Gangland (16 page)

Later that day, signs appeared all over the city threatening that one police officer would be killed every 48 hours until the chief of police resigned. The chief, retired army major Roberto Orduña Cruz, had taken over in May after his predecessor, Guillermo Prieto Quintana, fled to El Paso. He was tough, firing and replacing half of the city's 1,600-member police force. Initially he stood firm against the threats, but when the bodies of a police officer and a jail guard were found a few hundred feet from his office with another note threatening him on February 19, he stepped down. “Respect for the life that these brave officers risk every day on the streets for Juárez residents obliges me to offer my permanent resignation,” Orduña Cruz said.

Juárez's PRI mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz tried to put a positive spin on it, saying that Orduña Cruz “didn't blink” in the staredown with the cartels, but had decided to fight them in other ways. His tough talk sounded somewhat hollow a day later when the El Paso police force revealed that Reyes Ferriz had fled north of the border and was guiding Juárez's government business from the basement of a friend's house. “We received information that the Juárez mayor lives in El Paso, and that possibly (the cartels) were going to come to El Paso to get him,” El Paso Detective Carlos Carrillo said. “He has not asked us for our help, but it's our duty to protect any resident of our city who may be under threat.” With the violence just yards from the border and a frequently threatened official in its midst, Texas took action, activating “Operation Border Star Contingency Plan,” which put local, state and federal officials on high alert. “The most significant threat Texas faces is spill-over violence from Mexico's drug cartels,” Steve McCraw, the state's homeland security director, said at a presentation to the state senate. “You can never be too prepared.”

On February 28, Calderón sent 1,800 more soldiers to Juarez to bolster the 5,000 soldiers and Federales already there.

Perhaps emboldened by how they had terrorized the government of Juárez, the cartels continued to pursue official targets, including some big game. On February 22, the three-car motorcade of Chihuahua's PRI Governor José Reyes Baeza Terrazas stopped at a red light in the capital city, also named Chihuahua, when they were ambushed and fired upon by masked men. In what was probably a case of mistaken identity, the would-be assassins fired only at the trailing car, killing a bodyguard (Alejandro Chaparro Morales) and injuring two others, while the governor's car, in the lead, was untouched.

Two days later, on Mexican Flag Day, Calderón delivered a firebrand speech about how he would never give up the war against the cartels. An hour after that, at 5:20 p.m., Octavio Manuel Carrillo Castellanos, mayor of Vista Hermosa, a suburb of Calderón's hometown of Morelia, was assassinated by two masked gunmen as he got out of his car in front of his house.

• • •

It was also in February 2009 when American consciousness (outside of El Paso) of the Mexican Drug War intensified. Miguel Angel Caro Quintero—former head of the Sonora Cartel and younger brother of Rafael Caro Quintaro, who was involved in the Camarena incident—had been in a Mexican prison since his arrest in 2001. At the time, he claimed to be an innocent rancher and said, “If I had a cartel, I'd have a lot of money and my brother wouldn't be in prison.” But in February 2009, he was extradited to the U.S. where he pleaded guilty to a number of charges, admitting to personally sending at least $100 million from the U.S. to Mexico, and was sentenced to 17 years in an American maximum-security facility.

On the same day he was extradited, February 24, the DEA announced that it had arrested 755 people in California, Maryland and Minnesota under Operation XCellerator. At least 50 of them, U.S. attorney general Eric Holder said, were members of the Sinaloa Cartel. Conducted with data from Mexican and Canadian police forces, the raid also allowed the DEA to seize $59.1 million in U.S. currency, over 26,000 pounds of cocaine, 16,000 pounds of marijuana, 1,200 pounds of methamphetamine, 18 pounds of heroin, 1.3 million ecstasy pills, 149 vehicles, three airplanes, three seaworthy boats and 169 firearms. Michele Leonhart, acting administrator of the DEA, also said that her forces uncovered a “super meth lab” capable of manufacturing 12,000 hits of methamphetamine a day.

On the same day as it was reporting on Operation XCellerator,
The New York Times
published an investigative piece that alleged that over 90 percent of all firearms seized in the Mexican Drug War originated as legal purchases in the U.S. This re-ignited a decade-old debate in the U.S. about the legality of stripped-down versions of military assault rifles like the AR-15 and the WASR-10.

