Volunteer Luis Herrera Estrada was one of the four Allende firefighters who responded to reports of a blaze at the Garza ranch, and his statement of November 23, 2014, three and a half years later, is the first detailed account in the file of what the firefighters saw at the ranch that night. The collection is at once a narrow and graphic examination of the events of March 18-20 and a broader look at the combination of bribery, intimidation, and ruthless violence used by Los Zetas (and now, CDN) to turn local security forces into instruments of their criminal operations. The two had gone to the ranch on March 18 to get medicine for a cockfight that evening. For the family members, nothing has changed. He said that as many as ten of his family members disappeared that day, including Vctor, Alma, and their youngest son Julio Csar. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico,, Allende, el infierno: Los testigos de la masacre,, Exoneran a ex alcalde de Allende, Coahuila, ligado a masacres de 2011, this report from the University of San Diegos Justice in Mexico program, Mexicos bloody drug war is killing more people than ever,, Masacre de Allende: el silencio del general, U.S. Prosecutions Bring Mexico Corruption into Focus, Advirti EU riesgo ante mandos mexicanos corruptos, Six Years On, Ayotzinapa Investigations Advance, FiftyYears After Tlatelolco, Censoring the Mexican Archives: Mexico's "Dirty War" Files Withdrawn from Public Access, Transcripts of intercepted cell phones open new lines of investigation in Ayotzinapa case, US: Mexico Mass Graves Raise "Alarming Questions" about Government "Complicity" in September 2014 Cartel Killings, Mexico's San Fernando Massacres: A Declassified History. About five estacas[9]participated, and with [deleted] and [deleted] ten more joined. Among others, I remember that there was Jos [deleted,] the owner of the ranch, [deleted,] his wife, [deleted,] [Vctor Manuel] [deleted,] an employee of the [Garzas] by the name of [deleted,] a man by the name of Hctor [deleted,] among other people from the family of the [deleted] and people from the town whose names I dont remember, but who I know on sight, other people that I had not seen before, and people of advanced age, who they were putting inside the large bodega.- Declaration of former Allende volunteer firefighter, December 17, 2014, 11:37. Another explained that he stopped cooperating with the Zetas after they kidnapped his father. The slowly unfolding investigation of the Allende massacre finally gained some momentum with the establishment of a special task force in 2014. A center for car manufacturing northwest of Mexico City, Guanajuato averaged at least nine homicides a day in 2020, one of the highest murder rates in the country. Of particular importance was the November 2014 testimony of a woman from Piedras Negras whose husband, himself a member of the Zetas, had been kidnapped, detained, and later killed by the group in 2010. One of the homes destroyed in Allende in 2011. shares. [At the meeting] were the mayor, the city council secretary , the person in charge of civil protection the police director and me. [T]he director, who almost never left his office, knew all about this. Please do not fill in this field. "How the U.S. The recent violence is also a reminder that Mexican authorities have largely failed to protect the countrys civilian population from historically high levels of violence or to alleviate the effects of an ever-deepening security crisis. Hit especially hard was the extended family of Jos Luis Garza Gaytn (also known as Junior and El Wichin). I left the job because, the truth is, I did not like what was happening in the town of Allende, since things were getting ugly, in addition to which the entire directorate of the municipal police were mixed up with people from Los Zetas. Authorities investigating the massacre reported numerous hijackings of passenger buses on Mexican Federal Highway 101 in San Fernando, and the kidnapped victims were . All threereceived lengthy sentences, but with no bodies to build a murder case, they were convicted only of aggravated kidnapping, a charge that seems woefully inadequate given the nature of the crimes. Oct. 27: A police officer is seen outside a car wash after gunmen burst into the shop and killed at least 15 people in Tepic, Mexico. Germn Zaragoza Snchez, better known as El Canelo, was a top Zetas boss in Allende and managed a group hawks who monitored and reported on the movements of state and federal security forces. The government should do more to find them. After three days of abuse, on the night of March 20, the Zetas took him to the Garza ranch and put him to work managing the incoming truckloads of corpses along with a few living hostages. There was also a man by the name of [Everardo Elizondo,] who raised fighting cocks, and [Csar Alfonso Garca Ramrez] And how the people from the Zetas were shouting, hitting and mistreating these people!