One year, the moment arrived and the order came down that in thirty days exactly, no one, absolutely no one, would be allowed to sell a single packet of cocaine. Not even a tiny amount could be sold in Juárez. No one would be able to do it. Why? There was an announcement that something like three thousand kilos of cocaine had been lost. But the small-time sellers who were causing problems for the cartel that was in control of the plaza did not pay attention to this order because they had never really understood the power of the organization and they thought that they could disobey the orders of the cartel. So what happened? The people who had stolen these drugs and who were selling it on their own were identified and executed. We are talking about a massive execution of about seventy people.
Somewhat earlier, there had been another problem, this time with car thieves. No one was in control over what they were doing. It developed into a real problem, and the police themselves asked for help from the cartel to dismantle these gangs of car thieves. So there was another massive cleanup of a group of some forty-five young punkso who were dealing in stolen cars.
When these people were rounded up, the operation was not carried out by just one group. You could never say that it was done only by sicarios working for the cartel. The operation also included elements of the municipal police and the state and federal judicial police working with the cartel. We are talking about some eight hundred elements working together to get rid of this group of seventy dealers and the other group of forty-five car thieves who were causing a lot of trouble.
And these bodies are now buried in various colonias and houses throughout the city. And these are bodies that are never going to see the light of day. Or in the case that someday these bodies are found, they will never be identified. If it is difficult to recognize five bodies buried in a common grave, how do you ever think that it will be possible to identify seventy people in a mass grave when they have been put into the ground many years ago completely naked?
Not all of these people died immediately. Among those who were kidnapped, there were a dozen or more of them who were held and given the chance to live for several days before being killed. Why? Because they knew people inside the cartel and they had earned a special privilege. Because they were people who were working in some capacity as informants for the cartel. And others were informants for the police. And not just for the police in Mexico, but some of them had crossed over to the United States to give information to the police agencies there about what was going on in Mexico.
These people received a very special treatment. I remember one time when we heated up two-hundred-liter tubs of water. The people were tied up at the shoulders, their bodies suspended over the tub using a winch, and they were lowered little by little into the boiling water. When they fainted, they were taken out of the water and there was a doctor there who revived them. And then parts of their bodies were cut off—parts that were completely burned, cooked. And they would revive and react once again, and they were lowered again into the water little by little until they finally died. These deaths are not the work of a sicario. This is the work of sick people. Sick people. People who enjoy seeing the suffering of another.
THE FUNCTION OF A SICARIO
The function of a sicario is to do away with a person immediately. Whether by a bullet or a knife or a blow, so quick and clean that the person feels nothing.
If you are going to kill someone in a car, for example, when a sicario is a professional, he does not do it like any imitation sicario. Here is the car and the target is driving and you have to kill him. An imitator shoots up the whole car . . . bam bam bam bam bam . . . spitting bullets all over the place. When a real sicario works and has a target and the target is driving, he makes a tight circle with the bullets right here through the car door where it will hit the target near his heart, or here through the windshield where it will hit the target in the head. This is the work of a sicario. The rest are imitators.
A real sicario has no need to make the person suffer. Because the person is already suffering from the first moment that he knows he is being followed. There is something that he feels, even if the target has nerves of steel, even if he is very strong, he feels it and he suffers.
Among the jobs that have been done, there are various ways of targeting the objective in the car. You might have a car stop in front and one behind—there is always a car behind that helps to avoid crossfire. One car pulls up alongside the target car to shoot. Several other cars will trap the objective in his car so that he cannot escape. Once the target is shot, the various cars leave the scene all going in different directions. There are ways of doing it so that there is no crossfire.
There are difficult moments when the order is to . . . well, there can be some mistakes, and sometimes one of your close companions ends up being the target. This is very difficult because the order comes to do away with one of our own. You can never ask why. The only one who knows why is the person who gives the order, and that is the boss. And the boss never makes a mistake. And if he makes a mistake, it is possible that the order will come again. That is, the order will be given to do away with anyone who might know that the original order might have been in error. These moments were very difficult for me. And if the order comes and you are ordered to kill a person who is your own companion.... Many times there are mistakes....
But during your trajectory through life, there comes a moment when you hit a roadblock, you reach your limit. And so when the day came and I hit my limit, I suddenly stopped drinking, I stopped smoking, and I stopped consuming drugs. I said to myself: “No more.” This day was a lot of fun for the person above me, my boss at the time.
He says, “You want some perico, some cocaine?”
“No thank you.”
“How about a drink?”
“No thanks, sir.”
“Cigarette?”
“No thank you, sir.”
He was shocked and started laughing at me. “What’s happening with you?”
“No more for me.”
“Will you be able to handle the work sober?”
“I am the one who does the work, not the cocaine, the alcohol, or the cigarettes.”
