Mexican Civil Society Wants President and Drug Traffickers To Face War Crimes Charges In The International Criminal Court

by Kristin Bricker, SSR Centre

The accused (from left): Public Security Secretary

Genaro García Luna, Defense Secretary Guillermo 

Galván Galván, President Felipe Calderón, and Navy 

Secretary Mariano Francisco Saynez Mendoza. 

A coalition of lawyers, academics, activists, and journalists has announced that it will seek the prosecution of President Felipe Calderón in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from his deployment of the military to battle drug trafficking organizations.  “Our petition is supported by over 20,000 signatures, both handwritten and electronic,” they said in a written statement, “making it the largest citizens’ complaint that the ICC has ever received.”

Netzai Sandoval, the lawyer who is preparing the complaint, argues that the ICC has jurisdiction in this case because Mexico is a signatory to the Rome Statute, and because the country’s drug war constitutes an “armed conflict not of an international nature.” The Rome Statute, which created the court in 2002, defines an “armed conflict not of an international nature” as “armed conflicts that take place in the territory of a State when there is protracted armed conflict between governmental authorities and organized armed groups or between such groups.”


Details of the Complaint

In addition to President Calderón, Sandoval has requested that the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor investigate Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna, Defense Secretary Guillermo Galván Galván, Navy Secretary Francisco Saynez Mendoza, drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, and “other authorities, military officials, and drug traffickers who are responsible for war crimes in Mexico.”

The Office of the Prosecutor is responsible for determining admissibility, defendants, and charges.  However, Sandoval has requested that the Prosecutor investigate both government officials and drug trafficking organizations for war crimes and crimes against humanity.  He argues that both sides of the conflict have committed murders, rape and sexual slavery, forced disappearances, physical mutilations, inhuman treatment and torture, extensive destruction of property, and attacks against the civilian population, all of which are classified as war crimes or crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute.

Sandoval notes that the Army has murdered and tortured innocent civilians at military checkpoints and during military operations.  “It has attempted to cover up these incidents in order to guarantee impunity,” argues Sandoval.  In 2010, for example, the military killed two students at the elite private university Tec de Monterrey. Soldiers planted weapons on the students’ corpses and removed their backpacks and student IDs to make them appear to be cartel gunmen.

The complaint that Sandoval will present to the ICC also details war crimes committed by criminal organizations.  It specifically mentions the massacres perpetuated by unidentified gunmen at drug rehabilitation clinics that are occurring with alarming frequency in various northern states.  Moreover, he accuses drug trafficking organizations of forcibly recruiting children under fifteen years of age, which has been demonstrated by arrests of children such as 13-year-old Edgar Jiménez Lugo, a cartel hitman who says that a drug trafficking organization kidnapped him when he was eleven and ordered him to kill or be killed.

Sandoval argues that both the government and drug trafficking organizations have committed physical mutilations.  Early in the war, drug trafficking organizations began to terrorize the civilian population by dumping tortured and mutilated bodies in public places such as in dance clubs, alongside highways, hanging from overpasses, or in front of government buildings or schools. In late 2009, the government responded in kind: the Marines killed drug kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva in his home, and then employees from the medical examiner’s office stripped him down to his underwear and covered his bullet-ridden corpse with bloody peso notes and U.S. dollar bills.  They took pictures of his semi-nude body and leaked the pictures to the press, presumably to intimidate Beltran Leyva’s criminal organization.

The complaint also accuses officials from the Mexican government’s National Immigration Institute (INM) of collaborating with drug trafficking organizations to kidnap and traffic Central American migrants who pass through Mexico on their way to the United States.  The government has admitted widespread corruption in the INM, where alarming numbers of immigration agents detain migrants and then hand them over to cartels in exchange for a fee.  The cartels themselves frequently kidnap dozens of migrants in a single raid.  The criminals detain the migrants in “safe houses” while theydemand ransoms from the migrants’ families in the United States, or they enslave the kidnapped migrants to work in fields or—in the case of women—the sex industry as prostitutes or in pornographic movies.

The Gravity Threshold


Due to its limited capacity, the ICC declines to investigate some cases in which it has compelling evidence that war crimes have occurred, but do not reach the ICC’s standard for gravity.  “Even where there is a reasonable basis to believe that a crime has been committed, this is not sufficient for the initiation of an investigation by the International Criminal Court,” wrote ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo when he declined to file charges against coalition forces for war crimes committed in Iraq. “While, in a general sense, any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court is ‘grave,’ the [Rome] Statute requires an additional threshold of gravity even where the subject-matter jurisdiction is satisfied. This assessment is necessary as the Court is faced with multiple situations involving hundreds or thousands of crimes and must select situations” in which the commission of said war crimes are “committed as a part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.”

Migrants’ plight in Mexico might be one of the complaint’s more compelling aspects for the ICC because the crimes committed against them are so widespread.  Germán Guillermo Ramírez Garduaza, who runs the “Santa Faustina Kowalska” Migrante Shelter in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, estimates that 80% of the Centeral American women who pass through his shelter have been raped during their journey.  “They consider rape to be part of the price they pay to migrate,” explains Fermina Rodriguez of the Fray Matias de Cordova Human Rights Center in Chiapas.

The Mexican government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) documented 214 cases of mass kidnappings of migrants in 2010 alone, with a total of 11,333 victims.  This number does not include unreported mass kidnappings, nor does it include kidnappings of small numbers of migrants, meaning that the total number of Central American migrants kidnapped in Mexico is likely much higher.

Sandoval hopes that the staggering statistics of over 50,000 dead, thousands of forced disappearances, at least 230,000 displaced persons, and the appearance of severely mutilated bodies left on public display in various parts of the country on a daily basis will convince the court that high-ranking government officials and drug trafficking organizations are committing war crimes in Mexico “on a massive scale.”


Goals of an ICC Investigation


Unlike the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), which allows victims to sue State parties over a range of human rights violations, the ICC prosecutes individuals—not States—who are allegedly responsible for a very limited range of war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.  Whereas the IACtHR has the power to order States to reform laws or policies that prevent victims from obtaining justice, the ICC only seeks punitive damages, such as imprisonment or indemnity for victims.

Nonetheless, Sandoval believes that an ICC investigation could have important political implications in Mexico.  He hopes that the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor will be able to obtain confidential information regarding the military’s role in the drug war because the Mexican military has denied many Transparency Act requests on the basis of national security.  “On May 9, 2007, [Calderón] published an executive order to create an elite force called the Cuerpo de Fuerzas de Apoyo Federal [Federal Support Forces],” explained Sandoval.  “This elite unit is directly controlled by Felipe Calderón and was involved in the drug war… There is no General or other official between Calderón and those soldiers.”  Sandoval hopes that the Office of the Prosecutor will investigate the secretive Federal Support Forces for any possible human rights abuses, because domestic attempts to obtain information about their actions have been futile.  If the ICC finds that the elite unit is responsible for human rights abuses, Sandoval argues that it can hold Calderón directly responsible for their actions.

Due to the corruption and complicity with organized crime that prevails in Mexico’s security institutions, many victims never report crimes for fear of retaliation.  Mexico’s Census Bureau (INEGI) reports that in 2010, 24 percent of the Mexican population reported being the victim of a crime.  However, only 12.3 percent of them reported the crimes to the police. Of those crimes that were reported to the police, the police only investigated eight percent.

“Mexico is a country of impunity,” argues John Ackerman, a legal scholar with the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Legal Investigations Institute.  Ackerman says that bringing a case before the ICC is a way for citizens “to use legal, peaceful means to demand justice and accountability.”

Sandoval hopes that the ICC will open offices in Mexico to carry out a direct and impartial investigation into possible war crimes. “The ICC should open field offices in different parts of the country so that victims can go there and give direct testimony.”

Even though ICC investigations can drag on for years, Sandoval hopes that the complaint will pressure Mexican politicians to reform the country’s security strategy soon.  “The candidates who will compete in the 2012 presidential election should know that if they continue with a militaristic policy that covers up soldiers’ crimes, they will share Calderón’s fate,” said Sandoval.  “One would hope that they would begin to discuss a plan for the military to return to its barracks, and embark on a new strategy for confronting organized crime.”

Kristin Bricker is a Mexico-based freelance journalist who specializes in militarization, human rights, social movements and the drug war in Latin America.

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Mexican Drug War: Soldiers vs. Soldiers

The most severe blows against the military in the war on drugs have come from former soldiers

by Jorge Carrasco Araizaga, Proceso
translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker

The most offensive casualties the Mexican Army has suffered in the war on drug trafficking aren't the result of confrontations with hitmen. Rather, they're executions carried out by ex-brothers-in-arms, trained by the Mexican National Defense Ministry, who have joined the ranks of organized crime, or by cells protected by high-ranking officials. In less than four months, 21 soldiers have been murdered by those who at one time were "incorruptible."

The Mexican Army's most lethal enemies have come from amongst their own ranks. Concentrated in Los Zetas, the armed wing of the Gulf cartel, men who at one time were soldiers are responsible for the most severe attacks against the armed forces in their confrontation with drug trafficking cartels.

In the past three-and-a-half months, the Army's most significant and offensive casualties have occurred in Cancun, Quintana Roo; Chilpancingo, Guerrero; and Monterrey and the surrounding area in Nuevo Leon at the hands of drug traffickers who used to be members of the military or that, according to groups dedicated to drug trafficking, have formed alliances with active military personnel.

Contrary to President Felipe Calderon's discourse about the incorruptibility of Mexican soldiers, the most severe blows against the military have been planned and executed by those who were prepared and specialized, in Mexico as well as abroad, by the National Defense Ministry (Sedena in its Spanish abbreviation).

