Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers (43 page)

Garay Cadena’s behavior became clear thanks to María Fernanda’s evidence. The witness explained that Garay was also on the payroll of El Mayo Zambada’s organization, and had previously been briefed to attack the clan’s new enemies—the Beltrán Leyvas and their enforcers such as La Barbie. But in March 2008, after a vacation in Acapulco, Garay had done a deal with Arturo Beltrán not to serve the Sinaloa cartel anymore.

“When did you discover that Commander Garay was in league with the Beltrán Leyvas?” asked the prosecutor questioning María Fernanda.

“I suppose it was after his vacation in Acapulco that he made the arrangement with Arturo Beltrán, because from March 2008 onwards it became more difficult to get raids launched on Beltrán’s houses.”

“What do you mean by ‘made the arrangement with Arturo Beltrán’?”

“I mean that from then on, Commander Garay had a deal with the Betrán Leyva organization not to act on the tip-offs we gave him via Commander Bayardo.”

In the end, Garay bowed to superior orders and in October 2008 carried out the operation against the Beltrán Leyvas’s main cocaine supplier, Harold Poveda. His triple certificate of trustworthiness, bestowed by the DEA, the FBI, and the SSP, had gone down the plughole a long time ago.

Edgar Bayardo was richly rewarded for all the information he gave to the PGR. He was given complete freedom of movement and a bodyguard, and continued to enjoy the good life. He didn’t live in a safe house, as protected witnesses usually must, but in a luxury block at 86 Calle Tres Picos, in Polanco. It’s said he owned two apartments there, each worth $800,000, with no visible security. Among the narco-cop’s illustrious neighbors were the foreign secretary, Patricia Espinoza, and a former foreign secretary, Jorge Castañeda.

The US Embassy’s mounting suspicions

This whole investigation, conducted in secrecy by the PGR with the declarations of El Rey Zambada’s sons, sent tremors of anxiety through the SSP. In the US embassy they were beginning to worry
that Genaro García Luna, their servile ally in the Mexican government, might not be useful for much longer if his reputation continued to take a battering.

On November 25, 2008, the embassy sent a confidential cable to the main government departments in Washington: Justice, Treasury, Homeland Security, the DEA, and others.
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The message focussed on the corruption in the police and justice areas of the Calderón administration, and how officials close to García Luna were being investigated by the PGR.

The embassy had not failed to note President Calderón’s obstinate defense of García Luna during a state visit to Peru. In the context of the storm of criticisms leveled at the top team in the SSP by protected witnesses in their statements to the public prosecutors, the president had declared that the investigations into his government’s infiltration by drug traffickers were not directed at García, of whose abilities he had no doubt. The US cable went on to remark: “Nevertheless, some perceive the investigations into the behavior of so many of Garcia Luna’s close colleagues and subordinates as potentially undermining his authority as an effective Public Security Secretary.” The SSP “appears to be less an active agent in an anti-corruption campaign and more a passive participant as the PGR is investigating and prosecuting corruption cases in the Secretariat.”

A political and security adviser at the Embassy, quoted in the cable, suggests that “the number of corrupted officials surrounding García Luna points to either negligence or tolerance on his part, even if thus far evidence has not been presented to publicly implicate García Luna in corrupt activities.” The embassy notes that there has been speculation in Mexico that Calderón might ask García to step down, although such rumors have been rife in press and political circles “practically since García Luna assumed his current post.” “Concerns about Garcia Luna’s ability to manage his subordinates may complicate Mexico’s ability to work bilaterally on sensitive security issues,” the cable cautions. And points out that the international police corps, Interpol, was worried that international data might have been leaked in Mexico to organized crime groups by García Luna’s team:

Interpol announced November 20 that it sent a team to Mexico to investigate the possibility that its communication systems and databases are not being used for legitimate law enforcement purposes, even while the Mexican government sought to assure Interpol that no sensitive information from the international police agency’s system was leaked to cartels.