Citing a study that Mexican cartels had dealings with contacts in at least 230 American cities and that kidnappings and murders had significantly increased in Phoenix, Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama, where the Mexican cartels were very significant players in the drug trade, Director of Homeland Security Roger Rufe outlined a plan to use the U.S. National Guard as a threat to prevent the Drug War from spilling northward. He suggested that the two countries were nearing a “tipping point,” after which sending in U.S. military forces to protect Texas would be inevitable. While he admitted that the Mexican cartels were the greatest organized crime threat to American security, President Barack Obama said he did not see a “tipping point” in the future and reiterated his intention not to militarize the border.

That month, Calderón secretly purchased six Eurocopter EC 725 heavy transport helicopters from the French military and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the U.S. was delivering eight more Black Hawks to Mexico.

Arrests at a Quinceañera

As winter turned to spring in 2009, Calderón's forces made a series of stunning arrests. While the news on the morning of March 19 mostly centered around the discovery of five severed heads and notes threatening the Sinaloa Cartel in the small Jalisco town of Ixtlahuacán del Río, Federales and soldiers in Tijuana were quietly surrounding the massive ornate Mezzanine banquet hall. It was the setting of a
quinceañera
, the traditional 15
^th
birthday celebration thrown for girls throughout Latin America.

But this particular girl had some notable relatives. The army stormed the party and detained 58 guests, including the band and several members of staff. After questioning, 26 people were arrested. The real prize, though, was Ángel Jácome Gamboa—his nickname “El Kaibil” is a reference to the Mayan rebel Kay'bil B'alam who evaded capture by the
conquistadores
; it is also a name he shares with the Guatemalan military's special forces, which have recently been linked to Los Zetas. A former state police officer, Jácome Gamboa was said to be second-in-command of the Tijuana Cartel and his primary responsibility was to manage a staff of
sicarios
. He was charged with ordering the murders of 12 police officers in Rosarita Beach, along with trafficking and gangsterism.

At the scene, police seized Jácome Gamboa's gold-plated 9mm handgun. On it, were two revealing carvings. Embossed on the left side of the handle was an illustration of
Santa Muerte
(Saint Death). A mixture of Catholic and indigenous beliefs symbolized by a Grim Reaper-like character,
Santa Muerte
is a cult of sorts that is condemned by the Catholic Church, but adhered to by millions in Mexico, particularly people of lower social and financial classes, including prostitutes, thieves and drug traffickers. It is often linked with folklore hero Jesús Malverde, a mythical Robin Hood-like character from Sinaloa who is revered by many in Mexico and believed to grant miracles to true believers. He is known as
El Rey Guei de Sinaloa
(the People's King of Sinaloa) and is considered the patron saint of drug traffickers.

On the other side of the gun's handle was an inscription reading “EL TEO,” the nickname of Tijuana Cartel boss Teodoro García Simental, whom police alleged gave Jácome Gamboa the weapon as a gift.

Also arrested were Jácome Gamboa's 18-year-old brother Bartolo and eight police officers, two of whom had been employed as bodyguards for Baja California's PAN governor José Guadalupe Osuna Millán.

Acting on information from accomplices arrested at a Sinaloa hub in Chicago as part of Operation XCellerator, Mexican army officers surrounded a luxurious mansion in the exclusive Jardines de Pedregal neighborhood of Mexico City on the morning of March 19. They arrested its owner, 34-year-old Jesus Vicente “El Mayito” Zambada Niebla, son of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, second-in-command of the Sinaloa Cartel. Zambada Niebla was alleged to be responsible for the cartel's logistics and to have the authority to order assassinations, and was wanted in the U.S. for importing at least $50 million in drugs. He was arrested with four bodyguards and police seized three AR-15s, three .38-caliber handguns, three bulletproof luxury cars and $67,480,866 in U.S. currency. Zambada is a known fugative.

On March 25, two days after the Mexican government published a wanted poster of their 37 highest targets in the cartels, and the same day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Mexico City for a summit meeting with Calderón, the military surrounded a luxury car dealership in San Pedro Garza García, a suburb of Monterrey. They arrested its owner, Héctor “El Burra” (the She-Donkey) Huerta Ríos, one of the 37 faces on the poster. Four of his bodyguards—Gilberto Treviño Herrera, Jorge Barrera Lozano, José Donato Moreno Bustos and Manuel Ruperto Martínez—were arrested with him and two AK-47s, an AR-15, a submachine gun, four handguns and four fragmentation grenades were confiscated, along with 18 luxury cars and cash.

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 35
^th
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 higher 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.