From October 3, 2008, to February 3, 2009, a total of 21 soldiers, including a retired brigadier general, were executed by Los Zetas cells that arose from the military, and by Beltran Leyva brothers' cells that are linked with military officials.

Of those 21 deaths, eleven were stabbed, eight were decapitated, and two were tortured to death. In contrast to the casualties that occur during confrontations with hitmen, these victims were kidnapped or rounded up and subjugated in front of numerous witnesses.

According to data published by Sedena, prior to Tuesday, February 3, the military had suffered 68 casualties, both active duty and retired military personnel, since operations against drug trafficking began in December 2006. The highest number of victims have been reported in Guerrero, Nuevo Leon, Michoacan, Sinaloa, Sonora, and Tamaulipas.

The military's two most recent casualties occurred in Cancun on February 3. Brigadier General Mauro Enrique Tello Quiñones and his assistant, infantry Lt. Getulio Cesar Roman Zuñiga, were tortured and murdered by a group Sedana identified as Zetas, with the participation of ex-members of the army.

Retired this past January 1, Gen. Tello Quiñones was in charge of the creation of a special anti-narcotics group made up of 100 soldiers which was going to be under the direction of the mayor of Benito Juarez in Cancun, Gregorio Sanchez Martinez.

A native of Coacolman in the mountainous zone of southwest Michoacan, which is dominated by drug trafficking, the mayor who in Cancun is known as "Greg" says that National Defense Secretary Guillermo Galvan Galvan appointed Tellez [sic: Tello] Quiñones.

Civilian Juan Ramirez Sanchez, Greg's nephew, was murdered along with the general and his assistant. [Greg] was questioned regarding his family's alleged ties to organized crime (Proceso 1684).

The Executioner

Tello Quiñones' death was a severe blow to the military. Not only because organized crime murdered a high-ranking soldier, but because between 2007 and 2008 the general was commander of the 21st Military Zone, headquartered in Morelia, where he participated in the anti-drug trafficking Operation Michoacan.

The intellectual author of these crimes was Octavio Almanza Morales, aka "El Gori 4," an ex-soldier who, until his capture on Monday, February 9, was the boss of the Gulf cartel's cell in Cancun.

Upon announcing his detention on February 11, Sedena's second-in-command of operations, Brigadier General Luis Arturo Oliver Cen, confirmed that El Gori 4 belonged to the military, which he joined on May 20, 1997, and was discharged on July 1, 2004.

El Gori 4's brothers Raymundo and Eduardo Almanza Morales, who were also members of the military, were Zetas with him in Cancun. According to Oliver Cen, both managed to escape the operation in which the Gulf cartel cell was detained.

According to the head of the Assistant Attorney General's Office for the Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime (SIEDO), a department of the Federal Attorney General's Office (PGR), Marisela Morales Ibañez, the two ex-soldiers fled to Belize. Neither Sedena nor the PGR indicated what military rank the Almanza Morales brothers earned in the military. El Gori 4 didn't appear in the list of most wanted criminals the PGR has on its website.

The murder of Gen. Tello Quiñones was the first execution undertaken by Almanza Morales, who recently arrived in Cancun to substitute Javier Diaz Ramon, aka "El Java Diaz," as leader of the Zetas. Diaz Ramon was detained by the military this past December 22 in the port of Veracruz.

Octavio Almanza Morales was Sigifredo "El Canicon" Najera Talamantes' deputy in the state of Nuevo Leon. His capture, which resulted from a tip, was important for the military. Sedena identifies him as a co-conspirator in the execution of nine of the eleven soldiers murdered in Monterrey last October.

The casualties occurred between October 17-22, 2008, in acts of extreme cruelty. The military agents were attacked with sharp, pointed objects and wounded in the neck and thorax. Some of the remains were dumped in vacant lots and others stayed at the scene of the crime (Proceso 1669).

The first attack against soldiers in Monterrey, where Operation Safe Nuevo Leon began in December 2007, occurred the night of Tuesday, October 14, in a downtown bar. Three soldiers were stabbed: Eder Missael Diaz Garcia, Roberto Hernandez Santiago, and David Hernandez Martinez.

Four days later, on Saturday, February 18, the cadavers of another three soldiers and an ex-soldier appeared in different places, also stabbed.

The bodies of David Hernandez Aquino and Jose Perez Bautista in a Country La Silla park in the neighboring municipality of Guadalupe. Another one, that of Gerardo Santiago Santiago, was left next to the cantina Los Generales in the Juarez municipality. The fourth victim was Eligio Hernandez Hernandez, an ex-soldier who worked for a private security company. He was stabbed while his hands were handcuffed behind his back.

The next day, Sunday the 19th, another three soldiers turned up dead in the Las Margaritas ejido[1] in the Santiago municipality. Anastasio Hernandez, Claudio Abad Hernandez, and Hector Miguel Melchor Hernandez--who was also a private security company employee--were found with slit throats.

The violent attacks on the military in Monterrey reached a climax on October 22 with three more murders. One of the executed was the Second Sergeant of the 7th Military Zone, German Cruz Lara. According to the autopsy, his body had stab wounds in the thorax and abdomen; blows to the head, chest, shoulders, and knees; and second-degree burns on the arms and forearms, back, and abdomen.

All of these deaths occurred when the commander of the 7th Military Zone, based in Escobedo, Nuevo Leon, was Division General Javier del Real Madallanes. As of December 4, 2008, the general is the Undersecretary of Police Intelligence and Strategy in the Ministry of Public Security, responsible for the federal police's operations against organized crime.

According to Sedena, El Gori 4 participated in all of these executions. El Gori 4 was detained along with six other people as suspects in the murder of the two soldiers in Cancun.

The Decapitated

The viciousness of the murders in Monterrey was just a warning of what would occur later in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, where eight soldiers were decapitated, seven of them while they were still alive, according to the investigation dossier obtained by Proceso.

The first case occurred on December 9, when Sergeant Carlos Alberto Navarrete Moreno was murdered. His head was deposited in a bucket on the monument to the Flags, along one of the busiest streets in the city, with the message: "According to the soldiers, they are combatting organized crime. They are kidnappers. This is going to happen to them because they're whores."

The other victims were soldiers between 21 and 38 years of age assigned to the 35th Military Zone based in Chilpancingo, who were intercepted in different areas of the city--some in front of numerous witnesses--by one or more armed commandos between 8pm on the 20th and the first minutes of December 21.

In total, seven off-duty soldiers were kidnapped: Captain Ervin Hernandez Umaña, Sergeants Juan Humberto Tapia Romero and Ricardo Marcos Chino, Corporals Jose Gonzalez Mentado and Juan Muñoz Morales, as well as soldiers Julian Teresa Cruz and Catarino Martinez Morales.

The following people were murdered along with them: Simon Vences Martinez, who was assistant director of the Judicial Police during the Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu administration[2], and 22-year-old indigenous man Oligario Vazquez Quiroz, native of the Tlacopa municipality, who worked cleaning in the 41st Infantry Battalion in Chilpancingo and was about to be promoted to soldier.

The dossier of the investigation into the murder AP/BRA/SC/02/2725/2008, compiled by the Guerrero Attorney General's Office and obtained by Proceso, establishes the soldiers' cause of death: "hypovolemic shock by external hemorrhaging, produced by the detachment of the cephalic extremity consistent with a wound produced by decapitation."

The forensic report, numbered 352/2008, states that the perpetrators used a "Giggy" saw, a very thin flexible serrated metal cable used by orthopedic surgeons to cut bones during surgery. It notes that, despite being gagged, they didn't die from asphyxia due to the fact that they decapitated them ante mortem.

Their heads were dumped in a mall parking lot near the 35th Military Zone in the south of the city. Their bodies were dropped in two places in the north.

Even though Sedena has not officially blamed these crimes on any particular organization, the military repression after the incident (which the military publicly declared "an offense that that would not go unpunished") has been focused on a Beltran Leyva organization cell in the Costa Grande region, which includes the Zihuatanejo port.

Groups who oppose the [Beltran Leyva] organization have hung "narco-banners"[3] accusing Colonel Victor Manuel Gonzalez Trejo, commander of the 19th Infantry Battalion based in Petatlan, of protecting Petatlan's ex-mayor Rogaciano Alva Alvarez and Reynaldo "El Rey" Zambada, detained this past October.

It was unofficially stated at the end of January that Gonzalez Trejo was replaced by Infantry Colonel Marco Antonio Hernandez Chavez, a soldier promoted last November by Calderon. According to the same source, Gonzalez Trejo is being investigated for the accusations against him.

Colonel Gonzalez Trejo isn't the only soldier in the zone that has been accused of protecting drug traffickers. Lt. Colonel Jose Alfaro Zepeda Soto was mentioned in narco-banners hung on pedestrian bridges and public buildings in the La Union and Petatlan municipalities, also in the Costa Grande and Acapulco, Guerrero; as well as Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan.

Lt. Colonel Zepeda Soto, who is commander of mortar platoon in Zacatula in the La Union municipality, is accused of protecting Jose Angel Pineda Sanchez, aka "El Calentano."

The narco-messages, addressed to the head of Sedena, claim that Zepeda Soto and El Calentano received money from Jaime "El Hummer" Gonzalez Duran, one of the founders and leaders of Los Zetas detained in early November 2008 in Reynosa, Tamaulipas. The payment, they alleged, was in exchange for protection of the activities of the Gulf cartel's armed wing in Guerrero (Proceso 1678).

El Hummer also belonged to the military. He enlisted on November 15, 1991, and deserted on February 24, 1999, to join fellow ex-soldier Arturo Guzman Decenas and ex-cop Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano, other Zetas founders working for the Gulf cartel.

