Hardee's Secret Recipe, Vision Express Annual Report, Accident On 94 Today Michigan, Brand New Serpentine Belt Broke, Articles A

In 2019, the state had a homicide rate of about 61 . 8:01. Perspective | How a U.S. drug enforcement operation got dozens of The story of the Allende Massacre from the words of eye witnesses I still love Mexico. Allende is a small town southwest of Piedras Negras, Mexico and is the site of a massacre by the drug cartel, Los Zetas. But he did not say anything to me. 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. During the two years she spent investigating the role of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the 2011 massacre in Allende, Mexico, she worked to understand and portray that reality of . Vasquez then ordered that the father be killed. In an act of revenge cartel members in 2011 razed and burned houses and disappeared people just by bearing the last name of the alleged traitor. 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 me: "The United States . The Allende massacre - in which, according to the families of the victims, there were more than 300 people dead or missing - remained hidden for almost two years. Whereas, according to a 2016 interview of Coahuila attorney general Homero Ramos Gloria, the Mexican government has identified only 28 human remains and 54 . Fax: 202/994-7005Contact by email. He said that Los Zetas commanders then forced him and another Zeta, who he identified as Chucho, to kill two of the hostages, including Everardo Elizondo, the ranch hand who had stopped by the ranch to prepare for the cockfight. Another explained how the money was divided up among members of the Allende police. Residents of the small town of Villa Union, 12 miles from Allende, said Tuesday . 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. April 16, 2018, US: Mexico Mass Graves Raise "Alarming Questions" about Government "Complicity" in September 2014 Cartel Killings According to testimony, Vasquez did so because he and other Los Zetas wanted the father to suffer. Horrifying Allende massacre still haunts Mexico. Because if you dont [keep quiet] theyre going to kidnap you too.. At the same time, President Lpez Obradors desire to weaken or abolish the institution charged with guaranteeing those rights, INAI, represents a looming threat to human rights transparency in Mexico. Netflix drama series Somos. In written statements, both themayorand thepolice director said they had only limited contemporaneous understanding of the events of March 18-20, 2011, and claimed that they did not receive any reports about the violence as it was happening. 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. The DEA claims credit for helping Mexico make the arrest, but would not discuss what steps were taken to investigate the 2011 intelligence leak that led to the massacre in Allende. InMilenio, Diego Osorno writes aboutThe Sad Case of the Two Sergio Garzas,Juniors uncle and cousin, who were murdered, along with other family members, in March and August 2012part of a continuing effort by Los Zetas to eliminate loose ends from within the Garza family. 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. 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. How US intelligence has helped cartels kill thousands in Mexico Allende, Coahuila, municipio donde se perpetr una masacre, en 2011. [5]More recently, Lpez Obradorsignaled his intentionto eliminate the autonomous state organ charged with guaranteeing access to human rights documents like these, the National Institute of Access to Public Information and Personal Data (INAI). And when I finished tying him up, I put him in the back of the truck, and there were already bodies in the trunk.- Declaration of Zetas member, September 19, 2014. Allende, Coahuila - Wikipedia Somos ("We are" or "We Exist" in English) is a Spanish Television Mini-Series based on the ProPublica article " How the U.S. triggered a massacre in Mexico. See Allende, el infierno: Los testigos de la masacre, Zcalo (Coahuila), July 10, 2017. Founded in 2002 as the enforcement arm of the notorious Gulf Cartel, the first members of Los Zetas were recruited from a Mexican special forces group known as GAFE (Grupo Aeromvil de Fuerzas Especiales), members of which were trainedat the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia. 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]. The new Netflix series, "Somos.," (We Are), offers a respectful but powerful look at the Allende massacre, one of the most brutal episodes of Mexico's war on organized crime, which sets it apart from other narco-series. Many needed the money. 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. How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico - Magazine [13] Bracketed items identified in portions of the Herrera Estrada declaration published by Zcalo. 