Three Men and a Baby vs. Senator Dodd and WOLA

Friends of Brad Will cuts through the human rights smokescreen that surrounds the Merida Initiative, aka Plan Mexico.

American military training and Texas guns are helping boost drug-war violence

This article from the Fort Worth Weekly is the most comprehensive overview I've read this year of how US is inextricably implicated in Mexico's drug war violence that is now spilling across the border into the US. And it mentions my article that uncovered US-based private contractor Risks Incorporated's role in torture trainings for Mexican police. An excerpt from A Border Under Siege:

At least one other U.S.-based security firm is already operating in Mexico. In July, the day after Bush signed the Mexico Plan, two different videos of a torture training session for police in the city of Leon, Guanajuato, were released by the local paper El Heraldo de Leon. The tapes showed graphic images of torture techniques (as practiced on police volunteers), including images of one volunteer having his head forced into a pit of rats and feces, and another being dragged through his own vomit after he was beaten.

Kristin Bricker, an investigative reporter with NarcoNews.com, subsequently uncovered evidence that the trainers in the video were from Risks, Incorporated, a Miami-based private security outfit that specializes in, among other things, teaching psychological torture techniques.

"There is no question that the U.S. is involved in every aspect of the drug war in Mexico," Castillo said. And if you don't believe the author and former DEA undercover agent, how about the departing U.S. ambassador to Mexico? Tony Garza is now saying that they United States must accept responsibility for the gun trade and for providing the market for Mexican drugs. The Dallas Morning News reported last week that Garza said in a recent speech that Mexico "would not be the center of cartel activity or be experiencing this level of violence, were the United States not the largest consumer of illegal drugs and the main supplier of weapons to the cartels."

Read all of A Border Under Siege

US Police Train Mexican Police to Torture

A Mexican police trainer fired for hitting a female cadet was been hired by another police force in Guanajuato

La Jornada has revealed that some of the trainers responsible for the torture classes given to Leon, Guanajuato, Special Tactics police are San Diego, California, police officers from that city's SWAT team. Other trainers came from the private Mexican company Sniper, according to the Mexican government. The government released the names of the following trainers: Carlos Guillermo Martinez Acuña, Gerardo Ramon Arrechea de la Vega (the Cuban-Mexican trainer whom Narco News revealed is a high-ranking member of the anti-Castro Cuban paramilitary organization Comandos F4), Francisco Javier Jaramillo Barrios, Alfredo Torres Solano, and Martin Gonzalez Cabrera. La Jornada reports that the government did not disclose the trainers' nationalities nor their respective employers.

The torture training was discovered when videos from the classes were leaked to Leon's daily newspaper El Heraldo in June of this year. Three videos surfaced:

• The first video portrayed an English-speaking trainer of British origins making a trainee roll through his own vomit as punishment for not completing an exercise. The government has not disclosed this trainer's name, nor the company for whom he works. Narco News identified him as Andrew "Orlando" Wilson of the US/British company Risks Incorporated. Videos of the Leon training (minus the torture segments) are posted on Risk Incorporated's website.
• The second video shows police being trained in torture tactics that are historically popular amongst Mexican police officers: the tehuacanazo and the pocito. The tehuacanazo involves squirting mineral water up the victim's nose, which produces a burning sensation. In the pocito, the victim's head is inserted in a hole filled with feces. A participant in the leaked video stated that the hole also contained rats. During the training, a police officer whom the government says was a volunteer was subjected to both torture tactics at the same time.
• While the first two videos were shot during the spring, the third video was shot in December 2007 or January 2008. It shows police trainer Roberto Ramírez Govea, who at the time was employed with the Leon Public Security Department, hitting a female cadet in the head during target practice. El Correo de Guanajuato reports that Ramirez was fired for this offense, but less than 15 days later was hired for the same position in the San Francisco del Rincon Public Security Department. San Fransisco del Rincon is also located in Guanajuato.

Together, the torture videos sparked international outrage. Leon's municipal government, which contracted the training, defended the courses, saying that they were necessary to prepare the police to combat organized crime. La Jornada reports that each course cost MX$82,000 (USD$6,205).

