Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers (39 page)

Many grudges had been piling up, but what the Zetas most resented was that while they had conquered their territory in battle, “fairly and squarely,” The Federation had relied on “the support of the government and of people at the top of the AFI and the Secretariat of Public Security.” The fact that the Zetas had managed without “official support” made them feel invincible. A little ingenuously, they even thought they could snatch back from The Federation its traditional strongholds in Jalisco and Sinaloa.

The Federation was represented at the meeting by Joaquín Guzmán, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, Juan José Esparragoza, Ismael Zambada, Ignacio Coronel, Arturo and Héctor Beltrán Leyva, and their chief enforcer, Edgar Valdez, La Barbie, who had started the war in Nuevo Laredo on the orders of the cartel.

Although in 2002, it was Esparragoza, El Azul, who had urged his partners to begin hostilities against the Gulf Cartel, now the high cost for both sides had convinced him to be one of the main promoters of the truce meeting. It is said he was encouraged by a senior government official, who promised nobody would be harassed if there were a ceasefire. At the beginning of 2007, El Azul had already made one attempt at a pact, through an official in the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
¹⁸
But the Gulf Cartel, and especially the Zetas leader, El Verdugo Lazcano, had refused. He didn’t trust his adversaries an inch, and didn’t want to fall into the same trap as his boss, Osiel Cárdenas. “We’ll never make a pact with them,” had been Lazcano’s
response. In the end, The Executioner was forced to sit down with his enemies after the Beltrán Leyva brothers kidnapped one of his cousins. El Azul intervened to secure his safe return before the meeting, as a token of peace.

The Gulf Cartel was represented by Ezequiel Cárdenas and Heriberto Lazcano. Humberto García Ábrego, regarded as the honorary leader of the Gulf Cartel, was not present; the brother of Juan García Ábrego had not been directly involved in the drug business for some time, though he still took his cut of the profits.

Such a meeting between Mexico’s top drug traffickers, in the middle of one of the bloodiest wars ever, seemed unthinkable. But business is business. The hostilities between the organizations was costing them dearly, in terms of both cash and casualties. Even their respective contacts in Colombia were beginning to wonder if the Mexicans could still be trusted. Intelligence reports indicate that cocaine shipments from Colombia had noticeably fallen off around that time.

It was just after midday when Joaquín Guzmán arrived at the meeting place. The tension rose. There were so many grievances on both sides. All the men were armed to the teeth, but there were no fingers on the triggers. When El Chapo Guzmán stood face to face with Heriberto Lazcano, the room fell silent. “If I was queer, I’d have fucked you already”, said Guzmán, looking the Zeta leader’s youthful, athletic figure up and down with a face of surprise. Then he gave him the sort of hug only a mafioso can give one of his rivals. The ice was broken. Everybody burst out laughing. It wasn’t for nothing that El Chapo was who he was; his ability to charm, even at moments of life and death, was scarily impressive.

The first agreement they came to was to stop the violence. They decided to respect the territorial advances made by each cartel during the war, and not to attack the authorities in the areas where they were operating. The Gulf Cartel would keep Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, and Quintana Roo. The Federation would have Sonora, Sinaloa, Durango, Chihuahua, Nayarit, Jalisco, Guerrero, Guanajuato, Querétaro, and Oaxaca. In states like Nuevo León, Michoacán, the Federal District, and the State of Mexico, each group would keep the areas it had conquered,
sharing the territory as a whole. Aguascalientes, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, and Puebla would be left as “neutral” states. They also agreed, at the request of the government, to try to put a stop to retail drug dealing, and to ensure that most of the product left Mexico. Of all the agreements, that would be the most difficult to fulfill. Furthermore, it was agreed that the two organizations would join together to pay for state protection, on the understanding that this would henceforth be provided to all the groups, not just El Chapo’s.

The Valle Hermoso pact was in fact an opium dream, a fleeting illusion. Two factors made it only too easy for the truce to break down. The first was the difficulty of sharing territory, especially between drug traffickers who had been at one another’s throats for years. It was one thing for the generals to reach an agreement, quite another for the rank and file to obey. The second factor was, strange to say, the United States government—very fond of making pacts itself, but not so keen on others making them behind its back.