The Incorruptibles

Despite the fact that the deaths of soldiers in recent months are allegedly linked to the illegal activities of fellow members or ex-members in the military, Felipe Calderon stated on Tuesday, February 10, that Mexico's soldiers are incorruptible.

During the Mexican Air Force Day ceremony held in Tecamac, Mexico State, after requesting a minute of silence for the murder of Gen. Tello Quiñones in Cancun, he ventured: "General Vicente Riva Palacio rightfully said that society guards in its breast an incorruptible seed of morality and a core of men whom neither seduction nor fear can corrupt. That's how I view Mexico's soldiers." He added: "Mexico sees in the members of our institutions a reserve of those values that are the real security of our nation."

Beyond the soldiers murdered by ex-members of the military, there are various cases where soldiers have been murdered for their relationships with organized crime. The most recent occurred on Monday, February 9, when an armed commando group entered the prison in Torreon, Coahuila, to kill and then burn with gasoline three kidnappers who just hours prior had been imprisoned.

One of them was Ubaldo Gomez Fuentes, aka "El Uba," a second lieutenant who belonged to the 33rd Infantry Battalion's Military Intelligence Group. He was detained in early January in Coahuila for the kidnapping and murder of Monterrey businessman Rodolfo Alanis.

Ezequiel Flores contributed to this report from Chilpancingo.

Translator's notes:

[1] Ejido is a commonly held piece of land.

[2] Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu was governor of Guerrero from 1987-1993. He was former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari's brother-in-law. He was assassinated on September 28, 1994, amid rumors that he had had various confrontations with Salinas' brother Raul, who allegedly had links to the Colombian Medellin cartel. Raul was convicted and imprisoned for bring the intellectual author of Ruiz Massieu's murder, but was exonerated ten years later.

[3] Narco-banners are banners hung by alleged members of drug trafficking organizations. They tend to criticize police, the military, or government officials of protecting or working with rival criminal organizations.

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In Two Years the Number of Gang Members Doubles in Monterrey, Mexico

In 2006 there were eleven thousand youths involved in gangs; in 2008 the number rose to 26 thousand. A military report confirms that Los Zetas financed the tapados protests.

by Diego E. Osorno, Milenio

Monterrey - Organized crime groups have beaten the state for control of Monterrey's poorest neighborhoods, as indicated by military reports, official surveys of state police, and sociological studies.

Recent statistics from the state Ministry of Public Security show that in the past two years the number of youths who enter gangs has doubled in Mexico's richest city. According to official numbers--considered to be conservative by independent investigators--, in 2006 the authorities had counted 11,319 gang members, but last year the number rose to 26,023.

The majority of these young people (between 12 and 22 years old) reside in neighborhoods where organized crime recruited gangs to carry out various activities, according to a military document in which the current situation in Nuevo Leon is also analyzed.

Tomorrow [March 16] will mark one month after the most recent blockade carried out in this city's streets by tapados ["masked ones"] who were demanding that military operations in the zone cease. The military puts forward in this report--shared with some state and federal officials--that "the criminal group Los Zetas has high and dangerous influence" in the Monterrey metropolitan area's colonias populares (poor neighborhoods) and that the protests that occurred this past February 9-17 were financed by this group as part of its strategy to destabilize the city before a presidential visit.

Cheap Labor

Of the Monterrey metropolitan area's* 747 neighborhoods, 206 are considered problematic and sixy-six are in critical situation, warns a study by Patricia Cerda, coordinator of the Nuevo Leon Autonomous University's Communication Department's Investigation Center.

The investigator states that 1,917 gangs currently exist in the metropolitan municipalities. The Escobedo conurbation reports the highest increase in gang membership. In 2006 there were 149 gangs in this city; the number tripled in 2008 to 492.

"The analysis of conflict zones draws the conclusion that in areas with high rates of domestic violence, the proliferation of gangs and social violence gets worse. With that comes the possibility that the gang members turn to micro-criminal groups, which the macro-criminal or organized crime can utilize as cheap labor," explains Cerda in an interview.

In another study the investigator demonstrates that the current violence situation has generated a considerable increase in the number of young people who commit suicide. "I don't think that there is a failed state in those neighborhoods, but if we don't attend to them as a society, as a government, other groups are going to do it," she says.

Waiting on the Corner

However, due to the current economic crisis, others think that the near future isn't very encouraging for Monterrey's poor neighborhoods. Sociological studies from the Nuevo Leon Autonomous University reveal that in 1984 and 1995, after economic crises that were comparable to the current one, the number of gangs rose in these zones.

David Gonzalez, who has been a social promoter in the city's marginalized zones since the 80s, believes that the situation in these neighborhoods is alarming. "From the street generation we move on to the dead end streets--the generation of those born in saturated houses, saturated streets, and saturated cities. In these new generations, the young are immersed in skepticism: they don't believe in the country. These kids make their parents happy when they're in the streets, and the kids are also happier."

About the tapados, a member of The Shot Collective says: "What's happening is that the kids get together in the streets; if someone comes with a ball and says 'We're going to play soccer,' they go; if someone comes with a forty (beer) and says 'We're going to go get drunk,' they go to get drunk; if someone shows up with rocks and says 'We're going to throw stones,' they go."

It's no secret here that the people who went out to protest against the military a month ago are the same clientele that the political parties mobilize for big events, including elections. [Translator's note: Political parties are known to recruit people for rallies and to buy votes in exchange for tortillas, preferable utility rates, and public works like paved roads.]

The mother of a tapado from the Sierra Ventana neighborhood says: "One day we woke up and there were backpacks with a $200 peso bills on our doorsteps with a message: 'This is yours if you participate in today's protest; if you're not interested, leave everything where you found it.'"

Hell

• According to ecologist Guillermo Martinez Berlanga, organized crime's penetration in Monterrey's poor neighborhoods is explained by a lack of public spaces.
• "A major city that abandons its youth and leaves them in misery without opportunities is a society that sooner or later will fail."
• "I warned about these changes when they privatized the Santa Catarina River and the Fundidora Park. We lack seven thousand hectares of free public spaces in the Monterrey metropolitan zone. So you really think these kids aren't living in hell?"

*The Monterrey metropolitan area consists of nine municipalities.

Translated for Narco News from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker.

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Who Won and Who Lost in Mexico's "Narco Protests"

Calderon and the Military Become Heroes; Social Organizers and the Poor are Demonized


On February 9, 2009, several hundred young people with their faces covered blocked major highways in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, in a series of highly coordinated actions, paralyzing the city of 1.1 million people. The protesters returned almost every day for over a week, their actions allegedly coordinated by young men on Nextel cell phones. Each time the protesters came back to block the highways, more women with young children in their arms accompanied them.

At first, the protesters' motives were unclear. Then the protesters made it known that they were protesting the use of the military in the war on drugs. Specifically, they called for the withdrawal of the military from civilian policing functions and the resignation of the commander of the 7th Military Zone, Cuauhtémoc Antúnez Pérez.

Within days of the first protest, the Mexican military--which was deployed to Nuevo Leon by President Felipe Calderon in February 2007 to combat organized crime--arrested six alleged members of Los Zetas, the organization founded by Mexican military deserters who work for drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). The government accuses the six men of leading the protests that shut down Monterrey. Among those arrested is Juan Antonio Beltrán Cruz. The military says it found illegal firearms and 71 backpacks filled with school supplies in his pick-up truck. Beltrán Cruz allegedly went to poor neighborhoods with the backpacks to entice parents and young people into participating in the protests.

Some protesters also admitted to the government and the media that they were paid to participate--anywhere from $200 to $1000 pesos (USD $13-$70), with women receiving more money, and women with small children in their arms receiving the most.

On February 17, the day of the most intense protests in Monterrey, anti-military protest blockades occurred in Reynosa and Matamoros in the state of Tamaulipas; various cities in Veracruz; and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua.

On February 18, the military began to patrol the streets of Monterrey. The protesters vanished.

On February 19, President Felipe Calderon gave a speech commemorating Mexican Military Day on the 7th Military Zone base in Monterrey. In his speech, he called the drug cartels "cowards" for paying women, children, and the elderly to protest, and he declared that the military would not return to its barracks until civilian police had the ability to carry on the fight.

Not Your Average Protests

Narco News spoke to an adherent to the Zapatistas' Other Campaign in Ciudad Juarez about the February 17 protests that shut down three international bridges in that city. She actively participates in multiple city-wide organizing networks and says she knows most social organizations and hears about protests before they happen. She wishes to remain anonymous for her own security. The adherent tells Narco News that two of the three blockades were publicized before they happened and known organizations--taxi drivers and families of disappeared people--participated in them. Their singular focus on the military was new--the taxi drivers generally protest the Secretary of Public Transportation's policies regarding licensing, a lack of taxi stands, and other work-related issues. Likewise, the families of the disappeared generally protest violence, insecurity, and militarization, but they never focus solely on the military.

The third protest, however, was "very strange," she says. It was not advertised before it occurred. The adherent says she knows most organizers in the city, but when she watched the protest on the news, she "didn't see a single familiar face." While the adherent says that the February 17 protests were out of character for Ciudad Juarez, she says they weren't nearly as bizarre as the protests that occurred in Monterrey.

In Monterrey, local organizers knew immediately that the anti-military protest was not your average protest. A Monterrey-based collective that is an adherent to the Other Campaign told Narco News that it is in touch with most social organizations in the city that hold protests, and none of them knew any activists or organizations who participated in the protests. They didn't even know the protests were going to occur until they happened--there were no e-mail announcements and no fliers in the streets calling people to protest.

