Montes de Oca Family
From Tucson RPG Guild
The Montes de Oca crime family ("MDO" in the acronymic parlance of law enforcement memorandums and street graffiti) controls a significant portion of Tucson's drug trade to some degree or another. They have connections to prison gangs like the Border Brotherhood and at least one significant drug supplier in Mexico. With their base in Tucson, they have expanded into the Phoenix market with a strong position, but the size of drug sales there makes any potential takeover by anyone a more protracted, violent enterprise.
Often mocked (behind their back) for their tangled family relations, these relationships form a web of loyalty and resentment that have led them to have a paranoiac and fractious situation. Using their own product, often to addiction, and murderously defending their territory has led to the very worst of the worst rising to the top of the bloody froth. They deal in methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and, occasionally, ridiculously large quantities of marijuana.
Because of MDO's violence and devotion to the drug game, they are under considerable law enforcement scrutiny, from Tucson Police Department, the Sheriffs of Pima, Cochise, Santa Cruz, Yuma and Maricopa Counties, the Drug Enforcement Agency and Immigration/Customs Enforcement.
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History
In the nineties, the family was involved primarily as low-level dealers and operators in Phoenix and Tucson. Tiring of the endless gang warfare in Phoenix, they hungered for the relative quiet of the market in Tucson. There was only one obstacle, the existing organizations.
MDO came to power in 2000-2001 in a brutal drug war that included the Gomez family and their allies. MDO spent the next few years solidifying their position without organized opposition, acquiring or eliminating minor, unaffiliated dealers. They now dominate the methamphetamine trade, since the police have largely shut down "mom and pop" meth operations and forced large-scale groups to seek their meth from Mexican superlabs. They also dominate the (significantly smaller) heroin market. They sell more than half of the cocaine that changes hands in Tucson. They do not see marijuana as a high priority - only when they can get good quality at massive wholesale bargains do they even enter the market - of course when they do, they fully expect everyone else to get the hell out for the duration.
Bosses
Unlike the Gomez family, in which Rafael Gomez occupies a patriarchal position, "first among equals" of the older generation of gang members, the MDO has a more "flat" structure in which a small cabal of top gangsters scheme against each other and oppress the structure beneath them. In turn, the lower-level dealers, runners and other operatives cheat the bosses out of everything they can and jockey for positions in which they can extort more from their underlings.
Julieta Montes de Oca
This bloodthirsty but eerily youthful woman murdered her husband and four siblings to gain her position in the organization and (it is said) cut the tongue out of her current husband so that he couldn't talk about what he heard to anyone.
Jose Montes de Oca
Julieta's half-brother, Jose bears a grudge against the Gomez family that his younger brother was killed in the 2000 war. He is one of the more aggressive MDO bosses when it comes to targeting the Gomezes. He is also known to be somewhat more superstitious than most.
Underlings
Raul Montes de Oca
Raul, an ambitious lieutenant, envies Jose and Julieta's success with witchcraft, and has therefore dealt himself into the Mage-related conflicts of Southern Arizona.
Raquel Chaidez
Raquel's boyfriend Leon Castaneda was a MDO drug dealer until he went away for 10 years on multiple felonies and generally being an asshole. She had to continue to run the East Tucson drug house that he left behind. Leon left her a good client book, but she's a party girl, not a businesswoman, and thus she's in a bit over her head and everyone knows it. MDO brass does not trust her, and with good reason as she talks too much and has little enough loyalty to them. The only thing she's canny about is men - Leon showed her that any of them can go away at any time.
She recently gave (after alcoholic and charming persuasion) Raymundo Saavedra information about the current state of MDO methamphetamine sales - and the hit they took when the latest shipment was seized by the police.
Rogillio Moreno
A MDO soldier, basically a gun-toting doofus. Although he "has promise", and certainly isn't stupid, he hasn't proven himself to the MDO leadership and therefore normally is closely supervised and required to follow specific orders.
He was one of three soldiers sent to kidnap Carlos Moore, torture him for information on the meth bust in the Whetstone Mountains, and then murder him. After Carlos escaped, Rogillio was captured by Donald Pugliani, and after a conversation with Raymundo Saavedra, he agreed to pass information given by Saavedra along to his bosses as a peace offering and get everyone to the table talking. He apparently did this.
Juan Carlos Olivares
A terrifying figure, Olivares is the hitman's hitman, an assassin of such feared stature that even to rumor that he has been spotted sends the street into a spiral of terror. One of very few to walk through the 2000 drug war without ever a scratch - not one hospital visit, not one stitch, not one arrest, not one bullet with his name. The bullets, they say, would not dare speak his name except to ask who he wanted them to kill. A savage dog rarely let off the leash, his whereabouts intentionally concealed for months or years at a time.
He was recently incarcerated for several charges relating to an assault on former DEA agent and now Gomez family operative Carlos Moore. He will be in prison for some time, unless the rumors are true and he can walk through walls.
Stuart Van Deusen
A former anthropology student who stumbled onto ritual magic and methamphetamine at approximately the same time and became addicted to both, now the "pet" curse-slinger and ghost-stirrer of Jose Montes de Oca. He resides in a shithole trailer in a South Tucson trailer park also used by the family for methamphetamine distribution and sales.
The Dead
Oscar Montes de Oca
Julieta's dead first husband, he was the one that hatched the plan to provoke troublesome DEA agent Carlos Moore into violating protocols and getting fired. Julieta murdered him in 2006, but the case never got made against her.
GM's Notes and discussion
The Montes de Ocas are a good source of contacts and influence for low-Morality characters who don't mind getting their hands (and shoes and rooms) bloody. If you need a lowlife drug dealer to be protected by someone that the characters have to cope with to get information, the MDO is a great option. They are also good ugly allies for those that want to eliminate others' influence in the criminal area. I (Jason) am using them as foils and enemies, but not a group that the PCs are equipped to damage significantly. They are more a hostile environment than anything else at this point. (But do note that at least one of the characters in Coyotes, Carlos Moore, has the destruction of the group by law enforcement as his long-term goal, and he works hard on it, I can assure you!
The bosses I have listed here definitely have some Occult knowledge, but none of it is "real" World of Darkness stuff. However, they certainly could pay an enterprising young Mage or Vampire to "curse" an enemy or "bless" an operation, and if they're effective, all the better (Van Deusen's involvement triggered many of the events in Coyotes.) Think of them as superstitious. Jason C 05:48, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
