I am fevered and about to pass out. It came to me late yesterday, this fever, but I ignored it and now I sit here wondering if he will show up and wondering if I will be conscious when he shows up. I think he will not show. This is a test, an audition. I sip the ice water, lean down and caress the cat, look out into the glare and feel him watching me.
I must have him. Others question this appetite in me. They say he must be a psychopath. And maybe he is, but how can you know unless you meet him? Or they say he is evil, and then I ask them what evil means and they mutter but never clearly answer me. I think he is essential to understanding. He is my Marco Polo of slaughter.
I have been with mountain lions, twice less than ten feet away, once with the lion standing in the night screaming in my face. I consider them fellow citizens, not predators. The basic American lion kills about once a week—depending on the temperature and how long the meat holds—kills something in the range of seventy-five to one hundred pounds. Their dreams are based on white-tail deer. After the kill, which is quick in order to reduce the chance of injury, they stay on the carcass until it is gone or goes bad. It is not a business. I have no idea how they feel about the killing, but it has to be personal since they kill with their mouths inhaling the scent of the victim, feeling the warm blood flood their tongue as life leaves the body.
I have been with rattlesnakes and often sat a few feet away as they rested in a coil. Their habits vary with the species and the opportunities of the ground, but the ones I spent the most time with only killed about two rats a year. Think of them as armless Buddhas. They are hardly creatures up for duct tape and torture. And they ask for no money for their killings.
The foxes, coyotes, and weasels of my life have been lesser events but all, in balance, quite civil in their behavior and not prone to boasting or excess. I feel no fear, no rancor toward them, not even the coyotes that ripped the throat out of a favored dog.
But the man I am waiting for, he hails from a different country and his tribe is known to me only as rumor and legend and brief flickers out of the corner of my eye. I have sat with the cold men, pistols in their waistbands, and known I was not like them. But I have never known just what they were like.
That is why I have come. That is why I wait. That is why the phone rings, the voice says it will take a little longer. And that is why the man does not come.
It will take time. Days perhaps.
I think it is possible.
And I think it is possible because I have come, and he is not used to that. And because he can see his own death, smell it is near, and he knows he will be soon forgotten because no one really wants to remember him.
My head is nothing but fever. I relax. I could not overpower a fly.
I am ready for the story of all the dead men who last saw his face.
This morning, as I drank coffee and tried to frame questions in my mind, a crime reporter in Juárez was cut down beside his eight-year-old daughter as they both sat in his car letting it warm up. This morning, as I drove down here, a Toyota passed me with a bumper sticker that read with a heart symbol I LOVE LOVE. This morning, I tried to remember how I got to this rendezvous.
I was in a distant city, and a man told me of the killer and how he had hidden him. He said at first he feared him, but he was so useful. He would clean everything and cook all the time and get on his hands and knees and polish his shoes. He took him on as a favor, he explained, to the state police who had used him for their killings.
I said, “I want him. I want to put him on paper.”
And so I came.
But my reasons and path are no stranger than those of others. For a while, across the river, there was this man who worked for the cartel. He collected debts. He would fly to Miami and explain that you owed a million and must pay him and no one had to wonder what would happen if the person who owed said no.
Eventually, he found Christ but at that point he owed the cartel one hundred thousand dollars. The story is that men came with guns to collect. But they retreated because they said they found seven guards around the man with AK-47s. The man says this is not accurate. In reality, he was surrounded by seven angels.
So I wait.
The man I wait for insists, “You don’t know me. No one can forgive me for what I have done.”
He cannot watch the news on television. He says he can see behind the news and hear the screams.
He has pride in his hard work. The good killers make a very tight pattern through the driver’s door. They do not spray rounds everywhere in the vehicle, no, they make a tight pattern right through the door and into the driver’s chest and head. The reporter who died this morning received just such a pattern, ten rounds from a 9 mm and not a single bullet came near his eight-year-old daughter.
I wait.
I admire craftsmanship.
People talk of those who are innocent and they talk of those who are sucio, dirty, people who live and prosper because of illegal lines of work such as the drug industry. This is a comfort, these categories, and of course, these categories are lies. Let us dance through some numbers. In 2004, the budget of the Mexican army was $4 billion. In 1995, by DEA estimates, the Juárez cartel, at that time a wholesale organization moving heroin, marijuana, and principally cocaine from South America and Mexico into the retail markets of the United States, was earning about $12 billion a year. No one on earth thinks its income has declined.
In Juárez, the payroll for the employees in the drug industry exceeds the payroll for all the factories in the city, and Juárez has the most factories and is said to boast the lowest unemployment in Mexico. There is not a family in the city that does not have a family member in the drug industry, nor is there anyone in the city who cannot point out narcos and their fine houses, or who has any difficulty taking you to fine new churches built of narco-dollars. The entire fabric of Juárez society rests on drug money. It is the only possible hope for the poor, the valiant, and the doomed.
