Borderland Beat

by Alex Marentes

  In the night of darkness, I made my visit to Ciudad Juarez.

  I crossed the international bridge as it was starting to get dark and I was picked up on the Mexico side to be taken to a hotel. An older gentleman picked me up, but he did not talk much. I sat quietly, looking out the window and wondering if this was wise.

  I remember staying in this motel in a seedy part of Juarez, not armed, feeling vulnerable, insecure and looking over my shoulder expecting the unexpected. I was not armed, and I was always used to being armed, all the time. The rare times I did not have a weapon on me at home, I always felt vulnerable. Well here in Mexico, I felt terrified.

  By the time I settled in the motel, it was completely dark. I looked out the door, and by the entrance to the parking lot of the motel, I could see two parked police cars. I was not sure if the officers were inside their cars or where they were. I saw people walking on the sidewalk, just going about their business, it seemed like a normal night in Juarez. I then realized, normal in Juarez was constant violence and mayhem.

  I was harmless, not interested in naming anyone, just telling the story in a general overall view. My intention was not to inject myself in the activities of organized crime in Mexico, or play games with anyone, I just wanted to know more. My only interest was to understand, to know the how, when and why, without worrying about the who. I had no interest to piss anyone off, I just wanted to know more about the armed wing of the Juarez cartel.

  I met with what I assumed was an active police officer of the Juarez Police. I was truly expecting him to have his face concealed, but he was not. He seemed like he was in his 30s, clean cut and very friendly. There was a noticeable bulge on the right side of his waist that was covered by his shirt, evidence that he was armed. Every once in a while, through the remainder of the interview, I could hear people walking right outside the door. I was watching him real close, for signs of anything that might be wrong, any red flags that might give me cause for concern.

  He told me to call him Hector, but I suspected that was not his real name. He had indicated to me that his identity was not important but keeping his name secret was necessary to keep him and I safe.

  The ground rules were easy and simple, do not ask anything personal about him or who he knows. No names, just the names of organizations and events.

  So, I started to learn about La Línea.

  La Línea did not operate in the cover of darkness, they were very open about it. The word started to spread and soon most of the people in Juarez knew what they represented. It was not kept as a secret. "I am in La Línea," cartel bosses would announce and suddenly they seemed to easily avoid any problems with police or were able to pass through checkpoints with no problems. "I have joined La Línea," young men who joined the organization would bolster to friends. They would point to a nice truck driving by and say, "in that truck are traveling members of La Línea." It was common especially to people who were familiar with the name.

  Hector summed it up really easy.

  "Initially I do not know what it was," said Hector. "I joined the department two years ago, and I had never heard the word. Until one day during a check point a man from a van said: I'm from La Linea, and a colleague told me that we had to let him go. We let him pass unchecked. "

  Hector had asked his companion what that word meant and was told some mysterious explanation. "They are the bosses of the main plaza. They are called La Línea." Since then officer Hector lets them pass and lets them walk at will all over the city.

  "Nobody messes with them. It is impossible. I was told that they are protected and no one can do anything about it," the officer said.

  A few months ago, officer Hector learned of an incident that happened to a police friend of his who was humiliated by La Línea. "My friend had arrested some armed men, but later they came back to see him. They took out their AK-47's (cuernos de chivo) and forced him get on his knees. They put the assault rifles to his head and told him never to mess with La Línea. The next time you die. "

  Since that day, Hector does not dare lay an eye on them.

  "Sometimes I see them arriving by convoy. Sometimes they park and get out armed to the teeth. One can't do anything. The only thing I do is turn the other way, as if I did not see them," says Hector. "You just can't go against them. I wanted to be a policeman and fight crime, but that would require removing all the heads of the command. It must be an initiative from the very top, like from the President of Mexico, because La Línea has people everywhere, "he said.

  Many people I know in the city know individual members of La Linea. It may be a cousin or a childhood friend or a long-time school acquaintance. There are so many of them that almost everyone knows someone. La Línea has their networks in gangs like "Barrio Aztecas" who are street thugs, and the municipal police commanders that protect their precious cargo.

  Also, the state police that are on the payroll, and even judges and prosecutors. Also aligned (as in La Línea) are the mules who pass the drugs to the other side of the border, the taxi drivers who are the network of information and let's not forget "the poles" (people in street corners who are the ears in the neighborhoods).

  A young business professional man said that one of his college friends, joined La Línea. "He was my best friend and was middle class. He then graduated college and disappeared for some time. Later I saw him at a restaurant, and he was very well dressed, wore a gold chain and was driving a new expensive car. He said he had found a very lucrative business," the businessman said. Two or three years later, he saw his friend again at a school reunion. The guy was driving a very luxurious SUV.

  "He said I'm from La Línea. I'm doing very well. Soon I will allocate a large sum of wealth"

  "I did not say anything, but it scared me. It has been about a year and I have not seen or heard of him. He is no longer seen anywhere here. Maybe he's in jail, or has been executed, or plainly moved to another city."

