Borderland Beat

by Alex Marentes

  Whatever the reason, Monterrey was feeling the effect. Murders skyrocketed and the Zetas roamed the streets in caravans with near impunity, battling their Gulf rivals as well as the Mexican army. Monterrey had 828 murders in 2010, a threefold increase from 2009.

  El Pozolero - The Stew Maker

  It was 2009 when Santiago Meza Lopez, El Pozolero, didn´t care if he was seen crying, nor did he care that tens of news reporters, soldiers and curious people wanted to take his picture, or ask him how he made “el pozole” (the Mexican stew), or how much the Sinaloa cartel paid him.

  He only cared about being forgiven by God.

  Santiago could barely open his eyes. The beating he had received when he was arrested left his face swollen. Crying was hurtful, but the cocaine dose he had inside made it bearable.

  Inside the Tijuana´s military base, the detainee was begging, “Please, forgive me…”.

  Meza Lopez was asking for forgiveness from the relatives of all the people he dissolved for nine years, first under the orders of the Arellano Felix cartel, then under those of the Sinaloa cartel when Teodoro García Semental, El Teo, switched sides.

  The job of Santiago Meza López was to dispose of the enemies of a notorious drug baron by dissolving them in tubs of acid. Over several years he claims to have “disappeared” 300 enemies of El Teo, a former henchman for one of the largest cartels.

  Meza, 45, told police that, once their remains had been in the acid baths for 24 hours, he would bury them. In a twisted act of chivalry, he said he only dissolved men, refusing to make women vanish in this way. He said that he was paid $600 a week by El Teo.

  His horrific career came to an end on Thursday when he was ambushed by elite Mexican troops, acting on a tip-off, who caught him and two other drugs henchmen as they headed to a party with a prostitute in Tijuana.

  Armed with a machinegun, three rifles and two hand grenades, plus body armor, Meza and the two others tried to flee but eventually gave themselves up without a fight.

  Some people say Santiago was crying because he didn´t believe he was guilty, he thought life put him there and that was the job intended for him. He claimed he wasn´t a killer, he wasn´t a kidnapper, he didn´t see himself as a drug dealer.

  Soldiers remember him praying out loud when they were transporting him from Ensenada to Tijuana. He asked God for forgiveness. “Sorry, sorry” he was heard inside the Humvee in which he was being transported to Tijuana.

  The Mexican authorities paraded The Stew Maker in front of a nondescript shack where he admitted that he had disposed of the bodies over a period of ten years. Two grave-sized holes had been dug near the walls.

  The nickname “Pozolero” came from pozole, a stew local to Mexico and the Southwest US. Its ingredients are normally corn, meat and chilli. Meza told police that his busiest time was in December 2007, when he claimed to have disposed of 32 bodies.

  Santiago Meza Lopez talked about his recipe on how to make “Pozole.” It involved two large empty oil barrels, several pounds of Sodium hydroxide, also known as lye or caustic soda, latex gloves and gas masks. He was taught how to cook from men brought in from Israel.

  In the year 2000, the Arellano Felix brothers of the Tijuana cartel decided to use a new method to get rid of their enemies. Previously, they just dumped the bodies in the sewers or the river, but it was dangerous, or someone could catch them.

  Benjamin and Ramon Arellano Felix decided to bring people from Israel who knew how to dissolve bodies in acid. They trained a group of men, including Santiago, who in those days used to take care of drugs that were to be smuggled to the United Stated.

  Santiago gave details, he would begin by buying the empty oil barrels, then he dumped about 100 pounds of Sodium hydroxide that he bought in a hardware store in the Mariano Matamoros community on the east side of Tijuana. The Sodium hydroxide costing him roughly $1.50 dollars a pound.

  “A lady at the store once asked me why I bought so much Sodium hydroxide, I told her I used it to clean houses," said Santiago Meza.

  “The bodies that I was given to make “pozole” were already dead. I dumped them complete inside the oil barrels.