As an added factor, the declining cost of drugs has made it possible to create a vast domestic market in Juárez, and this market teems with employees and customers. Who in their right mind would turn down a chance to consume drugs in a city of poverty, filth, violence, and despair?
Look at what people do to survive. Measure their words, and you will find that in Juárez, as in every other place in the world, some people are truthful and some are liars. But don’t ask who is innocent and who is dirty, because everyone here tries to eat and drink and we have no pure food or water.
We are the future. We watch governments erode and bluster. We watch cops strut and steal. We watch dealers operate in broad daylight. We work hard and get little.
And we survive.
And don’t ask how.
I watch two guys pretend to work on a car and watch me. I watch a man stand in front of his house and talk on a cell phone and watch me. I notice traffic, and if a car keeps coming by with two men staring out, I think they are also watching me.
I continually search for birds but seem to find few and they are mainly grackles and pigeons. I am in front of a known drug house and it is clear I am not welcome here.
I watch Juárez watch me and wonder if anyone is watching at all. That is the sense of things: being on camera in a city where no one ever really sees a murder or remembers the faces of the killers.
I am with a man who worked in the business. Years ago, when the sicario—the murder artist—was just starting out, he was a mentor to him. That was before he found Christ and found the Bible’s hard judgment that must be faced. He says this is the second revolution. The first came in the 1970s, when the government of Mexico started pushing condoms and the birth rate sank from 6.8 children per woman to a little over 2. He feels this was very good. The killings now—these, also, are a great benefit. He speaks from experience.
He is a large man, with fair skin, a moustache and very serious eyes. And a well-thumbed Bible with yellow highlights. He insists I read a passage from Ephesians
if I am to understand the killing in Juárez.
I put down my coffee. We are sitting in the sun on a clear day. He does not approve of my cigarette. He lives very cleanly, always has, even those years he spent in the Juárez cartel.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against
the wiles of the devil.
(Ephesians 6: 10-11)
He says once he thought the power was with the strong, that the power came with the guns.
“I was, you see, a son-of-a-bitch, a real motherfucker.”
I nod. He has been told that I do not believe in God and so he is both disturbed by me and yet desirous of finding some common ground so that my soul might be saved.
He lines up two cell phones on his Bible, also a set of keys he keeps fingering. I am to take dictation. He has decided to give me his testimony. For months, he has moved just on the edge of my consciousness, a man of mark with a dark past trailing him, but also a man I am never able to meet until now. He is connected and this makes him seem dangerous in the eyes of others. I can feel caution when others speak of him, because no one can ever be certain who is in the organization and who is out of the organization. And no one can be certain that anyone is ever really able to leave the organization. So he moves with this aura of power and this may be fantasy or fact. There is no number to call where such matters can be verified.
He learned the martial arts in the university in Juárez and became the school champion. When the man was twenty-two, the governor of Chihuahua hired him as a bodyguard. One day, some dumpy-looking guy came to the governor’s office and everyone treated him like a God.
Later, the bodyguard asked, “Who was that dumb asshole?”
He was told it was the head of the Juárez cartel.
He thought to himself, I could run that business better than this guy.
So, he joined the game, and soon he was living the life.
He moved marijuana through the U.S. port of entry by using deaf and mute people as mules. When they occasionally got busted, they were released because they were handicapped. Also, they could not reveal anything to anyone. One day, he lost a load to the United States and suddenly owed the supplier twenty-five thousand dollars. That is the rub in the business. The supplier places a high value on the drug even though its cost to him is wholesale. The drug smuggler is making 10 to 20 percent a load—there is an overhead for bribes and muscle. So if you lose a load, you must pay full value, even though you only earn a fraction of that amount if the load goes through. When these economic facts are coupled with whores and cocaine consumption, the drug smuggler winds up working for the company store. Or winds up dead.
He is told he will be killed if he does not come up with the twenty-five thousand. His family also may be killed. It is a business.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against
powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual
wickedness in high places.
Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be
able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on
the breastplate of righteousness;
And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
(Ephesians 6: 12-15)
He drives to Michoacan in central Mexico to face the boss. When he arrives, an AK-47 is pointed at him and he is shoved into a truck. The boss takes him high up into the mountains. Then he is pulled out, and he marches for fifteen minutes with the AK near his head. He expects to have his brains blown out at any second.
They reach a high mesa with twenty hectares of marijuana.
The boss says, “All this is mine.”
Then he is marched back to the truck and taken into town. He does not drink or smoke, but when they enter a bar, he begins drinking brandy like water.