The torture videos surfaced the same day President George W. Bush signed Plan Mexico into law. Plan Mexico, which is designed to combat organized crime, will provide more training and equipment for Mexican police and soldiers, utilizing US police officers, federal agents, and military trainers. The US government thus far has not commented on the Leon torture trainings or made any promises that the similar training programs will not continue with US taxpayer money under Plan Mexico.

Comic by Magu for La Jornada. Translation: "Every day more and more Mexicans know that they're protected by the police." "Yeah, narcos, kidnappers..."

Witness in Brad Will case talks about Oaxaca Uprising

Gustavo Vilchis, a witness to Brad Will's murder and the man who gave him mouth-to-mouth on the way to hospital, remembers the protests, the organizing, and the repression; discusses why the government went after the witnesses; and talks about Plan Mexico and how it will affect resistance in Mexico. The government issued an arrest warrant for Vilchis for Brad Will's murder.

Audio on Chicago Public Radio: http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/content.aspx?audioID=30367

"I Didn't Kill Brad Will": An Interview with Juan Manuel Martinez

The man who supposedly murdered the US videographer agrees that he participated in the APPO protests, but he maintains that he never met the journalist.

by Diego Enrique Osorno, Mileno
translation by Kristin Bricker

"I didn't kill Brad Will," says Juan Manuel Martinez, the young man the Federal Attorney General's Office officially accused three weeks ago of allegedly murdering the US Indymedia videographer.

"It doesn't matter how much they pressure me; I'll never agree to the lie that they want me to agree to. I never even had the privilege of meeting him (Brad) and I wasn't even in the place where they killed him," he reiterates from the Santa Maria Ixcotel Penitentiary in Oaxaca where he awaits the final evaluation of his case by Rosa Iliana Noriega, 5th district judge.

"God willing, the judge won't be biased, as often happens in Oaxaca, because the government orders them to be," stressed Martinez.

"They're telling all lies. There are a number of people who saw me that day in another place; I was not in the street where what happened happened. There isn't even one video or photo of me in which I am there when they shot at Brad. I don't know how they can get away with this injustice if it's very clear that it's all lies. Like my lawyer says, I am the scapegoat."

Before being imprisoned, Juan Manuel worked in the Santa Lucia del Camino city council as an assistant in a regent's office. "In the District Attorney's office they read me the statements and the only person who is accusing me is the mayor's cousin--the same mayor who is accused of sending gunmen to shoot that day," he states.

"Furthermore, the man that is accusing me (Alfredo Feria) says that he knew I was the killer because that's what a voice said--that's how it's written in his statement--that a voice told him that I was the assassin!"

The alleged murderer of Brad was born in Santa Lucia del Camino, a suburb of Oaxaca, where he lived with his wife and three children in a 2 x 4 meter room in his mother's house.

Why do you think they detained you?
The United States government wanted them to detain someone for Brad's death and the Mexican government wants to protect the real assassins, but I don't know why they're using me as a scapegoat. It's probably because I don't belong to an organization and I don't know anybody; they thought that no one was going to stick up for me, but, thank God, many human rights organizations are doing just that."

You aren't a member of the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca [CIPO in its Spanish initials]?
When they detained me, the agents told me: "you are a CIPO jerk," but I'm not even a member of that organization. I was an APPO supporter, like many people in Oaxaca, because of the poverty we live in and the injustice.

Did you participate in the protests?
Yes, but I'm not the person they say I am; I wasn't near where the homicide was committed.

Where were you that day?
I sell comforters and bedspreads...I'm also a baker. You know what it's like in Oaxaca, you've got to look for work everywhere. I had gone out that day to sell comforters in Santa Lucia del Camino, because I'm from there--and that's apparently scandalous--but I wasn't there when they shot Brad.

Everything they're saying in the supposed investigation they're doing is all lies. They say that I used a number of vehicles when I don't even have a bicycle; they say I have a gold Golf, a black Golf, and other vehicles; they say that I'm a person that has money, but anyone who investigates will realize that I have three children and a wife and we're living in a really small room that they're loaning to us.

