacional, which the New York Court calls “The Twelve Apostles of the Devil,” according to the indictment.
- In 2004, members of the right-wing ARENA party approached MS-13 leaders to ask for the votes of their inner circle, according to an interview published by El Faro.
- In February 2005, he was transferred to the maximum-security prison in Zacatecoluca, as reported by El Diario de Hoy in an article titled, “Authorities neutralize 17 imprisoned gang leaders.”
- His mother, Ofelia Solórzano de Coronel, who lives in Los Angeles, used to visit El Salvador every year on Diablito's birthday to visit him in prison, according to an article in Harper’s Magazine.
- On February 19, 2007, during a prison search, members of the Order Maintenance Unit broke his jaw with blows, he said in an interview with El Faro.
- On September 7 and 8, 2010, together with Élmer Canales Rivera, alias Crook, they were responsible for a nationwide transport strike, in collusion with the leaders of the 18th Street gang, alleges the indictment in the “Cuscatlán Case”. The gangs threatened to kill the transport workers if they did not comply with the order to paralyze all bus routes nationwide. The strike forced the government to deploy military trucks to transport the population.
- In February 2012, while in Zacatecoluca prison, he made a call to gang member José Fernando Flores Cuba, alias “Cola de Western,” who was imprisoned in Ciudad Barrios prison, to order the gang not to sabotage the municipal and legislative elections to be held that year. This was an action aimed at facilitating agreements with the government of President Mauricio Funes, according to the Cuscatlán Case.
- In the early hours of March 8, 2012, he was transferred from the maximum-security prison in Zacatecoluca to the prison in Ciudad Barrios, along with 14 leaders of the Ranfla Nacional, as part of a negotiation between the government of Mauricio Funes and the three gangs in El Salvador, in exchange for reducing the homicide rate. That agreement became known as La Tregua (The Truce).
- Diablito became the direct contact between the mediators of La Tregua, the leaders of the 18th Street gang, and the media.
- On December 4, 2012, from the Mariona prison, Diablito publicly announced his gang’s support for the project to declare 12 municipalities as “Municipalities of Peace”. “This Peace Municipalities initiative is a way to reconcile with our own neighborhood, with the people who have seen us grow up and whom we have unfortunately harmed. The first to benefit will be the civilian population, merchants, and of course our own people, who will stop engaging in violence and crime and become part of the community,” he said.
- In early 2013, Diablito's partner, Jenny Judith Corado Portillo, was arrested with $8,000 outside the Ciudad Barrios prison. The prosecutor's office said that the money was the result of extortion, La Prensa Gráfica reported on May 22, 2023.
- On June 5, 2013, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned him along with five other gang members, freezing their cash flows and prohibiting U.S. citizens and companies from conducting any financial transactions with them.
- In December 2014, he ordered his partner Marvin Adaly Quintanilla Ramos, alias Piwa, to visit Salvador Ruano, of the right-wing ARENA party, to reach political agreements, according to the Jaque case.
- On February 19, 2015, after the truce broke down, Diablito and other members of the Ranfla Nacional were returned to the maximum-security prison in Zacatecoluca, after spending three years in the Ciudad Barrios prison. They were locked up in the new cells in Sector 6, in a courtyard that separated them from the rest of the population, without physical contact or visits, El Faro reported. A few days later, he went on hunger strike.
- In March 2015, together with Ricardo Adalberto Diaz, alias Rata de Leeward, he ordered a squad to attack the police, as revealed by the informant known as “Cortez,” who collaborated with the Transnational Anti-Gang Center (CAT).
- In mid-2015, a revolution broke out within MS-13 in the Izalco prison, where Walter Alexánder Carrillo Alfaro, alias Shorty de Fulton Locos, called for disobedience to the National Ranfla. The dissident movement within MS-13 became known as MS-503, as recorded in intelligence report AE-030216-003, produced by the CAT.
- In November 2015, Diablito gave his approval through a wila (written message) sent from Zacatecoluca prison to kill Shorty, who was murdered in January 2016, according to a CAT intelligence report.
- On December 28, 2015, together with other gang members imprisoned in Zacatecoluca, they sent the order to members of the Izalco prison to “attack prison staff from any prison, deputies, Supreme Court magistrates, the director of Forensic Medicine, prosecutors, police officers, and soldiers, as well as prison directors and administrative staff,” according to a confidential note from the Police Intelligence Center dated January 14, 2016.