In typical narco style, the meeting in Valle Hermoso ended with a wild party. Heriberto Lazcano and his colleague went to bed, while the guests enjoyed an abundance of alcohol, music, and prostitutes. Other meetings followed, in Cuernavaca and the Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City, to wrap up the final details of the accord. A fragile calm descended on the country’s streets. The death rate fell sharply, from ten executions a day to an average of eight a week.

For his part, Heriberto Lazcano got on famously with Arturo Beltrán Leyva. Their violent personalities were a perfect match. It is said that around this time El Verdugo had a plane accident and that Arturo, El Barbas, came to rescue him in a helicopter. As a sign of his friendship, El Barbas began to share with the Zetas leader all the protection The Federation enjoyed from officials in the SSP. Those who had been hunting the Zetas like dogs were now helping them collect their bribes. At the same time the Mexican government, rotten to the core, in speech after presidential speech continued to extol its phoney “war on drugs.”

The truce could not last. Betrayal is the only constant among drug traffickers. If El Chapo had foreseen that this pact would turn out to mark not the end, but the beginning of the worst phase of the war, he would never have held out his hand to El Verdugo.

The reek of betrayal

It was the beginning of 2008, and Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, El Mochomo, was feeling wound up. By nature he was a cautious man, but that day he was in a hurry to visit one of his women, who it is said was a relative of Joaquín Guzmán’s. He usually carried a Colt .38, and moved around with a group of bodyguards, but in matters of the heart he preferred privacy. His rendezvous was to be in Culiacán, at no. 1970 Juan de la Barrera, in the Burócratas neighborhood. Very few people knew where the couple would meet, much less at what time.

On Sunday, January 20, two AFI officers traveled to Culiacán to follow up a supposed anonymous phone call, giving advance notice of where El Mochomo would be that day.

In 2007, the PGR and the SSP had signed an agreement to place the AFI under the jurisdiction of the Secretariat, together with its assets, weapons, offices, and files. Genaro García Luna aspired to create a single police force, bringing together the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) and the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) under a single command: his own. The agreement was a first step towards what would be known as the Federal Police.

The AFI officers, following orders from García Luna’s team, checked out the address they had been given at 4:30 p.m.
¹⁹
They could be sure that El Mochomo would spend a good few hours there with his lady friend, maybe for the last time. At 2 a.m. the officers returned, with reinforcements from the Mexican army. Something, or someone, caused El Mochomo to leave the premises at precisely that time. The property’s electric gate swung open for Alfredo Beltrán Leyva to depart in a chunky white BMW, accompanied by just three bodyguards.

The trafficker, sitting in the back seat behind the driver, was livid when the police officers ordered him to stop. But he and his men were so convinced it was a mistake that they all got out without their guns. The last to alight was El Mochomo, who confidently gave his real name and never thought of using his pistol. It could only be a mix-up, or else one of those pointless pantomimes they put on from time to time. Alfredo was the one who paid the bribes to the former
AFI chiefs who now ran the SSP, as well to the army chiefs. Like the rest of The Federation, he took it for granted that he was untouchable.

The officers showed him a summons. El Mochomo couldn’t understand what was happening; suddenly everything was going wrong. Then they confiscated an AK-47, five handguns, magazines and ammunition of various calibers, a bullet-proof vest, and three travel cases whose contents added up to $950,000—not a lot for a drug baron of his stature. They also found in the car valuables worth five million pesos (about $450,000 in 2008), including eighteen Rolex, Dior, and Chopard watches, made of platinum or gold and set with precious stones, as well as emerald and diamond rings, and five spectacular rosaries. Drug traffickers often use religious images or objects as talismans. These rosaries were of gold, with black pearls for beads and diamond-encrusted crucifixes, but they didn’t bring El Mochomo any luck on that occasion.

The situation reeked of betrayal. El Mochomo’s arrest had little to do with justice and much more with the envy of his cousin, El Chapo Guzmán. And it didn’t take long for his brother, Arturo, to figure that out. The Beltrán Leyva brothers had been climbing the ladder inside The Federation way too fast for El Chapo’s taste. They owed their rise to the fact that, through them, the organization was developing many new contacts with local, regional, and national authorities in its operational zones. To some extent El Chapo had been sidelined: he was no longer the cartel’s only means of getting close to the government, as he had been since his escape.