  Most citizens here are afraid of La Línea. After two years as a policeman, Hector also fears them. "They are in charge. They give the orders. It's unbelievable, but that is just how it is.

  I got some insight in to the background of the enforcers and sicarios of the Juarez cartel, La Línea. Their job, keep all rival cartels away from the plaza, enforce the code of the cartel, protect the trafficking operation on the Mexico side of the border and settle scores, punish anyone who dares to interfere with operations or betrays the cartel institution.

  The Sinaloa syndicate had entered the plaza and have dared to challenge the Juarez Syndicate. It’s a battle to ensure Juarez does not fall. La Línea has been tasked to repel their assault on the city and take a few federales with them. This is a business that must be protected, and it will. They will not allow anyone to get in the way.

  The Juarez cartel does not employ street gangs to protect their empire. Hector made it clear to me, directly and with no reservation, “the Juarez Cartel employs professionals, sicarios that know how to deploy with weapons and have an understanding of police tactics. This is a real business my friend, the corporation makes a lot of money, they have no time for amateur bullshit!”

  I was not naive, I knew that La Línea was sometimes the actual local police. At one point, I asked about police corruption in Juarez and I was corrected, "Corruption? The police are the cartel."

  It was really simple I was told. The criminal organization is a straight line. All the drug dealers, hitmen (sicarios), the police who protect them and the mules who carry the cocaine to the U.S. must all be aligned. Straight shooters. The Juarez drug cartel created a new term used to describe their organization. It started as a concept, a method of operation, then it became a group of enforcers. So, they call themselves "The Line" (La Línea) and everyone fears it.

  Hector looked me in the eye, “fear it my friend.”

  A knock on the door announced his signal to say his goodbye, and leave the same way he came in, disappearing to the black cold darkness outside my motel door. To me, he was an unk
nown person who I will probably not ever see again.

  What I heard was hard to swallow and initially I thought there was more of bragging going on here, but later on, through experience researching the Mexico narco life, I knew that what I heard was for the most part true. Perhaps I did not want to believe it. I had a lot of respected for law enforcement in general, including Mexico but this made me see things in a totally different way. I found the level of corruption from police institutions, as explained to me, repulsive and dangerous. Later, I was reassured by another Juarez cop that I should not lose faith in law enforcement in Mexico, as not all cops are corrupt. Many of them die fighting the criminal cartels and make great sacrifices in their life to do the right thing. “Do not lose faith, police work in Mexio is still honorable with some, believe it,” I was told.

  Later on, Borderland Beat would report, on many occasions, of the life of some of the good guys fighting the fight in Ciudad Juarez and that for the most part many of these good guys made the ultimate sacrifice trying to make a better life for the citizens of a very violent city.

  There had been a specific report in El Paso Times sometime around 2011 that remained close to my heart, for the knowledge that I had known and the law enforcement south of the border that had touched my life, teaching me that when there is bad, there is also good.

  “A Juárez police captain was gunned down after ending his shift at the Benito Juárez police station, according to the Juárez Department of Public Safety.

  Several gunmen shot José Manuel Rivas López, after storming into his home in the 1103 block of Joaquín Soto Mendoza and Teniente Daniel García streets, located in the Oasis Revolución neighborhood.

  The victim, riddled with bullets, was found dead in the living room, authorities said. Forensics staff members recovered 64 bullet casings. According to an unconfirmed report, Mexican federal police officers arrested two suspects in connection with this shooting.

  Forty Juárez police officers have been killed since Juárez Mayor Héctor Murguía took office on Oct. 10, 2010. Fourteen Juárez police officers have been ambushed just in 2011, according to the Juárez Department of Public Safety.”

  Yes, I survived that night in Juarez. The next morning, I was outside the streets of Juarez and noticed many federal police and soldiers on almost every corner. I ate some tacos of barbacoa real early in the morning, the streets were bustling with people doing their daily chores, going about their business. Sitting there, among the masses of people, for a minute, I was just another person among many.

  Walking back to the international bridge I saw three federal police pickup trucks running lights and siren with three or four federal police officers in the back holding for dear life. They were all in black wearing ballistic helmets, ski masks and all had long rifles strapped to their shoulder. I wonder if they were responding to another daily execution or shootout somewhere in Juarez. It did not seem to faze the public as they seem to go about their normal business, like nothing was happening, just another day in the city.

  After 2007, Felipe Calderon sent thousands of military troops and federal police to Juarez, you could see check points all over. It was the military and federal police primarily checking for weapons and drugs. So how was La Línea able to operate freely, move heavily armed, many times in convoys, and openly wage war against the Sinaloa cartel in Juarez?

  Simple, collusion from police officers of every agency and a network of boots on the ground in constant communication. Many people on the payroll, a costly operation sustained for long periods of times. Everyone had a motive and everyone took a side.

  In this plaza it was federal (black uniforms) with Sinaloa faction and municipal (blue uniforms) with the Juarez faction. It was a game being played out in the streets of Ciudad Juarez.