- On January 30, 2016, during a visit to the Zacatecoluca prison by Dany Balmore Romero García, alias Big Boy, Diablito asked him to spread the order to “take down” and relieve all those who supported Shorty's revolution from any position of command, prosecutors asserted in the “Jaque Case”. According to the testimony of Ismael Antonio Fuentes, alias “Diez,” he also requested an attack on the system “to have the main Ranfleros transferred from the Zacatecoluca prison to other prisons, or to achieve a truce.”
- On February 7, 2017, while in prison, Diablito was accused, along with Crook, of laundering money through the purchase of land and the export of vehicles, according to a gang member with the code name “Zorro,” who spoke with the PNC. The cars were purchased in the United States and repaired in El Salvador to be put up for sale. His mother, who lives in the United States, was the one who received the money, according to Carlos Humberto Rodríguez Burgos, Smiley, one of the members of the dissident MS-503 faction, who spoke to the PNC's Police Intelligence Subdirectorate in July 2017.
- In August 2017, Diablito and Rata supported the plan to attack the state, according to a confidential PNC intelligence alert.
- In September 2017, Oswaldo Vladimir López López, alias Snarf, of the dissident faction 503, revealed in an interview with the PNC Intelligence Operations Division that Diablito owned four restaurants at kilometer 18 in the department of Morazán, as well as car and bus dealerships, all in the names of other people.
- On October 24, 2017, Diablito gave the order to attack Deputy Commissioner Iván Orlando Rivas, director of the Zacatecoluca Penal Center, according to the 2017 Daily Intelligence Situation Report, because he had allegedly “personalized himself with all the MS-13 gang members.”
- In March 2018, Efraín Cortez, alias Tigre, revealed to the authorities that Diablito, along with Carlos Tiberio Ramírez Valladares, alias Snayder; and José Luis Mendoza Figueroa, Pavas; were “thinking” about whether they were “capable of waging war against the system on the streets, or if, on the contrary, they could no longer do so and would instead go all out for dialogue with the system.” The above is based on the Executive Report on Achievements and Relevant Activities Carried Out in 2018, filed by the Police Department of Penitentiary Intelligence (DIP).
- On April 10, 2018, another gang member imprisoned in Zacatecoluca. Collaborating with the authorities, he revealed that “information and orders” from MS-13 were leaving the prison through Diablito's lawyers, according to the DIP's 2018 Executive Report.
- On October 27, 2019, under the administration of President Nayib Bukele, Diablito was transferred for the first time from the Zacatecoluca prison to Santa Teresa Hospital for an alleged health emergency and was admitted, according to the Intelligence Subdirectorate's Intelligence Analysis and Production Division in a report filed October 31, 2019. The next day, there was not a single death in the country.
- According to Maniaco, Diablito was not only taken to the hospital, as stated in the release report, but was also taken to the Izalco prison to share information about what was to come. “They went to take Borromeo to Zacate[coluca] and they took him to go talk to Izalco. There in Izalco, one from Phase III and one from Phase II arrived, and they took one from here and one from there to talk. When they entered, the news immediately spread, and there we saw Diablo.” Another wila confiscated in Ciudad Barrios during those days reported that “leaders had planned a dialogue with government representatives,” as recorded by the PNC in “Daily Analysis of the Gang Phenomenon for the period from October 25 to 31, 2019,” obtained through the Guacamaya cyberactivist collective.
- On November 1, 2019, Diablito was at Santa Teresa Hospital, but that day he was transferred to Dr. José Antonio Saldaña Hospital of Pulmonology and General Medicine in San Salvador, El Faro reported. Diablito's departure was the turning point in the agreements; his move marked the official start of negotiations with the Bukele government, according to police intelligence, as recorded in the “Daily Analysis of the Phenomenon from March 5, 2020, to March 6, 2020.”
- In December 2019, Diablito, who had already spent decades in prison, was sentenced to an additional 19 years in prison for complicity in murder, according to the ruling in the same case.
- On January 30, 2020, Diablito and Crook had a treasurer in Mexico who received $1,000 for each of the programs to administer, according to the “Daily Analysis of the Gang Phenomenon for the period from January 30 to February 4, 2020.”
- On February 10, 2020, the director of Penal Centers, Osiris Luna, and two hooded men who were authorized by Luna to enter without being searched or identified, visited level 2 of Sector 6 of the Zacatecoluca prison to talk with Diablito and Renuente, according to prosecutors in the Cathedral Case.
