Borderland Beat

by Alex Marentes

  At an immigration removal hearing in Bloomington, Minnesota, in August of 2005, Lalo was asked what would happen to him if he was sent back to Mexico.

  "Well, they will kill me or they will torture me and then they will kill me," he says.

  "Who will?"

  "Yeah, the police, the cartel, the government, it's all the same people."

  "Why do you say it's the same people?"

  "Because the police work for the cartel."

  He testified that the power of the Juarez cartel extends all the way to former Mexico President Vicente Fox, and that the cartel once used ships from the Mexican Navy to transport drugs from Colombia to Mexico, and that the PGR, Mexico's federal police, would then fly the drugs to Juarez.

  Lalo became an informant because he always felt he belonged in the law enforcement side, being a former police officer himself. He felt he was doing the honorable thing. He also had a soft heart toward law enforcement and respected the US lawmen in general.

  Bill Conroy of the Narco News Bulletin covered many of these events concerning Lalo and the “house of Death” at length.

  Lalo’s real name is Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez-Peyro.

  I heard a rumor that he visits Albuquerque often (he most likely has his family living in or around Albuquerque) and has occasional acquaintances that he has befriended that are retired Albuquerque Police officers (APD). In the past he has always trusted US police officers and has enjoys their company. Over some beers, he has told them about his exploits while an undercover informant for ICE. A retired APD officer told me about his many meetings with Lalo, telling me about drug cartel stories that even I would not believe, if I did not know what I know.

  No one believes it, it just sounds too incredible.

  Armed to the Teeth

  The weaponry used by the cartels in Mexico is extensive and high powered. Mexican police officers who only carry a side arm for patrolling are under-armed in most cases and are essentially in a suicidal mission if they elect to engaged heavily armed sicarios. Most sicarios carry ar-15 or ak-47, if not more power firepower.

  Most of the time cartels in Mexico over power the police and at times even the military. Cartels spend millions of dollars from their drug profits to arm themselves to the teeth. Law enforcement faces sicarios that are armed with assault rifles that are fully automatic, 50mm style machine guns and fragmentation grenades. The prospect of confronting armed cartels in Mexico is daunting and extremely intimidating. To give you an example let’s look at the operation that was carried out in Michoacan on September 2008 by the military.

  An arsenal consisting of 18 assault rifles, 222 handguns of different calibers, 38 grenades and more than 10 thousand rounds were seized. Also seized were drugs, police uniforms and radio communication equipment. This was the result after Mexican military conducted six simultaneous search warrants carried out in Morelia and Zamora, all part of the Joint Operation Michoacán.

  According to reports from the 21st Military Zone, the work was carried out after military intelligence received information from anonymous citizens demanding action against organized crime.

  Military elements, once they had gathered their intelligence work, designed the strategy to carry out the search warrants simultaneously, five of them in Morelia and one in the municipality of Zamora, where they managed to secure the arsenal.

  One of the operations was carried out in the Michoacán capital, where the military found a motor scooter and ten wrapped packages with the drug "rock."

  Another operation was in the house that is located in the corner of the streets Caucho y Bambú, located in the neighborhood Jardines del Rincón, where they found and secured 6 assault rifles ar-15, ak-47 and a IMI Galil, in addition to seven super .38 caliber handguns.

  On the same location, they recovered nine fragmentation grenades and two gas grenades, along with 455 rounds of ammunition of different caliber, 42 magazines for various weapons and uniforms with logos of different police agencies, bulletproof vests, tactical vests, blue shirts, police patches, police caps, several pairs of military type boots and several sets of handcuffs.

  Also, in a house that was located on Juan Jose Escalona Street, in the community of Ejidal Ocolusen, they seized three vehicles, about four kilos of marijuana, in addition to 25 small wrap containers of "rock" and heroin.