Don Hector Camero of the Monterrey-based NGO Land and Liberty also knew right away that this protest was different. He told Radio Bemba that groups who participate in protests usually make themselves, their, organizations, and their demands known. This was not the case with the anti-military protests. The people who were protesting remained anonymous, even covering their faces. They didn't make their demands immediately known, and they didn't express how they themselves have suffered since the military hit the streets in their city.

Camero knows at least some of the participants were paid. He recounted to Radio Bemba how a family member of a friend accepted $500 pesos to participate in the protests. The man of the house had just lost his job, and someone offered his wife $500 pesos to go particpate in a blockade. She accepted the offer.

The Monterrey Other Campaign adherents also became suspicious when they saw the police reaction to the protest. While this protest was one of the more aggressive protests Monterrey has seen in recent history, the police were more light-handed than they've ever been during previous protests. Burning barricades don't happen on the streets of Monterrey durign normal protests, says Narco News' source. But when 80 or 90 young people set a barricade ablaze on Fidel Velasquez Ave. during the anti-military protests, the police chose dialogue over repression. "If social organziations did that there would have been very strong repression," says one Other Campaign adherent who wishes to remain anonymous due to fear of reprisal.

Camero agrees. "Young people gather in the Civil College Plaza in Monterrey. As soon as the young people start to congregate, the police are on top of them. They don't let the young people meet. They [the young people] show educational, political, and civic movies there--which isn't a sin--and they [the police] don't let them carry out their cultural activities. They run them out of the place. But in this case [the "narco protests"], the police acted very prudently."

The police and military's "prudent" response to the protests is widely documented in Mexican media. Approximately fifty people were detained during one of the protests. They were freed hours later after paying a $500 peso bail. Thanks to Mexico's draconian organized crime laws, these people, whom the government accuses of working for drug cartels, could have been held without bail--but they weren't. Reforma reports that one young woman was detained on Constitution Ave, but was freed minutes later. Soon thereafter she was seen blocking Gonzalitos Ave.

It is unknown why the police behaved so prudently. The local government's official reason is that so many women, elderly people, and children participated in the protests. Narco News' Monterrey source reports rumors that the police had received threats. That is a likely scenario: the day after police arrested alleged Zeta Beltrán Cruz with a 9mm submachine gun and 71 backpacks in his possession, a police commander involved in his apprehension was murdered in broad daylight. The attackers shot him so many times that his face was unrecognizable. The shells recovered from the scene of the crime show that at least some of the weapons used--a 9mm submachine gun and an assault rifle--are limited under Mexican law as exclusively for military use (though law has not prevented these weapons from winding up in the hands of drug cartel members).

The Winners and Losers in the "Narco Protests"

During the "narco protests," the world's attention was focused on one question: Who was behind the protests? The government says the Gulf cartel and its armed associates Los Zetas organized the Monterrey protests. Some have quietly speculated that the government itself set up the protests to boost the military's popularity. The truth is that no one except the protest organizers themselves will ever really know who was behind these protests. Therefore, the real question isn't "Who did it?" but "Why did they do it?"

The reasoning behind the careful planning and masterful execution of the Monterrey protests is best understood by evaluating who gained and who lost when the "narco protests" finally ended.

The Winners

President Felipe Calderon: Calderon ran on a "get tough on crime" platform. Within days of taking office, he made the highly controversial decision to deploy soldiers to states where he felt territory had been lost to drug traffickers. Since then, drug violence has skyrocketed: in 2008, the number of organized crime-related murders more than doubled the 2007 total, making the drug war more deadly than the drugs themselves. However, the day he arrived at a Monterrey military base to give his Military Day address was the first day in over a week that no "narco protests" occurred in Monterrey. Whereas before Calderon was associated with surging homicide rates, chaos, and violence, he is now associated with peace and tranquility. As the anonymous Monterrey Other Campaign adherent put it, "Everyone was talking about a 'failed state,' and then Calderon arrives and he brings order."

The National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI): 2009 is an election year in Nuevo Leon. Both the Monterrey mayor position and the governorship are up for grabs on July 5. Monterrey is currently controlled by the PAN, while Nuevo Leon's governor is a PRIista. Both contests have turned into races to see which politician can repress dissent better than the rest of the candidates. The PAN, being the party behind the deployment of the military to combat organized crime, already has a proven "iron fist" (mano dura) track record when it comes to organized crime. However, the PRI, which ran Mexico with an iron fist for over seven decades, won't be outdone so easily. Rodrigo Medina de la Cruz, the PRI's gubernatorial candidate, proposed that the Nuevo Leon state congress pass a law making blocking a road "in a violent manner" punishable by up to six years in prison and a fine of $7,500-$25,000 pesos (USD$492-$1,639). Monterrey's PAN mayor, Adalberto Madero Quiroga, delivered his own proposal to the state congress: street blockades should be punishable by six years in prison, but if someone dies during the protest, the sentence is doubled to 12 years. Quiroga's proposal does not specify if the 12-year sentence applies only if protesters kill the person, or if it applies when police or the military kill someone, too. In Mexico, the police, the military, and pro-government paramilitaries are generally responsible for protester deaths, not the protesters themselves.

The Military: The Monterrey protests have turned the military into heroes. Press and eyewitness reports say that Monterrey citizens literally welcomed the soldiers with open arms when they began to patrol the city's streets just one day prior to Calderon's arrival. People on the streets reportedly cheered and clapped when they saw the soldiers. Narco News' Monterrey contact says that "the city is completely militarized"--and people seem to like it.

If someone wanted to stage protests to boost the military's popularity, Monterrey is the perfect place to do it. The Monterrey collective told Narco News that there was never significant anti-military sentiment in Monterrey, despite the military's presence in Nuevo Leon for over a year. Camero explains why: "In Monterrey there haven't been the sorts of violations committed by soldiers that there have been in other places. I'm not saying they don't exist; we've had 150 or 200 PFP agents on top of us [the Federal Preventive Police, or PFP, are federal police that have also been deployed in the war on drugs and participate in joint operations with the military]. But in general, soldiers' patrols are carried out with caution. There have been some complaints due to mistaken house searches or the military checkpoints. But in general there haven't been a lot of complaints regarding their treatment of the population. So these protests, where the young people have not only covered their faces, but they're also walking around with sticks threatening drivers or young ladies, have created a situation where the population is standing behind the military. They're saying, 'We're with the military.' So the protests are actually provoking the opposite" of their stated goal, which is the withdrawal of the military.

Indeed. Just two weeks after the protest ended, the federal government announced that it was sending an additional 5,000 soldiers to Ciudad Juarez, which is Mexico's most violent city and also the site of a protest the media linked to the "narco protests." One thousand federal police and two thousand soldiers have already arrived. Prior to the recent build-up, 2,000 soldiers were stationed in Ciudad Juarez, meaning that when all of the reinforcements arrive, 7,000 soldiers will patrol the city of 1.4 million people. That's one soldier for every 200 civilians in a city with a population density of over twelve thousand people per square mile, or sixty soldiers per square mile. While the federal government's announcement is probably not a direct result of the "narco protests," the protests surely didn't hurt military public relations prior to one of the more intense military surges in the country.

Any DTO that Collaborates with Sectors of the Military: In December 2008, Narco News correspondent Bill Conroy laid out the evidence that corruption within the Mexican military may not be limited to a few isolated incidents of (albeit high-ranking) officers on the cartel payroll in his story "Juarez Murders Shine Light on an Emerging 'Military Cartel.'" One source, former DEA agent Celerino “Cele” Castillo III, told Conroy:

During the presidential elections, El Chapo [Joaquin Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa drug trafficking organization, or DTO] supported [Mexican President] Calderon. Calderon then rented the military to El Chapo to take out Osiel [Cardenas Guillen, leader of the Gulf DTO, which controlled the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo]. Keep in the back of your mind, why has Chapo not been arrested?

Calderon took back the military and is now working hand in hand with El Chapo. … [U.S.] Iraq [War] veterans were acting as mercs for the Mexican military. Right now, as we speak, there are U.S. Iraq veterans work ing for this organization. They are doing the enforcement work on this side [of the U.S. border] for the Mexican military. They are collecting the … profits of drug sales in the U.S. They [targets who owe money to the drug organization] are grabbed and given 24 hours to wire some of the money into Mexico bank accounts. If not, they are executed. ...

The old M-79 grenade launcher uses the 40 mm round. The ones that were laying on the table in the picture [of weapons confiscated by Mexican authories] of today’s paper. What the story is not telling is these 40mm [rounds] are U.S. military issued. How about them apples?

Conroy goes on to write, "Castillo adds that he recently was provided information that indicates another group made quite famous by the media, the Zetas (a U.S.-trained Mexican special operations group that defected from the Mexican military) is now assisting the Mexican military in its narco-trafficking operations along the border."

In the same story, Conroy quotes Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, a former high-ranking member of the Juarez DTO who is an informant in the House of Death case, as he describes how the Mexican Navy ran drugs for his DTO from Colombia.

Conroy's story does not point to one DTO that has control over the Mexican military. He mentions three or four separate DTOs who are allegedly in cahoots with the military: El Chapo Guzman's organization, Los Zetas (who allegedly work for the Gulf DTO or anyone else who pays well), and the Juarez DTO. Rather, Conroy's evidence and sources show that in a clandestine industry where to survive one has to keep his friends close and his enemies closer; where alliances and rivalries change with the wind; and where politicians, police, and military officers go to the highest bidder, the military has emerged as another player in the game. Just like other cartels, the "military cartel's" alliances shift as conditions change, and it finds new allies if the price is right. Different military officers may choose to ally themselves and the troops under their command with different DTOs. And even if rumors that President Calderon has a preferred DTO and is using his military campaign to take out that DTO's enemies are true, Calderon can't keep all of his troops in line any more than El Chapo can keep all the cells of the Sinaloa "Federation" in line.