-Declaration of Allende volunteer firefighter Luis Gerardo Herrera Estrada, November 23, 2014, The chief of the fire department, Christian Alejandro Lpez Tamez, told investigators in a revised statement that, just like his colleagues, he was able to identify many of the faces he saw there, including the director and other top officials from the Allende police department. 92110 United States [email protected] +1 619-260-2299. Justice in Mexico 5998 Alcal Park, San Diego, CA. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico" was published in 2017 by the investigative news agency ProPublica.. Despite the brutality of the case, major U.S. TV and print outlets have largely ignored the kidnapping and murder of hundreds of people from Allende, Coahuila. What is clear is that the failure to do so sealed the fates of an untold number of victims who were murdered at the ranch later that night. The next day, the wives of other ranch workers came by the Snchez Robles house, looking for their missing spouses. An Army unit was sent to Rancho Garza to investigate. Some cooperated more than others. Beyond criminal prosecutions, the Mexican government also has a specific legal obligation to divulge information related to cases, like Allende, that constitute clear violations of human rights and humanitarian law, raising the hope that additional information may come to light through the countrys access to information law. And I did not know exactly what happened with them.- Declaration of Allende firefighter Jess Gerardo De Len Ramos, December 17, 2014, 14:50, The former fire department volunteer described a similar scene as the victims, including several elderly captives, were led to slaughter. Leaving aside the role of the DEA and the wider implications of the case, todays posting focuses on the most revealing documents among the facts-on-the-ground evidence gathered by the state of Coahuila. By Theodore Bunker | Friday, 06 August 2021 02:11 PM EDT. And from previously I knew that all of the Allende municipal police were linked to or worked for the Zetas.-Revised declaration of Christian Alejandro Lpez Tamez, December 17, 2014, Firefighter Jess Gerado De Len Ramos, too, spotted various units of the municipal police at the entrance to the ranch, including police director, Roberto Guadalupe Trevio Martnez, and shift commanders Maria Guadalupe Avalos Orozco and Rogelio Javier Flores Cruz, who he and others described as key links between the police and the Zetas. In the latter group was Csar Alfonso Garca Ramrez, who had just returned home to Coahuila for a visit from his job in Texas. In March 2011, gunmen from one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in the world, the Zetas cartel, swept through Allende, a quiet ranching town not far from the Texas border. Mexican Federal Police collect ashes, bone fragments and other bits of evidence from the Garza Ranch on January 28, 2014 (Source: Document 40: Field Criminology Opinion Report, January 28, 2014). There were other people in civilian clothes who carried long arms, and these people were Los Zetas, since I realized that there at the [Garza] ranch were [El Pala,] whose name is [Fernando Ros Bustos]; [El Canelo,] whose name is [Germn Zaragoza Snchez]; [El Cubano], whose name is [Juan Rafael Arredondo Oviedo]; [El Pjaro], whose name is [Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar]; [El Flacaman,] whose name is [Gabriel Zaragoza Snchez,] among other people, some of whom I did not know, but they seemed to be from the south since they wore sandals and carried machetes. [Rodolfo] came home all covered in grease, ate, and later, as we sat outside smoking a cigarette, he told me, Things are getting to be a real pain in the ass, but he didnt tell me anything else, and we were there for about ten minutes. For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. Three and a half years later, what stood out to these firefighters was the conspicuous police presence, the brutal treatment of the captives, and the threats directed at them by Zetas members. Early in the morning on March 19, Arturo called his own mother, Elvira Espinoza, and told her that neither Liliana, who worked for her fathers ranch business, nor her parents were answering their phones. American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Trevios but never acknowledged the devastating cost. One evening in March 2011, dozens of assassins tied to the infamous Zetas drug cartel began to arrive in Allende, a small town situated in the northern Mexico state of Coahuila, a lucrative . The tenth anniversary of the Allende killings comes as allegations of narcotics-related corruption among top Mexican officials have brought U.S.-Mexico security ties to their lowest point in many years. Members of the criminal group Los Zetas could be seen unloading barrels next to a storage shed near the back of the property. What we saw, he said, was something thats not easy to forget.. [12] While the names of Zetas, police officials, and witnesses are for the most part redacted in the volumes released through CNDH, a previously published portion of El Pjaros declaration reveals some of those redacted names. [5] The Mexican government signaled its intention to soften some of the more severe restrictions imposed by the new law. He said he recognized many of the Zetas gathered there.