To Die in Mexico: Dispatches From Inside the Drug War (13 page)

She filed a complaint with the Sinaloa State Human Rights Commission. The result?

“The State Human Rights Commission forged my signature on a document officially closing my case as resolved, as if I had been fully informed and in agreement that they close it,” she said.

The state human rights workers forged her signature? I asked her what happened next.

“Nothing,” she answered. “Nothing happened. Here in Sinaloa nothing happens. Come on, they kill us and nothing happens, what’s going to happen with a forged signature?”

Once when she went to review her son’s case file the homicide detective said, “Ma’am, we’ve now identified the weapons that killed your son in the workshop.” It turns out that those same weapons have been used in another twenty-plus crimes and killed more than sixty other people.

Alma Trinidad was not impressed. “How can you not be ashamed to tell me that? How can you not be ashamed? What do I gain with you having identified the weapons if you haven’t arrested the killers? They’re out there killing and killing. What are you waiting for, for them to show up and kill someone here? Or what are you waiting for? How is it possible that you know they are out there killing and killing and you don’t go arrest them?”

For Alma Trinidad learned, through her dogged reading of case files—which as the relative of a murder victim she has full access to under Mexican law—that the authorities actually know the names and addresses of her son’s killers. In one of the sworn testimonies in another unsolved homicide case involving the same weapons, the brother of a murder victim testified who the killers are and where they live. No arrest warrant has been issued for these gunmen; no homicide detective has gone to pay them a visit, ask them a few questions.

“There is no law here,” she told me, “Culiacán is a place without law. Or rather, there is law for the highest bidder, for whoever can pay the most. Justice for the highest bidder.”

She knows this and still she demands that those who speak in the name of the law do their jobs.

Alma Trinidad together with other mothers of other young people gunned down in the streets formed a nonprofit organization called Voices United for Life (
Voces Unidas por la Vida
) to demand justice for their children. In one case the attorney general claimed that the young man in question had committed suicide.

“They said that he killed himself,” she said. “They found him wrapped in a blanket and black tape, and the boy committed suicide. I mean, they think people are dumb. They think people are stupid, that they are dealing with people as idiotic as they are, because you can’t describe them any other way. Come on, they say that the boy committed suicide when someone had thrown him in a canal wrapped in a blanket and electrical tape. Suicide. The boy shot himself, wrapped himself up, and threw himself into a canal. Yes. Just like that. Really.”

She and the other women began to march, hold rallies and protests in front of state and municipal government buildings, and every two weeks go there to demand progress in their investigations. “Even if we just go to say hello, because they never have any new leads in the case, never have done any work, we don’t stop going. Every two weeks.”

They spent two years requesting an interview with Sinaloa governor Jesús Alberto Aguilar Padilla before his office granted them a meeting. “We thought that if we were able to speak directly with him, then perhaps things would change a little bit, that they would do something about catching the criminals. But now we see that no. We had the meeting and things are exactly the same.”

They requested a meeting with the famed senator Rosario Ibarra de Piedra. Ibarra de Piedra became an activist in 1974 when federal agents “disappeared” her son, Jesús Piedra Ibarra, who was accused of being a member of the urban guerrilla group Communist League of September 23. In 1977, Ibarra de Piedra founded the Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, the Persecuted, the Disappeared, and Exiles, known as Comité ¡Eureka!. Ibarra de Piedra was an icon of resistance to the PRI regime and fought for years against the official cover-up of those killed and disappeared during Mexico’s repression of both armed and unarmed protest movements in the 1970s. In 2006, Ibarra de Piedra became a senator under the Mexican system of assigning a certain number of seats in the senate and chamber of deputies based on the number of seats won in the election. So Alma Trinidad and her colleagues saved up, scrambled to get a week off from their jobs and from the chores of their homes, and traveled to Mexico City. Ibarra de Piedra received them in her office, gave them the numbers of her legal team, and said good-bye. When the mothers of Voices United for Life called the numbers, they received only two alternating kinds of advice; leave a message or call back later.

“Well, we thought of Rosario Ibarra de Piedra as a mother,” Alma Trinidad said, “because she lived through a situation similar to ours, they disappeared her son, we thought she would help us, but no. And so we understood that the lady is no longer a mother; now she is a senator.”

So much rejection, so many closed doors, so many months and then years that go by with nothing to show for their efforts. “It is demoralizing,” she said, “And I think they do it with this in mind. They want people to see that there are no possibilities. They want them to go off and stop looking for justice. Why should people go on if the authorities will do nothing? It is very difficult; it is not easy at all.” Several of the other women in the group, in fact, have started to pull away; they do not want to go on.