What other accusations have they made during your hearings in the District Attorney's office?
They say I have straight hair, but my hair is wavy, and things like that that don't make sense, because the person that's accusing me is a relative of the man that's being accused of having killed Brad.

Did you know Brad Will?
It would have been an honor to meet him, but I didn't know him. I participated in the protests like thousands of Oaxacans who suffer from injustice. In Oaxaca injustice is so shameless and and cynical that the police and the politicians do whatever they want. There isn't any help for the people. There are more places to get high or be an alcoholic than there are where you can play sports. It's what there is.

What do you have to say to Brad's family?
I ask that Brad Will's family please demand that the United States government demand that the Mexican government detain the true killers. Sometimes I get scared because the President is covering for the governor of Oaxaca, who is covering for those responsible for the homicide, but I have to do it.

According to the PGR [Federal Attorney General's office], this is an investigation made up of intelligence, but there's lie after lie. I also want to say that I fear for my family's lives, that they want to do something to them; I want to hold the federal government responsible for whatever might happen to my family.

Did they beat you during your detention?
No, they didn't beat me.

How were you detained?
First, at the end of September I was stopped by federal agents. I was walking down Calicanto when two men--whom I now know were agents--stopped me and asked me, "Are you Gabriel Meza?" What I told them is that I wasn't him. So they asked me my name and one grabbed my back and told me to give them my telephone. I gave it to them and they leave, telling me that they're going to get in touch with me.

I got to my house and I told my mom that two police had stopped me and then days later, during my sports work in Santa Lucia del Camino, the same people detained me. They were driving a Chevy Monza, and they told me that I had to go with him. I told them that if they were cops they needed to show me an arrest warrant, and they told me they weren't going to show me anything.

So they put me in the car and we went to the Attorney General's Office, and the government building where the preventive police are. I asked them where they were taking me, and if they were going to kill me, and that they should at least give me the right to make a phone call. "You don't have the right to shit," they told me. Later we arrived at San Bartolo Coyotepec, where the PGR is.

What happened in the PGR?
They weren't telling me anything about why they had detained me. A person arrived and asked me what organization I belonged to. I told him that I didn't belong to any organization. "Don't be an asshole, tell me what you know," he responded and later said, "Look, son of a fucking bitch, I'm going to leave for a bit and you think about what you're going to tell me, because when I get back you don't know what's going to happen to you."

I told him, "You can leave for an hour, two hours, a day, and I'm going to tell you the same thing."

He responded, "Don't be an asshole, son of a fucking bitch, but if you don't tell me, I'm going to fuck you up to get it out of you."

Mexican Government Tries to Pin New Charges on Juan Martinez in Brad Will Case

The government likely knows that murder charges won’t stick in a fair trial, so it hopes to imprison Martinez for firearms possession

Oaxacan newspaper Quadratín reports that the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR in its Spanish initials) has opened a new criminal investigation against Juan Manuel Martinez Moreno in the Brad Will murder case. Martinez is the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) activist that the Mexican government has charged with murdering Will on October 27, 2006, as he filmed clashes between APPO supporters and paramilitaries affiliated with the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI).

Quadratín reports that Federal Investigation Agency (AFI, the PGR’s police force) Agent Fernando Gómez Monjarraz entered Martinez’s cell yesterday to interrogate him about how he obtained the gun they claim he used to murder Will. Despite significant pressure to answer the questions immediately, Martinez refused to answer without his lawyer present.

The November 25 Liberation Committee, a prisoner solidarity organization in Oaxaca, said that this was an act of intimidation and harassment, and that Mexican law states that any interrogation should have occurred in an interrogation room outside the jail, not in the jail itself.

The November 25 Liberation Committee believes that the government has opened the new criminal investigation against Martinez because it wants to bring more charges against him to ensure that Martinez is not set free.