  Santiago was assisted by two young men who he identified as “El Chalino” and “El Yiyo”, a pair of 25 year olds, who were also born in Sinaloa. Both left Guamuchil and arrived at Tijuana with the dream of making lots of money. They ended up learning how to make pozole.

  “The way I would receive the bodies was when El Teo would call me to tell me that at a certain hour, in a certain place, I was to be given the merchandise. He would call me and tell me in which vehicle the bodies were in. They would signal me with a light and delivery the bodies to me,” explained Meza.

  Santiago said that working with Sodium hydroxide was very dangerous. He said he always wore protection such as latex gloves and gas masks.

  The location was also selected well. They used a property located in a road to Tecate, a desolated area called “Ojo de Agua.”

  They would cook the posole and dump it on pits.

  Relatives of 100 missing people came forward saying that they wanted to show photos of their loved ones to Meza in the hope he could find their love’s ones fate.

  Cristina Palacios, president of Citizens United Against Impunity, which represented missing people in Tijuana, said: “We are here because this arrest gives us a ray of hope.”

  Rommel Moreno, the state's Attorney-General, said that Meza would be shown the photos to see if he recognized any among his victims. He said that the authorities were considering allowing the victims' families to meet him.

  Police searched the shack for human remains and ask US authorities for DNA-testing equipment.

  Fernando Ocegueda, whose son disappeared in February 2007, said that eastern Tijuana was a stronghold of the drug lord El Teo García. The Mexican Government denied that parts of the country had become lawless, but Meza's arrest was a rare success story in the increasingly savage drugs war.

  Since the start of 2008 346 people had died or disappeared in drugs-related violence, and Tijuana was one of the worst-affected areas.

  The revelations were a gruesome chapter in a battle that stands out for tales of torture, brutal killings and mutilated corpses. One cause of rising violence was a split between El Teo García and his former bosses, the Arellano Félix brothers, which ignited a war between two cartels to dominate the drugs trade. The two split after a Tijuana shootout between their followers left at least 14 people dead.

  The level of violence had heightened concerns in the Government about the damage it was doing to the country's image abroad. Patricia Espinosa, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, asked foreign correspondents not to file negative reports about Mexico.

  The man who dissolved bodies in acid, the same man that cried that day he was arrested, had apparently been forgiven by God. At least that´s what Rafael Romo Muñoz, Tijuana´s Archbishop, told the media. “Even if he got rid of 300 bodies, he still has God´s forgiveness if he is truly sorry. There´s always forgiveness in God, no matter the sin you committed.”

  Calderon takes on the Cartels Syndicate

  On December 1 of 2006 Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa had become president of Mexico and declared war on the Mexican drug cartels. He could not rely on the municipal police or state police departments around the country of Mexico, so he heavily relied on the military to conduct his operations.

  When soldiers tried to halt a suspicious-looking SUV that was being escorted through Monterrey by a state policeman, the police officer radioed for backup. In minutes, police from 40 patrol cars surrounded the military troops, drawing their guns and sending the soldiers diving for cover in an hour-long standoff.

  Confrontations like that were happening with increasing frequency in Mexico's wealthiest city, Monterrey, as soldiers fought corrupt police officers helping drug cartels - in addition to taking on the drug dealers themselves.

  In 2008 police and soldiers had confronted one another more than 6
5 times, a growing and dangerous trend in the war on drugs.

  Things were so bad, the general in charge of army operations in northeastern Mexico warned police chiefs his men are ready to open fire on police if it happened again.

  "The moment they shoot at us, get in our way, use their guns to protect criminals, they become criminals themselves," said Gen. Guillermo Moreno, commander of troops in Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas states along the Texas border.

  President Felipe Calderon had acknowledged that corruption permeates Mexico's low-paid police at all levels and therefore had opted to combat the billion-dollar drug-smuggling industry by relying primarily on the military, which has seen remarkably fewer cases of bribery by traffickers. His administration also had sent in federal police and soldiers, both of whom are higher paid and usually better educated, to go after police on the take.

  Mexico's top federal cop, Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna, had said that the only way to resolve the problem was to get rid of the low-paid city police forces, many of which had seen little improvement after being purged repeatedly in the past decade.