  It was said that President Felipe Calderon sent the military and federal police to Ciudad Juarez to take on the Juarez cartel. This was during the time the Juarez cartel and Sinaloa cartel were in a dispute over control of la plaza.

  One example was that of a former Juárez police officer suspected in 18 murders and belonging to a drug cartel La Linea, was one of multiple arrests during the operations of the Mexican military.

  Ex-officer Miguel Angel Delgado Carmona, 39, and suspected accomplice Roberto Gonzalez Lazalde, 34, were captured after a vehicle chase following an extortion attempt of a Juárez funeral home, officials with Joint Operation Chihuahua said.

  Soldiers with the Fourth Infantry Battalion began chasing the van moments after four men had delivered a note to the funeral home stating "Call today (a telephone number) without excuse, attention La Linea."

  Two of the men exited the Dodge Caravan at a street corner and escaped.

  But soldiers captured Delgado and Gonzalez, who allegedly confessed to belonging to a cell of La Linea, as the Juárez drug cartel is known. The cell (La Linea) was created to kill rivals from the Sinaloa cartel and would enforce extortion operations from several businesses.

  The insights of how cartels operate in Mexico among federal police and military forces opened my eyes. My suspicion of this complicated interaction between narcos and police was starting to make some sense. Not that it was right or even wrong, but just that it was a mechanism that had existed for many years and it was extremely hard to fix. Yes, certainly not right, but perhaps it was a way to survive to live another day and keep your precious family safe among a sea full of potential lethal danger.

  As I drove back to Albuquerque, my head was spinning. Too much to digest, I would have to take my time to take everything in.

  Heating up the Plaza

  In the narco world, a plaza usually means a city or town that is controlled by a particular cartel. The term “heating up the plaza,” means the increase of cartel violence activity in a city. Sometimes it could be that a cartel was defending a plaza from other cartels through violent means, or cleaning their turf by conducting executions. It could also mean that the military or federal police were targeting a specific cartel that many times resulted in shootouts or as a way for a cartel to enforce their dominance and settle scores as a method of retaliation.

  The third way of heating up a plaza is for a specific cartel to intentionally increase violence in a particular plaza to get the attention of federal authorities. For example; one cartel enters the plaza controlled by another cartel, conduct several executions of low-level cartel members or members of law enforcement, and this forces the federal police to put heat on the cartel in charge of the plaza. These tactics can be extremely violent. There were many times Borderland Beat found themselves front and center reporting on these events.

  Police corruption and cartel violence is blatant, and open in other cities that were once safe, like Monterrey.

  When gang members opened fire on the Café Iguana in downtown Monterrey in 2011, a squad of eight municipal policemen rushed to the scene.

  The police arrived to find four people dead and five wounded. Just as they began surveying the scene another group of sicarios pulled up in a truck and began loading the dead bodies in the back. Rather than confront them, the officers watched as the men stashed three bodies in the truck and briefly searched for the fourth, which had fallen behind some parked cars. They eventually left it behind and sped off.

  The officers involved came under investigation, but only one was arrested, the others fled.

  Monterrey police have been accused of co-operating with drug cartels. Police corruption was so rampant in this city of four million that government officials believe at least half of the force was on the payroll of the cartels. Low pay, scant resources and an inability to cope with the heavily armed cartels made the police an easy target for recruitment.

  Monterrey had been spared much of the cartel violence that has ravaged other parts of Mexico. That allowed the city to continue its remarkable growth, driven by its proximity to the U.S. border, just two hours away, and its status as the country’s main manufacturing center.

  The city is home to some of
Mexico’s largest companies, including cement giant Cemex, as well as 2,600 factories belonging to foreign businesses such as Whirlpool, Navistar and Philips. General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and dozens of auto-parts companies also have plants about an hour south in the nearby city of Saltillo.

  The North American Free Trade Agreement brought untold prosperity to Monterrey and income levels were among the highest in Mexico. There were sprawling shopping malls, gleaming concert halls, a multitude of museums and the Monterrey Institute of Technology, one of the best universities in the country.

  Monterrey had been considered so prosperous and so safe it was considered a potential home for baseball’s Montreal Expos in 2004 before the team moved to Washington. Even the cartel leaders used to send their families to live in Monterrey’s upscale San Pedro district, considered the richest suburb in Mexico.

  All that calm and security was shattered when the Gulf drug cartel and its military-like offshoot, the Zetas, began vying for territory. It was a classic fight to take over a plaza, but not just a plaza, a major modern urban metropolitan city. It was said that if Monterrey fell to the cartels, the rest of Mexico would follow suit, making Mexico a failed state. Just why that turf war spread into Monterrey isn’t clear.

  Some blame Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s war on the cartels, which he launched in 2006. They say that some of the fragmented cartels were driven on to untouched areas such as Monterrey, where they waged a war for control. Others point to the U.S. government’s crackdown on the Mexican border, saying that pushed more drugs and cartel violence south on to Mexico from the U.S. border and drove up the number of domestic drug users. Still others blame the Zetas, once the hired guns for the Gulf cartel, who had struck out on their own and were trying to develop their own drug trade.