Cuéllar said that Z-40 contacted him and told him to turn in any drugs he may have on his possession. Cuéllar knew that in the past when a member was going to be executed, they got all their drugs back first. This worried Cuéllar. Z-40 asked Cuéllar where he was going to be later in the day, he told him he was going to be at the racetrack. He never went because he was afraid. The sicarios of Z-40 went looking for him at the racetrack and became upset when they did not find him there. They sent Cuéllar a message that Z-40 wanted to talk to him. Cuéllar knew he was a target for execution and knew he had to get out of dodge ASAP.
Mario Alfonso "Poncho" Cuéllar, Héctor “El Negro” Moreno and José "La Güiche" Luis Garza (whose family’s ranch was the scene of many of the killings) betrayed the criminal organization and were forced to flee the state of Coahuila to the United States. In their hands they allegedly carried 5 to 10 million dollars from profits of drug trafficking and an accounting book from the criminal organization.
Z-40 became enraged and wanted to punish all who dared to betray the Zeta organization. Z-40 warned the men to return the money or else they would kill all their family and friends.
The men knew they were dead men either way if caught by Los Zetas, so they men ignored the demand.
This would initiate the reign of terror in “Los Cinco Manantiales”, (five springs) in the northern part of Coahuila. Los Cinco Manantiales are the towns of Allende, Morelos, Zaragoza, Villa Union and Nava,
Cuéllar and Moreno who had fled to the United States became protected witnesses of the DEA. Before leaving Coahuila, Cuéllar had warned those who worked for him to flee or hide, as their lives were in danger. Both agreed to cooperate with US law enforcement in exchange for clemency.
The massacre was set off by the corruption of an agent of the Mexican Federal Police who knew that the DEA had received the PIN numbers.
The families of Cuéllar and Moreno, for the most part, lived in the region of Allende, an area along the way to Piedras Negras, a border town with the United States. Only 40 miles separate Allende from the US border. This set of event would unleashed the monster, that would target whole towns and their people.
On the afternoon of March 18, 2011, a caravan of 50 late model trucks with dozens of Zeta gunmen onboard entered Ciudad Allende. They blocked the roads to the entrance of the town. They started knocking down doors from homes, killing people and making them disappear. Men, elderly, women, children, it did not matter to them, they were all the same.
Whole families were kidnapped or killed, including infants and children. Even servants of the families were made to “disappear.” Many of those taken had the misfortune to simply have the same last names as the people in the hit list.
Horrific things began happening in the evening. Armed men began arriving. They were going house to house, looking for family and friends of the people who had done them wrong. At 11 at night there was no traffic on the streets. There was no movement of any kind. Everyone was in lockdown in their homes, terrified and not daring to even look out the windows of their homes. But it was not totally quiet, every so often they could hear screaming and gunfire. People in their homes were trying to reach anyone on the phone or on social media that could help them, but no one came.
A flame was set at blaze, and it would not be stopped.
The day they drove in to town, they started shooting at homes and abducting anyone seen in public that at one point it included four older women and two children. The next day, they went to the house of a person with the name of Garza, where they abducted a man, his wife and their young son.
The Zetas put them all in police cars of the Allende police department and transported them to one of the ranches where they were holding many people from during the weekend. When night came, it was the end for them. They were taken out to be executed.
The Zeta attack provided evidence of collusion with the local authorities. The 20 municipal police officers of Allende were instructed not go out on patrol, not to respond to calls for help and to detain anyone with the names of their traitors, so they could be turned over to Los Zetas.
The hitmen went to the mayor's office and demanded the home addresses from the property tax records of all the properties of the traitors and their families. The mayor of Allende, Sergio Lozano, and his municipal police cooperated with Los Zetas, to include saying nothing about the disappearances and taking no action to stop it. Some of the police officers actually participated in rounding up people to turn over to Los Zetas.
Los Zetas destroyed and burned everything in their path; houses, ranches, businesses. For Allende and its residents, it was converted into an apocalypse scene, all in the name of hatred and revenge.
They killed and killed, and like cattle they loaded the bodies on the back of trucks.
A dozen Allende municipal police officers led various groups of assassins to the houses that had been located by the sicarios.
In one of the residences of the Garza Gaytan family, the Zetas were fired upon and three gunmen fell. In the end though, the man who dared to shoot at them in an act of self-protection, along with several of his relatives, were killed by the gunmen.
A few miles outside of town, the gunmen descended on several neighboring ranches along a dimly lit two-lane highway. The properties belonged to one of Allende’s oldest clans, the Garzas. The family mostly raised livestock and did odd contracting jobs, including coal mining. But according to family members, some of them also worked for the cartel.
Now those connections were proving to be deadly. Among those the Zetas suspected of being a snitch was José Luis Garza, a relatively low-level cartel operative, whose father, Luis, owned one of the ranches. It was payday, and several workers had gone to the ranch to pick up their money. When the gunmen showed up, they rounded up everyone they could find and took them hostage, never to be seen again. After nightfall, flames began rising from one of the ranch’s large cinder-block storage sheds. Los Zetas had begun burning the bodies of some of those they’d killed.