Added to this were the misgivings of the Colombian government: “Colombia also is worried about the levels of corruption in Mexican law enforcement,” the cable noted. On November 19, a diplomat at the Colombian embassy in Mexico told a political officer at the US embassy that the director of Colombia’s National Police had given García Luna an ultimatum. He warned him that if he couldn’t demonstrate that the vetting process for Mexican Federal Police officers receiving training from Colombia was “thorough,” Bogotá would have to consider closing the program.

These were difficult days for García Luna. The last thing he wanted was to increase the distrust of the US government. That could mean dismissal, or worse, imprisonment—the fate of General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, who quickly went from being an intimate collaborator of the US Government to becoming an outcast.

In the end, García’s growing influence over President Calderón won the day. In September 2009, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora—García’s rival and the only man who had managed to act as a counterweight to him—was relieved of his duties and sent as ambassador to London. Far enough away from García Luna. Things immediately got better for the secretary of public security and his team. On November 20 that year, protected witness Rambo III, the foolishly garrulous Jesús Zambada Reyes, was found dead in the PGR safe house where the authorities of Calderón’s government were supposed to be watching over him. The scandal of his convenient death quickly subsided. The official version was that he committed suicide.

On December 1, 2009, Edgar Bayardo, the other key witness against SSP officials, was executed in broad daylight in a busy Starbucks coffee shop in a smart district of Mexico City. Just after eleven in the morning, an Isuzu 4×4 suddenly pulled up outside. One person
stayed inside with the motor running. Another, with a machine gun, burst through the door and shot Bayardo at point-blank range. He knew who his target was. They disappeared as quickly as they’d arrived, leaving the protected witness spread on the ground, his body slightly bent.

The person responsible for the witnesses’ security was Marisela Morales, the deputy attorney in charge of SIEDO, and an obliging collaborator of García Luna and his team. As noted, she later became President Calderón’s last attorney general.

In most countries, such a series of blunders would have spelled disaster for a whole raft of public officials. In Mexico, they had no consequences at all. Luckily for the secretary of public security, there was something else in the air that was weighing on President Calderón’s mind.

The assassination of Juan Camilo Mouriño

When the government arrested El Rey Zambada, his brother, El Mayo, felt betrayed. He thought he’d been stabbed in the back. The “lord of the mountains,” as he also liked to be called, complained to his subordinates that he had already paid this presidency so that he could work in peace, and “a pact is a pact.”
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United States government sources have said, off the record, that after the arrest of El Rey Zambada they detected threats and warnings made to Los Pinos presidential palace.
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They go as far as suggesting that El Mayo phoned Los Pinos to demand the release of his dear brother. He was told this wasn’t possible, because the US government was exerting a lot of pressure. But Ismael Zambada is not a man to be toyed with. So, it’s said, he decided not to wait any longer.

On November 4, 2008, just before 7 p.m., a Learjet 45, flying from San Luis Potosí, crashed in Mexico City close to the intersection of the Periférico ring road and Paseo de la Reforma, only a few miles from Los Pinos itself. On board were the secretary of the interior, Juan Camilo Mouriño, the secretary of the Penal Reform Commission, José Luis Santiago, then an adviser to the president on organized crime, and seven others, including the crew and other government officials.

Many witnesses told the media, both on the night of the crash and the next day, that the plane was already ablaze before it hit the ground: “We suddenly saw this ball of fire that fell from the sky and destroyed everything in the street,” said businessman Sergio Lebrija. Some said they felt the force of a blast, others even claimed to have seen a “mushroom cloud.”
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It was an appalling scene: men and women wrapped in flames, running or trapped inside their burning cars, buildings half destroyed, billowing smoke, and body parts strewn everywhere, amid a stink of fuel. The body of José Luis Santiago—who had once held key posts in the PGR—was left hanging in a meeting room on the second floor of an office building, on the corner of Montes Urales and Monte Pelvoux. It had been thrown out of the plane with terrible force. Only pieces were found of Mouriño; his hand was identified by the wedding ring engraved with the name of his wife, Marigely. The popular verdict on that infernal night was that the drug traffickers had done it.