  Meanwhile, on another operation the military arrived at Sauce Street between the streets of Obispo de Acueducto and Fray Antonio San Miguel, in the Rincón de Ocolusen subdivision, where they recovered 12 assault rifles of different calibers, 12 handguns of various calibers, one addition to a grenade launcher, three grenades for the launcher, seven 40 millimeter grenades, nine grenades fragmentation grenades, eight smoke grenades, 145 magazines for various weapons and 6,850 rounds of ammunition of different calibers.

  In the same place the military located two telescopic sights, thirteen loaders for caliber 2.23 rounds, 45 strips of ammunition for 50mm caliber machine gun, eight boxes of rounds for 2.23 caliber rifle, 25 uniforms with FF MM logos, 60 uniforms with federal police logo, ten municipal police uniforms, two telescopic sights, gas masks, insignia, holsters and cartridge belts.

  Among Mexican traffickers, the AK-47 it has earned itself the nickname "cuerno de chivo" or "goat horn" because of its distinctive banana-shaped magazine.

  Since the federal law banning assault weapons expired in 2004, so-called "straw purchasers" have flooded U.S. gun stores in the Southwest, mostly in Texas and Arizona, sweeping up these and other weapons. Court documents show such purchasers buying as many as 20 AK-47s at a time, paying as much as $11,000 in cash. Typically, the purchaser turns the guns over to a broker who takes them across the border to Mexico, where such weapons cannot be bought legally. The weapons are sold to the cartels, often for three or four times the original price.

  Gun rights advocates reject the term "assault weapon" and refers to high-powered guns as "modern sporting rifles." An NSSF survey last year found that 44 percent of owners of these weapons are active-duty or former military or law-enforcement personnel, and the typical owner is 35, married and has some college education.

  Once in the hands of cartel capos, however, the modern sporting rifle becomes very much an assault weapon.

  Violence in Mexico has claimed nearly 71,000 lives during President Felipe Calderon began a military offensive aimed at overpowering drug cartels.

  Military-style weaponry has enabled the drug trafficking organizations to match and sometimes overwhelm the firepower of Mexican law enforcement.

  In May 2008, Mexican federal police raided a suspected trafficker house in Culiacan, a long-standing drug hotbed in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. Cartel gunmen armed with AK-47s purchased in Arizona overwhelmed the police, killing eight.

  Of 2,921 guns traced, 1,470, or 50 percent, were from Texas. A total of 852, 29 percent, were from Arizona. California, by contrast, accounted for 90 guns, three percent of the total. California gun-control activists credited that state's low total to strict state firearms laws that severely limit sales of military-style weaponry.

  Another weapon popular among Mexican narcos is the Colt Super .38 pistol: Colt, based in West Hartford, Conn., is the corporate legacy of Samuel Colt, who popularized the revolver in the years before the Civil War. The "El Presidente" model is popular in Mexico because it is one of the few guns legally available there, according to the Violence Policy Center. It is cheaper at gun outlets in the U.S.

  The Colt Super .38 is often found popular with Mexican cartel bosses who plate them in gold or silver and engrave them with fancy grips.

  The Highway of Death

  During the regime of President Felipe Calderon most of the Cartel activities were focused on different segments of Mexico. One of the most heated regions, from the time I began contributing in 2008 on BB, was the Gulf Coast where the waging battle of Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel was intensifying. The region extends from the Texas border on the north of Mexico and spreads south through the gulf
coast, ending at south end on the border with Guatemala.

  Shootings, executions, kidnappings and attacks happened every day in Tampico, Altamira, Cd Madero, Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Valle Hermoso, Rio Bravo, Ciudad Victoria, Cd Mante, Reynosa, the border “Frontera Chica” municipalities and rural areas of the state.

  Highway 101 travels through the state of Taumalipas. The highway was a perilous journey that was used by Zetas to plant their seed of terror. People tell stories of mass killings of immigrants, primitive graves of people buried after being executed and buses getting hijacked only to have the passengers dragged out only to meet their ultimate ending in the most horrifying manner ever imagined. The road was so dangerous that no one dared to travel at night and tourist had to be escorted by police cars.

  There are many stories on Borderland Beat of people being killed after they got snatched from their buses and hundreds of decomposing bodies found in the area of Highway 101 in San Fernando, Tamaulipas.