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. He got in the truck and returned to Allende, or at least thats what I think I dont know what happened to [Vctor] nor to his parents. She said she later learned he had been kidnapped from their house and turned over to a criminal group, probably Los Zetas. Oct. 9, 2016. follows the lives of an ensemble group of fictional characters, all inspired by real-life . The government should do more to find them. "Nos rene la necesidad de enfrentar como pas y como Estado . The job netted Jimnez about eight thousand pesos ($700 USD) per month, plus expenses. [16] Exoneran a ex alcalde de Allende, Coahuila, ligado a masacres de 2011, El Financiero, Feb. 10, 2017. Los Zetas Drug Cartel Sicario and Piedras Negras Plaza Boss Sentenced Juan Ariel Hernndez Ramos, commander of the Allende police, who reported to the police director, is the most senior public official sentenced in the case. When he arrived, he told me and the other workers of the ranch to leave; that there had been a ruckus there; that armed, masked people told him to get inside; and that we should not get involved and should leave the ranch. Cartel Assassin Involved in Allende Massacre Sentenced to Life in One of the homes destroyed in Allende in 2011. shares. That is to say, to transfer them to the Los ngeles Cemetery of this city and later to the ranch of the [deleted] to finish them off. But he never came back. [T]here was a red truck with wooden enclosures that was parked near the bodega or large barn that was inside the ranch. They began to see Allende not as an isolated spasm of violence but rather as one of the most explosive episodes of a wider problem of criminal violence and systematic subversion of legal authorities throughout the region. 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. 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. 8 min de lectura. (AP) MEXICO CITY -- Gunmen killed 15 people at a car wash . Hundreds Believed Disappeared in Allende Massacre - Al Jazeera Many others disappeared and were presumably killed in the weeks and months that followed in the wake of the massacre. A self-described foca (lookout) for the Zetas, he had been found sleeping on the job. Armando Castilla, the publisher of the newspaper Vanguardia de Coahuila, says his publication was the first to report the case, in December 2013. The missing from the Allende massacre are among the 13,000 the . Declassified Documents Released on The Allende Massacre Hours later, his daughter was one of the last people to see him alive. ALLENDE, Coahuila - Only abandoned and destroyed farms and the self-imposed silence of the inhabitants of Allende remain after the massacre perpetrated in this city in . A declassified DEA report from 2015said that the Zetas in late 2015 made a conscious effort to rebrand as the Cartel del Noreste (Cartel of the Northeast). More information on CDN is available here. Police commander Juan Ariel Hernndez Ramos (who served under police director Trevio) said that Lozano had called top city officials to a special meeting to discuss the ongoing violent attacks around the city. 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. Bri Rooke. Mexico's defense secretary, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, was in charge of the military garrison in Allende when the massacre took place but has deflected responsibility for failing to stop the killings. Warning: violence in San Miguel de Allende. 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. Large swaths of northeastern Mexico have been under the de facto control of drug cartels for more than a decade despite the promises of successive governments to rein in the criminal groups and root out the corrupt officials who have made it all possible. 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. . See Allende, el infierno: Los testigos de la masacre, Zcalo (Coahuila), July 10, 2017. Where did your husband leave my husband? one asked. [14] In many cases, the names of the people identified by firefighters Lpez Tamez and De Len Ramos are legible behind clumsily applied redactions. And as there were three barrels we put one dead body in each barrel. In the worst cases, civilian authorities were little more than subcontractors of the Zetas criminal organization, involved in shakedowns, kidnappings, drug trafficking and numerous murders, not over a period of weeks or months, but for many years. 'Somos.', the fictionalized retelling of the massacre that took place in the town of Allende, is now streaming on Netflix (Netflix) 'Somos.', which began streaming on Netflix on June 30, may involve a fictionalized perspective of the victims of the shocking massacre that took place in the town of . Zcalo, a regional paper in Saltillo, Coahuila, also published portions of the testimony. The acrid odor of diesel fuel hung in the air. The US shares the blame for a massacre in Mexico He didnt have anything to do with crime, nor did his family, since they were kidnapped by mistake.. Los Zetas Cartel Used Network of Ovens to Hide Mass - Breitbart . For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. The Allende Massacre in Mexico: A Decade of Impunity The U.S.filed additional charges against Reyesin January 2020. Later on the following Sunday, with all of those people locked up at the ranch, around 8:30 or 9:00 at night, I accompanied Comandante 7 and [Comandante Pala], together with various estacas, among others that I recall were [El Canelo, El Cubano, El Chilero, El Panda, El Ruso, El Flacaman, El Cabe and El Meno,] together with a municipal police patrol [in which were riding police officers Guadalupe valos Orozco, La Lupe, and Jess Alejandro Bernal Guerrero,] to a house on [Cuauhtmoc] Street in the Center of Allende, which is where Vctor Garza lived. Audio series examines DEA culpability in 2011 Allende massacre. Washington, D.C., 20037, Phone: 202/994-7000 Police acted as lookouts (halcones) for the group, collected extortion payments from local club owners on their behalf, and participated in the Zetas drug trafficking activities. Netflix will release a series next month inspired by a story that revealed . Texting with her husband throughout the night, Sarah learned bits and pieces of what he and Arturo were up to. 