This profile was originally published in October 2024. This Tuesday, September 1, the Minister of the Interior, César Astudillo, confirmed that JhonSmith Cruz Arce, alias ‘JhonPulpo’, was captured in Bolivia. Here is his story.
Read more Mininter confirms arrest in Bolivia of ‘Jhon Pulpo’, identified as leader of ‘Los Pulpos’
By talking about our extortion wave with numbers and laws, we miss the core: the human being with their mixed miseries. There are many dangerous cursed ones but let’s choose one by asking the police. The answer is given by the CERCRI (Reward Evaluation Center Against Crime) Which head has been given the highest price? There are 4 for which S/.500 thousand is promised to whoever helps locate them. There is one that leaves me stunned. I will reconstruct them thanks to reading notes in national and Trujillo media such as Sobre el Rastro, based on information from the PNP.
Jhonsson Smit Cruz Arce assaults you from his ‘business name’ or alias (although, in reality, he has several). They call him ‘Jhonsson Pulpo’ to differentiate him from his father ‘John Pulpo’, founder along with his brother Miller, of Los Pulpos, the most fearsome gang in Trujillo (it is usually mentioned with territorial variants because the PNP, when striking a blow to ‘los Pulpos’ alone, cannot be sure if it hit the heart or one of its tentacles with suckers).
The important thing for the causal analysis of evil – sorely lacking in this crisis! – is that Jhonsson’s is a family business. In the family, more than in school and the neighborhood, lies the external cause of a perfidy that already has nearly 100 victims of murder, kidnapping, and extortion in Peru and Chile. In the urban horror record of ‘Jhonsson Pulpo’ there are two kidnapped people who were killed because their families did not complete the ransom and one who had half an ear cut off. He is directly accused of ordering the murder of Juliana Eustaquio, nicknamed ‘Queen of the Potato’ in Trujillo, in broad daylight at the La Hermelinda market.
But the internal causes of his wickedness are more important and difficult to determine. It would be necessary to catch him to have more information to examine. But we can give some insights. First, discard that this is a ‘criminal saga’. There was no solemn meeting where ‘Pulpo Jhon’ whispered to ‘Pulpo Jhonsson’ that he was too old to continue and left him the reins of the business. No, what happened is that Jhon was convicted of murdering his ex-partner Marilyn Angulo along with his lover Benjamín Salinas; and uncle Miller, who had founded the gang with Jhon around 1996, was convicted in 2022 for the murder of PNP sub-officer Mervin Colchado Pinto. Jhonsson took leadership by impulse and because his group was decapitated. He was not faithful to a tradition, he was simply experienced. In his early twenties, he became an old octopus.
His age and identity hide a fact that is exceptional in formal and informal worlds, but not so much in the illegal one. When you are declared dead, they no longer pursue you. In 2020, Jhonsson presented his death certificate to Reniec. The police took a while to verify, through their informants, that the criminal was alive and that the procedure had been a trick to build another identity. Marginality, when extreme, eludes even our most complete registry.
Raising rewards is like raising penalties. The increase does not guarantee capture or punishment. Jhonsson Cruz was registered on August 5 on the CERCRI most wanted list with S/.75 thousand for his head and on September 19 it was announced that the cost rose to S/.500 thousand. The decision weighed not only the government’s promises to the people of La Libertad and their governor César Acuña to end Los Pulpos as a specific goal; but also that Colonel PNP Víctor Revoredo, who pursues crime in the region, has them as a favorite target.
Money aside, Jhonsson’s notoriety has served to have an extraordinary piece to scratch the keys of causal analysis. The PNP obtained an audio in which Jhonsson would be talking – I use the conditional because these are leaks from an ongoing investigation – with Josué Oliver, from the gang ‘La Gran Alianza’. Josué, somewhat shyly, accuses him because third parties have told him that Jhonsson wants to harm him and his environment. The ‘octopus’ denies the charges and tells his life as a persecuted man: “They wanted to sell me, they wanted to give me to the uncles [police], that’s why I opened up” he tells Josué and finishes, taking advantage (as is presumed in the dialogue) that he has someone important to the other kidnapped: “To break the ice between us, I’m going to hand over this guy, without torturing him, you will be fine.” Jhonsson, from his civil condition of a dead man with a price, cries his miseries to negotiate, with a magnanimous offer that is at the same time a threat, his peace of quotas, ‘finger cutters’ and graves. Before death, they might be thinking about how to survive and commit crimes from prison… if they catch him.
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