Gangland

by Jerry Langton

  Huerta Ríos was arrested in connection with the murder of a police officer, as well as trafficking. “We have information that as the representative of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel, he held meetings with members of the Gulf Cartel with the aim of agreeing on drug distribution zones, in order to avoid clashes between the rival gangs,” said Marisela Morales Ibañez, deputy federal attorney general for organized crime.

  His odd nickname came from the fact that low-level drug exporters, the people who actually carry the drugs with them over the fence or the Rio Grande, are called Burros (Donkeys), and as the local boss, he was considered mother of the donkeys.

  On the morning of April 2, a wealthy businessman known as Alejandro Peralta Alvarez put on his snappy new, bright white Abercrombie & Fitch tracksuit and went for his daily jog in Bosque de Chapultepec park in Mexico City's exclusive Las Lomas neighborhood. As he entered the park, he was arrested by dozens of cops. Although he had official identification indicating his name, Peralta Alvarez was an alias for Vicente Carrillo Leyva, son of Juárez Cartel kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes and No. 2 in the organization now led by his uncle, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a fugitive from justice although not charged as of the writing of this book. Federales tracked him down because his wife, Celia Karina Quevedo Gastelum, had refused to change her name.

  On the same day, Guatemalan police arrested Juan Policarpo, who in November 2008 had led a gang that ambushed a bus in that country. Believing the passengers to be members of a rival gang, he had them all shot and then burned their bodies. The bus actually contained 15 Nicaraguan farm laborers and a Dutch tourist. Guatemalan authorities blamed the Mexican cartels, which they claimed had spilled into their country.

  Inside La Familia

  In Michoacán, an informant told police that members of La Familia would be attending the christening of a baby boy born to one of the cartel's members. He also told them how La Familia works. Cartel member travel the state, visiting rehab centers, hospitals, employment offices and anywhere else they can find people who are desperate or at least needy. They take them in, feed and clothe them, give them a place to stay in exchange for abstention from drugs and alcohol and regular attendance at prayer meetings. After a while, the person becomes a cartel employee, doing whatever they can to further the cause. “La Familia uses religion as a way of forcing cohesion among its members,” said Raúl Benítez Manaut, a researcher for the Humanities Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades (Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Science) and the Smithsonian Institution. “They are building a new kind of disciplined army that we have never seen here before. It makes them more dangerous.” The informant said he had been expelled because he had strayed from the drug-free path.

  And police had noticed a change in La Familia as well. Their victims were always found with cardboard notes attached to them, often poorly spelled. At first, most of the notes had anti-drug messages, pointing out that the victim had been killed for manufacturing or selling drugs in Michoacán. But in 2009, the notes turned more sinister with messages like: “I was victim of a kidnapping by those who call themselves La Familia Michoacána; thus, I am carrying out justice by my own hand.”

  At least 400 police and soldiers surrounded a church in Morelia on April 19. After a tense standoff, they arrested 44 people, including Rafael Cedeño Hernández, who was said to be second-in-command of La Familia. Along with the detainees, police discovered three AR-15s, an AK-47, six handguns, five grenades and four bags of marijuana and cocaine.

  Chapter 10

  The Roll Call of Death

  But all these arrests came at a steep price. On March 22, Édgar Garcia Dimas, commander in charge of kidnapping and extortion for the Michoacán state police who had been decorated by the FBI for finding and returning an American fugitive who was hiding out in Morelia, was stopped at a red light in the town of Chapingo when two cars stopped on either side of his. Gunmen pumped 50 shells into him. A nearby patrol car heard the noise and its driver shot at the fleeing cars. Somehow, he managed to shoot one of the drivers in the head, killing him. The car careened out of control and slammed into a university building. The passenger, clearly hurt and perhaps shot, staggered a few feet before the other car picked him up. The police officer was also shot in the exchange. Later that day, unknown gunmen took a few pot shots at a police squad car on the other side of town.