That weekend of March 18 through the 20, 2011, Los Zetas attacked 32 houses and seven ranches in Allende, in order to take revenge on Alfonso Cuéllar, Héctor Moreno and José Luis Garza. When they could, they would demolished dwellings and residences with heavy machinery.
On Saturday, March 19, the gunmen summoned several heavy-equipment operators and ordered them to tear down dozens of houses and businesses across the region. Many of the properties were in busy, well-to-do neighborhoods within sight or earshot of not only passersby but also of government offices, police stations and military outposts. The gunmen invited townspeople to take whatever they wanted, triggering a free-for-all of looting.
Allende was transformed into a post-apocalyptic scene, full of destruction and desertion.
From Allende the gunmen moved north along the dry, flat landscape, rounding up people as they covered the 35 miles to the city of Piedras Negras, a grimy sprawl of assembly factories on the Rio Grande. The attackers drove many of their victims to one of the Garza ranches, including Gerardo Heath, a 15-year-old high school football player, and Edgar Ávila, a 36-year-old factory engineer. Neither had anything to do with the cartel or with those the cartel believed were working with the DEA. They just happened to be in the way.
You could see the signs that something unspeakable happened in Allende, a quiet ranching town of about 23,000, just a 40-minute drive from Eagle Pass, Texas. Entire blocks of some of the town’s busiest streets were left in ruins. Once garish mansions were now crumbling shells, with gaping holes on the walls, charred ceilings, cracked marble countertops and toppled columns. Strewn among the rubble were tattered, mud-covered remnants of lives torn apart.
In the ranch Los Garza, Los the Zetas brought in a truck with metal drums of gasoline.
They drenched bodies with fuel they had piled up against the walls in a warehouse and set them ablaze. They shot anyone they found still alive. To make some of the remains disappear, they dug narco graves.
/> In another place in the ranch Los Tres Hermanos (municipality of Zaragoza) they killed and burned people, using another procedure: they brought in drums, made holes in the bottom and sides. Then they put one body in each drum. Then they poured fuel on the bodies and set them on fire. After five or six hours the bodies were completely burned to ashes. They threw the remains in a ditch and in a well so that they could not be found.
In the Piedras Negras prison, which served as a den of the Zetas, Los Zetas forced 40 people to kneel and shot them in the city of Piedras Negras. This was according to testimony given by Adolfo Efrén Tavira to the Human Rights office in the University of Texas.
In Monclova, the night of March 18, 2011 a "surgical" operation was carried out by Los Zetas to kidnapped 7 bookkeepers and as many members of Los Zetas who were under the command of Poncho Cuellar.
The same happened in the coalfield municipalities as well as in Nava, Zaragoza, Morelos and other towns of Cinco Manantiales, where they kidnapped dozens of people.
In Piedras Negras, gunmen located and kidnapped 41 relatives and friends of Cuellar, who were taken away to an area in Pico del Águila to face the Trevino Morales brothers in person. They were all killed.
Among those arrested was Efren Tavira. He was saved from being killed because his Zeta friends told Z-40 that since Poncho fled he could worked for them.
Before leaving the area, Efren Tavira would witness when Z-40, Z-42 and other gunmen peppered Poncho's 40 friends with bullets.
Borderland Beat reporters Chivis and DD were boots on the ground in the northern part of Coahuila during the massacre of Allende. Chivis found herself in the area at the same time the attack on Allende was taking place:
“We could see the smoke from afar, yet the news was void of reports. I along with everyone else in the area could see what was happening with our own eyes, yet nothing was reported. Residents were left with no news or alerts on the streets, Coahuila was a narco news blackout state.
On March 18, 2011 we were driving from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon on Hwy 57, when we saw the smoke ahead. We saw a narco convoy and first responders but as in many other incidents of violence, the fire department were warned not to intervene. Residents flooded the emergency center with pleas for help, but help never arrived.
We decided to turn around and go through Tamaulipas and up through Texas and across to Del Rio and into Mexico that way.
I was scared far more than I ever had been while in Mexico, yet strangely residents didn’t share the same level of fear as I. For example, on the second day we had a function at a school in Piedras Negras but traveling there was dangerous. I didn’t want us to go. My staff said in the daytime it would be ok. They went, I didn’t. They teased me for being afraid, I scolded them for their lack of fear.
In 2010 Tamaulipas became a blackout narco news state. Coahuila was even a blackout state even prior to 2010. In 2010 the SDR tuitero (Twitter) movement began with #ReynosaFollow leading the way. This movement filled the vacuum created by the conventional blackout media. By using social media, these warriors were able to send out warnings and reports of situations at risk in Tamaulipas, and joining states such as Coahuila, of narco roadblocks, shoot-outs, and other dangerous situations. This was a very perilous endeavor that cost the lives of Tamaulipas bloggers, some decapitated, hanged, and one, a doctor, abducted, made to “confess” on her twitter account and killed.
These brave citizen reporters have saved countless of lives. One of our reporters at BB joined the group in Tamaulipas who created a manifesto that was published to the world. The word and warnings on the street became news of information on social media.
And this was how we were able to receive any reports of what was happening in Allende.