The government’s case against Martinez and the other eight accused men is not likely to hold water—if the men receive fair and impartial trials, that is. Will’s family and friends, Physicians for Human Rights, Reporters Without Borders, and the Mexican government’s own National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) have contradicted or outright denounced the PGR’s theory that APPO supporters shot Will at close range. All of them claim that all evidence points to a long-range shot, quite possibly shot by local police and local and state government officials. The government’s case, however, relies almost entirely on the testimony of Adolfo Feria, the mayor of Santa Lucia del Camino’s cousin. Feria claims an unidentified person told him that s/he saw a thick man in a pickup truck kill Will. Martinez does not own a pick up truck. He told the Mexican daily Milenio, “I don’t even own a bicycle.”

The government has charged an additional eight APPO supporters of covering up the crime. At least five of the nine accused voluntarily presented themselves to the PGR as witnesses to Will’s murder in March 2007. The PGR is now using their testimony as evidence against them to prove that they were present when Will was murdered. In a statement following the announcement of the arrest warrants, the witnesses said, “We gave statements before the Federal Attorney General, contributing information, we supplied testimony based on the real events, and we presented counter arguments to those of the State Attorney General, given that the information and investigation led by this institution has always been full of irregularities, ambiguities, and omissions…. We are men with great dreams and social activists but that does not make us murderers. Those responsible are other people and there is sufficient proof of this…”

Plan Mexico

At least 19 other people were killed during the 2006 uprising in Oaxaca. The government has not made arrests in any of these other cases. In late October, the head of the CNDH, José Luis Soberanes Fernández, stated his opinion on why that is the case: "It's said that they weren't going to give them [the Mexican government] the Merida Initiative resources if they didn't resolve this case, and therefore they had to clear it up at any cost, and now we see the results." The Merida Initiative, also known as Plan Mexico, is a multi-year military and police aid package from the US government. It is worth well over a billion dollars. An explanatory statement accompanying the law that authorized 2008 Plan Mexico funds required the US State Department to submit a report to Congress "detailing progress in conducting a thorough, credible, and transparent investigation to identify the perpetrators" of Will's murder. It also called for the State Department to work with the Mexican government to assist in the investigation of the case.

Prior to Plan Mexico, it seemed as though the Mexican government was going to allow the Will case to go unresolved just like the other 19 cases. Soberanes pointed out that the federal government dragged its feet for two years investigating the Will case. Then, suddenly, "in 15 days they resolve the case."

The State Department's priliminarly report on the Will murder investigation confirms the Mexican government's continual delays and lack of progress. The report, which outlines the steps the Mexican government has taken to investigate the case over the past two years, only constitutes nine pages written in 12-point font. Two-and-a-half of those pages are commentary from the State Department itself. The report documents repeated requests for information from the US Embassy and the Will family that went unanswered, sometimes for months. And the answer from the Oaxacan prosecutor's office was--when an answer came at all--that the "office was continuing to investigate the case."

Under significant pressure to resolve the case, the PGR needed to make arrests. It was faced with a choice: arrest the police officers government officials shown in photographs and videos shooting at Will around the time of his death, or blame someone else. Given that a bulk of the pressure came attached Plan Mexico--which includes armament and training for police--arresting police officers and government officials for the murder of a US journalist was not likely to grease the way for Plan Mexico funds. So the PGR arrested the witnesses.

While Martinez states that he was not present when Will was murdered, the Mexican government singled him out as the man who pulled the trigger. Martinez was likely chosen because, unlike the men accused of merely covering up the murder, he was a very easy target. During the uprising he supported the APPO as an indivudual, not as a member of an organization like the other witnesses. Martinez became further isolated when he, like some other APPO supporters, took a job working with the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD, Mexico's center-left party) in the local government. The integration of some APPO members caused a division within the movement, with anti-government APPO members showing up at public events to heckle their former comrades who had taken positions within political parties and the government.

Of the nine accused men, only Martinez is in prison. The rest are free thanks to an agreement negotiated between Section 22 of the teachers union (which led the 2006 protests with the APPO) and the state government. Their arrest warrants are on hold, and the men have to report to the local district attorney's office every week. If the men are taken into custody, the teachers union has vowed to shut down Oaxaca yet again.