Alma Trinidad goes on. On the two-year anniversary of the Mega 2000 massacre she held a rally in Culiacán’s main square. She printed a black banner with dozens of names in white: all innocent people gunned down in the drug war in Culiacán. She baked a three-tiered black cake with red candles and called it the Impunity Cake, for the only thing the government has given them to celebrate, she said, is impunity for the killers.

Some people tell her that she should give up too, for her own safety, and that anyway, “God will do justice one day.” To this her response is vehement.

“Well, what do we want justice on Earth for, then? If we’re just going to sit around and wait for justice in heaven, then what do we want these good-for-nothings here for?” she says of the detectives and lawyers, judges, state psychologists and human rights commissioners, senators and governors, attorney generals and presidents, people who cash their paychecks in the name of justice on Earth. “Well, even if all is lost, I’m going to make their lives impossible.”

Here is the genius of Alma Trinidad’s rebellion in the land of impunity: where everyone tells her justice is impossible, she says okay, then I will continue to insist on justice, and in so doing make your life impossible. That spirit is what hope looks like in a place where murder is the local, everyday by-product of the global industry that caters to people who get high.

Alma Trinidad’s rebellion began on the day of her son’s murder. She rebelled against the mutilation of her son. She refused to look at Cristóbal, to identify him, see him in the morgue, or see him in the coffin. Not after what they did to him. She refused to let the bullets tear into her son’s tender 16-year-old face a second time, in her memories. The gunman, possibly the same age or only a few years older than Cristóbal, had shot him through the hand, which apparently Cristóbal had extended to stop the bullets in a desperate last clinging to life. The gunman then shot him at close range in the face and head, with high-caliber bullets, the impact of which can lift your body in the air and toss it to the ground. César had failed to notice at first due to the way Cristóbal had fallen and then finally collapsed. When he went to lift him up, he saw.

“I didn’t want to see Cristóbal,” Alma told me. “I wanted to remember him as he was. I felt that if I looked at him as he had been left, that I would have been worse, that I would have gone crazy. I think it is the best thing I could have done. Now my son comes into my mind with a smile, as he was, a beautiful boy. That’s how I remember him.”

The city belongs to them.

—Rafael

BEFORE THE
COMANDANTE
SAID,
“Take these guys and ice ’em,” before they put a black hood over his head and closed the doors, before they forced him down and placed the barrel of a 9mm pistol against the back of his head, before that moment, Rafael still had hope. And hope is everything.

Everyone was talking about Reynosa, the city of half a million people across the border from McAllen, Texas. There were tales of roadblocks and gun battles, tales of executions, of bodies in the streets. It was February 2010 and gun battles, executions, and dumped bodies had become the norm in many parts of Mexico. Something different was happening in Reynosa. All the talking took place inside a chamber of silence. There were no official statements, no local news reports, and no national or international correspondents on the scene, no photographs, no radio interviews, no documentation, only talk. A friend said the city was under siege. A friend of a friend said people were afraid to go outside. Someone heard that the schools were empty; parents terrified that their children would get caught in the crossfire on their way to school were keeping them at home. In late February 2010 the U.S. Consulate in Reynosa closed its office until further notice. Reynosa residents anonymously posted accounts of gun battles on Twitter. Everyone was talking about Reynosa, but the talk was all off camera, off the record. The governor of Tamaulipas said that “collective paranoia” was to blame. A woman then posted a video recorded with her cell phone to YouTube. Off camera the woman said, “The government says it is paranoia.” The video showed two lifeless bodies, shot-up SUVs, hundreds of bullet casings on the pavement, deserted streets and stores, and in the distance Mexican soldiers standing by. A reporter told me that the woman was later dragged from her home and killed.

Rafael is not given to paranoia. At 30 he carries himself with an unusual air of sustained concentration. When you speak with him, you can
see
him thinking. He works for Milenio TV in Mexico City and is an exhaustive reporter. He is in Monterrey, Mexico’s northern financial capital and the city where he earned an undergraduate degree in journalism and worked for several years. He is on vacation; his mobile phone rings, and he answers. His boss is on the line and says, “You know what, man, there have been a bunch of shoot-outs in Reynosa, but nobody knows what’s going on. We want you to head over there and document what you can.”

Rafael takes a bus to Reynosa. On the way into town the bus stops at a police roadblock. Several officers board the bus and scan the passengers. The only person they speak to is Rafael.

“Identification, please.”

Rafael hands them his ID and press credentials. He thinks, “Why just me? Is it the way I look?”

The police hand him back his ID and press card, get off the bus, and wave it on.

The bus pulls into the station and Rafael is gathering his bags when his cell rings.

“Rafa, are you in Reynosa?”

“Yes.”

“Um, well, we want to let you know that Multimedios has a problem there in Reynosa,” says his boss. Multimedios is Milenio TV’s parent company. “There seems to be a cameraman on staff there who works for . . . the bad guys. We just wanted to give you the tip so you can take precautions.”