So, while it is possible that one DTO or an alliance between a DTO and a sector of the military masterminded the "narco protests," no one knows which military officer and his troops are working with which DTO until someone snitches on the officer. Even then, it's not certain that the snitch is telling the truth. So the official and clear-cut winner in the "narco protests" was the military as a whole. Whichever DTOs are currently aligned with sectors of the military just saw their ally's power, and therefore their own, increase. And because the military, which has been fighting a constant public relations battle over its involvement in the war on drugs, just increased its power and popularity, it may have also just increased the going rate for its loyalty.

The Losers

In addition to any drug cartel that is not aligned with the military, particularly in regions where the "narco protests" occurred, civil society suffered a significant blow thanks to the protests.

Social Organizers and Organizations: The "anti-military" protests in Monterrey succeeded in neutralizing very legitimate demands (that the military withdraw from civilian policing duties) and complaints (that soldiers performing civilian policing functions without an official declaration of war is unconstitutional).

When anti-military protests broke out in areas that do have a history of legitimate protests against militarization, such as Veracruz and Ciudad Juarez, there was immediate speculation in the press that they were also linked to drug traffickers. However, unlike Monterrey, no concrete proof has emerged that these protests were organized by anyone other than the protesters themselves. While an Other Campaign adherent in Ciudad Juarez told Narco News that one of the anti-military blockades of an international bridge in that city was "very strange" when compared to other similar protests, she did say that legitimate social organizations were definitely involved in the other protests and blockades that occurred in other parts of Ciudad Juarez that day. Even though the government verified that legitimate family members of persons allegedly disappeared by the military participated, the press reported--without citing further evidence--that unidentified "security agents" said people were hired to protest. While the government has not presented any proof or made any official statements that at least some protesters in Ciudad Juarez received compensation for their participation, if someone did pay people to protest while legitimate organizations were also protesting, they have succeeded in ripping away all credibility that legitimate social organizations had in that city. And even if not a single protester in Juarez participated because they were paid, the specter remains--the media discussed the protests in all four states as if they were the same, without a shred of proof that participants outside of Monterrey received any compensation.

Organizers are thorns in the side of undemocratic power. As such, organizers can be as much of a liability for narcos as they are for the government. In locales where the narcos own or are the government, or in regions where narcos are the caciques (local political bosses), organizers threaten DTOs' power. Whoever was behind the protests--be it the government or a DTO or a mix of both--has further consolidated its power by stripping organizers of theirs.

The "narco protests" didn't just serve to damage organizers' credibility; the government is also using them to push measures to repress protests and gain some control over them, much like the US government does. As previously mentioned, Nuevo Leon officials have proposed 6-12 year prison sentences and high fines for blocking a road during a project, which is currently a traffic violation. The one proposed exception to the law is if a legitimate protest group advises the government prior to its action that it wishes to block a road during a protest. This will effectively introduce a protest permit system to Mexico, in which protesters who wish to protest the government must first ask permission of the government to do so. The system is widely in place in the United States and gives the government significant control over protests. The government tells organizers where they may protest and when. When the government does not want protests to occur, it outright denies permits to protesters, as was the case during the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Philadelphia in 2000. The city government granted protest permits to the RNC for the entire city for the duration of the convention, leaving none for social organizations (the RNC, of course, did not use the permits to protest itself--it simply wanted to lock out activists). The only permit given to protest organizers was in a "free speech zone" (implicating that "free speech" was only a right in that area, but not in the rest of the city) which was a fenced-off area in a corner of a parking lot so far away from the Convention Center that no one even noticed the few protesters who decided to use the zone. If protest serves to raise the costs of a government policy or decision such as a war, permitted protests reduce the costs to the government to a minor and temporary headache.

Thanks to the "narco protests," public opinion in Monterrey has given the government and pro-government civilians the green light to kill demonstrators. Narco News' Monterrey contact sent comments posted on online forums that he says are accurate representations of how many Monterrey citizens feel about the protests. In a forum on the Monterrey newspaper El Norte's website, one poster says, "If you're in your car and one of them [the protesters] crosses your path, run them over and don't stop even if you leave them lying on the ground. Don't even turn around, as if you'd run over a toad..." Another poster says that after running over a protester, motorists should put the car in reverse "to see if they still want to act like clowns for a couple of backpacks." Yet another says that if a citizen runs across protesters on a bridge, s/he should throw the protesters off the bridge. No one on the forum criticizes comments that encourage murder.

Being an organizer in Mexico is already dangerous, even without public support for their murder. This past February, the Mexican Supreme Court refused to hold accountable the police who killed Alexis Benhumea and Francisco Javier Cortes in the 2006 San Salvador Atenco protests. In its decision, it didn't even acknowledge that police were responsible for the murders, even though a tear gas canister killed Benhumea and the gun that killed Cortes is of the caliber that is issued to state police commanders but is illegal for civilians to carry. Also in February, armed men "who appeared to be soldiers" abducted two indigenous human rights activists in Guerrero and tortured and murdered them.

Colonias Populares: Colonias populares are poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of cities. They have to fight for basic municipal services such as paved roads, running water, and sewer and drainage systems.

Narco News has documented how the joint federal police-military operation in Michoacan is being used to repress colonias populares, particularly those who belong to social organizations. Given that there is proof that residents of colonias populares were paid to block roads during the "narco protests," it can be expected that government repression will increase in Monterrey's colonias populares--even in those that did not participate.

If the blockades provoked rage against protesters in general, it provoked a particularly fierce rage against Monterrey's poorest residents because it is known that some of them participated in exchange for school supplies and money. One poster on El Norte's forum wrote that the military should be deployed against the protesters (it was deployed six days after the post) and that "if they [the soldiers] kill those people no one will miss them, they stream out of every trash dump or piece of poop...a couple of dead ones won't hurt anyone, it's better that way because we'd be doing society a favor by not keeping fucking people who are dying of hunger alive, because these idiots cost us in an indirect way."

The anger towards Monterrey's poor residents is misdirected, says Camero, because it ignores the conditions, created by the government itself, that led to people blocking roads in exchange for school supplies and cash. "There is a crisis of unemployment and of abandonment of young people. There's no guarantee [of employment for young people]. I'm not even talking about school or sports here--I'm talking about employment. With this abandonment it's easy to make these sorts of offers [to get paid to protest]. This is a very strange, unimaginable scenerio, but it can easily happen because of the situation."

Camero blames the government for spending millions of pesos in public money on maintaining political parties when it doesn't adequately supply schools with basic necessities. "How is it possible that the narcos are offering people school supplies? We have a long-term campaign to get school supplies in [Nuevo Leon] schools. These are conditions that the government has allowed to develop, and organized crime can take advantage of them."

Originally from Narco News: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/03/who-won-and-who-lost-mexicos-narco-protests

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Dirty Tactics in Operation Clean-Up

Operation Clean-Up's arrests of Mexican officials are based on hearsay and contradictory testimonies; many of the accused could be set free

by Ricardo Ravelo, Proceso

translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker

The attempt to clean up the Attorney General's Office (PGR) appears to be threatened by deficiencies in the investigation which have already resulted in judicial losses in favor of some of the accused. And what's worse, it might have to face an international denunciation for employing "dirty means" in its zeal to find culprits.

Inconsistencies, contradictions, and statements based on hearsay produced by protected witnesses may lead to the downfall of the so-called Operation Clean-Up, which is led by Federal Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora. The operation's aim is to "clean up" the institution responsible for combatting organized crime. The PGR has been infiltrated by drug traffickers for years.

The vices and failings in compiling the dossier PGR/SIEDO/UEIDCS/0241/2008 have begun to surface: the ex-chief of the Assistant Attorney General's Office for Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime (SIEDO), Noe Ramirez Mandujano, won an injunction in the 6th District Criminal Court which blocked the extension of his administrative detention for 40 more days. However, the PGR announced on December 25, 2008, that it had requested an appeal of the injunction, which is why the ex-federal official remains detained, but not under administrative detention, and his legal situation could be resolved in another month.

That's not all: Despite being accused by three protected witnesses of forming part of a network that protected the Beltran Leyva brothers, judicial authorities denied imprisonment pending trial for Miguel Colorado Gonzalez, ex-technical coordinator of the SIEDO who is implicated as part of Operation Clean-Up, because they say the PGR did not prove his ties to drug trafficking.

However, Colorado Gonzalez remains detained in the Puente Grande maximum security prison--the same prison Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera escaped from, and the same prison where Alfredo "El Mochomo" Beltran Leyva has been imprisoned since January 2008. The reason: the United States government formally requested his extradition on December 24. A court in that country has summoned him to be prosecuted for the crime of conspiring to traffic drugs.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday December 30, Miguel Colorado Luke, son of the ex-PGR official, said that his father is prepared to face the United States court "as soon as possible," and for that reason his lawyers will demand that the Foreign Relations Ministry speeds up his transfer.

"Every other person fights in Mexican courts to not be tried in the United States. Why does your father prefer to be immediately extradited?" Luke was asked.

"In Mexico the PGR doesn't want to prosecute him because, according to what we've seen in the dossier, there isn't any evidence against him. All of the witnesses that implicate him rely on hearsay. They're false accusations.

"Faced with this reality, the family has decided to stand trial in the United States, where we are sure that we're going to win, and afterwards we'll initiate a countersuit so that the international community sees that the PGR is an institution that uses dirty means to try to push on with its Operation Clean Up."