Links between Mexican Security Secretary Garcia Luna and Drug Kingpin "El Mayo"

by Ricardo Ravelo, Proceso
translation (from the original Spanish) and notes by Kristin Bricker

Federal police say Garcia Luna's bodyguards witnessed the head of Mexico's Public Security Ministry discuss an "agreement" with a drug cartel gangster

The Secretary of Public Security, Genaro Garcia Luna, who is considered untouchable and Felipe Calderon's "spoiled official," has maintained numerous public officials accused of having links to drug traffickers--El Mayo Zamabada in particular--in his inner circle. An investigation carried out by agents who are opposed to the proposed police integration[1] assure in a letter sent to Congress, which Proceso has a copy of, that this past October numerous armed men intercepted Garcia Luna on a highway and disarmed members of his escort while a gangster warned him, "This is the first and last warning so that you know that, yes, we can get to you if you don't follow through on the pact..." The document adds that then Garcia Luna withdrew from the spot for four hours in order to negotiate with the gangster...

With his powerful tentacles and his ability to corrupt police and infiltrate the institutions responsible for combatting drug trafficking--including the National Defense Department--, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia has extensive control within the Public Security Ministry (SSP in its Spanish initials), which is led by Genaro Garcia Luna, whose main collaborators--some of them currently held under administrative detention--are accused of being at the service of the man who today is considered to be the top boss of the Sinaloa cartel.

The owner of estates and ranches, untouchable in Sinaloa--his stronghold--, Zambada Garcia has broad networks of complicity at his disposal in the most important departments in the PGR [Federal Attorney General's Office], such as the SIEDO [the Assistant Attorney General’s Office for Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime], and in the SSP, where various top-level officials are being investigated for serving the gangster who, following the example of Amado Carrillo[2]--who for many years was his business partner--, transformed his appearance with plastic surgery.

Also untouchable and considered to be President Felipe Calderon's "spoiled official," Garcia Luna doesn't appear to escape the networks that Zambada Garcia and the Beltran Leyva brothers created in the SSP. The Beltran Leyva brothers left the Sinaloa cartel following a division sparked by the aprehension of Alfredo "El Mochomo" Beltran this past January.

Police who are opposed to the federal police unification project carried out an investigation regarding the alleged ties between Garcia Luna and Zambada Garcia's and Arturo "El Barbas" Beltran Leyva's cells.

In a field investigation, backed up by records and revelations that were supposedly made by Garcia Luna's own body guards, the police agents reconstructed an episode that occurred this past October 19 in Morelos state, which they recount in a letter sent to the Chamber of Deputies [Mexico's lower house of Congress] and the Senate with the goal of demonstrating, according to the agents, the danger that granting more power to the SSP would entail. They assert that a significant number of SSP police commanders are working for drug traffickers.

The document details:

...This past October 19 (...) the current Federal Secretary of Public Security, Genaro Garcia Luna and his escort, comprised of approximately 27 agents, (...) was intercepted or summoned on the Cuernavaca-Tepoztlan highway by a high-ranking gangster who was accompanied by an undetermined number of shooters or hitmen in approximately 10 armored Suburbans. Said official's escort did nothing to protect him, apparently due to a verbal order from him (Garcia Luna).

The letter that is now in the hands of legislators--a copy was delivered to Proceso--adds that members of Garcia Luna's escort, under orders "from the high ranking drug gangster," were disarmed and blindfolded for "approximately four hours."

The agents who are familiar with the incident, and whose names are omitted for fear of reprisals, state in the document that the "gangster's" voice said to Garcia Luna: "This is the first and last warning so that you know that, yes, we can get to you if you don't follow through on the pact."

The document asserts that, after the gangster's statement, Garcia Luna retreated, "leaving his escorts to their own luck, without knowing the route he took or what he did during those four long hours, time in which he could talk in a more comfortable place away from the spot where the alleged incident occurred."

