Who is Aldo ‘El Lobo’ Dupie, criminal sentenced to 2,000 years in prison and central to the mutiny that paralyzes Guatemala

Police officers escort Aldo Dupie Ochoa Mejía, known as ‘El Lobo’, after an operation to regain control of the Renovación 1 prison, in Guatemala National Civil Police of Guatemala/Handout via REUTERS A wave of violence has been plaguing Guatemala since the weekend. After a simultaneous riot in prisons, members of the Barrio 18 gang, considered a terrorist group by the government, carried out large-scale attacks on police officers across the country. ✅ Follow the g1 international news channel on WhatsApp Nine agents have died in the country since then. The government decided to cancel classes and put the Army on the streets. The mutiny aimed to ensure prison privileges for leaders of the criminal group, especially for the leader of the faction, Aldo “El Lobo” Dupie, sentenced to sentences that, together, total more than 2,000 years in prison (read more below). The escalation was a reaction by the bandits after the country’s security forces regained control this Sunday of the Renovación 1 prison, in the south of the country, one of the prisons that had been taken over by inmates on Saturday (17). Find out who Dupie is, the pivot of the security crisis that is plaguing the Central American country. Police officers are killed and arrested riot during a day of violence in Guatemala ‘El Lobo’ Aldo Dupie Ochoa Mejía, known as “El Lobo”, would be 42 years old, according to Guatemalan authorities. He is considered the leader of the Barrio 18 gang, author and mastermind of several murders, among other crimes. Dupie was born in the city of Jalapa and grew up in El Limón, on the outskirts of Guatemala City, the country’s capital. His life is interspersed with an enormous number of arrests: according to Guatemalan newspapers, his record contains at least one arrest in a center for juvenile offenders, when he was 16 years old. In 2003, he entered the prison system for the first time as an adult. The first reports that he had assumed leadership of Barrio 18 appeared in the middle of the following decade. Among his most famous convictions is that of masterminding the murder of 11 bus drivers, a crime for which he received a sentence of 191 years in prison. He was also convicted of robbery, criminal association, aggravated robbery, murder and attempted murder — in addition to being behind other massacres. Combined, their prison sentences amount to around 2,000 years. Guatemalan police officers put down inmates who participated in a riot at the Renovación I prison, on January 18, 2026. Guatemalan National Police via Reuters Relationship Dupie dated and married María Marta Castañeda Torres, niece of Sandra Torres, former candidate for President of Guatemala. There is no evidence that Torres has emotional ties with María, nor any ties to criminal groups in the country. Sandra, in herself, is a unique figure in the country’s politics: former first lady, she ran for head of the Executive three times, always reaching the second round and always defeated — the last time in 2023, by the current president, Bernardo Arévalo. María Torres, in turn, has been imprisoned since August 2025, in connection with an attack on a prosecutor. Criminal group Barrio 18 originates in the city of Los Angeles, USA, as a small gang formed by young Latin American immigrants in the 1940s, according to the think tank InSight Crime. It began to take its current form in the 1980s, and migrated to Central American countries in the following decade, in the face of a tightening of American law in relation to foreign criminals. In addition to Guatemala, it also has a strong presence in El Salvador and Honduras. In all countries, their leaders are imprisoned and coordinate their actions from prison units. The group has frequent clashes with rival criminals, with whom they occasionally negotiate truces. There are also feuds between different factions of Barrio 18. “Despite its size and territorial control, the gang remains a subsistence criminal group, which relies mainly on extortion, micro-trafficking and violence to generate profits,” says an InSight Crime report. Guatemala’s Congress declared Barrio 18 a terrorist group in October 2025, shortly after US President Donald Trump’s administration did the same.

Source link