Rafael hangs up. He knew he was traveling into a place controlled by the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas, but he thought he could at least count on the national media company he works for to provide support and contacts via the office in Reynosa. Not so. He calls the Milenio news director in Reynosa, a friend whom he knows to be an honest reporter, and says, “Hey, I’m at the bus station. Come pick me up.”

In the car they talk. The news director says things are very heavy here. Milenio, along with the other news outlets, he says, has published next to nothing about it. The cartels control the local media. Not all reporters are on the take, but those who are honest are terrified. Drug lords impose censorship with cash, fear, or death, but whichever way it’s done, it is absolute. What cannot be said is never said. The news director confirms that the cameraman in question works for a cartel. Milenio has sent a cameraman from Mexico City who will be arriving at the Reynosa airport shortly. Rafael decides not to work out of the Reynosa office. He decides to stay at a different hotel each day.

Rafael has not accepted the reign of censorship. His editor sent him to Reynosa to document what he can. He is a reporter and that is what he has come to do. He is not careless, nor fearless. He does not have a death wish. He is not an adrenaline junky. He is a measured person. He is not a war correspondent; he has never been to a war zone. But now his editors have sent him to report on gun battles that no one else is covering. And he plans to do so. But he is not stupid. He knows that you cannot be seen reporting on a gun battle, you cannot stand on a street corner with your camera running. If you do that you will be shot dead if you’re lucky, taken off and put through hideous torture and then killed if you’re not.

A few days before Rafael arrived, a convoy of cartel gunmen attacked the Reynosa prison in an attempt to break out some of their cohorts. Brazen prisoner breakouts are common in the drug war zones. In May 2009, some thirty gunmen traveling in a convoy of seventeen vehicles with a helicopter flying overhead raided a state prison in Cieneguillas, Zacatecas. The gunmen, some in federal police uniforms, pulled up before dawn, marched into the prison without firing a shot, demanded that the prison guards release fifty-three inmates, including eleven considered highly dangerous by Interpol, and then marched the prisoners—some of whom could not conceal their grins—out to the waiting vehicles, whereupon they drove off into the night. Before leaving, however, they broke into a prison storage room and stole twenty-three guns. The entire operation took two minutes and fifty-two seconds. Security cameras recorded the whole thing. Within days the prison director and all forty-four on-duty guards were themselves jailed for questioning. In Reynosa, the breakout attempt did not go so smoothly. Gunmen attacked and prison guards fought back. The gun battle lasted some two hours, until the attackers finally gave up and left without freeing any of the convicts.

Rafael and his cameraman, Eduardo, fresh off the plane from Mexico City, decide to go out to the prison to film the bullet holes in the walls and guard towers. No one wants to speak with them, much less in front of the camera.

They go to interview the mayor of Reynosa. He admits that things have become “difficult” in town. The city government has recently opened a Twitter account to inform residents of the locations of gun battles throughout town. Rafael thinks that in itself is a story, though perhaps a marginal one. So he asks the mayor about the Twitter account and about the locations of various gun battles over the previous few days. He and Eduardo produce a small segment on the Twitter account and the bullet holes out at the Reynosa prison and send it off to Mexico City.

No one wants to speak with them. That makes reporting next to impossible. But Rafael does not give up; he does not stay in his hotel room. Their second day in town, Rafael and Eduardo decide to just head out and drive around for a bit. Eduardo drives and Rafael is checking Twitter on his mobile phone when they hear a police siren behind them. They are in downtown Reynosa, near the city government offices. They glance back and notice how traffic parts behind them to make way for the police car to pass. They pull over as well. But as they do, they see that the siren does not emit from a police car, but rather from a grey Jeep Cherokee with tinted windows, strobe headlights similar to those used by police vehicles, and a turret with a mounted machine gun. The Cherokee has no front license plate, but as it passes, Rafael sees that it has a back license plate that reads CDG, the Spanish acronym for the Gulf Cartel (
Cartel del Golfo
). The Cherokee speeds past blasting its siren and is followed by nine luxury SUVs—Suburbans, Escalades, Yukons—some without plates, others with plates from the Gulf of Mexico states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas. Some also bear the letters CDG painted with white shoe polish on the sides or back windows. In each of these nine SUVs men with assault rifles hover in the open windows with their weapons at ready. The convoy speeds by and turns a few blocks up ahead.

Rafael looks to Eduardo and says, “Let’s follow them, but discreetly.”

And so they do. They make the same turn up ahead and find the convoy already parked in front of a restaurant in downtown Reynosa, right behind City Hall. The gunmen get out and walk into the restaurant, fully armed, apparently making a lunch stop.

Rafael and Eduardo drive by and keep going.