And, in another point, the letter says:

It shouldn't go unnoticed that the Secretary in question is an expert actor in deceit. It should be remembered that in the past he created a circus around a kidnapping in Ajusco in Mexico City in which a French woman was supposedly involved, where he summoned the televised media and (...) manipulated all of his bodyguards, making them believe that what happened was a drug gangster's attempt to intimidate (a levanton or drug-related kidnapping), though the truth is that it was a meeting arranged by this alleged gangster.

According to investigations carried out by the Assistant Attorney General’s Office for Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime (SIEDO), a good number of the officials closest to Garcia Luna appear to be contaminated by drug trafficking. Evidence that the SSP is one of the institutions most infiltrated by the Sinaloa cartel and other illicit organizations has arisen since the Vicente Fox adminstration, and even more under the current administration.

For example, Édgar Enrique Bayardo del Villar, ex-inspector assigned to the Federal Preventive Police's Operations Section, was taken into custody by the SIEDO for allegedly serving Zambada Garcia. Close to Garcia Luna, with a salary no higher than MX$26,000 monthly [at the time approximately USD$2,600], Enrique Bayardo rose out of poverty to achieve a magnificent wealth.

According to the investigation of the facts, in which PFP agents Jorge Cruz Méndez and Fidel Hernández are also implicated, Bayardo del Villar today owns two residences with a combined value of close to 9 million pesos.

Overnight, Bayardo del Villar broke out of his financial difficulties and bought himself BMW, aMercedes Benz, and an armored Cherokee. He spent 12 million pesos on these acquisitions and, just like his residences, he paid for them in cash.

Another piece of this network that is presumably at the service of the brothers Jesús and Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada--within Garcia Luna's inner circle of trust--is Gerardo Garay Cadena, ex-commissioner of the PFP, who this past November 1 resigned from his position to voluntarily put himself "at the disposal of the authorities," although the SIEDO immediately put him under administrative detention. During the inquiries the spotlight also fell on other officials linked to Garay Cadena. One of them is Francisco Navarro, chief of the SSP's Special Operations, with broad control over the Mexico City International Airport, known as one of the major operations centers where drugs come in and drug trafficking money goes out.

Within this group that, according to the PGR, protected El Mayo Zambada, Luis Cárdenas Palominos also appears. Known as Garcia Luna's "right hand man," he wasn't put under administrative detention but he keeps being called to make statements to the SIEDO. Other high-ranking SSP and PFP officials who are held under administrative detention are Jorge Cruz Méndez and Fidel Hernández García.

The statement delivered to the federal Congress, in particular to the Security and Justice commissions--where the project to unify the federal police is being pushed, which is said will be resolved this year--, the AFI agents assert that Garcia Luna is incorporating personnel into the PFP and the SSP who have criminal records and ties to organized crime.

In the majority of the cases, they warn about inexperience and improvisation in investigations related to organized crime activity that, according to Edgardo Buscaglia, an investigator with the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM), constitute a range of 25 crimes such as drug trafficking, contraband, kidnapping, and human trafficking.

In their statement, the agents tackle the corruption and disorder that run rampant in Garcia Luna's agency. They say that personnel called to leave the AFI [which Garcia Luna used to run] and join the Federal Police [which Garcia Luna now runs as head of the SSP] have not completed four years of police duty and that priority is given to those who come recommended or who are supporters of high-ranking officials, as well as "high-ranking officials' friends and lovers."

A number of the agents' statements and warnings can be confirmed even in recent incidents. For example, two days after Gerardo Garay's resigniation, on November 3, Garcia Luna named Rodrigo Esparza Cisterna as acting commissioner of the PFP. Esparza Cisterna has a history that is as long as it is shady.

In 1993, when Rodrigo Esparza was a PGR delegate in Sinaloa, the first rumblings surfaced over his alleged relationship with Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, then a bitter rival of the Arellano Félix brothers, the bosses of the Tijuana cartel.

