Gangland (20 page)

“These appalling assaults on members of our own State Department family are, sadly, part of a growing tragedy besetting many communities in Mexico,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. “They underscore the imperative of our continued commitment to work closely with the government of President Calderón to cripple the influence of trafficking organizations at work in Mexico.”

While the media concentrated on connections to the consulate, the Department of Homeland Security investigated and determined that the Redelfs/Enriquez murders were actually retaliation by an El Paso gang called El Barrio Azteca and that the target was actually Redelfs, not Enriquez.

Five days after the killing, the DEA and El Paso police launched Operation Knockdown against El Barrio Azteca, making 26 felony arrests. Ricardo Valles de la Rosa—a Mexican native who grew up in El Paso and became a member of the gang in prison – was among those charged. He admitted to both murders and said that El Barrio Azteca had a close relationship with the Juárez Cartel. The murder of Salcido Ceniceros had been a mistake. The American authorities found out that members of El Barrio Azteca worked on both sides of the border and carried out many different tasks for the Juárez Cartel, including contract killing. “Within their business of killing, they have surveillance people, intel people and shooters. They have a degree of specialization,” said David Cuthbertson, head of the FBI's El Paso division. “They work day in and day out, with a list of people to kill, and they get proficient at it.” It was also determined that another El Paso gang, the Artistic Assassins, did similar work for rival cartels.

Murder north of the border

While much of the U.S. media's attention on the Mexican Drug War focused on Texas, a story emerged from Arizona that led to a national outcry, military mobilization and one of the most controversial laws in U.S. history. Robert Krentz was a well-known rancher. His family had established a cattle farm just outside Douglas, Arizona (a small, still mostly non-Hispanic town across the border fence from the much larger Mexican city of Agua Prieta) in 1907 and he had been voted into the Arizona Farming and Ranchering Hall of Fame.

After seeing what he described as literally thousands of illegal immigrants cross over his property, he became an outspoken critic of the contemporary border policy and called for more security. “A bear of a man with a reserved nature, he could seem imposing at first glance,” read
The New York Times
' description of him. “But almost always rendered help to those who needed it, friends and family said.”

He was doing just that at about 10:30 on the morning of March 27. A neighbor, Wendy Glenn, heard him broadcast a message to his brother Phil on a shared radio. “He says, ‘I see an immigrant out here, and he appears to need help. Call the Border Patrol,'” recalled Glenn. “He was not frantic. He was not calling for help.”

When nobody heard from him again after a few hours, his family and friends organized a search party. The body of Krentz's dog was found on a remote part of his ranch just before midnight. He had been shot several times. Searchers followed the tracks of Krentz's all-terrain vehicle and found his body at the wheel. His gun was still in its holster and his wallet was still in his pocket. Because it appeared as though Krentz was neither confronted nor robbed, Glenn came up with a theory for his murder. “There are a lot of people out here who are unarmed that need help, and I'm sure Rob didn't realize [the killer] was armed,” she said. “I think he approached to see if he could help him and the guy thought maybe he was going to get arrested, that maybe Rob was the law ... I don't know what the guy thought, but he never gave Rob a chance.”

The Krentz family issued a statement in which they said they did not blame the Mexican people for the murder, but the governments of both countries. “Their disregard of our repeated pleas and warnings of impending violence toward our community fell on deaf ears shrouded in political correctness,” it read. “As a result, we have paid the ultimate price for their negligence in credibly securing our borderlands.”

The reaction to the Krentz murder was quick and huge. Locally, the first response people had was to arm themselves. Lynn Kartchner, owner of Allsafe Security, the most popular gun shop in Douglas, reported an immediate 20 percent increase in sales. “We've been selling a lot of the concealed type of guns,” he said. “Most of these people who have been buying guns have told me if these people will shoot Rob, they will shoot anybody.”

