Lozano Gracia announced that he was closing in on the cartel, but it wasn't fast enough for Zedillo. After 44 officers were lost, for only eight small-time arrests, Zedillo fired Lozano Gracia and replaced him with Jorge Madrazo Cuellar. One of Madrazo Cuellar's first moves was to appoint General José de Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo as national drug czar. It was a calculated move because, while the reputations of the police and politicians were tarnished, the military was considered clean.
His tenure and the army's reputation of being above corruption lasted just two weeks. Defense Secretary Enrique Cervantes Aguirre met Gutiérrez Rebollo at home and determined that it was quite lavish for his salary, so he started asking questions. The 62-year-old Gutiérrez Rebollo became nervous and confused and suffered a mild heart attack. Cervantes Aguirre continued questioning him (even within the ambulance that he'd called) and learned that the general had been sharing all of the government's information with Amado Carrillo Fuentes, head of the Juárez Cartel, in exchange for cash, real estate and cars for the previous seven years, essentially protecting him from the law.
Called “El Señor de los Cielos” (The Lord of the Skies) because of the fleet of jetliners he employed to bring product from Colombia, the DEA named Carrillo Fuentes the most powerful drug lord of his era and estimated his personal fortune to be in the neighborhood of $25 billion. He was very different than the wild Arellano Félix brothers. Low-key and well-spoken, Carrillo Fuentes often worked in conjunction with other cartels and organizations without much violence. He'd been on the run from the law since early 1993, and would often fly to places like Russia and Cuba when he felt law enforcement was getting too close.
After his connection with Gutiérrez Rebollo was revealed, Carillo Fuentes decided to change his appearance. While undergoing plastic surgery and liposuction at Santa Mónica Hospital in Mexico City on July 3, 1997, he was killed by an overdose of the anaesthetic Dormicum. Rumors abounded that he was killed by a rival or that it was actually a stand-in who was killed and Carillo Fuentes escaped, but DEA investigators determined it was him by comparing fingerprints to his old U.S. immigration card.
With Carillo Fuentes out of the picture, the Juárez Cartel fell into decline, losing men and territory to the Sinaloans. More important, though, was the loss of his calm diplomacy and his connections with the cops. The cartels became far more violent. With crime absolutely rampant and the economy still in ruins, in the 2000 election, the Mexican people elected Vicente Fox to be their first non-PRI president since 1920. He beat the PRI's Labastida Ochoa, who was also running on an anti-cartel platform.
Early in his administration, the government scored a couple of huge strikes against the Tijuana Cartel. On February 10, 2002, Ramón Arellano Félix was in Mazatlán (allegedly to assassinate Sinaloa's Ismael Zambada García) when he was stopped for a traffic violation by a cop who did not recognize him. The police presence in the city had been increased after two judges were assassinated in less than a week and Mardi Gras was approaching. Ramón got out of his Volkswagen Beetle and shot the cop. In the subsequent shootout, Ramón, his associate and another police officer died. Ramón had been No. 2 on the FBI's Most Wanted List, right behind Osama bin Laden, on the basis that he had killed or ordered the murders of more than 300 people. After his body was stolen from a Tijuana funeral home, rumors that he had faked his death surfaced.
Less than a month later, Benjamin was arrested. The DEA learned through an informant that his oldest daughter had a rare and easily recognizable facial disfigurement and that Benjamin never let her get too far from him. They located her in Puebla, a city between Mexico City and Veracruz. “Once we knew [Benjamín] was with his family, we could keep track of where he was by keeping track of his daughter with the very prominent chin,” Mexican Defense Secretary Ricardo Vega Garcia said. By following her, they found Benjamin's otherwise hidden house in the suburbs. A unit of the Mexican Army stormed the house and arrested the drug lord barefoot and in his pajamas. Entire rooms in his house were filled floor to ceiling with cash.
His arrest was followed by that of his lead trafficker, Jesús Manuel “El Tarzan” Herrera Barraza, in Tecate along with Tijuana police chief Carlos Otal Namur and 40 of his officers suspected of helping the cartel. Namur subsequently resigned as police chief, but was never charged.