Miguel Colorado is the person that, under Noe Ramirez Mandujano's orders (Ramirez led the SIEDO from January 2007 until July 2008), began to spy on Captain Fernando Rivera Hernandez after the then-assistant attorney general received reports from the DEA in March 2008 that accused Rivera and another group of soldiers and civilians--all of them SIEDO officials--of being in collusion with the Beltran Leyva brothers and of receiving monthly payments of up to USD$450,000 (Proceso 1674).

Colorado is the only soldier that has not taken refuge in the witness protection program, but in the dossier PGR/SIEDO/UEIDCS/0241/2008 he appears to be splattered with drug corruption, according to statements from his accusers.

Protected witnesses Saul, Moises, and David incriminate Miguel Colorado in the Beltran Leyva organization's payments to officials.

For example, an addition to his statement before the SIEDO on August 8, 2008, the witness Moises (as Captain Fernando Rivera, Colorado's boss, is identified by the PGR) states that Miguel Colorado and Jose Antonio Cueto (who is indicated in the same dossier as the main recruiter of officials to serve the Beltran Leyva brothers) have known each other for a long time.

Additionally, the witness David (code name of soldier Roberto Garcia Garcia, who was a member of the Mexican Military's High Command Special Forces Airmobile Group), when he elaborated on his September 25, 2008, testimony, said that he learned that a federal agent known as El Pinocho "received money from the [Beltran Leyva] organization" and that the same man was the one who "handed over the money to Miguel Colorado."

However, David does not specify how he learned of such facts, nor if there is any record of them, which is why Miguel Colorado's family considers him to be a "hearsay witness."

At least El Pinocho isn't David's own invention, according to what is inferred from the same SIEDO investigation. El Pinocho is Francisco Javier Jimenez Sanchez, accused by Saul (another witness whose real name is Milton Cilia Perez) as Sergio "El Grande" Villareal Barragan's protector. This man was ministerial agent and was assigned to the Stolen Vehicles department in Coahuila, but he switched sides to work with the Gulf cartel is now a Beltran Leyva employee in La Laguna and in the state of Morelos, one of their main refuges.

Fabricated Evidence

Amongst the group of soldiers and civilians who worked in the SIEDO, Miguel Colorado is known as "the old man of the heavens" for his fondness of reading the Bible. And it's by this nickname that Emiliano, another protected witness, refers to him. On September 9 of last year, Emiliano said "that he recognizes the old man of the heavens or 'the elderly man' as a member of the organization" led by the Beltran Leyva brothers.

"All of this," says Colorado Luke, "is made up. That's why the accusation didn't stick in my father's case, and now they want to extradite him, because the PGR doesn't want to look bad in Mexico. Moreover, the majority of the soldiers implicated in Operation Clean-Up have stated that they weren't under orders from Attorney General Medina Mora nor from Noe Ramirez Mandujano, but rather from the Brigadier General Luis Rodriguez Bucio," ex-head of the Anti-Narcotics Intelligence Center.

According to his record, Rodriguez Bucio was dismissed after becoming caught up in Operation Clean-Up. Previously he was involved in the dossier 55/2001 for "misuse" of the 4310 certificate, earmarked for "transfers for national and public security expenses." This incident came out of a statement against him in the PGR, along with Wilfredo Robledo Madrid and Genaro Garcia Luna (who acted as head of the Federal Investigative Agency during the past administration) for purchasing aircraft without soliciting bids. Afterwards, the Internal Affairs Department released him from responsibility.

Meanwhile, Operation Clean-Up's voluminous dossier PGR/SIEDO/UEIDCS/0241/2008 shows inconsistencies: the protected witnesses--whose statements this weekly had access to--have fallen into contradictions regarding the places where the Beltran Leyva brothers' agents handed over payments to the SIEDO "informants" accused of protecting them.

For example, Jennifer says in her statement that the money was delivered to Captain Fernando Rivera (ex-coordinator of SIEDO intelligence and also a protected witness) in the El Caballito tower, on Paseo de la Reforma Ave., although, she says, other meet-ups took place near the National Auditorium. Saul testified that Rivera was paid in the house of Roberto Garcia Garcia (who is now the witness "David"), in Satelite.

Another witness, Felipe, (as the ex-federal agent Alberto Perez Guerrero is identified), whose statements set off Operation Clean-Up, has been testifying since mid-2008 in the Mexican Embassy in the United States without a lawyer present, "because that's how he requested it." The two additions to his testimony happened in the presence of a US lawyer, but the ministerial act does not specify if the lawyer speaks Spanish or if s/he is familiar with Mexican laws.

Multiple witnesses don't remember or refer to incidents that they were made aware of through a third party, which demonstrates "the porosity" of a good part of the accusations against civilians and soldiers presumably implicated in drug trafficking.

Zambada's Infiltration

In the tangle of statements produced by the protected witnesses--one of the investigation instruments utilized by the PGR in this case and that, incidentally, was not submitted for revision during the recent legal reforms approved by Congress--stories arise that are now part of the accusatory dossier put together by the SIEDO against its ex-officials.

Likewise, old arrangements are getting back on their feet: the pacts, for example, that have been alleged between the Ernesto Zedillo administration and brothers Rey and Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, that latter being one of the emblematic figures in the Sinaloa cartel.

In his ministerial statement on August 20, 2008, David says that a person named Oscar the Lawyer (an alias that Rey Zambada used to hide his identity) made payments to the administrative coordinator of the defunct Special Prosecutor for Attention to Crimes Against Health, Hiram Gonzalez, as well as Mariano Herran Salvatti, who took the place of General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo in the PGR's anti-drug prosecutor's office after his dismissal and imprisonment for being in collusion with the drug baron Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

The witness tells of

an event that occurred a little over a year ago, without remembering the exact date, [where] Jose Antonio Cueto [a recruiter of civilian and military officials in SIEDO to put them to work for the cartels] called the witness by Nextel radio to tell him that they would go to eat with other people in a Chinese food restaurant that was located on Paseo de la Reforma Ave. at the intersection with Palmas...

The witness waited for him at the door. Upon arriving, Cueto entered and took the witness to a table in the back where there were six men. One of them presented himself to Jose Antonio Cueto as Oscar the Lawyer; he was surprised that the witness was present. Cueto Lopez told [Oscar the Lawyer] that the witness was his friend and that it was as if the witness were Cueto himself because he trusted the witness completely.

Next, David describes "Oscar the Lawyer" as

55 years old, medium build, one meter and 68 cm tall, brown-skinned, short wavy hair combed back, normal face, small eyes, nose with a slight downward curve, normal eyebrows, small mouth... Dressed in a fine suit and an expensive watch. The other five subjects who were with Oscar the Lawyer were his bodyguards.

He adds:

Oscar the Lawyer asked him who he was and what his job was. The witness responded that he was a federal investigation agent and that he was assigned to the SIEDO.... He stated that Jose Antonio Cueto and Oscar the Lawyer talked about a sum of money without stating the amount because they had previously discussed the subject. Oscar wanted to unblock the money he referred to, which was frozen in Banamex and Banorte bank accounts. They alluded to Oscar's family member who worked in Banamex. Upon leaving, he went to the valet parking. Oscar's car arrived first: a blue armored BMW.

There was a second meeting between Cueto Lopez and Rey Zambada in his role as "Oscar the Lawyer." David states in his ministerial statement that he does not remember the date,

but that it was more or less a month after the first one, this time in the Champu Helices restaurant on Paseo de la Reforma Ave. in front of the American [sic] embassy. On this occasion Oscar was accompanied by another subject who presented him/herself with his last name, but the witness doesn't remember it. The subject said he wanted to discuss issues with Los Zetas in the SIEDO and that he represented that cartel's interests.

On another occasion Oscar the Lawyer asked if there was an extradition order against "el Chapito," that is, Joaquin Guzman Loera's son Archivaldo Guzman--I don't remember the his second last name. Cueto Lopez said that we should let him know immediately. He called Alberto Perez Guerrero [the witness Felipe who gave his testimony in the United States and whose statements set off Operation Clean Up], who worked in the American embassy. He didn't want him to go into the restaurant; he sent the witness in... Perez Guerrero only had to cross Reforma Ave. The witness met him on the street.... The witness told [Guerrero] that he was interested and responded that he didn't know if el Chapito had an extradition order or not, but he said he'd verify it in the embassy and [in] Interpol. The witness returned to the table and informed those gathered of what happened.

That time Oscar the Lawyer seemed very worried over the alleged extradition order. Both Cueto and the witness told Oscar the Lawyer that the SIEDO had information about houses where they were going to try to locate Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera, aka El Chapo Guzman, and Alfredo "el Mochomo" Beltran Leyva.... Oscar the Lawyer said that he was interested in that information, but that they should give it to him another time.... When we left we went to the office of the lawyer who said he represented Los Zetas, because Cueto Lopez had gotten into legal problems with his cousin Rodolfo de la Guardia [ex-director of Interpol, currently held under administrative detention] and he was thinking about seeking a lawyer. Said lawyer took them to a white three-story building which was located behind the American embassy, [and] he said that he was the owner of the whole building.

After about a month, a third meeting occurred in the Camino Real de Polanco Hotel. The witness came with his resume. Jose Antonio Cueto Lopez had stayed with Oscar the Lawyer, who was going to give the witness the address of the Culiacan, Sinaloa, Public Security Ministry office, so that from there he could protect the both their interests and those of their bosses, El Chapo Guzman and the Beltran Leyva brothers. On this occasion, information was given to Oscar the Lawyer about places where the SIEDO could carry out operations to detain El Mochomo and El Chapo Guzman. For that, Oscar the Lawyer paid USD$10,000.