According to the official memo DGPDSC/UEA/1938/2005, dated August 12, 2005, and obtained through a request to the Federal Institute for Access to Information (record number 0001700181305), Esparza was accused of impeding the administration of justice. Said accusation was registered in the criminal proceeding 159/93, which came out of the criminal investigation 3423/93. On June 28, 1993, the charges were accepted by the Third Criminal Court in the Ramo District in Mexico City, and later he was imprisoned awaiting trial.

His detention was revoked on August 23, 1993, via judicial tricks. In less than three months, Esparza saw the investigation into his alleged wrongdoings buried with a stay of proceedings in his case. This precedent notwithstanding, Rodrigo Esparza is now Garcia Luna's right hand man in the PFP.

A Portrait of Power

El Mayo Zambada was chubby and round-faced, but one day Vicente and Amado Carrillo, who underwent plastic surgery in the Santa Monica clinic in Mexico City--the clinic where Amado Carrillo died in 1997--, suggested that he change his appearance and he accepted.

Zambada lost weight and made his cheeks smaller. His face became more chiseled and a bit elongated thanks to the face lift. When Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos[3] was head of the SIEDO, federal agents found, during a search of one of his multiple properties, a photograph where Zambada Garcia looked rejuvenated and slender. The photo was saved in the files related to the Juarez cartel, the organization that El Mayo belonged to. Untouchable for decades, Ismael Zambada has demonstrated his power and ability to increasingly infiltrate government institutions during the Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox, and Felipe Calderon administrations: over 35 Federal District Attorney agents assigned to the SIEDO were his employees, and each one received USD$350,000-$400,000 monthly for leaking information about case files and preliminary investigations in progress against members of his organization. During Vicente Fox's term, the Sinaloa cartel even infiltrated the National Defense Department (Sedena), where, through Arturo "El Chaky" Gonzalez Hernandez, various high-ranking military officials who operated the telecommunications systems were coopted. They advised him in advance that in a matter of days or hours military operations would be carried out.

Moreover, El Mayo Zambada had control of the Sinaloa police, and high-ranking military commanders looked after his personal safety and his businesses. The impunity and power were of such a magnitude that in December 2005 at the El Mezquite ranch, a Christmas party was organized. The band Ilusion provided the entertainment. Zambada Garcia attended the party. Rivers of alcohol flowed, strong doses of cocaine were distributed, and shots were fired into the air.

This drew the attention of a sector of the Mexican military stationed in Sinaloa, which requested a search warrant in order to enter the ranch. Due to the fact that--rather unusually--it took hours to issue the warrant, Zambada Garcia had time to leave the site, which was protected by police, and calmly go to his hideout, a fortress whose entrances and sidewalks are permanently guarded by his people.

In May 2007, the United States Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control published a report that six companies and twelve people in Mexico are part of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada's financial network.

The US report indicates that Zambada's ex-wife, Rosario Niebla Cardoza, was well as his four daughters--Maria Teresa, Miriam Patricia, Monica del Rosario, and Modesta Zambada Niebla--play a key role in El Mayo's dirty businesses. They carry out an important function in the gangster's "property and control of his companies."

After the falling out between the Beltran Leyva brothers and "El Chapo" Guzman, the Sinaloa cartel--at its peak it was perhaps the most powerful criminal organization in Latin America--suffered a reduction in power, but it hasn't been brought down completely.

According to information from the SSP and the PGR, the Beltrans extended their tentacles: they penetrated the SIEDO, the PGR, and a good part of the military's regional commands, in addition to allying themselves with Los Zetas[4] and the Juarez cartel, whose current boss is Vicente "El Viceroy" Carrillo.

Zambada Garcia and Joaquin Guzman have maintained their alliance, and Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel[5] and the Cazares Salazar brothers[6] are also a part of this group.[7]

This drug clan suffered a loss recently: this past October 17, Jesus "El Rey" Zambada Garcia, El Mayo's brother who had a reputation for being discrete, was detained in Mexico City. Up until 2007, Jesus Zambada was not considered a kingpin--not even by United States intelligence agencies--, but after his capture Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora described him as one of the most important people in El Mayo Zambada's money laundering network.