'We are.', Miniseries of Netflix which is based on the report by journalist Ginger Thompson, fiction this harsh reality. Document 1 August 25, 2007 Shutdown Slows but Doesn't Stop Central Americans Headed North U.S. Embassy in Mexico, cable, sensitive, 3 pp. In towns like Allende, Los Zetas relied mainly on local recruits and corrupt officials to protect their narcotics operations, shake down local businesses, and keep watch for rival gangs and other threats. A 10 aos de la masacre de Allende, recrean la pesadilla para no olvidarla And outside the house there were four people with long arms who were dressed in black and had on bulletproof vests. A cartel war has transformed once-tranquil Guanajuato into one of Mexico's deadliest states. Netflix series inspired by story of 2011 massacre in Allende, Coahuila That if any citizens asked us for help that we would not pay attention to avoid getting into trouble. The next day, the wives of other ranch workers came by the Snchez Robles house, looking for their missing spouses. 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). 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. Las Cruces bowling alley massacre still unsolved after 30 years Hit especially hard was the extended family of Jos Luis Garza Gaytn (also known as Junior and El Wichin). Soon, Coahuila state authorities discovered links to other violence in the regionin Piedras Negras, on the border, and across the Cinco Manantiales (Five Springs), a group of neighboring towns in northern Coahuila that includes Allende, Morelos, Nava, Zaragoza and Villa Unin, site of numerous cartel attacks in recent years. In a country where more than 90% of crimes go unsolved, searching. El 18 de marzo de 2011, sicarios de Los Zetas irrumpieron en el pequeo municipio fronterizo buscando venganza porque alguien les haba . And he said this openly, because almost all the police received money from those people And that according to that meeting, they had told him that if we saw strange things related to Los Zetas, that we would not do anything or say anything. The destruction of the 2011 Allende massacre is still evident to this day. The two had gone to the ranch on March 18 to get medicine for a cockfight that evening. The cartel allegedly turned this storage shed, which held equipment and animal feed, into an incinerator for the . September 27, 2019 1:06 PM EDT. So I left the ranch in my truck and went home, and since that date I dont know anything about what happened to my husband.- Declaration of wife of heavy machinery mechanic for Rodolfo Garza, July 23, 2014. 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.] [A]t that time I lived in La Colonia Presidentes, and I knew all of these people because they were from the town. [I]n fact, he sometimes came and went inside the cells to beat those who were locked up. 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. What actions had they taken to guarantee the security of the people of Allende? MEXICO CITY (AP) Mexican drug gang bosses furious at suspected turncoats sent commandos aided by local police to seize dozens perhaps hundreds of people, murder them and dispose of their bodies in a town near the Texas border, yet state and federal officials ignored the massacre for years, according to a government-backed report released Sunday. 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. In exchange, Reyes passed DEA intelligence to the criminal groups, including, in at least one case, sensitive information about a pending DEA investigation. In 2020, a U.S. court also indicted Reyes Arzates boss, former public security minister Genaro Garca Luna, for taking tens of millions of dollars in bribes from Sinaloa Cartel chief Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn. 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. Many thousands disappeared in Mexico's drug war. First published on Wed 6 Nov 2019 16.31 EST. To me in particular they gave me 2,000 pesos [per month].-Declaration of former Allende police official, July 22, 2014. Peering through the gates, the firefighters saw members of the Los Zetas criminal group berating and beating members of the Garza family, who owned the ranch, along with several of their employees. Reading Pulitzer Prize-winner Ginger Thompson's oral history of a little-known 2011 massacre in the Mexican border town of Allende, and of the role, the U.S. government played in triggering it, is an experience at once intimate and vast.Hearing the voices of survivors, whether they were perpetrators . Access request to Mexicos National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH), Freedom of Information Act request to DEA. The human rights exception applies even to records from an ongoing criminal investigation, the kinds of files normally only accessible through high-profile leaks, such as the Panama Papers, or in piecemeal fashion and after lengthy delays through access to information laws. An important moment seems to have come in March 2015, when state investigatorssaw a familiar patternemerge in three seemingly unrelated cases. And when we met with him, he told us that things were going to get hot. It is not clear why members of the the military unit thatexamined the ranch did not secure the property or, evidently, take any additional steps to comprehend what was happening in Allende. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico" was published in 2017 by the investigative news agency ProPublica.. And after five or six hours during which the corpses were cooked it was then around five or six oclock in the morning. How the U.s. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico Mexico's San Fernando Massacres: A Declassified History What we saw, he said, was something thats not easy to forget.. And what I did, in that place, together with [Chucho] was carry containers filled with gasoline and diesel to the bodega, which was filled with hay. PICTURED: Victims of Mexico massacre that left 3 moms and 6 children Outside the ranch entrance, the firefighters spotted officers and vehicles from the Allende police department. As many as 40 houses and seven ranches were sacked and burned, according to aMarch 2018 CNDH report, the inhabitants beaten and dragged awaykidnapped in broad daylight. I want to point out that I did not know any of the dead And when we had them in the barrels [deleted] began to bathe the corpses in diesel so that they could then be set on fire, and I was then sent to keep a lookout a few meters from there to make sure that no one was coming. De Len also remembered the moment, as they were leaving, when he saw the Zetas lead the victims into the bodega. The 2020 U.S. arrest of Mexicos former defense secretary, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, for alleged narcotics ties has led Mexicos president, Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, tofast-track a new lawimposing strict new restrictions on U.S. personnel in Mexico and that threatens to significantly curtail the exchange of intelligence and law enforcement information. This was the brutal and forgotten Allende massacre in Mexico portrayed Meanwhile, Mexico has announced the arrest of police officers allegedly involved in the killings. Zetas. Despite the unimaginable death toll and visible trail of destruction, for several years the case was largely ignored by federal, state, and local authorities. Rodolfo Snchez Robles, who worked as a chauffeur and mechanic for the Garza family, seemed to know something was wrong on the day he disappeared. Washington, D.C., March 18, 2021 - Ten years ago, the Mexican municipality of Allende was the site of one of the worst human rights atrocities ever seen in the country: a three-day wave of violence in which the criminal group known as Los Zetas kidnapped, murdered, and later burned the bodies of an estimated 300 . [17] The Zetas member is not identified in the text but from context appears to be El Canelo. Meanwhile, criminal violence continues to soar in Mexico, with the Cartel of the Northeast (CDN), successor to Los Zetas, implicated in some of the worst cases. They watched as gang members led their victims into a larger shed near the back. Local media, fearing reprisals, did not report the violence until years later. Eastern District of Texas | High-Ranking Member of Los Zetas Cartel He told me that inside the jail Los Zetas were burning all of these people that I mentioned as well as my spouse who they burned inside that place after killing him, and more people from other parts of the state. In fact, sometimes [deleted] would come to the municipal jail and take people away. . Allende massacre. Elvira Espinoza and her husband were among the first to inform federal authorities about the violence, telling investigators that she and her husband reported the disappearance of Arturo, Liliana and the three children to the military garrison along Highway 57, just outside of Allende. The hooded figures spotted by Hctor Prez that night included the Zeta known as El Pjaro, who told authorities that he and a group of Zetas led by Jos Manuel Daz (Comandante 7) and Fernando Ros Bustos (Comandante Pala) had kidnapped Vctor, Alma, and their son Julio, and murdered them at the ranch later that night. The name "Allende" is in honor of Ignacio Allende, a hero of Mexico's War of Independence.The town's folk hero is Arnulfo Gonzlez who was gunned down in the mid-1920s, and has a "corrido" sung by artists such as Vicente Fernndez and many others. And this began to occur more or less in the years 2010 and 2011, which was about when Los Zetas got started in the region.- Declaration of former Allende police official, November 12, 2014, 15:20. 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. 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 . When they did not return or respond to phone calls, their wives became concerned. This was at about 7:30 or 8:00 AM on Saturday, March [19], 2011 Just past the entrance I could see some Allende municipal police trucks, and beneath these were armed people who I recognized as police.- Complaint of wife of victim Csar Alfonso Garca Ramrez, May 23, 2014. 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. 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. 0:04. Villa Unin, just a 20-minute drive from Allende, has been the site of numerous acts of violence linked to the CDN in recent years. [6]In January, the bodies of 19 Central American migrants werefound in Tamaulipas, a neighboring Mexican border state and the site of hundreds of still largely unexplained migrant murders over the past eleven years.