The boss says, “I will give you twenty thousand dollars. To come here and tell me you lost my load, you must have big balls. Get a cell phone. You are going to sell a ton of marijuana, and don’t steal it.”
After bribing U.S. Customs, he moves the ton across the bridge into El Paso in two vans. Then he drives to Miami, and in three weeks, he is back with all the money. After that, he moves five tons a month.
“The game,” he admits, “became my life. But I became bored and wanted to retire.”
The boss told him he must move one more load.
He said no.
The federal police tortured him for four days and broke some ribs in the process. But finally, they let him go. He was shaking, he says.
“I had been collecting millions in Miami,” he continues, “It was an ugly life. You had money but no peace. You love no one. You serve the devil. You don’t care about your wife or son. One day I said to the Lord, if you exist, rescue me. But I got no answer.”
He starts a real business: He provides security to factories in a city of violence. He makes money hand over fist.
Then, he gets a special job: guarding the brains behind the Juárez cartel, the business genius who disposes of all those billions in investments. The man is a cocaine addict and keeps two kilos of coke on hand for his appetite. His nose constantly bleeds. Part of the guard’s job is to clean up the business guy so that he can do fine deals for the cartel.
And he does that and they become friends.
Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench
all the fiery darts of the wicked.
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is
the word of God:
Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching
thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.
(Ephesians 6: 16-18)
The business genius becomes a born-again Christian, but his bodyguard does not. One day, he goes for his pay and the guy says he can’t pay him, but not to worry, the Lord will.
He becomes furious and is going to beat the business mind when suddenly the guy breaks out in laughter. The bodyguard is confused, he slams the door as he leaves.
That night, he cannot sleep, the laughter of the businessman rings in his mind, as do his words about getting his money from God. Then he finally drifts off, and the Lord comes to him in a dream. He is at a party, and everything and everyone is white. It is very pleasant, there is a lot of laughter, but he is depressed. He feels a hand on his shoulder and turns around, and there is a very large man, but he cannot make out his face. The man takes his hand and they fly through the window and into the sky between the stars. Eventually, they alight on a mountain and sit down. The bodyguard looks like a baby, sitting beside his father.
God tells him people are slaves to consumption. God tells him preachers promise the people wealth and this leads them down a false path. The man is stunned because he has given at least three business speeches in Washington, D.C., to corporate people on how commerce can be done safely in Juárez. God takes him to a fancy hotel, and there is just such a meeting of businessmen going on and he looks up and realizes that he is the speaker.
That, he tells me, is how he came to Christ. Now he sells security in a dangerous world full of demons. He left the cartel and began working with the police since he knew everything they did not know. He cannot be harmed, he tells me, because God protects him.
His only weapon now is the Bible.
And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my
mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,
For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak
boldly, as I ought to speak.
(Ephesians 6: 19-20)
Now, he leans forward, I must understand that the slaughter in Juárez is necess
ary. His work with the cartel planted the seeds of violence and corruption, and this is the harvest. All the sicarios must die. People must return to decent values and stay home with their families and have good habits. Corruption must be uprooted, the streets made safe. True, the Mexican army is butchering people, raping women and all that. But it is necessary for the cleansing to be accomplished. It is God’s will. You see, he tells me, the army is murdering the police so that sound police can be created. They are killing drug merchants so that the drug money can flow to the government and provide decent public services.
Yes, yes, he says, read Ephesians 6:10-20. It is a tale foretold and there is nothing left to do but live out the book. This is the second revolution. First, as he noted, came the reduction of family size. Now, the forces of Satan must be slain, the men, the women, the children, all who are in thrall to evil. His world has perfect order because he knows why people are dying and so the little details hardly matter. For example, he has no idea which cartel now controls Juárez—it is very confusing at the moment, he tells me—but he is certain that the murders are divine justice and so for him, they are nothing to worry about.
He taps his Bible, leans forward, and reads again to me: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. . . .”
The present is always acceptable. Period. The city teems with shacks, poor people, dust, violence, and music booming out of open doorways. Women wear lipstick, children scurry past wearing clean clothes, buses rumble down the street spewing black exhaust, and the hours of the day slide by and it is life and it is normal and people cling to it one and all and it is good, good enough to make a life out of and to cherish. The stories float over the city, stories of murders, of executions, of rapes, robberies, stories of men protesting, stories of women holding vigils. At the bridge linking Juárez and El Paso, a memorial stands to murdered and vanished women, pink ribbons fluttering in the breeze, each ribbon bearing the name of a soul lost to life. And yet, each day, men huddle at the base of the memorial hawking newspapers, and cars line up to cross and the little tower of pink ribbons becomes invisible. I stand there, I stare at it, and I still cannot see it. It is not part of the city, it is part of an effort to imagine a different city and this effort is ignored because the present is acceptable. Period.
Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields Page 7