  He wanted to create state law enforcement agencies to oversee Mexico's 31 states and the federal district of Mexico City. The government would raise officers' salaries significantly to deter bribery.

  President Calderón revamped the federal police from the ground up to be used to combat the cartels. Much of his funding came from the Merida Initiative, millions of dollars in grant money from the US. Federal police suddenly found themselves with upgraded equipment and all the federal police officers were seen carrying exclusively AR-15s.

  President Calderón urged Federal Police officers not to allow crime to infiltrate their ranks or to tolerate complicity or dishonesty among their colleagues.

  “We want Mexicans to be proud of their Federal Police and unlike in the past, we do not want them to distrust, fear or underestimate police performance," he declared.

  “Let the federal police be an example because of its loyalty, effectiveness, service, capacity for unreserved commitment to the public security of Mexican families," he said.

  “One of the goals we wish to achieve in Federal Government is to provide Mexicans with a reliable police force, a strong, well-trained Federal Police force whose technical and organizational capacities exceed those of criminals,” he said.

  He ordered pay raises for the Federal Police and the Mexican armed forces to avoid more desertions and cut down on bribes. Federal police officers are mostly PFP (federal preventive police) and are specialized in combating organized crime and drug cartels. The police officers dedicated to investigating and prosecuting crimes in the country are the ministerial police at the federal and state level with 26,928 policemen and women for the whole country. They only constitute 6.3% of the total strength of all polices forces.

  The remainder of the total strength of all state and municipal police forces are "seguridad publica" (public security). The municipal police have only the most basic education, in other words they are semiliterate at best, and about two thirds of all policemen (state and municipal) in the country earn about 4,000 pesos a month (about $315) or less.

  It is estimated that 40% of all municipal and state police in the country have no effective role in law enforcement. They do not fight or deter crime, nor do they protect their communities. These men and women are the most corrupt segment of police forces and many have links to organized crime. Some are active criminal participants. They are tasked with basic law enforcement and deterrence and have no investigative functions.

  The military and federal police are moved around the country to participate in operations and they also started concealing their identity with ski masks so that cartels would not be able to bribe or retaliate against them.

  Calderón was from Michoacan and naturally he did not waste any time taking on the organized crime in Michoacan. On December 11, 2006 Calderón launched Operation Michoacan to fight the “Familia de Michoacan” cartel, who was growing in power and becoming extremely violent and brutal. Calderón would deploy more than 6,500 military troops in the state of Michoacán to battle drug traffickers.

  In the early year of 2006 and in to 2007 Calderón devoted a lot of resources in Baja California, dismantling major operations of the Tijuana cartel. These operations against the Tijuana cartel of the Arellano-Félix Organization boosted the takeover of the Sinaloa cartel in Tijuana.

  On April 3, 2006 federal Police arrested suspected drug lord Victor Magno Escobar in Tijuana. This caused the state of Sonora to heat up with numerous battles and executions of sicarios and police.

  On May 14, 2006 Jorge Altriste, head of operations for Mexico's elite police forces in Tijuana was murdered. By the end of 2006 the war on the cartels in Mexico was spiraling out of control that also spilled to journalists and musicians. Popular singer Sergio Gómez was kidnapped and killed in December 2, 2006 and Gerardo García Pimentel, a crime reporter, was killed on December 8, 2006. The music bands of popular narco-ballads were taking sides with cartel factions and singing homage to some drug lords that was upsetting the opposite cartels.

  And sometime around January 12, 2010 federal troops stormed a seaside vacation home and captured one of the country's most brutal drug bosses. American anti-drug officials had been helping Mexican authorities track down Teodoro Garcia Simental, known as "El Teo."

  He was arrested near the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, where his gang had been bringing in plane loads of drugs to smuggle across the U.S. border. El Teo had initially worked for the Arellano-Felix but eventually turned on them when they were weakened and join the powerful Sinaloa cartel.