Another event alluded to the true power of El Rey Zambada: in Culiacan, Sinaloa, a banner was hung near the state Congress that shot down the thesis that Jesus Zambada Garcia was a small-time player. The banner said:

Chapo Guzman, they kill your son and you keeping being murderers' friends. Don't be ashamed; how Nachito Coronel has changed you. He bosses you around to his liking and all because he takes care of you. Intelligent El Rey Zambada: you are killing counties, states, and ministerial cabinets, and he is unloading ephedrine and cocaine in the Mexico City airport.

In October--the month in which Garcia Luna was supposedly intercepted in Morelos, according to the agents' statement--, the blows against El Mayo Zambada's organization worsened. The Quinta La Paloma and Los Alpes ranches in Acaxochitlan, Hidalgo, were searched by federal police. The SIEDO said the properties belonged to El Rey Zambada.

El Mayo Zambada received a financial blow on September 18 when USD$26 million was seized--money which he had hidden in a safe house, carefully stacked in egg boxes.

Despite the blows against the Sinaloa cartel and notwithstanding the division that it suffered with its separation from the Beltran brothers, the organization continues afloat in drug trafficking: it controls sea ports and airports, and it has allies in high levels within the SSP who, according to the missive sent by federal police to Congress, "are obligated to follow through on the pacts."


Notes:
[1] The Mexican government has proposed combining the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI in its Spanish initials) with the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) under a single command: that of the SSP. The AFI is currently the Federal Attorney General's (PGR's) police force and was founded to be an investigative police force. The PFP, on the other hand, is the Public Security Secretary's police force. It aims to "prevent crimes" and is more militarized than other police forces. Over 150 agents from the PFP and AFI hit the streets in September in protest of the plan, arguing that it would give more control to Garcia Luna and the corruption-ridden SSP.
[2] Amado Carrillo Fuentes led the Juarez cartel along with other family members. Carrillo Fuentes died in 1997 during a plastic surgery operation that was intended to change his appearance. The doctors alleged to have botched the operation, Dr. Jaime Godoy Singh, Dr. Ricardo Reyes Rincón, and Dr. Carlos Humberto Avila Melgem, were widely reported to have been brutally tortured, murdered, and partially entombed in cement-filled oil drums. The PGR had charged the doctors with murdered Carrillo Fuentes, claiming that they should have known that administering the sleeping drug Dormicum would have killed him due to his liver problems. However, there are rumors that Dr. Rincón, also known as Pedro López Saucedo and Pedro Rincón, is alive and residing in the United States under the witness protection program in exchange for information about the Juarez cartel. The Washington Post reported that Dr. Rincón knew Carrillo Fuentes and had operated on many of his friends. "Rincón" means "secluded corner" in Spanish and may have alluded to his status as a back-alley doctor.
[3] Vasconcelos died in the November 4, 2008, plane crash that also killed Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño, three other government officials, three crew members, and six people who were on the ground when the plane hit Mexico City's financial district. The official explanation for the crash was that the pilot followed a Mexicana commercial airliner too closely and the resulting turbulence downed the plane.
[4] Los Zetas was a specialized unit of the Mexican military that received training in the US School of the Americas. After completing their US taxpayer-funded training, they defected from the military en masse and became drug cartels' armed thugs. They've been accused of running their own drugs, too.
[5] Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel is known as the "King of Crystal" because he dominates the crystal meth market. He is also alleged to move cocaine and run the Sinaloa cartel's finances.
[6] Blanca Margarita Cazares Salazar has been identified as being in charge of the Sinaloa cartel's money laundering operation.
[7] In previous publicaitons, Ricardo Ravelo has described the Sinaloa cartel has having a "rectangular" structure with numerous cells, as opposed to a top-down "pyramid" headed by one person. This makes the cartel more flexible and adaptable, and less vulnerable to operations that aim to pick off its leaders. Zambada Garcia, Guzman Loera, Coronel, and the Cazares Salazar family have all been identified by the US government as Sinaloa cartel leaders, and all appear on the US government's "Foreign Narcotics Kingpins" list.