  Mexican authorities were constantly extracting bodies from mass graves in the state of Tamaulipas not far from the US. Hundreds of corpses have surfaced following reports of passengers being pulled off buses in the area by gunmen and disappearing.

  Most of all the bodies were found in pits along the township of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, where security forces located the graves while investigating reports of attacks on buses blamed on the brutal Zetas drug gang.

  During most of 2010, the San Fernando municipality had suffered from constant confrontations between Zetas and members of the Gulf Cartel. General Miguel Angel Gonzalez, Commander of the Eighth Military Zone based in Tamaulipas, said that this isolated town was very important because "it is a node where several highways, strategic for drug smuggling come together."

  San Fernando was a neglected area, affected by ongoing droughts that weaken agriculture, without businesses to create jobs and with commerce affected by the violence.

  Los Zetas took control of the San Fernando region and imposed their rules. The group's high command, El Lazca and El Z-40, appointed Salvador Alfonso Martinez Escobedo, La Ardilla, as chief of the area. He in turn placed a former soldier, Edgar Huerta Montiel, El Wache, as lieutenant for San Fernando, along with Martin Omar Estrada Luna, El Kilo, who, in practice, acted as the area chief.

  El Kilo was one of the best examples of the barbarism that characterized Mexican narcos. He was born in Mexico but lived in the United States. His first "schools" were the gangs in northern California, among them "Los Nortenos.

  El Kilo went all over the town openly carrying weapons. He'd get out of his vehicle with his weapon to make purchases in the stores on the main square, where the mayor's office is located. He had 20 of the 34 San Fernando police officers on his payroll.

  El Kilo inspected every bus that arrived at the municipality. "A bus would arrive every day, and every day they would make the passengers get off the bus to investigate them, to find out where they were coming from. They would check the messages on their cell phones. They would allow most people who were not involved to leave. The rest we would kill," said El Wache when he was interrogated by the Federal Police. From his paranoid point of view, all the young men who were going to the border could be recruited by the rival Gulf cartel.

  The afternoon of August 22, 2010, two freight trucks were traveling on Highway 101. In the trucks were migrants from Central America trying to reach their dream to make it to America. About nine miles north of San Fernando, the hopes of the migrants ended and their nightmare began; they encountered three vehicles blocking the highway carrying armed men with their faces covered.

  "We're Zetas," they identified themselves, then asked the migrants to get off the trucks. Then they took them in pickup trucks to the warehouse of an abandoned ranch. There, 58 men and 14 women were taken down off the trucks and placed against the walls in the store room. First, they questioned them to find out where they were coming from and what they did for a living. They all denied they were working for the Gulf Cartel.

  Their captors wanted to force them to work for them, but the migrants refused the offer. In the face of such a refusal, they made them lie down on the floor with their faces (facing) down. They told them not to look up and then shot them with bursts of bullets from assault rifles. To make sure nobody was left alive, they fired a gunshot to their heads.

  A man from Ecuador who was not hit by the bursts of gunfire and whose intended head shot went into his neck and came out through his jaw pretended to be dead and waited until the executioners left. He left the ranch and walked almost 15 miles until he found some marines and asked for help. "The massacre was a little while ago," he told them, but they didn't believe him.

  The incident was reported to their superiors, who ordered an aerial reconnaissance of the area. That afternoon, when the Army helicopter was flying near the store room, they were attacked by criminals who were going back to the site get rid of the bodies.

  It was getting dark on August 23 and the Marines withdrew to Matamoros. But they came back to the ranch the next day with reinforcements. There they found the 72 bodies.

  El Wache confessed that they had killed the 72 Central American migrants on El Lazca and Z-40 orders, because they thought "they were going join with El Metro 3," the Gulf Cartel boss in Reynosa.