  Calderón started to take on the corruption of the local police. On December 29, 2006 the entire police force in the town of Playas de Rosarito, Baja California, was disarmed by the Mexican military. Their weapons were taken away after there was suspicion of them collaborating with drug cartels. Eventually Tijuana would hire a military colonel to be chief of the Tijuana police named Julián Leyzaola.

  Authorities of the State Preventive Police (PEP) arrested former municipal police officer Luis Gilberto Sánchez Guerrero "El Gil," an alleged associate of El Teo. This arrest represented a serious blow to the structure of the Tijuana cartel operating in the state, as the suspect admitted that he commanded at least ten criminal cells.

  At the time of his arrest he was in possession of two handguns, one known as "matapolicías" (police killer), with 58 cartridges and a bulletproof vest.

  In October 2007, while in a municipal patrol car, "El Gil" helped drug trafficker Raydel Lopez Uriarte "El Muletas" escape from a federal raid.

  He had also participated in various criminal acts including in the murder of several municipal police officers, and the attempted assassination of Tijuana police chief Julian Perez Leyzaola. During the raid from by the military and police, they were able to seize several cloned Military trucks and sophisticated weaponry.

  Information obtained confirmed that "El Gil" was also involved in settling narco accounts, executions, abductions and "protection" to small business shops.

  According to the analysis of his profile, it was determined that he had a hierarchy similar to that of Filiberto Parra Ramos "La Perra", one of the operators of Teodoro Garcia Simental and another man identified as "El Tomate" also ex-Tijuana municipal police.

  "El Gil" was arrested when he came to his home in Colonia La Moderna Ensenada where he was hiding after he fled Tijuana. His location was obtained through intelligence work of the Special Intervention Group of the PEP while detecting his activities.

  Four police chiefs and four uniformed municipal officers were arrested and presented to the Federal Prosecutor of Public Security in Baja California, after being identified by Gilberto Sánchez Guerrero, "El Gil," for allegedly participating in organized crime activities.

  Lieutenant Colonel Julián Leyzaola Pérez was hired to reform the police in Tijuana, clean up the corruption within the ranks and take on the ca
rtels head on.

  This was how Tijuana would become the first major city under Calderón to hit the cartels hard and hopefully end the corruption. It was seen as fighting the cancer from within.

  Julián Leyzaola was from Sinaloa, had a degree in military administration and a post-graduate degree in administration from the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, United States.

  In 1983 he graduated from the Military academy as a second lieutenant. In 1999 he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel of the General Staff.

  In December 2008 he took office as Secretary of Public Security in Tijuana.

  Leyzaola fired 400 police officers as his first act as chief of police for failing integrity tests and charged 25 of them, accusing them of working for the Arellano Félix and/or the Sinaloa cartel.

  Leyzaola was interviewed for the magazine The New Yorker in which he revealed that when he started working as chief of police for Tijuana, a retired military officer showed up at his office claiming to be an official representative for El Chapo Guzmán and offered him $80,000 a month to let the Sinaloa cartel operate in the city. He said he rejected the bribe and that at gunpoint, he took that ex-military man to Mexico City and handed him over to the Attorney General's Office (PGR).

  On July 14, 2009 WikiLeaks leaked information that was published by La Jornada that indicated that Leyzaola had made a pact with the adversaries of the Sinaloa cartel drug trafficker Teodoro García Simental, El Teo.

  He had supposedly agreed to arrest El Teo.

  Leyzaola strategy was that by eliminating El Teo, Arellano Félix would "regulate" the other criminal groups and the violence in the Tijuana plaza would be reduced.

  El Teo had been accused of the murder of 47 police officers and of trafficking cocaine. Operations from the state and municipal police along with the Army targeted El Teo. On November 2007 he almost got caught in Playas de Rosarito, but his collusion with the Tijuana police facilitated his escape.

  Chief Leyzaola had several assassinations attempts and managed to survive all of them. They have attempted to assassinate Leyzaola with bazookas, he has been ambushed, even with trucks cloned to look like military vehicles, they have tried to take him out with car bombs, and even a sicario infiltrated his close circle of security detail to kill him by all means possible, including poison.