[13]. He went on to say that now that Mexico has reformed its National Security Law, authorities from the U.S. could find themselves connected to another massacre similar to the incident in Allende. The George Washington University Finally, the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice recently confirmed, in a FOIA denial letter to the National Security Archive, that its investigation of the DEAs links to cartel violence in Mexicofirst announced in 2018is ongoing, a probe that may have significant implications for the Allende case and for U.S.-Mexico security cooperation more broadly. Ten years later, the case has wide-ranging implications after investigative reporting in the U.S. and Mexico have linked the massacre to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and top Mexican security institutions. So I went to my friends house who lives only two blocks away to tell her this; but in the few minutes I was with my friend, my daughter [called] to tell me that her father was going on a trip [S]o I headed home, and when I was about 50 meters away, a white, double-cab, Tundra pick-up truck arrived, and I see my husband leave the house with his dirty clothes on. However, families of the victims in Allende touted the overdue government efforts as a publicity stunt. And also El [Chucho] killed a person, but I did not see who. In June 2019, more than eight years after the fact, President Lpez Obradorapologizedfor the Mexican governments ineffective response to the assault on Allende, pinning most of the blame on narcotraffickers but also recommitting his government to implementing the March 2018CNDH recommendations, which included punishing government agents who facilitated or failed to react to the violence. It was around March 15, 2011, the then-director of the municipal police called all the elements to a meeting in the offices of the municipal police. Allende is a small town southwest of Piedras Negras, Mexico and is the site of a massacre by the drug cartel, Los Zetas. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. Jimnez told authorities that local Zetas leaders sent him to the ranch as part of an all-out assault on people and properties associated with the Garza family. Whereas, according to a 2016 interview of Coahuila attorney general Homero Ramos Gloria, the Mexican government has identified only 28 human remains and 54 . [7]A2005 FBI evaluationfound that the original Zetas had a military-style organizational structure that included counterintelligence, intelligence and tactical enforcement units. By 2010, Los Zetas had broken with the Gulf Cartel and independently controlled key narcotics smuggling corridors and strategically located cities in northeastern Mexico near the U.S. border. [9] Literally stake or post, an estaca is a term used by Los Zetas for its assassination teams. And each estaca is made up of four assassins, but there were trucks that brought more people in the trailers. Oscar nominated screenwriter/producer James Schamus makes his television debut with 'Somos,' a six-part Netflix drama about a real-life cartel massacre in the Mexican town of Allende. See Vanguardia, March 18, 2019.. [W]hen the Zetas realized that we were there, they said to us, Youd better get the hell out of here, motherfuckers! Upon seeing us, these people began to shout that we leave the ranch, that we go fuck our mothers, and that we were not to respond to any reports [of fires] that are made.- Declaration of former Allende volunteer firefighter, December 17, 2014, 11:37, De Len said they watched as the Zetas continued to unload large quantities of fuel even as the bodega burned.. The 2011 San Fernando massacre, also known as the second massacre of San Fernando, was the mass murder of 193 people by Los Zetas drug cartel at La Joya ranch in the municipality of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico in March 2011. . Two days after the Zetas caravan of death had gotten underway it had arrived at the residence of Juniors uncle, Vctor Manuel Garza Garza, and his wife Alma Patricia Prez. After what happened to my spouse in May 2010, approximately one year later, in June 2011, [his captor] started looking for me according to him because my ex-spouse put him in charge of telling [me] what had happened to him He told me many things related with acts of violence in the region and I knew from his own words that he was an assassin for the Zetas cartel, and as we built some trust, I asked him various things.- Complaint of wife of murdered Zeta, November 13, 2014, He told her how the Zetas had killed someones grandson, probably a reference to Mauricio Espinoza, whose grandmother, Elvira Espinoza, was one of the first to report disappearances in Allende. He told her to cancel the birthday party they were planning for her the next week. She said Andrea, the six-year-old, blames herself for what happened to him. No one would tell her anything about the person who left the kids at the orphanage.