The arrests were met with cynicism on both sides of the border. Many Americans, used to the PRI's passiveness in the face of the cartels, thought the arrests were meaningless. “It's going to be very interesting to see if the Mexican judicial system—we're talking about judges—are going to have the capability to try these people, understanding how dangerous they are and what it means to them and their families,” said Ana Maria Salazar, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for drug enforcement and a specialist on Mexican organized crime. “I have my doubts.”
While many Mexicans countered that even if Benjamin was put away, there were plenty of other qualified people who would be more than willing to step up to the plate. “You can cut off the heads of an organization, but they will always grow back,” said Professor Luis Astorga, who researches drug trafficking at the Institute of Social Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “The business carries on because there are always people from within or outside the cartel that are waiting to take over.”
Others believed that the crackdown on the Tijuana cartel was an indication that Fox and the Americans were conspiring to favor Guzmán Loera and the Sinaloa Cartel. This opinion was summed up in the popular narcocorrida “The Ballad of Ramón Arellano Félix” as sung by Los Embajadores del Norte (the Northern Ambassadors).
The Sinaloans had in fact been expanding. In 1996, Guzmán Loera befriended a group called the Colima Cartel—led by the José de Jesús Amezcua Contreras and his brothers Adán and Luis—who manufactured and traded methamphetamine. The major cartels had long tolerated the Colima Cartel because they had their hands full moving cocaine across the border, and most of them considered methamphetamine to be a low-volume, low-profit drug.
The move into meth
Guzmán Loera was the first of the big cartel leaders to see how wrong they all were. When all three Amezcua Contreras were arrested in 1997 and 1998, he took over their immense methamphetamine business. He is said to have loved the idea of meth because it could be manufactured easily in huge amounts with ingredients commonly sold in pharmacies and hardware stores, which meant he owed nothing to the Colombians. He quickly set up a network of meth factories close to the border, earning himself a new nickname, “El Rey de Cristal” (the Crystal King).
And he was expanding the Sinaloa Cartel's territory as well. Four brothers from the Sinaloa town of Badiraguato—Marcos Arturo, Carlos, Alfredo and Héctor Beltrán Leyva—had worked closely with the Sinaloa Cartel, particularly importing large amounts of cocaine from the Cali Cartel in Colombia. With the decline of the Sonora Cartel after the arrests of the Caro Quintera brothers, the Sinaloa Cartel allowed them to set up their own, allied organization called the Beltrán Leyva Cartel to keep pressure against the Tijuana Cartel and to handle the crossings into Arizona.
That move led the Tijuana Cartel to form an alliance with the Gulf Cartel. To compensate, the Sinaloa and Beltrán Leyva Cartels formed a pact with the Juárez Cartel, effectively creating two opposing groups of drug-trafficking organizations.
By the beginning of 2005, the Sinaloa and Beltrán Leyva Cartels were believed by the DEA to have as many as 40 men working in the city of Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas, which is the heart of the Gulf Cartel's territory. In May, 2005, Guzmán Loera, surrounded by 30 of his men, walked into the posh Paseo Colon restaurant in downtown Nuevo Laredo. His security detail locked the doors, confiscated cell phones from the restaurant's employees and 40 or so patrons “for security purposes,” ate a large meal, then paid for it and everybody else's, leaving a substantial tip.
That affront could not be tolerated by the Gulf Cartel, probably the most violent
of all the cartels, and may actually have been the spark that ignited the Mexican Drug War. At least, it was seen as a declaration of war between the two cartel alliances.
Original Gulf chief Juan García Ábrego was arrested soon after the creation of the cartel. He was replaced by Oscar Malherbe De León, who was himself arrested almost immediately afterwards. Sergio “El Checko” Gómez Garcia, took over and ruled for two weeks before being murdered by Salvador “Chava” (Chick) Gómez. He was soon killed by Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, who earned the nickname “El Mata Amigos” (the Friend Killer) and undisputed leadership of the organization.
Trouble in Nuevo Laredo
While he was consolidating his power, Cárdenas Guillén came up with a devilishly clever and effective plan. He was well aware of a group of Army special forces officers called Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (Special Forces Airmobile Group, or GAFE) who went through an intensive, six-month counter-insurgency and urban warfare training course from American, French and Israeli specialists. It was originally formed to provide security for the 1986 World Cup, but had become the government's primary weapon against the cartels.