Finally, the witness David implicates ex-officials from the defunct Special Prosecutor's Office for Attention to Crimes Against Health (FEADS in its Spanish initials). After recounting the fear that Cueto had of Rey Zambada--when the FEADS was still in existence, Zambada had ordered the kidnapping and execution of a Federal Judicial Police commander--he stated: "Cueto says that Oscar (the Lawyer) was sending money, without saying how much, to Hiram Morales, who was the FEADS administrative coordinator, who gave part to the then-Special Prosecutor Mariano Herran Salvatti."*

Translator's Notes:

*In a twist of irony, Mariano Herran Salvatti is currently in legal trouble for fabricating evidence to imprison innocent people in Chiapas. Under pressure from a months-long hunger strike carried out by political prisoners in prisons across Chiapas, the Chiapas government reviewed their cases and many others. As a result of their review they released 137 prisoners (only 30 of them political prisoners, but more political prisoners have since been released) whom they say were most likely innocent of the crimes they were imprisoned for--but the prisoners remain on parole and must report weekly. The Chiapas Congress accuses Herran of inventing many of the charges that imprisoned the innocent men and women.

From Narco News: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/01/dirty-tactics-operation-clean

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“Wall of Violence” on Mexico’s Southern Border

Calderon’s “two-faced” policy combines police, the military, gangs, and Los Zetas to fulfill US mandate to deter Central American migration


by Kristin Bricker

“Humberto” is a Honduran subsistence farmer. He grows his beans and vegetables without pesticides and herbicides. “The chemicals they put in food these days ruin the taste,” he says. Humberto has a patch of land, a house, a wife, and five children—three of whom still live at home.

Like many small farmers, Humberto has a lot of debt. The bank is going to take his home if he doesn’t come up with the approximately USD$17,000 he owes. So Humberto packed some clothes, kissed the wife and kids goodbye, and headed north to the United States. He told them he’d be back as soon as he’d paid off the debt; it wouldn’t take long.

Humberto had planned to take the route most undocumented Central Americans take north: he took busses, combis (vans), and hitched rides towards Mexico’s southern border. He crossed the Suchiate River that divides Guatemala’s Tecún Umán from Ciudad Hidalgo in Chiapas, Mexico. He took the combis north to Arriaga, Chiapas, where he planned to hop on a freight train, perched precariously on its roof as it headed towards Oaxaca. In Oaxaca he’d hop a different train to Veracruz; from Veracruz he’d hop a train to Mexico state, and from there he’d get on a train headed to one of five crossing areas on the Mexico-US border. He’d figure out how to cross into the US when he got there.

But Humberto’s plans were put on hold in Arriaga. As Humberto waited for the train in Arriaga—it leaves every three days—he made friends with some fellow train-hoppers who said they were Guatemalan. They chatted, shared a couple of kilos of tortillas and a can of sardines that Humberto had scared up (“Woo! We ate rich that day,” he remembers), and dozed on the train tracks. At some point—Humberto doesn’t remember exactly when—the Guatemalans disappeared. He looked around, wondering where they went, and saw why they’d fled so fast: a police patrol was headed his way. An unidentified man dressed in plainclothes accompanied them.

Humberto ran. The police and the man ran faster. The man in plainclothes caught Humberto first. He hit Humberto in the ankle with a club. Humberto’s ankle shattered and he crumpled to the ground. Their job done, police and the man started to leave. They had no interest in arresting Humberto.

“Hey!” Humberto shouted. “You guys can’t just break my foot and leave me here! Take me to a hospital!”

The police and the mysterious man heeded Humberto’s cries. They radioed for an ambulance. The plainclothes man—Humberto doesn’t know if he was police or paramilitary—supported Humberto on his right side. A police officer put Humberto’s left arm around his shoulder and together they helped him to the road and waited until the ambulance came to pick him up.

When the hospital discharged Humberto, he went to the Catholic Church’s Casa del Migrante “El Hogar de la Misericordia” (“House of Mercy”), a shelter for migrants that provides them with food and a roof over their heads. Even though migrants are only allowed to stay for three days while they wait for the train to leave, Father Heyman Vazquez and his humanitarian team let migrants stay longer if the need arises. With his leg in a cast and multiple pins in his ankle, Humberto will be incapacitated for months. The Casa del Migrante will let Humberto stay until he recovers. The shelter has an agreement with the local hospital, which treats shelter residents for free.

Humberto says he’ll continue north when he recovers. He has to pay off that debt or he won’t have a house to go home to.

I ponder Humberto’s bravery in the face of such brutality, more of which is certainly awaiting him further north.

“Did you pay a coyote?” I ask him. Coyotes charge a high price for trafficking migrants through Mexico and across the US border. Their financial agreements with government agents (both US and Mexican) provide their clients with a certain degree of security.

“No, I didn’t,” Humberto replies. “I’m on my own.”

Part of the Price

Humberto’s story is repeated throughout El Hogar de la Misericordia and its sister Casas del Migrante in Oaxaca and Veracruz. The actors often change—sometimes the attackers are gang members, or police, or soldiers, or drug cartel members, or immigration agents. Too often, as in Humberto’s case, they seem to be a combination of several of the above. Together they take advantage of the impunity provided by the government to rob and abuse migrants, forming what several immigration activists have referred to as a “Wall of Violence” that discourages migrants from ever wanting to set foot on Mexican soil.

The “Wall of Violence” is fierce: El Hogar de la Misericordia estimates that 80% of all migrants who pass through Chiapas have been assaulted during their travels. Approximately 30% of the women who come to El Hogar de la Misericordia report being sexually assaulted in la Arrocera, Chiapas, which is only one of many stops along the migrants’ route. Fermina Rodriguez of the Fray Matias de Cordova Human Rights Center, which monitors human rights on Mexico’s southern border, says, “When you talk to women, they consider rape to be part of the price they pay to migrate.”

“Two-faced”

The “Wall of Violence” shouldn’t exist in Mexico. In mid-2007, Mexico decriminalized undocumented migrants. It did away with the ten-year prison sentences the law used to allow and now refers to foreigners who enter the country illegally as “administrative irregularities.” Police and soldiers shouldn’t be carrying out operations—be they official or clandestine—against undocumented migrants. But they do.

On October 15, 2008, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon met with Salvadoran President Elías Antonio Saca to call on the United States government to decriminalize immigrants in the US. Calderon also agreed to reform regulations that apply to undocumented Salvadorans in Mexico. One promised reform will allow undocumented Salvadorans to enter a Mexican program to earn a bachelor’s degree in English. In announcing the pact between the two nations, Calderon stated that it was necessary to “protect the dignity of people who are in Mexican territory, regardless of their migration situation.”

In August 2008, Calderon had a similar meeting with Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. There, the two leaders called immigration “a human right.” Calderon promised his Honduran counterpart that his country would respect migrants’ human rights in Mexico, and he “reiterated our readiness to prevent cases of abuse and human rights violations that can happen on our southern border.”

However, Central American presidents aren’t the only leaders with a vested interest in how Mexico treats migrants passing through its territory.

Mexico is a participant in the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a North American initiative that aims to pick up where the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) left off. It aims to “harmonize” laws, regulations, and procedures related to migration, security, energy, health, trade, the environment, and agriculture. Thomas Shannon, Sub-Secretary of Western Hemisphere Affairs for the US State Department, summed up the SPP in one simple sentence: “To a certain extent, we’re armoring NAFTA.”

The SPP is able to succeed where NAFTA fell short because, unlike NAFTA, SPP initiatives do not need to be ratified by Congress. The North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), a group of thirty business leaders from Mexico, Canada, and the US, issues recommendations under the SPP, and the three countries’ executive branches commit to carry out the recommendations. In this sense, while NAFTA is a treaty, the SPP is more of a handshake agreement.

The SPP specifically deals with the nations’ borders. It aims to facilitate the flow of cargo, money, and “legitimate” people across borders. In its “Prosperity Agenda,” the SPP vows to “identify measures to facilitate further the movement of business persons within North America” [emphasis added] by developing a “trusted traveler program.” At the same time, the NACC recommends that leaders “enhance the use of biometrics in screening travelers destined to North America with a view to developing compatible biometric border and immigration systems.” Biometrics utilize unique biological identifiers such as fingerprints and DNA. The NACC also promised the presidents and prime minister, “We will develop standards for lower-cost secure proof of status and nationality documents.”

Globalization’s double standard under the SPP and free trade agreements such as NAFTA isn’t lost on Father Alejandro Solalinde Guerra, the southern coordinator of the Catholic Church’s Human Mobility Mission Migrants program: “The globalized economy has been, above all, machiavellian and immoral. The markets cross borders freely. Money crosses freely. The volatile speculative market, financial capital, even poultry magnates cross freely. But the migrant population isn’t given the same treatment.” While the SPP opens North American borders to capital and capitalists, it’s closing them to capitalism’s victims.

The SPP’s border recommendations are already being implemented through one of the SPP’s hundreds of programs and agreements: the Merida Initiative, aka Plan Mexico. While Plan Mexico’s aim is to combat organized crime, the US government snuck the SPP’s biometric equipment into the aid package for Mexico’s military and police. This past November 17, US Ambassador to Mexico Antonio Garza helped the Mexican government inaugurate the first of its sixty Plan Mexico-funded laboratories designed to determine the authenticity of immigration documents. While the head of Mexico’s National Migration Institute, Cecilia Romero, says the labs will combat human, drug, and arms trafficking, it’s unclear how they will fulfill all but the first goal. After all, illegal drugs and guns don’t carry immigration papers, and, as the Burro Hall blog points out, “On the list of antisocial activities committed by the cartels, sneaking into the country on false papers is pretty far down the list.”