We have had the best ongoing coverage anywhere. During the massacre, residents from Allende and Piedras Negras wrote to BB giving their accounts.
We covered the trial of the Zetas in Texas that allowed us direct reporting in court, especially when Cuellar took the stand.
For me it was difficult to know when to stop writing my post as there was an astronomical amount of more information.
There was much more happening in the surrounding cities, including military clashes, killings, destruction. It was not only Allende,” recounted Chivis.
There was little or no press coverage except for Borderland Beat that published the first story on the massacre on March 26, 2011, just days after the terror ended. But no one paid attention. The story basically remained hidden (except to BB readers).
State emergency response authorities took some 250 calls from people reporting general disorder, fires, fights and home invasions throughout the region. But numerous people interviewed said no one came to help. The police emergency line 089 received 26 calls from Allende and 1,200 from Piedras Negras between March 18 and March 22, 2011.
Of the calls, 100 were to report 42 different fires in Piedras Negras, and nine in Allende.
Despite the calls. No authority responded. No municipal, state nor federal authorities. Due to the inaction of the authorities, there were no apprehensions for the horrific acts.
The police recorded emergency calls for help.
"Help! They are burning! They are burning houses!"
Nothing happened, there was no response. The government allowed the town of Allende to burn and their residents to be massacred.
There was a recorded emergency call from a female frantic reporting on the incidents; "Allende is a town without law, burning houses, the abduction of many people, there are many people missing, the Zetas they took them. I think someone betrayed the cartel because there is a brutal, horrible disorder. Please there are too many people missing, there are looting homes. This has been occurring since Friday afternoon and it's going on every night." The caller then hung up.
Almost all Borderland Beat contributors at the time were getting messages on social media of people frantically pleading for help.
Months later the Governor Rubén Moreira set up an operation consisting of hundreds of state and federal police, that also included military to conduct a thorough investigation of the massacre. Between January 26 and February 5, 2014, they searched for traces of missing people.
They found many narco graves and perforated metal drums where the bodies were supposedly burned with fuel. They found bone fragments. In total, 66 bone fragments were found along with 68 dental fragments.
The massacre was so brutal that there were no clear numbers of how many victims actually died.
The government of Coahuila estimated that 28 people had disappeared. However other media sources estimated the number to be more around 42 to 60 disappearances who were believed to be dead. Other sources, specially witnesses on the ground, said that the real number was around 300 people that were missing and probably dead.
Of the missing 20 were relatives of Garza, countless friends and family of Cuéllar and 40 workers and friends of Moreno.
A couple of people connected to criminal activities from the incident were arrested but not directly charged for the massacre. It included mostly former local police and low level cartel members who were just following orders. No one really was charged for the massacre.
A criminal judge of Piedras Negras issued formal arrest for the former mayor of Allende, Sergio Alonso Rodriguez Lozano, for crimes committed in the Zetas slaughter that occurred in Allende on March 2011.
The former mayor was charged with aggravated kidnapping and complicity in the massive disappearance of residents in Allende.
He was also charged with having knowledge of the crimes that Los Zetas were going to commit in later days, as he and another official attended a meeting with Los Zetas and agreed not to intervene to allow Los Zetas to operate freely.
The Mexican federal authorities question the role of the US authorities and pointed out the failure of the DEA to be transparent hindering the investigation to find the truth of what really happened. The Mexican government maintained that the DEA held import
ant information needed to understand what role people played in events leading to the massacre. The Coahuila prosecutor's office had not been able to extradite or obtain information from the "main players" of the massacre that were in custody in the United States, for at least two of them were protected witnesses in the US.
The Mexican government would eventually apologize to the community of Allende for having failed them in protecting them and holding people accountable.
El Zeta 40
Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, El Z-40 was born in 1973, in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, part of a poor large family consisting of six brothers and six sisters. El Z-40, grew up near the border with the United States. In his youth he was part of a gang known as "Los Tejas," in Dallas, Texas. The gang dedicated themselves to stealing cars and the sale of street drugs. They were part of the network of the Gulf cartel operating in the United States. In 1993 at the age of 23 he was arrested in Dallas on minor charges and for resisting arrest.
He would eventually become judicial police in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. In 1999 at the age of 27 years of age he would join the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, known as Los Zetas. Los Zetas was mainly composed of former military deserters and at the time, were led by Arturo Guzmán Decena, Z-1, under the orders of Osiel Cárdenas Guillén.
They essentially formed Mexico’s first narco-army. Many of the soldiers came from impoverished backgrounds. The army had offered jobs but the cartels offered money and power. The three most trusted men within the Zetas were Guzmán Decena (Z-1), Rogelio González Pizaña (Z-2), and Heriberto Lazcano (Z-3); the Zs were code names denoting their ranking and seniority in the organization.
These three men, along with new recruit Treviño Morales (Z-40), embarked on secret missions into cities and towns across Tamaulipas, including Nuevo Laredo. This was Treviño Morales’s hometown, and he knew the targets intimately. He gained the reputation of a traitor. They were there to execute members rivals of the Gulf cartel and ensure that the gulf cartel remained the most powerful drug-trafficking organization in the gulf coast.
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