By bribing and threatening government officials, Cárdenas Guillén managed to gain access to the unit's secret records and approached Lieutenant Arturo Guzmán Decena, who after a healthy bribe and huge salary increase, quit the army and assumed a position as Cárdenas Guillén's bodyguard. But he proved more valuable than that, as Cárdenas Guillén recruited 30 more men from GAFE through him. The men called Guzmán Decena “Zeta,” because his old army code name was Z1. Soon the former GAFE men and the men they trained became known as “Los Zetas.” Their duties expanded to collecting debts, securing disputed territory and assassinating enemies. Their signature was to make their victims' bodies so grotesque as to add an extra level of terror among those who might think of crossing them. Their tactics and weapons made them a weapon the other cartels, and even the Mexican military, couldn't match.
But Cárdenas Guillén also made a big mistake. In November 1999, a vehicle carrying a Gulf Cartel informant and a number of DEA and FBI agents was stopped and surrounded by Cárdenas Guillén and his men. Despite being apprehended, assaulted and threatened by having an immense number of AK-47s and AR-15s pointed at them, the Americans refused to surrender or hand the man over. Eventually they were allowed to leave as their abductors apparently decided against antagonizing the U.S. government any further.
This made Cárdenas Guillén an enemy of the United States, and on March 14, 2003, a Mexican Army unit acting on American intelligence surrounded his home and arrested him. The Gulf Cartel fell into some disarray after that. Cárdenas Guillén attempted to run things from prison via cell phone, but real leadership fell to his lieutenants, older brother Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas Guillén and childhood friend Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez. Without Cardenas Guillén in control—and with Guzmán Decena dead after an assassination at a restaurant in 2002—Los Zetas became less loyal and more militant, often making their own deals without the consent or knowledge of the Gulf Cartel.
With the Sinaloa and Beltrán Leyva Cartels moving in and the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas protecting their turf, a small war broke out. Automatic gunfire was heard frequently. Locals knew who the bad guys were and stayed as far away as possible. The media started calling Nuevo Laredo “Narco Laredo.” Radio journalist Raul S. Llamas told the BBC he stopped reporting on cartel violence after a friend and colleague was murdered for saying the wrong thing. Guzmán Loera upped the ante Colombian-style by paying for the school supplies and healthcare for poor people in the city. José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, Mexico's drug czar, begged the media to let those people know that everything the cartels were giving people was the result of illegality and violence. “Help me make the people realize that this peso or this dollar that the drug trafficker gives is dripping in blood,” he asked.
A Federale chasing a Ford Expedition SUV that was speeding in Nuevo Laredo was killed by passengers firing AR-15 assault rifles. The gunmen then fled on foot. When the truck was searched, it was found to be bulletproof and contained four hand grenades, five more AR-15s, three MP5 submachine guns, two telescopes, 11 cell phones and more than 2,000 rounds of ammunition. In the past, Mexican and U.S. officials said, law enforcement officers probably would not have given chase to an expensive SUV with blacked-out windows, either out of fear or because they were on the drug cartels' payroll. Officials believe Ezequiel “Tony Tormenta (Tony Storm)” Cardenas Guillen, the brother of jailed cartel boss Osiel Cardenas Guillen, was a passenger in the SUV.
When the chief of the Nuevo Laredo police abandoned his post, attorney Alejandro Domínguez Coello was the only volunteer for the job. Seven hours after he was sworn into office, the father of three was surrounded by Chevrolet SUVs and shot to death. He was the fiftieth person and fourth police officer to be killed in the Nuevo Laredo war. Three days later, the Federales moved in and were fired upon by the local cops. Nobody was killed, but one Federale was critically injured. When the factions waged a firefight in front of the American consulate using assault rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, the consul and his staff packed up and went home. The fact that the consulate left Nuevo Laredo was a shock to many Americans who had no idea how violent their neighbor to the south had become, since the fighting had not yet spilled over the border.
Fox was compelled to move. He sent in 800 army soldiers who detained all 700 members of the Nuevo Laredo police force and sent the 41 involved in the attack on the Federales to Mexico City for interrogation. Fox likened Nuevo Laredo to Chicago in the 1920s. He said it would take years of hard work and millions and millions of dollars to fix the problem.