The scene makes an impression on Rafael. He thinks, “Now that is tangible evidence of impunity, of the fact that they are the ones in charge of Reynosa. They can drive in convoys, hanging out the windows with assault rifles, and no one says a thing.”

Rafael meets up with a friend who knows the town. He asks him who controls the
plaza
in Reynosa. The friend gives him the name: Samuel Flores Borrego, alias Metro Tres. Rafael types the name into an Internet search engine. He finds an entry on Borrego on the U.S. Department of State’s Narcotics Rewards Programs website. Borrego is 37 years old, weighs 155 pounds, stands five feet nine inches tall. He is a “ranking member of the Gulf Cartel and is currently in control of Cartel operations in Reynosa and Miguel Alemán, Mexico,” according to the website.

The U.S. Department of State is offering $5 million for information that leads to Borrego’s arrest. Rafael keeps searching. He types in “Metro Tres” and is led to a video on YouTube. He listens. The song, by the Reynosa hip-hop duo Cano and Blunt, is called simply
The Song of Metro Tres
. The lyrics praise Metro Tres for his ferocity and loyalty: “He was a government official / now he’s in the gang / and he’s got hella people under his command.” One of the repeated verses says: “Straight up people, we tell it like it is; this is dedicated to Metro Tres / one of the good ones, he reigns over his territory / with a nine and an AK, he sends you to hell.” The video consists of a handful of still images of Cano and Blunt in various mafia outfits striking gangster poses. In one of the photographs they pose with a number of other men in front of a mural of themselves.

This, Rafael thinks, is a story. The world of drug trafficking so deeply imbedded in popular culture and everyday life that local musicians compose and self-publish songs about the gangster in charge of their hometown
plaza
. Though there is a longstanding tradition of such compositions in the form of traditional
corridos
, Cano and Blunt represent the latest trend in hip-hop narco-music. “I need to find this group,” Rafael thinks. He asks around about where he might find the rapper mural he saw online and is directed to a low-income neighborhood where most residents work in the border maquiladoras. There he asks where he might find the muralist and the two rappers in the mural. After a bit of walking around he and Eduardo stand before them.

Cano and Blunt come from hard streets and have crafted a hard look: shaved heads, dark glasses, and baggy shirts, flashing gang signals, hanging out in a luxury SUV. In one of their YouTube videos they pose with a cute, two-foot-tall stuffed rabbit. Cano holds the rabbit by its ears, pulling its head back, while Blunt aims a stockless AK-47 assault rifle at the bunny’s forehead. In one of their songs,
Reynosa la Maldosa
(roughly, Reynosa the Wicked) they sing this chorus: “We are pure Reynosa, a fuckload of thugs / pure mafiosos, suffer it or enjoy it / Reynosa the wicked, the street is dangerous / look alive, pure mafiosos.”

Cano and Blunt are not happy to see Rafael and Eduardo. They repeatedly ask them who they are, what they are doing, why they have sought them out. Rafael explains, but his explanations do little to ease the suspicion. He says he’ll come back tomorrow. He does. This time they agree to an interview but say that they will not talk about their “dedicated songs,” referring to those praising specific figures in the drug-trafficking underworld like Borrego, el Metro Tres. In the interview Cano and Blunt sit on a concrete block in front of the mural of themselves. It is night. They talk about new generations who no longer listen to
corridos
but prefer reggaeton and hip-hop. Cano says of the song
Reynosa la Maldosa
, “We see what the street is like, what’s going down, and our song is about that. That’s it. That’s what’s happening and that’s where we get our inspiration.”

When the interview is over and the camera turned off they speak a bit more frankly. One says about their dedicated songs, “We’ve never met the people we write about. But there are people who show up at my house and give me three hundred dollars and say they want me to write a song about one guy or another and that the song should more or less say this and that. And we try to be creative and give it good rhyme so that it’ll be catchy.” Rafael and Eduardo go back to the hotel, edit, and send a three-minute news clip about narco hip-hop that includes playing a few verses of
The Song of Metro Tres
over images of shot-up SUVs, police roadblocks, and military convoys.

Rafael and Eduardo are waiting for an interview with the commander of the military base in Reynosa. They are television reporters, so they need images. Rafael says, “Let’s go film the police roadblock out on the highway on the way into town.” They drive out and park about 200 yards away to shoot initial images from a distance. While filming from inside their rental car, they notice a group of police jump into a truck and head toward them at top speed. Within seconds they arrive, arms drawn and aimed.

“Get out of the car! Hands on the dash!”

“Easy, we’re press,” Rafael says as he complies. “We’re press. Here are our credentials. We’re from Mexico City.”

The police officer in charge reviews their credentials and then says, “Sorry about that, things here are very tense. Very tense.”