Calderon’s desire to pander to both his Central American counterparts and the US government leaves Mexico with what a Contralinea editorial cartoon referred to as a “two-faced” immigration policy on the southern border: one on paper and another completely different one in reality. Solalinde argues, “If the Mexican government really wants to demonstrate that it respects human rights, it can’t just sign documents. It has to be consistent in all of its actions through all of its institutions and personnel in order to respect human rights. If it doesn’t do that, it leaves the impression that everything that’s happening on the southern border is state policy. The Mexican government doesn’t have the guts to put up a wall on the southern border. But in a lot of ways it’s putting up a de facto wall, because it’s causing a lot of people to die; it’s making a lot of people turn around and go back. There’s the suspicion that this is a state policy that’s coordinated with and financed by the United States so that migrants aren’t allowed to cross.”

Wall of Violence

“Migrants don’t have rights in Mexico,” says Father Heyman Vazquez Medina, founder of El Hogar de la Misericordia. “It’s ok to beat them, extort money from them, rob them, sexually abuse them, murder them, and nothing happens. Central American migrants’ legal security guarantees appear to be repeatedly and permanently violated by individuals and groups of people who rely on the protection, consent, tolerance, or acquiescence of the State and who have the power of weapons, money, police protection, corruption, and impunity. They have put a price on the head of each migrant.”

Migrant shelter staffers say those who abuse migrants operate with absolute impunity. Most migrants don’t report crimes because they don’t have the time or resources to stay in the town where the crime occurred in order to work on their cases. Others are so traumatized by their experiences that they just want to leave Mexico as soon as possible. Solalinde recalls one case where a woman was kidnapped from one of the shelters he oversees. Solalinde remained in contact with her family throughout the ordeal. When she finally turned up in the United States, she said that the group that kidnapped her forced her to make several pornographies. When they finally brought her to the US-Mexico border, they made her family pay thousands of dollars in ransom. Solalinde offered to fly her back south and pay all of her expenses if she filed a complaint with the government. The woman refused, saying she never wanted to set foot in Mexico ever again.

Even when migrants or human rights organizations do file complaints, they almost never result in arrests or convictions. Solalinde says that almost every time he calls the police because migrants have identified and located their attackers, he can’t find a police force that will arrest the suspects. They all say they don’t have jurisdiction in immigration affairs.

Vazquez says El Hogar de la Misericordia no longer bothers to file complains with Mexico’s official National Human Rights Commission (CNDH in its Spanish initials) when Mexican security forces abuse migrants. Even though he has provided the CNDH with photographic evidence and eyewitness testimony to police and military abuses, the CNDH generally says there is not enough evidence to issue a non-binding recommendation (the only “power” it has).

Migrants’ exploitation in Mexico begins the moment they attempt to cross the Guatemala-Mexico border. Mercedes Osuna of La Semilla del Sur, a Chiapas-based organization that works primarily on indigenous issues, recently followed the migration route from Guatemala to southern Mexico. She explains that a Guatemalan-Mexican “union” of raft owners traffics people and goods across the Suchiate River between Tecún Umán, Guatemala, and Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, in full view of an immigration office located next to the river. The rafts that ferry cheaper Mexican goods to Guatemala cost MX$10 (about 75 cents) per ride. Slightly further down the river, the same “union” uses the same rafts to ferry migrants from Guatemala to Mexico. Migrants pay USD$300. Faced with this steep price and barred from the 10-peso rafts, many migrants choose to wade or swim across. “The river is filthy and it stinks,” Osuna says.

After crossing the river into Ciudad Hidalgo, migrants walk or catch combis north to Arriaga. However, on the route between Ciudad Hidalgo and Arriaga, there is a Mexican immigration office. Osuna explains that to avoid passing this office, undocumented migrants must walk a roundabout route through an area called la Arrocera. La Arrocera is teeming with violent criminals who mug migrants as they pass through. Osuna spoke with some migrants who recently passed through la Arrocera. They told her that in la Arrocera they saw uniformed Chiapas state police in marked vehicles pick up and drop off people who mugged migrants. In la Arrocera, the muggers are painfully thorough: migrants complained to Osuna of being stripped searched. The assailants even checked their victims’ anuses and vaginas for hidden valuables.

Police don’t just offer rides to assailants; they often are the assailants. While immigration violations do not fall within the jurisdiction of the state police, police use migrants’ fear to their own advantage. Osuna explains that while police can’t legally ask migrants for identification (only immigration police can), they do so anyway in order to extort money from them.

Bricks in the Wall

There is, of course, a slightly safer way to migrate: pay a coyote, also known as a pollero. Coyotes charge migrants a hefty fee to shuttle them through unknown lands. Carlos Solis, coordinator of Arriaga’s El Hogar de la Misericordia, says that the coyotes’ price for passage between Arriaga and Ixtepec, Oaxaca, is a thousand pesos (about USD$75).

In Chiapas, the coyotes pay the train machinists to guarantee their clients’ passage. Osuna says that at some popular hop-on points, machinists will slow down the train if coyotes pay them to. On the other hand, if the train is approaching a group of migrants waiting to hop on, but a coyote hasn’t paid, the machinist will speed up the train, increasing the likeliness of injury as desperate immigrants attempt to jump on.

Coyotes also pay machinists for information on when the next train will leave. Osuna witnessed obvious machinist-coyote complicity in Arriaga during her visit there. On the day a freight train was rumored to leave, about 150-200 migrants waited by the train tracks. A train with only four cars began to move, but most of the migrants believed that the train wouldn’t leave with so few cars—engines move around the train yard to pick up cargo and cars, but the trains don’t leave the yard for good until dozens of cars are attached to the engine.

That day, however, the train left the Arriaga station with only four cars. Ten migrants who were accompanied by their pollero knew that the train was leaving and were able to get on. When other migrants saw the pollero’s clients get on, they realized what was happening and chased the train. About thirty of them managed to get on, but over 100 would have to wait three more days for the next train.

Gangs and Los Zetas also enforce the coyote system. Father Solalinde says that a few months ago in Veracruz, a group of people allegedly working for Los Zetas boarded a train full of migrants. The men had lists of the names of migrants who had paid coyotes. They asked each migrant for his or her name and checked the name against the list. If the migrant’s name did not appear on the list, the man with the list told him or her, “You haven’t paid your pollero.” Solalinde recounts, “And if the migrant refused to pay, he was thrown from the train. Several migrants lost limbs that way. And the pollero who doesn’t pay Los Zetas gets it even worse.”

The gangs and Los Zetas have financial incentive to make sure the migrants pay their polleros: Los Zetas, former Mexican soldiers from an elite US-trained Special Forces team who deserted to work in the more lucrative drug trade, charge coyotes a fee to operate in their territory.

Los Zetas don’t stop at taking money from migrants through their coyotes; they also rob and kidnap migrants. This past October, 32 Central American migrants escaped from Los Zetas’ custody in the Mexican state of Puebla. Los Zetas and municipal police had kidnapped the Central Americans and demanded USD$2,500 from each migrant’s family in the United States. Father Vazquez says mass kidnappings of migrants, even women and children, are common.

Solis says that a Chiapas state police commander told him that Los Zetas are also infiltrating El Hogar de la Misericordia. About five or six months ago, Los Zetas were first detected in and around Arriaga. They pose as migrants and enter El Hogar de la Misericordia to gather intelligence on the residents. The Zetas find out who doesn’t have a coyote, which migrants have money, and who is planning to receive wire transfers. They report this information to their colleagues, who later rob the migrants.

Zetas have also been seen photographing migrants on trains. Solis says they even take his picture sometimes.

Criminal Organizations Unite Across Borders

While Los Zetas started out as the Gulf cartel’s private army, they appear to be diversifying their operations. The DEA reported this year that it believes Los Zetas are attempting to break free from the Gulf cartel to form their own cartel. Furthermore, Los Zetas are reportedly purchasing land along the Guatemala-Mexico border to store and traffic drugs. The News’ Malcolm Beith reports that Zetas kill bus drivers and business owners in Tecún Umán if they don’t pay the fees the criminal organization demands.

Los Zetas have entered the immigration industry in southern Mexico with relative ease and little resistance from other more established Mexican cartels. Solis says this is due to their links with other southern criminal organizations.

This month FBI director Robert Mueller reported that Los Zetas have “periodic contact” with the notorious M-18 and MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) gangs in El Salvador, the birthplace and stronghold of Central American gangs. Solis says these gangs work together with Los Zetas in Honduras, as well.

Further north, Los Zetas have found natural allies in a Guatemalan group called kaibiles. Kaibiles, much like Los Zetas, were Guatemalan Special Forces soldiers trained by the US during Guatemala’s dirty war. They committed some of the worst atrocities during that country’s brutal civil war, and then they deserted to work in drug trafficking. The working relationship between Los Zetas and the kaibiles dates back to at least 2005, when the US Department of Homeland Security notified the Border Patrol that kaibiles were training Los Zetas in a McAllen, Texas, ranch.

“Did you pay your coyote?”

Carlos is on his twelfth attempt to reach the United States. He says there’s just too much poverty in his native Honduras.

Carlos arranged for his sister to wire him money along the way so that he didn’t have to travel with a lot of cash. When he reached Arriaga, she wired him USD$300. On his way back to El Hogar de la Misericordia, a group of men jumped him. Some of them were Mexican, and some were Central American. They stole his $300 and everything else he was carrying. Then they brutally beat him. Carlos has a concussion, lost hearing in his left ear, and has bruises and wounds all over his body. He can barely walk and suffers excruciating headaches. Even though the attack happened days ago, Carlos still has blood all over his shirt.

“Are you going to file a complaint?” I ask.

“No, they don’t do anything,” Carlos replies.

“Did you pay a coyote?”

“No, I’m on my own.”

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