  On March 26, news broke that the body of an agent of the U.S. Marshals El Paso office had been found in Juárez. Vincent Bustamante had indeed been killed execution-style with four bullet wounds to the back of his head, but he was in Juárez because he was on the run from American authorities. When he tried to pawn a Glock pistol in El Paso, the shop's owner called the ATF. The subsequent investigation concluded that Bustamente had stolen and pawned a number of Glock and Ruger handguns, a shotgun and a pair of binoculars from the marshal's office. He was wanted after failing to appear at a court date a week before his discovery. The reasons for his execution are still unclear.

  On April 21, two days after the failed attempt to free Gámez Garcia that cost the lives of six Federales and two prison guards, the Archbishop of Durango, Héctor González Martínez, called a press conference to discuss the fact that more than 200 priests had fallen victim to extortion plots by the cartels. Frustrated, González Martínez revealed what he claimed was the whereabouts of Mexico's most wanted man, Sinaloa Cartel chief Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera. “He lives in Guanaceví,” he said. “Everybody knows it except the authorities.” Guanaceví is a small, pleasant town tucked away in the coniferous forests of the Sierra Madre mountains.

  After the press conference, the Archbishop's spokesman, Victor Manuel Solis, went into damage control, saying that his comments were “reckless, dangerous and to a certain degree, irresponsible.” He added that “we have had to take some precautionary measures for the lives of our priests.” Officials in Guanaceví immediately denied El Chapo was in or around their town.

  The following day, Guzmán Loera, who had recently been named by Forbes magazine on its list of billionaires, sent González Martínez a reply. Police came upon a Ford Fiesta on a road just north of Guanaceví. Inside were two plain clothes Federales. Their hands and feet were bound with duct tape, and there were obvious signs of torture. Their bodies had been riddled with fire from numerous AK-47s. Attached to one them was a note that read: “You'll never get to El Chapo—not the government, not the priests.”

  And on May 17, fifteen people were murdered in Chihuahua in seven separate incidents. The first victim was 18-year-old Victor Manuel Felix Soto, who was hanging out at the corner of Avenidas Arturo Gámiz and Francisco Villa in Chihuahua. He was shot 10 times by a 9mm handgun from inside a car that sped off at 1:30 a.m. A few hours later, at 5:40, a man in the Dr Porfirio Parra neighborhood of Juárez discovered two decapitated bodies in his front yard. One was identified as 25-year-old neighbor David Olivos Aguilera, the other was never claimed. At 7:25 a.m., a body of a middle-aged man bound and gagged with duct tape was found at the old Honduras Raceway in southern Juárez, which was being converted into luxury housing. He had two bullet holes in the back of his head. At 11:50 a.m., an unidentified man walking through the Barrio Alto neighborhood of Juárez was shot in the head by a masked gunman, who became lost in the crowd. At 2:48 p.m., the bullet-ridelled body of Jose Alfredo Gallegos Torres, a young father and owner of a small trucking firm, was found in the middle of a Juárez intersection. At 3:05 p.m., witnesses in the Salvarcar Sauzal Plains neighborhood Juárez saw masked men slit known drug dealer Grade Jorge Lopez's throat then shoot him three times in the face. At 7:58 p.m., an unidentified man was gunned down in a drive-by in the San Angel districts of Juárez. And, at about 11:00 p.m., a white Jeep Grand Cherokee stopped in front of the trendy Bar San Martin in Juárez, let out two gunmen who killed Roberto Acosta and his friend, Juan Holguin Rascon, before fleeing. Nearby officers from the attorney general's office heard the shots and came running, but could not
pursue the SUV.

  On May 18, the cartels showed that they were capable of large-scale military-style operations. On federal highway No. 23, between the central cities of Zacatecas and Jerez de García Salinas, there is a sleepy road that goes for two miles and leads to nothing except a prison called the El centro regional de readaptación social de Cieneguillas (The Cieneguillas Regional Center for Social Rehabilitation). At 4:45 a.m., a helicopter landed outside the prison. It was soon joined by about 17 vehicles, some bearing Federales logos. At least 80 armed men assembled and 30 of them in Federales uniforms approached the prison and were allowed entry. The helicopter then took off and circled above the prison.

  Once inside, the men in Federales uniforms forced the prison's guards at gunpoint to free 53 men from their cells, most of them were associated with Los Zetas and at least 11 of whom had been convicted of murder. All the men were taken to the trucks, which drove off without incident.

