The Beast (19 page)

“I imagine there are guys in your station that work for them,” I said.

“Yeah, I know there’s some. But I try not to get involved, not to dig around too much. Not to trust anybody.”

“So there’s no solidarity at the station.”

“Forget it. Almost everybody’s bought. If you stop a Zeta, other Zetas will turn you in, spread your name around, put your family at risk. Everybody’s looking out for themselves. In El Ceibo the other day the police reported capturing two guns when what they actually got were five guns and an AK-47.”

He was referring to an operation a few days earlier when in the small Mexico–Guatemala border town of El Ceibo, known as an arms smuggling hotspot, police arrested a young man driving a car with five nine-millimeter pistols and an AK-47. A photographer and I were close by when it happened, waiting to see if the Guatemalan army would follow through with their planned operation against arms dealing in the area. However, as it was publicly announced beforehand, the operation was a failure. And the same
day, after the Mexican police caught the kid with the weapons in his car, they reported that they found only two pistols. The AK and the other three guns, who knows where they ended up.

Los Zetas have infiltrated everywhere. Not even the army is clean. On July 1, 2009, Mexican Intelligence detained sixteen soldiers on bases in Villahermosa and Tenosique, accusing them of working with Los Zetas. They were charged with warning Zetas about military raids and even plotting to assassinate Gilberto Toledano, the police commander who was in charge of the operation at La Victoria ranch.

NO LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

The sun hangs low, but the heat is still suffocating in this café, when the conversation with the undercover agent comes to an end.

“All of this is complicated,” he says as though in summary. “It’s complicated because the first thing we have to do is fight off their deep infiltration. We have to build a front, and the entire state apparatus has to be in on it, fighting against them. Then we’d have a real battle.”

“So what’s being done now, what do you call that?”

“A quaint little game, one that doesn’t get results.”

Then, as a form of goodbye, we exchange futile, broken thoughts. “It’s hard … Yes, complicated … A tough job … Little by little, with care.”

Hopelessness takes hold of me. I think it must be the same feeling that overcame the journalist, the policeman, the priest, and now this agent. As we walk the streets of these southern Mexican towns and make way for people with lowered gazes we will be witnessing the fear. And we will witness the fear in the people making vigilant rounds in their cars. And we will witness it in the streets where soon there will be another murder, and where soon many more migrants will be kidnapped.

“It’s complicated,” the agent repeats. Then we shake hands and say goodbye.

1
In Spanish, the word “zeta” is the name of the letter Z.

2
Narco-corridos are popular norteña or country-style songs celebrating the big drug barons and their deeds.

3
AFI stands for Agencia Federal de Investigación, akin to the FBI, currently subsumed into the federal police.

Crossing point at Suchiate River, which separates Guatemala from Chiapas.

The crossing of the river marks the beginning of the journey across Mexico for undocumented Central American migrants.

On many stretches of the trail through Mexico, migrants are forced to travel on foot, avoiding roads in favor of areas of dense vegetation. La Arrocera—the Rice Cellar—is one of the most notorious of these stretches, a network of twenty-eight ranches scattered across one hundred and sixty miles of thick vegetation in southern Mexico, where migrants endure robberies, assaults, and rapes.

A woman from the group Las Patronas. For almost twenty years, the women of La Patrona, Veracruz have been bringing food and water to the migrants as they pass by on the trains.

Stowaways. The journey from Ixtepec to Medias Aguas takes six to eight hours. Falls, assaults, and kidnappings are common on this stretch.

A man murdered in one of the dangerous neighborhoods of Huixtla, Chiapas. Violence against migrants also affects many others areas and has prompted the formation of community patrols.

At El Bambi, a brothel where a number of Central American migrants work.

A Guatemalan mother and daughter, inside a car traveling north. On this trip, they were intercepted by Mexican agents, but were able to continue their journey after delivering a payment of 1,000 pesos (about eighty dollars).