People in the state of Arizona made calls for federal help. “The federal government must do all it can within its power to curb this violence and protect its citizens from criminals coming across the border from Mexico,” John McCain, the state's senior senator and a former Republican presidential candidate, wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, herself a former governor of Arizona. He pointed out that in the 262-mile strip of border known as the Tucson Zone, Border Patrol made about a quarter-million arrests in 2009. The request was bipartisan. McCain's sentiments were joined by those of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who said: “The federal government must respond appropriately. All options should be on the table.”

Heeding their plea, Obama deployed 1,200 National Guard soldiers to help train and reinforce Border Patrol, immigration and customs agents along the border. McCain replied that 6,000 would have been a more appropriate number.

Mexico's ambassador to Washington, Arturo Sarukhán Casamitjana, used the opportunity to put a spin on the move that echoed much of what Calderón had been saying, by praising “additional U.S. resources to enhance efforts to prevent the illegal flows of weapons and bulk cash into Mexico, which provide organized crime with its firepower and its ability to corrupt.”

The Krentz murder became a rallying cry for supporters of Arizona's controversial Bill SB 1070 (better known as the
Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act
), which, if passed, would allow authorities to enforce a federal law already on the books that requires non-citizens to provide documentation upon request. The Act also bars state and local legislatures from restricting enforcement of immigration laws and increases penalties on anyone sheltering, transporting or employing illegal immigrants.

SB 1070's future was in doubt as the national (and international) media cast it as racist and many boycotts were threatened, but it was signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on April 23. Reaction to the law was negative in Mexico. Calderón said: “The Mexican government condemns the approval of the law [and] the criminalization of migration” and called it a “violation of human rights.” But American journalist and Mexico specialist Chris Hawley pointed out that Mexico has essentially the same law on its books, allowing Federales to check the documents and even detain suspected illegal immigrants and that Federales and other Mexican police routinely engage in ethnic profiling when dealing with Central and South Americans.

Business as usual in Mexico

While the central part of the border was caught up in political rhetoric, the northeast was still awash in violence. After a motorcade carrying the chief of police of a suburb of Juárez was shot up, tensions in Monterrey were high. On March 19, army soldiers engaged in a shootout with suspected Gulf Cartel members just outside the campus of
Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey
, a prestigious university often referred to as Monterrey Tech. When the smoke cleared, authorities announced they had killed two
sicarios
. It was later revealed that the two dead men were actually accomplished graduate students at the school.

On the morning on March 28, 40 prisoners held at
Centro de Ejecución de Sanciones de Santa Adelaida
, a state prison in Matamoros, escaped without violence. Fifty of the prison's staff were arrested for complicity.

Two days later, just hours after authorities tried to douse rumors of impending violence after several key members of Los Zetas were arrested, the cartels surprised the military by staging seven different assaults on army bases throughout Nuevo León. It began when cartel members attempted to block the entranceway to a military compound near Matamoros by moving tractor trailers in front of it. In the end, 18 cartel members were killed in the ensuing gun battle, and authorities seized 54 assault rifles, 61 grenades, eight improvised explosive devices (IEDs), three rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and six armored SUVs. The only casualty suffered by the government forces was a soldier with an injured toe.

But like the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, while the attacks of March 30 were a military failure, they had an enormous psychological impact. Soldiers had been killed on patrol or in ambushes throughout the war, but these incidents marked the first time the cartels were willing to launch full-scale attacks on the military. It seemed just a matter of time before the cartels came out of hiding and confronted the police and military openly. The authorities, however, said that the brazen attacks were a show of desperation on the parts of the cartels.

Later that day, Federales in Villahermosa arrested Roberto Rivero Arana, nephew of Los Zetas leader Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, and Daniel Pérez Galisteo, the acting police chief of Ciudad del Carmen, an oil refining town on the Gulf coast in the southern state of Campeche. Investigators determined that Pérez Galisteo had been receiving about $16,000 a month to allow Los Zetas to work in the city unmolested. “He's an agent who had been with the police force long before we took over the town government,” Ciudad del Carmen mayor Aracely Escalante Jasso said. “We had given him our trust.” Along with the men, the Federales seized 10 assault rifles, a grenade, ammunition, drugs and uniforms with police and Pemex insignia.