  In addition to the massacre of the 72 migrants in San Fernando in August of 2010, authorities also discovered at least 193 bodies in 47 clandestine graves in San Fernando between April and May of 2011, and the discovery of 49 human torsos in Cadereyta in the neighboring state of Nuevo Leon in May 2012. Many other narco graves were found in the Tamaulipas state, so many Borderland Beat collaborators lost count and were unable to keep up. Almost all the body remains found in these clandestine graves were immigrants from Central America, not to mention thousands of Central America people that have been reported missing from 2008 through 2013 in the Gulf coast region of Mexico.

  Michoacán – Tierra Caliente

  In 2006, La Familia Michoacán (LFM) left their calling card when they threw five heads onto the dance floor of a nightclub, along with the message: “La Familia does not kill for money, does not kill women, does not kill innocent people, only those who deserve to die. Know that this is divine justice.”

  In an incident that shocked Mexico to its core, a new kind of way of conducting business, a drug cartel introduced itself on that day. A cartel whose ultimate goal was to set the moral compass for society and replace the state within its territory.

  This was "La Familia's" maximum demonstration of terror. The group had expanded in the Tierra Caliente region. It seized control of Apatzingán from "Los Zetas" and extended its power in the States of Mexico -- where Enrique Pena Nieto was governor; Guerrero, Jalisco and Guanajuato.

  La Familia’s origins can be traced to a precursor group known as La Empresa that emerged as a large-scale drug-trafficking operation in 2004 through an alliance with the powerful Gulf cartel, based in northeastern Mexico.

  It won local support among low-income sectors by offering loans to peasants, micro-enterprises, schools and churches, and provided other types of social assistance to the needy.

  That benevolence allowed the gang to develop an important network of informants and collaborators, while it also began making efforts to infiltrate the local police and government.

  La Familia cartel was sometimes described as a "pseudo-evangelical cult" since its leaders, Moreno González and Méndez Vargas, refer to the assassinations and beheadings they conducted as "divine justice" and that they may had direct or indirect ties with devotees of the New Jerusalem religious movement, which is noted for its concern for justice issues.

  La Familia’s boss and spiritual leader Nazario Moreno González, (a.k.a.: El Más Loco or The Maddest One) had published his own 'bible.' A copy of this 'bible' seized by Mexican federal agents revealed an ideology that mixes evangelical-style self-help with insurgent peasant slogans. Moreno González seemed to base most of his doctrine on the work by a Christian
writer John Eldredge.

  The Mexican justice department stated in a report that Gonzalez Moreno had made Eldredge’s book Salvaje de corazón (Wild at Heart) a required reading for La Familia gang members and had paid rural teachers and National Development Education (CONAFE) to circulate Eldredge's writings throughout the Michoacán countryside. An idea central to Eldredge’s message is that every man must have "a battle to fight, a beauty to rescue and an adventure to live."

  Eldredge quotes from Isaiah 63, which describes God wearing blood-stained clothes, spattered as though he had been treading a wine press. Then he writes: "Talk about Braveheart. This is one fierce, wild, and passionate guy. I have never heard Mister Rogers talk like that. Come to think of it, I never heard anyone in church talk like that, either. But this is the God of heaven and Earth."

  La Familia recruited members from drug rehabilitation clinics and forbid them to consume alcohol or drugs, but must transport and sell them. Advancement within the organization depended as much on regular attendance at prayer meetings as on target practice.

  On July 16, 2009, a man by the name of Servando Martínez Gómez (La Tuta) identified himself as the 'chief of operations' of the cartel. In his TV message, the self-appointed spokesman for the group stated: "La Familia was created to look after the interests of our people and our family," La Tuta said. "We are a necessary evil." When the TV presenter interrupted to ask what La Familia really wanted: "The only thing we want is peace and tranquility," came the reply.

  Michoacan state police commanders aided La Familia in its operations by permitting cartel operatives to use patrol cars, radio frequencies and police uniforms. Former and active state police officials used patrol cars to block off streets and help sicarios escape from other police. La Familia used state police infrastructure to establish routes and ensure the safety of their armed commandos.

  La Familia declared war against Felipe Calderon through a letter which delivered a warning. The following is a segment of the message from La Familia Michoacana, reacting after the death of Nazario Moreno González.