But I knew that in my life something was causing me to change. And that to always be drugged or drunk did not allow me to think clearly or completely about what I needed to do. When I began to take this step and when they started making fun of me, I started to feel persecuted by my own companions and coworkers. It was difficult to see how when I moved from one hotel to another ... because I never lived in the safe houses. Just like this motel room, the safe houses were only to be used for a time to do a job, and then they would be abandoned. The only time I stayed in a safe house was if I had to stay to take care of somebody who had been beaten up or to carry out an interrogation.
When I found that I needed to move about from place to place, I knew the techniques for doing that. I had helped many of my companions and coworkers and trained them in how to follow people and keep them under surveillance. So when this happened to me, when I tried to get away, it was less than two days before I realized that I was being followed and followed and followed. And then the day came that I decided to confront the person who was in charge of me.
CHILD OF GOD
I remember one time when I was leaving one of the safe houses and heading for a hotel. I had figured out earlier that I was being followed by my own companions. But this did not worry me too much. This is very common when someone stops drinking and taking drugs. It usually means one of two things. First, it may mean that the person is going to spend some time at home for a change. The second possibility is that he wants to run away, to get out of the life altogether. So the bosses are on guard regarding these situations. If the bosses say, “Here, have a drink,” then you have to drink. If they say, “Smoke,” you have to smoke. If they tell you to take drugs, you have to do it.
They know that if a person is not under the influence of any substances, then they are going to be rea
lly top-notch because they are fully aware of all of their five senses. At this time, my normal state was to drink about a liter of whiskey every day, a cuarta of cocaine (which is quite a few grams because we were snorting it all day long), and smoke one or two packs of cigarettes. This was my normal condition. When people saw me consuming cocaine, it was no problem for me because I didn’t care if people were there or not. I might be talking to someone and do drugs at the same time.... There are places where you can buy hits [he says “balas” (bullets)], and you can get it really fast. You just turn your back and inhale a line of cocaine, you don’t have to fool around with papers or anything. And since the death of Amado Carillo, cocaine has become easily available anywhere in Juárez.p
When you stop doing drugs, the person in charge of you starts to worry. I figured it was normal that they started following me and keeping me under surveillance. I seldom went to my house. I would sleep there one or two days and then go twenty or twenty-five days without going home. Why? For security. I always tried to keep them from knowing where I lived. I always had a room in a motel or friends with safe houses where I could go for a few hours and then go someplace else. Or go to a motel and shower, change clothes. Or I would invite some girls to go out and then return to some other place to sleep.
But when I stopped drinking, smoking, and using drugs, this was something that my bosses didn’t like. I stopped hanging out so much in hotels and started going home a lot more. This situation worried my bosses and my coworkers. What is going on with him? What is he up to? He is not the same person as before.
The only thing about getting off the drugs and alcohol that was beneficial to me was that it made the work I was doing at that time even better. When I quit drinking, smoking, and doing drugs I realized that I no longer functioned at 100 percent. I started to function at 200 percent. My work got so much better. I was stronger, faster, more aggressive. My instincts were sharper than ever. I did not hesitate.... When I got an order from a superior, I learned to look at his eyes, his body language, and even if his back was to me, I would see how he moved his head, his shoulders, his hands . . . and I would know what he was going to tell me before he spoke. I learned, and these senses got even sharper. When I quit these vices, instead of the work being harder, I began to be even better than before—better and sharper than ever.
I was so much better that I began to realize that on the way to my house I would always, always encounter this sign. It was a big billboard and it said:
IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS, CALL UPON HIM.
And a phone number. Well, I saw this sign every day, every single day for one or two months. Every day.
During these months, when they were anticipating a situation with me, I was going to be ready. Once we had to do a job in a discotheque with a bar here.
He sketches this out.
So here is the entrance. When they came in through this entrance, I was there accompanying the person I was guarding. Over here was an exit. I would never leave through the same door that I had entered. I easily got away by leaving through the back way, where an armored vehicle was waiting with people that I trusted at the ready. These were people I had chosen for the job who did not drink or smoke or do drugs.
The moment came when the change in me, in my character, was so radical that they doubted that I was not doing drugs. I had done so much in the past. “What are you doing, what are you taking?” They thought I was on some other kind of drug. I said, “No, nothing. I don’t want it anymore.” I told them that I was completely fed up, that I just could not do it anymore. I had taken drugs and used alcohol for practically my whole life. I couldn’t take it anymore.
Oh, there were times when I slept.