One of Mexico's most popular singers, Valentin “El Gallo de Oro (the Golden Rooster)” Elizalde Valencia, gave a concert at an open-air festival in Reynosa, just across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas, on November 25. At it, he sang a narcocorrida about Guzmán Loera and began and ended his show with his song “A Mis Enemigos” (To My Enemies), which had become something of an unofficial anthem for the Sinaloa Cartel. No more than 20 minutes after he left the stage, his Chevrolet Suburban SUV was surrounded and filled with bullets fired from AR-15s and handguns. Elizalde, his manager Mario Mendoza and driver Raymundo Ballesteros were all killed. A fourth person, believed to be a woman, was injured but escaped before authorities arrived.
If there was any doubt who was responsible, it was erased the following week. A series of videos started appearing on YouTube—including Elizalde's official autopsy video—that claimed that Los Zetas were taking responsibility for the hit. The videos received millions of views and hundreds of comments, including unambiguous death threats between Sinaloa and Gulf supporters.
And that's how 2005 ended in Mexico. Millions of people were crossing the border into the United States, a huge number of them with backpacks full of marijuana, cocaine or methamphetamines. They were bringing back immense amounts of cash and heavy weapons. Fox was bragging about the 46,000 drug-related arrests that had happened under his watch, not to mention the destruction of many clandestine airports and poppy fields, but was also begging for patience and funding. The cartels had aligned into two warring factions—the Sinaloa, Beltrán Leyva and Juárez on one side were facing off against the Tijuana and Gulf—who were making billions of dollars, recruiting new staff, appeasing the locals with handouts and bribing or killing opponents at will. Los Zetas were gaining confidence and making their own deals. The DEA, FBI and Border Patrol were spoiling for a fight. And the country was called to vote once again in an election that would determine their very precarious future as a nation.
Chapter 6
Trouble in Paradise
The Mexican Drug War did not start in a vacuum. It wasn't simply the case of a federal government cracking down on drug traffickers—nothing in Mexico is ever that simple. Although people in North America have long joked about how corrupt Mexican police and officials were, few realized how entrenched corrupti
on was in the culture until tourists started coming back in body bags.
Few places in the world are as welcoming and as naturally beautiful as the Caribbean coast of Quintana Roo. On the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in southeastern Mexico, Quintana Roo offers beaches with warm transparent crystal blue water and fine white sand. Away from the beaches, you can tour Mayan temples and pyramids, try the exquisite Yucatáneco cuisine or buy authentic Mexican handicrafts. Since the 1980s, places like Cozumel and Cancún have become familiar vacation haunts for Americans and Canadians alike. Travel agents refer to it as the Mayan Riviera, and it is where Hernán Cortés landed in 1519.
Most North Americans acknowledge some level of danger when traveling to Mexico, but Quintana Roo has a well-developed tourist culture, as have many other destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The best beaches and other hotspots are surrounded by lavish hotels, restaurants and entertainment complexes that cater to North Americans and a few Western Europeans. Everyone speaks English, American dollars are accepted everywhere and on Sundays you can catch NFL games in every bar. They are safe and hospitable, designed to make the visitor feel comfortable, at home, as it were, when thousands of miles from home. The greatest fear for most travelers is “Montezuma's revenge”—diarrhea caused by improperly stored food. Outside of those zones—where few North American tourists venture—lie places we'd call things like “the Other Mexico” where the local population lives. In some tourist destinations—like many in the Dominican Republic—the dividing line is marked with a high fence topped with razor wire; but in most places, tourists rely on visual cues or advice from hotel employees and other locals who rely on tourist dollars.
Demons in Eden
By 2006, Quintana Roo had made the news as a haven for organized crime. Frequent reports of drug trafficking and subsequent money-laundering made little impact on North Americans—many of whom pay little attention to Mexican news—until a different, more lurid type of organized crime was uncovered. Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho Ribeiro wrote a book called Los Demonios del Edén (The Demons of Eden), in which she revealed a massive child pornography and prostitution ring operating in this idyllic setting.
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