  After watching the prison's surveillance tapes, authorities became convinced it was an inside job. Noting that the whole operation took just a few minutes, not a shot was fired and that it looked like it was staged beforehand, 42 prison employees, including its director, were arrested. “It is clear to us that this was perfectly planned,” said Zacatecas PRD Governor Amalia García Medina. Six of the men were recaptured in Zacatecas on tips from informants, but state authorities later determined that they had been decoys and that the “informants” were actually associates of Los Zetas, who were keeping the police busy chasing the six while the perpetrators and their friends escaped.

  Later that day, three severed heads were found by a roadside in the resort town of Zihuatanejo de Azueta, just three miles from Ixtapa in the state of Guerrero. Their matching bodies were found in a taxi about a mile away. There was a note, but authorities would not release what it said. It was later determined that all three of the dead men were police officers who had participated in a raid on a chili-drying facility in the Zacatecas city of Fresnillo the previous January that had netted about 12 tons of marijuana.

  About a week later, on the morning of May 26, in a series of raids all over Michoacán, Federales arrested the mayors of 10 cities and towns (Apatzingan, Uruapan, Buenavista Tomatlan, Coalcoman, Nuevo Urecho, Arteaga, Tepalcatepec, Aguililla, Tumbiscatio and Ciudad Hidalgo) on various corruption charges. They represented all three major parties. Also arrested were 17 other officials including Citlali Fernandez Gonzalez, Michoacán's former secretary of state for public safety and by then an advisor to Governor Leonel Godoy Rangel; Mario Bautista Ramirez, the head of the state police academy and formerly the state's public security minister; and Carlos Vega Saldana, Michoacán's deputy secretary for public security. “They didn't inform us of the operation,” Godoy Rangel told reporters. “Initially we didn't know if the officials and former officials had been kidnapped or were detained.” Charges were eventually dropped against Gonzalez, Ramirez and Saldana.

  Information leading to the arrests came from informants after a raid in the state uncovered 22 high-volume methamphetamine labs, and was seen as a major move by the government. “This is a huge blow to the cartel. These ties are indispensable for the operation of these organizations,” said Victor Clark Alfaro, head of the Binational center for Human Rights in Tijuana. “Until now the government has never dared to touch the political classes tied to drug trafficking ... this is an important step.”

  Siege tactics

  The next major confrontation between the government and the cartels took place in Acapulco, which was the center of so much trafficking that Mexican media had been referring to it as Narcopulco, and introduced a new weapon, the rocket-propelled grenade. The Caleta neighborhood had once been a prime tourist destination with hotels visited and even owned by people like John Wayne, Elizabeth Taylor and Johnny Weissmuller, but has since attracted a lower-budget crowd mainly from Canada and the rest of Mexico.

  The ignition point for what happened on June 6 is up for debate. The official word is that a mixed force of soldiers and Federales were acting on an informant's tip and stormed a building known to contain members of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel. But eyewitnesses told local media that the shooting began when a white Chevy Suburban smashed through a Federale checkpoint. The ensuing battle—in which both sides exchanged automatic gunfire and the occupants of the building shot grenades at the invaders—went on for at least two hours and left 13 cartel members, two Federales and two innocent civilians dead.

  Early in the struggle, some Federales who had broken into the building discovered four shirtless, handcuffed men who identified themselves as Guerrero state police officers. They were taken for questioning to determine if they had been kidnapped or were collaborating with the cartel members. Some men from inside the house tried to make an escape, but their black Mercedes-Benz M350 ran into a wall when soldiers shot out the tires. They were killed. Another group of armed men came from another part of Acapulco in an effort to surround the government forces, but they fled after two of them were killed by .50-caliber machine gun shells from an army Humvee that arrived just after them.

  After the siege, reporters were given a tour of the house by the army colonel who led the assault. He wore a mask to protect his anonymity. He showed them the 13 handguns, 36 assault rifles and two rocket-propelled grenade launchers seized in the building. One Federale told a Mexican newspaper that their weapons and communications equipment looked like “toys” compared to those of the cartels. They arrested the five surviving men within the building. The dead and arrested men were identified as sicarios. One of the dead was a much-feared assassin the government would only identify as “El Comandante Magaña,” an important member of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel.