Here’s the bed, the pillow. Here on one side an AK-47, here at the end of the bed an AR-15, underneath a 9mm, or a 38-super. If there was a sound, I was so stressed that if I heard the least little sound, I would wake up immediately ready to shoot. Many times I did not go to my house because I felt so tense, so on edge, that if my wife made some sound or if I heard something that startled me while she was sleeping next to me, I was afraid that I would do something to hurt her. I could not tell the difference between a member of my family or an enemy.
There is a saying: “Never leave an enemy alive.” Because he will come looking for you and he will kill you. So for me, it was very difficult to sleep without my weapons. When I was doing a lot of drugs, I barely slept. I would doze off a little. Then I would have to get up, shower, and start doing drugs and drinking again. I would leave the house and sometimes get a motel room. And since I was alone, I would put the DO NOT DISTURB sign out. And pass a day or a day and a half sleeping. Completely alone. No one else in the room. I would pay for three or four days. Do not disturb. I would close everything and it would be very dark, and I would sleep and sleep and sleep.
When my colleagues began to see these changes in me, the moment came when I managed to escape from those who had me under surveillance. Due to the fact that I had trained a lot of these people in these techniques, I knew the tricks of how to escape when I was being followed. They were watching me. And since I had taught a lot of them—not all, but some of them—I could keep track of them. When they had not seen or heard from me for one or two days, they would start to call the house, and this really bothered me personally because I realized that they were not respecting my family or my privacy.
My bosses started giving me jobs to do that were really simple-minded. They would say to me, “Listen, this parking attendant at such-and-such a restaurant looked the wrong way at my wife. You! Go! Put him in his place.”
I mean, this was not a job for me. This was a job for a beginner. They knew that I was not the type of person who would be able to put someone in his place. My style of work was not, “Hey! Stop looking that way at so-and-so’s wife,” and give him a few slaps on the face. This was not a job for me, so I said, “Okay, I’ll take charge. I’ll order someone to do it.”
But they would come back and insist, “No! You do it. You take care of it.”
The problem was not that I was not capable of doing such a beginner’s job. Rather, because of all of the time I had spent living and working in this circle—ever since I received my first training—from the very first time that I received the order to execute someone . . . since I had been taught to spend days guarding someone ... since I had learned to spend thirty or sixty days in silence and closed up in a room . . . since they taught me to be under the influence of drugs and to stay awake for up to two weeks . . . since I was taught to never ever leave an enemy alive....
All of these circles for me had only one purpose. I could no longer go and just say to this guy, or to anyone, “Look, don’t be a pain in the ass.” My attitude did not allow me to just say, “Hey. Stop bothering me. Go away.” No. My attitude was that of a killer. My job was to carry out executions.
When I no longer had drugs or alcohol in my body, I started to see inside of myself and to reflect on my life. I said, “This is going to be forever, for my whole life.” This happened to me. I go out and I can no longer just blow it off and tell the person to quit causing trouble for the boss or whoever. No, instead I get there and I hit the person or even bam—take out the pistol and shoot him. Just like that! Normal. I get in the car and leave, and none of this bothers me at all. And so when the boss gets upset with this, I argue, “So why are you scolding me?”
“Well, because we told you just to threaten him, not to kill him.”
And I say, “No, you don’t send me just to give a warning. You don’t use me just to scare people. That is not what I am trained to do. If that is what you want, then go find someone who is just starting out.”
I had lived through too much. The circle was closing in. This vicious circle that all of us in this life pass through, those of us who are trained and selected over the years. It is a circle, and there comes a time when you know intuitively what you have to do. If they send a certain person, it is because they know what that
person is going to do. They will not send someone without knowing exactly what they are capable of doing. Even if the person is really small, the size of the person doesn’t matter. The person might be taller or bigger, or smaller than you, but all are equally dangerous. What matters is that you have the wisdom and the nerve to know what to do with the person.
What happened to me at this time was that I could not control my instincts to carry out an order if it only went halfway. When they said, “We want him alive.” Okay. What this meant is that we would use the complete team and equipment. All would be dressed in military uniforms, or uniforms of the federal judicial police or of the federal attorney general’s office. All in black, bulletproof vests, official vehicles.
Sometimes I acted only as an observer. But if a target started to run away or escape, then the observer might have to become the executioner. You could not commit the error of stopping someone and then let him get away. You could not under any circumstances allow this to happen.
So the person with the most training is the one who would be assigned the position of watching over the entire operation. And in the case that something went wrong, the observer would be aware of what was going on, and this person who was also a good executioner would be in a position to finish the job. When the person has been shot, whether in a house or in a car, after the attack there would always be someone assigned to approach the scene alone to give the target the tiro de gracia, the coup de grâce. This is to secure the objective. Until this is done, the job is not finished. Even if the person is completely stitched with bullets and the body is drenched with blood, the job is not finished until it is secured. The secure job is a shot to the head, and if you want the job secured, this is what you must do.
El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin Page 12