- In February 2020, Diablito attempted to smuggle a satellite phone into the Zacatecoluca maximum-security prison through a guard who would be paid $10,000, a task that would be coordinated by his right-hand man, Jorge Alberto Urbina Escamias, alias Saeta de Hollywood Locos, according to a member of the that clique who spoke to the Police Intelligence Subdirectorate, as recorded in the Daily Analysis of the Gang Phenomenon from February 17 to February 20, 2020.
- On March 4, 2020, two days after Bukele ordered a “maximum emergency” in the prison system, Osiris Luna visited Diablito and spread out a couple of newspapers, as was done during the 2012 truce, to inform him of criminal activity on the streets so that Diablito could locate the origin and perpetrators of the attacks. The director took the opportunity to give him a plastic-sealed Bible that entered without being inspected, as reported by the group of former police officers “Voz Penitenciaria.” The next day, Osiris repeated the task: He entered with three hooded men, evaded security checks, met with Diablito for an hour, and allegedly left him 30 cans of sardines to be given to him when he “requested” them, as shown in a police prison intelligence report.
- On March 31, 2020, prison cameras again captured Osiris Luna entering Sector 6 of Zacatecoluca with five hooded individuals to meet with eight leaders from both gangs. On that occasion, he and the prison director did not attend the meeting. The unidentified individuals spoke with Diablito, Snayder, and other members of MS-13, as well as four influential members of 18th Street, according to the Cathedral Case.
- In May 2020, gang member Saeta was in charge of keeping Diablito's money at his home, according to a gang member from that clique who collaborated with the Joint Border Intelligence Group and who also accused Diablito of owning eight taxis in San Salvador used as Uber vehicles, of owning two KIA pickup trucks, of earning about $25,000 per month, and of having received $45,000 from the Mexico Program.
- On May 23, 2020, in an interview conducted by the CAT with a Hollywood Locos gang member known as Invicto, who is imprisoned in Zacatecoluca, he commented that the gang had a satellite phone, which cost an estimated $10,000 and was provided by a guard known as Gato, who also helped them charge the two batteries they use with the phone, and that the phone was mainly used by Diablito and Snyder from Pasadena.
- On June 9, 2020, Osiris Luna arrived at the Zacatecoluca prison with several hooded individuals, three of whom met with Diablito, Snyder, and Jonathan Jeferson Escamilla, alias Bandido, from the Centro Program, according to the Cathedral Case. The next day, hospital visits resumed, and Diablito and Snyder were the first to be sent to Santa Rosa Hospital, where they were admitted for a week.
- In June 2020, a guard who was distributing dinner at the Zacatecoluca prison reported that Diablito threatened to kill him for not giving him more tortillas, as recorded in a criminal complaint.
- On February 10, 2021, days before the mayoral and congressional elections, the deputy director general of Penal Centers, Carlos Aparicio, visited the Zacatecoluca prison. Five minutes later, Diablito and Snayder left for the Santa Teresa National Hospital, with no report of their return, as recorded in an intelligence report filed by the Zacatecoluca Subdelegation of the PNC.
- On November 24, 2021, at 10:22 a.m., Diablito left Zacatecoluca escorted by two guards and headed to the Casa Linda Comprehensive Care Center for the Elderly, a nursing home. The prison report stated that he was taken to “a health center” for “ENT and gastroenterology evaluations,” according to the report on developments and relevant activities carried out in prisons that day. However, he ended up staying in a home for the elderly that offered cable TV, air conditioning, internet, and daily visits. It was at least the eighth time that Diablito had left Zacatraz for supposed medical appointments during the Bukele administration, but it was the first time that the Bureau of Prisons had authorized a prisoner to be taken to this facility. He remained there for 28 days, surrounded by elderly people and with very little security.
- On March 26, 2022, while MS-13 was carrying out a massacre across the country, which led to the breakdown of the pact with the Bukele government, Diablito, along with Snyder, Trece, and Carlos Alberto Martínez, alias Shaggy, were taken to the Bautista private hospital, where they remained for almost three hours, according to an investigation by El Faro.
- On March 30, 2022, with the state of exception already in place, Diablito appeared in a video released by President Bukele, in which he is seen looking somewhat overweight, complaining about the poor quality of food they were receiving in Zacatecoluca. This is the last publicly known audiovisual record of him.
- On May 2, 2022, an Interpol commission entered Zacatecoluca to intimidate him, according to the PNC's report of events for that day.
|