Another Gulf oil town, Tampico, was hit the next day. Masked gunmen attacked a police convoy as it approached El Moralillo bridge on its way out of town. Four officers—José Alfredo Ontiveros Romero, Federico Macías Hernández, Eduardo Robles Ramos and Salvador González del Ángel—were killed. That night, more gunmen forced their way into Club Mirage, a rowdy local strip joint favored by members of the Gulf Cartel. They shot the place up indiscriminately, killing five men and two women—including one dancing on stage. In the town square nearby, Jenni Rivera, a popular Mexican-American pop singer, was just about to take to the stage for an open-air concert when her entire audience of about 18,000 fled as a rumor spread that gunmen with grenades were coming to attack the show. As she was on the stairs to the stage, her crew stopped her from going on. “My security guys shouted at me not to go up and they pulled me and covered me,” she said. “Everyone on my team is okay.”

It was a spring of major discoveries for the Mexican authorities. The first came on April 23, when the Federales (supported by army soldiers) came upon a camp used by Beltrán Leyva Cartel to train assassins outside the town of San Dimas near the Pacific coast of Durango. After a brief firefight left seven
sicarios
and a man they had kidnapped dead, the Federales arrested 19-year-old José Natividad Ruiz Rodriguez. Several others escaped. They also seized about 1,000 pounds of marijuana, 11 AK-47s, three AR-15s, a shotgun, four handguns and 14 trucks, including two Hummers. They also discovered a .50-caliber Barrett special applications rifle. “The .50-caliber was interesting because we haven't seen that type of arm used in Mexico yet,” said Scott Stewart, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer and an analyst for STRATFOR. The Barrett is an incredibly accurate long-range sniper rifle that can kill from well over a mile away. “The [Barrett's] 5.7 x 28 armor-piercing rounds are not available for sale to the general public and are probably coming from the Mexican military,” he added. Three soldiers were wounded during the assault.

Unexpected corruption of a political hero

The second surprise came on May 26. Gregorio “Greg” Sánchez Martínez was regarded as a hero by many in southern Mexico. One of 15 children, Sánchez Martínez was born to a very poor family in Guerrero and grew up in Chiapas. At 16, he started his own lumber business and by his early twenties, he was wealthy and had made a name for himself as a popular gospel singer. He later moved to Cancún and dabbled in politics before being elected mayor of Benito Juárez Municipality, representing a coalition of four left-wing parties including the PRD. His populist, anti-corruption, anti-crime message resonated with his constituents (he had once disarmed and interrogated the entire Cancún police force), and Sánchez Martínez took a leave of absence from his job to run for governor of Quintana Roo.

Early in the campaign, Sánchez Martínez claimed on his website that he and other candidates from the “Todos por Quintana Roo” (All for Quintana Roo) coalition had received numerous threats. One he noted in particular read: “Resign from the race, or we are going to put you in jail or kill you.”

He wasn't killed. But he was put in jail for money laundering and for aiding both Los Zetas and the Beltrán Leyva Cartel. “This takes us all by surprise,” said his PRI opponent, incumbent Félix González Canto. “It is unprecedented.” Sánchez Martínez, meanwhile, maintained that he was innocent and that the evidence was manufactured by political opponents. He has yet to be tried.

Evidence gathered from the investigation that led to his arrest later brought police to a
cenote
—a type of sinkhole common in Mexico and the Caribbean that are usually filled with water, but this one was dry—in Leona Vicario, just outside Cancún, that contained six bodies. The victims, four men and two women, had been asphyxiated and had cocaine in their bloodstreams. Three of the bodies had been stabbed multiple times in the chest, while the other three had the letter “Z” carved into their abdomens, a calling card of Los Zetas. Two of the bodies were identified. One was that of Isaías de Jesús Valenzuela Ruiz, head of security for the municipal government of Playas del Carmen, a small resort town just south of Cancún. The other was that of Francisco Silva Ruiz, who had recently moved to the area and made his living singing on public buses.