That day Felipe Calderón was in Atotonilco el Alto, Jalisco. It was after seven when the president left the podium at the end of his visit. Suddenly his private secretary, Aitza Aguilar, approached looking shaken, but Calderón paid no attention and kept walking towards the helicopter that would take him to the airbase in Zapopan and the presidential jet. “Felipe, Juan Camilo is dead,” Aitza finally said. Calderón’s face crumpled. The president of the Republic put up a hand to hide his pain, vulnerable, helpless, in a word, human. Aitza told him briefly what had happened as they walked on. The short time it took before he got into the plane and could give in to tears must have seemed an eternity.

That unhappy night, Calderón gave a short speech in the presidential hangar: “My government, in coordination with the relevant authorities, will carry out all the investigations necessary to get to the bottom of what caused this tragedy.”

Members of Mouriño’s family say it was organized crime that killed the young politician with presidential aspirations. A few days after the crash, Carlos Mouriño, his brother, went to see the president in hopes of an explanation. “Tell us who killed Juan Camilo, we just want to know who it was,” he insisted, with the frankness that went with being the brother of Calderón’s best friend.
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The president
merely repeated the official version that had been given to the media: the accident was the result of pilot error. Later it became known that the crew were, to say the least, highly experienced professionals. Carlos Mouriño left the president’s office in high dudgeon.
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Juan Camilo’s family asked Calderón several more times to tell them what had really happened. The president stuck to the official line. On Thursday, November 6, the president bade farewell to Juan Camilo at a somber funeral ceremony at the Campo Marte military base. His heartfelt words expressed pain and affection for his friend, but his expression and demeanor conveyed something deeper, a visible aura of fear. When the funeral was over, a troubled-looking president went over to the Mouriño family. “Do you really want to know who killed him?” From the look on his face, the family understood that it was better not to know.
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People in the drug trafficking world say that El Mayo claimed responsibility for the death of Juan Camilo Mouriño, and that he let the president know it. “I have absolutely no doubt of that,” said a source close to the drug baron.

On November 9, 2008, Carlos Mouriño Atanes, Juan Camilo’s father, published an emotive letter in the Campeche newspapers insinuating much more clearly that his son’s death had not been an accident, and that the enemy had been identified as the drug gangs. After the letter the family spent a long time in Spain, and only returned in 2011.

Iván [as they called Juan Camilo in Campeche], your accident must not alter our path. We must be clear that your struggle and that of the authorities has to continue with equal or greater strength than before, in the conviction that we will defeat them, that there is an army of citizens behind us all, behind the president, the Congress, the parties, the authorities and the institutions, which urges us forward.

We know that in the present pass there are thousands of resolute and energetic citizens who have said enough is enough, for we are always more, and more determined. We will drive them into a corner, push them over the edge, and when they are defeated we will be able to smile and say to all those who struggled for the same ideals: Mission accomplished. Now may you rest in peace.

El Mayo’s people say that powerful C4 explosives were put in the plane. Several military intelligence informants say they noticed “unusual movements” at the airport in San Luis Potosí, where the aircraft waited while Mouriño signed a cooperation agreement with the state government.

In 2009 there were two arrests that shook the world of organized crime. On March 18, in Lomas de Pedregal in Mexico City, the Mexican army captured Vicente Zambada, El Mayo’s son; he looked and dressed like a rich kid, but he was his father’s right-hand man and the natural heir to his empire. A couple of weeks later, on April 1, Vicente Carrillo, the son of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, was also arrested. His PGR file describes him as a very active member of the Juárez cartel.

The death of El Barbas

Not even Juan Camilo’s death would change the deadly and absurd course of the narco war. After that, García Luna became the person closest to Calderón. They used to play paintball together in the gardens of Los Pinos, that game where nobody actually dies like they do in real life. The government’s actions against organized crime followed the same pattern as before: attacking the enemies of El Chapo, whatever the price.