  Less than 48 hours later, gunmen emerged from two SUVs in front of a Tijuana police station. They raked the building with automatic weapons and threw grenades, managing to kill two officers who were in a car parked in front of the station. At about the same time, another police station, about two miles away, was shot up the same way. Two officers who were outside the building were hit and wounded. One died later that day. The message was clear.

  At another resort, the government apprehended another big prize. Since the investigation of the murder of Tello Quiñonez led to the mass arrest of the Cancún police force, the army had been acting in their place. Acting on an informant's tip, on June 15 the army stormed a luxury beachside estate and arrested Juan Manuel “El Puma” Jurado Zarzoza, Luis Aguirre “Martin” Rafael Muñoz, Cristina “La Flaca” (Skinny) Marquez Alcala and Estanislao “El Gordo” (Fatso) Alejandro Sanchez. According to the attorney general's office, Juardo Zarzoza had been sent to prison for robbing a jewelry store in 2003, had become involved with drug traffickers while incarcerated and worked for the Gulf Cartel in Cancún, eventually becoming their top man there. Inside the house, the army confiscated nine assault rifles, 10 handguns, 35 pounds of cocaine and 100 pounds of marijuana. Interrogation of the suspects and records found within the home led officials to believe that two men—Octavio Almanza Morales and Napoleón de Jesús Mendoza Aguirre—were responsible for the assassination of Tello Quiñonez, and issued warrants for their arrests.

  On the same day, the Chihuahua state police received an anonymous citizen's complaint about some “funny business” going on at a ranch just outside the mountain town of Madera. When soldiers from the 35th Infantry Battalion arrived, they were met by men in army uniforms wearing ski masks and were told “we're on your side; we have authorization to work in this town.” But when the commander of the battalion noticed that the men were carrying AK-47s—the Mexican army issues only German Heckler & Koch, Belgian FN, American Colt or domestic FX assault rifles—he ordered their arrest. All 25 men at the ranch were rounded up without a shot being fired. It was a chilling new wrinkle in the drug war. Although cartel members and associates had long posed as police to commit crimes more easily, this was the first time that men had been caught in counterfeit army uniforms. Since the army was held in much high
er esteem than police by the public when it came to honesty and integrity, this was a significant find.

  The incident followed just two days after Mexican human rights watchdogs appealed to the American media to reveal abuses by the military in Mexico, particularly in Juárez. A coalition of non-government organizations accused them of using abusive tactics to obtain information about suspects, particularly kidnapping potential witnesses off the street, blindfolding them and beating them during interrogation. They called for a thorough investigation of the military's role in four unsolved murders and eight missing people. “The guarantee of public security has been totally broken,” said Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, president of the Chihuahua Human Rights Commission. “Juárez was better off without the soldiers.”

  That night the national newscasts led with the story of a Michoacán ambulance that was attacked with grenades and assault rifle fire allowing gunmen to kill the patient inside (who had already been wounded in a firefight in Morelia) and set the vehicle ablaze and the family whose 1972 Chevy van was shot up in Juárez, leaving all four—including a 14-year-old boy and 12-year-old girl—dead. The girl, Priscilla Ibarra Alfaro, was a U.S. citizen from San Elizario, Texas, who was riding with her uncle, aunt and cousin to their home in the Barreales neighborhood.

  As the long hot summer of 2009 went on, government forces suffered many setbacks. Ernesto Cornejo Valenzuela was a firebrand PAN politician who was actually in jail serving a sentence for his part in an anti-PRI riot when he was elected mayor of the Sonora town of Benito Juárez. On June 26, he was campaigning to become a congressman for the district when he and some campaign workers stopped at a taco stand in downtown Benito Juárez. When gunmen from an SUV opened fire, Cornejo Valenzuela managed to get safely to the ground, but two of his volunteers were killed. Many of his followers blamed PRI governor Eduardo Bours Castelo for the attack, who was never charged, but the mainstream media accused the Sinaloa Cartel, which had absorbed the Sonora Cartel, and considered pro-Calderón candidates to be their enemies.