The truce agreed in 2007 had also strengthened the Beltrán Leyvas. It was Arturo, El Barbas, who had the contact with Los Zetas, with whom he began to arrange his own shipments without consulting anyone. This made El Barbas feel more powerful, and encouraged him to throw his weight about. The straw that broke the camel’s back was a clash between El Chapo and El Barbas over the handling of Mexico City airport, where thanks to García Luna’s team they could fly in all the drugs and dollars they wanted.

All the members of the cartel had long known that it was El Mayo Zambada who controlled Mexico City International Airport. That was his quota of power, and the source of much of his influence in the organization. In 2007, the Federal District as a whole was a
territory run by Reynaldo Zambada, El Rey, El Mayo’s brother, with help from the Beltrán Leyva brothers and from Sergio Villarreal, El Grande, who had moved to Mexico City from Durango.

Once El Grande became operational boss he started executing people left, right, and center. A violent and taciturn man, he carried out the killings himself, with little in the way of explanation. In December 2007, when a shipment of pseudoephedrine belonging to El Chapo Guzmán arrived at the airport, Villarreal refused to release it, claiming it needed authorization from El Barbas. El Chapo was furious, and called a meeting in Culiacán with El Mayo Zambada and El Barbas to sort things out.

Strangely, Zambada backed Beltrán, and told Guzmán not to worry, he only had to let them know when he wanted to shift any merchandise. Arturo explained that his people hadn’t recognized El Chapo’s men, and of course they couldn’t let just anyone in; but as long they were forewarned, they’d always be happy to help out. El Chapo felt like a fool, and was not at all mollified, but he held his tongue, as is his way. The incident became common knowledge within The Federation when El Mochomo, Arturo’s younger brother, started bragging about it. El Chapo soon convinced El Mayo that it had been a mistake to support his cousin; the two of them agreed to teach the Beltrán Leyva brothers a lesson that would serve as a warning to other members of the organization.

On the same day that Alfredo was arrested, the PFP—which came under García Luna as Secretary of Public Security—carried out surprise raids on three of Arturo’s houses in Mexico City. Things were happening very fast. Arturo barely avoided capture, slipping away minutes before the police arrived. He had already guessed that El Chapo was behind his brother’s arrest. Apart from his obvious anger, something else must have pained Arturo Beltrán. It seemed his cousin had forgotten that he was the one who had sent him money in Puente Grande, enabling him to live like a king; he’d also forgotten that their family ties had become even closer since the marriage of his daughter to one of Guzmán’s sons.

“El Chapo is a big traitor, he’d betray his own mother if he could.” That’s what Pablo Tostado, the erstwhile aide to Esparragoza, was always saying; his words must have been echoing in El Barbas’s head.
At that moment of crisis and definition, the Beltrán Leyva clan had one unconditional ally: Heriberto Lazcano, The Executioner, the head of Los Zetas. Lazcano immediately provided Arturo with his most trusted lawyer to take on Alfredo’s case, thereby sealing the bond between them. The strength of the Zetas helped El Barbas to make a drastic decision: he would break with The Federation, and take revenge for his younger brother’s capture.

Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, Sergio Villarreal, Edgar Valdez, and the Gulf Cartel sided with the head of the Beltrán Leyva clan. They realized that if El Chapo and El Mayo were capable of handing over Alfredo and trying to get El Barbas arrested, then they could be next. La Barbie and El Verdugo, the two “military” chiefs, had never gotten along very well. But they were now together in the same boat, with the same objective: to put an end to El Chapo Guzmán and his clan. Thus two big blocs of drug traffickers emerged in Mexico: the Sinaloa Cartel headed by El Chapo and El Mayo, and the Beltrán Leyvas’ organization, united with the Juárez and Gulf cartels, and with what was left of the Tijuana Cartel. The split at the core of The Federation would trigger a war such as the country had never seen, a merciless struggle to the death, from which nobody would be safe.
²⁰

For seven years The Federation had been protected en bloc by the main public bodies in the judicial and security sectors: the army, the navy, the PGR, the AFI, and the SSP at federal level. Its rupture produced another, equally violent rupture among these state institutions. Public officials who worked for The Federation, at local, regional, or national level, now faced an acid test. They were like the children of a marriage that has suddenly broken down, and have to decide if they want to live with Mom or Dad. Many corrupt officials found themselves trapped between the two sides, and unable to dodge the bullets.