[10]. I would ask you the same thing, she replied. In November 2019, CDN gunmenriddled the city hall with gunfireand engaged in a gun battle with federal forces that leftat least 21 dead. But there was not any kind of response from the police or any other authority.. It was the case that among them I recognized several, since I knew them, because we were from the same municipality of Allende, Coahuila, where I live.- Declaration of Zetas member Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014. They are included here in brackets. The job netted Jimnez about eight thousand pesos ($700 USD) per month, plus expenses. Leave them. Despite the unimaginable death toll and visible trail of destruction, for several years the case was largely ignored by federal, state, and local authorities. Most importantly, he told her that many of the Allende massacre victims were first brought to a cemetery in Piedras Negras before being taken later to the Garza ranch. [14] In many cases, the names of the people identified by firefighters Lpez Tamez and De Len Ramos are legible behind clumsily applied redactions. The targets included the families of Juniors father, Jos Luis Garza y Garza, and his unclesVctor, Rodolfo, and Sergio. When the Zetas became aware of our presence, and that we were there to put out the fire, they said to us: You guys get the fuck out of here! My parents were born in Mexico and every summer we visited and it we had the times of our lives as kids and young adults. And as there were three barrels we put one dead body in each barrel. They had brought people from Sabinas, among others an ex-federal highways official and other people from the municipalities of Zaragoza and Morelosthis was weeks after what happened in Allende.- Complaint of wife of murdered Zeta, November 13, 2014. September 26, 2019, FiftyYears After Tlatelolco, Censoring the Mexican Archives: Mexico's "Dirty War" Files Withdrawn from Public Access Go fuck your mother! ProPublica and National Geographic set out to piece together how the U.S. contributed to a massacre executed by a drug cartel in Allende, Mexico. In a country where murders and disappearances are troublingly common, the scale and the horrific details of the Allende massacre case still stand out. In the U.S., the prosecutions of Reyes Arzate and others are likely to result in the collection of significant new evidence on the Allende case, including the testimony of Reyes himself, the statements of former Zetas, and key DEA records from the period in question. I could see that the owners of the ranch were there, since I could identify [Jos Luis Garza,] Mrs. [Alma Patricia,] their son [Julio Csar Garza, Rodolfo Garza, and] his daughter, whose name was [Nora Liliana Garza de la Torre.] He just asked us if we knew about what was happening. Prosecutors disagreed, arguing that Lozano collaborated with Los Zetas, was aware of the attacks before they began, and had failed in his obligation to protect the people of Allende. THE DOCUMENTS. The call lasted for about a minute.-Complaint of Yuliana Lpez Ibarra, October 14, 2014, Shortly after the troubling March 20 phone call with his mother, Vctor Garza and Yuliana Lpez managed to escape to nearby Sabinas, but Vctor insisted on going for his parents, according to Yulianas statement. A longtime resident of Allende, Herrera knew or was familiar with many of the people he saw at the ranch, including the Zetas, their police accomplices, and many of the victims. Beginning as a group of deserters from an elite unit of the armed forces at the service of the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas would go on to become one of the most powerful and feared cartels in Mexico before infighting and the loss of leaders started the organization's decline. 8:01. There were not many of us. Based on Ginger Thompson's 2017 oral history, "How the U.S. 0:04. . [4]Mexicos National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) has sinceposted the declassified volumeson its website, but they are not easy to find without a direct link. Washington, D.C., 20037, Phone: 202/994-7000 Criminals were shooting up the street and two police officers . In 2011, Drug Enforcement Agency officials informed Mexican . According to testimony, Vasquez did so because he and other Los Zetas wanted the father to suffer. He told me: "The United States . Oct. 9, 2016. I stopped working for Los Zetas because they disappeared my father who worked as a security guard at a construction site from where they also kidnapped another worker and a woman who I did not know, but she seemed to be a minor At the time of the disappearance of my father I was still with the municipal police and I asked the commander for help And he told me not to involve myself in these matters and that I should go home and go to sleep.-Declaration of former Allende police transit officer, July 31, 2014. May 12, 2015, Documenting Mexicos Recurring Nightmare One of the guys that went with Pala, who was nicknamed [El Cabezn,] forced me to kill one of the men, and [forced Chucho to do the same.] Una nueva serie de Netflix intenta . And they went to the Ranch but did not find anyone, and told us that they had scoured the place but had not found anyone.- Complaint of Elvira Espinoza, November 4, 2011. Later, [El Comandante Pala (ordered) El Ruso, El Blue, Chaln, Cabe, Meo, Flacaman, Cubano and Canelo] to take them from the house and walk them to the inside of a bodega near the house, and later to kill all of them, shooting them in the head. At the moment the cooking of the corpses was finished, the ashes were thrown in a well, and later covered with earth, and they flattened it so that no one could see anything.- Declaration of Zetas member, September 19, 2014, The focus on eliminating physical evidence and destroying crime scenes almost certainly played at least an ancillary role in impeding justice in the Allende case. For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. Witnesses Described Defendant's Participation in the 2011 Allende Massacre, Where Over 100 Men, Women, and Children Were Slaughtered by the Zetas Cartel PLANO, Texas - A Mexican national and high-ranking member of the Los Zetas cartel received a life sentence for drug trafficking violations in the Eastern District of Texas, announced Acting . He didnt have anything to do with crime, nor did his family, since they were kidnapped by mistake.. Schamus presents the trailer and key art for his new drama series Somos. Bone fragments found among the burned out ruins of the Garza Ranch, January 28, 2014 (Source: Document 41: Forensic Anthropology Technical Report, April 11, 2014). Lilianas husband, Arturo, had also been unable to reach his wife or her parents. 2130 H Street, NW The files depict a town almost completely beholden to LosZetasfrom the mayors office to top police commanders to ordinary cops on the street. Among the evidence posted today are the first complaints filed by the loved ones of those who went missing, the sworn declarations of Zetas members, Allende police and other city officials, the statements of firefighters and others who witnessed the violence, along with hundreds of pages of forensic reports, crime scene photos and related material. The cartel allegedly turned this storage shed, which held equipment and animal feed, into an incinerator for the . He recognized some of them: El Pala, El Cubano, El Pjaroall of them local men who worked for the Zetas. One former police official who attended the meeting said that Trevio told them that things were going to get hot that there had been a meeting with Los Zetas and the mayor, and that things were going to get ugly., As a result of the meeting with the mayor and Los Zetas, Trevio ordered police personnel not to leave the offices for anything, even if there were reports. The officer said they were told that if we went out it was under our own risk, and that they would fucking get us.. I recall that he was light-skinned, thin, of medium height, around 20 or 25 years of age, and they brought him in with his hands and feet tied up and with his face covered with tape.- Declaration of Zetas safe house guard, part 2, March 2, 2016, After a few days, he said, members of Los Zetas came and took him away in the bed of a pick-up truck, adding that he heard that they were going to turn him into roast beef, which is to say, that they were going to cook him.. The six-part miniseries examines the lives of the victims of a cartel massacre at the Mexican border town of Allende. Hours later, his daughter was one of the last people to see him alive. This story was originally published by ProPublica. According to Thompsons reporting, [t]he wave of killings was unleashed after DEA agents shared the PIN codes with a specially vetted Mexican Federal Police (MFP) group known as the Sensitive Investigative Unit (SIU), which had a record of leaking information to violent and powerful drug traffickers., That report was followed by the2018 convictionin U.S. federal court of the longtime head of the SIU, Ivn Reyes Arzate, who prosecutors say conspired with some of the very drug cartels he was to pursue as director of the specially trained, U.S.-funded intelligence unit. The official, town council secretaryEvaristo Rodrguez Chapa, said he called police director Trevio to let him know what was happening, to which he replied: Dont even fart, you asshole. In a country where more than 90% of crimes go unsolved, searching. [I]n fact, he sometimes came and went inside the cells to beat those who were locked up. El Gobierno de Mxico ofreci este jueves una disculpa pblica a los familiares de las vctimas de la masacre de Allende, una comunidad del norteo estado de Coahuila donde entre el 18 y el 20 de marzo del 2011 alrededor de 300 personas fueron masacradas por narcotraficantes. On the afternoon of March 20, aman reported the March 18 disappearance of his wifes parents and five other family members. The National Security Archive marks this grim anniversary by publishing an evidentiary history of the Allende massacre focusing on key documents and testimony from a 4,000-page dossier of investigative records compiled by Mexican prosecutors in the state of Coahuila.[3].
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