* * * * *. Diego Osorno, a reporter from the newspaperMilenio, has examined various new sources of evidence related to the Allende case in a series of recent articles. Mexican cartel war transforms Guanajuato into a deadly place - Los . The mayor of Allende in the Cinco Manantiales region of Coahuila said at the time of the slaughter that he was helpless to prevent the massacre. 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. And together with the patrols there were many cars and trucks both inside and outside the ranch, and these people carried long arms from which I deduced that these people were from Los Zetas.- Declaration of Allende firefighter Jess Gerardo De Len Ramos, December 17, 2014, 14:50. Since the acts occurred on the dates of March 18, 19 and 20 of 2011, they were committed under the same mechanics not just in the city of Allende, Coahuila, but also in other municipalities in the northern region of the state, among others Piedras Negras, Coahuila.- Memorandum on links between various cases, March 5, 2015. That is to say, the [Garza] ranch. Arriving at the ranch that night with three others from the department, Herrera said he could see that what was burning was a small room that was near the ranch. He saw that there were units of the municipal police out front. He said his hands were tied, so he stepped aside . [9] Literally stake or post, an estaca is a term used by Los Zetas for its assassination teams. May 12, 2015, Documenting Mexicos Recurring Nightmare 2018 is on track to be Mexico's deadliest year on record with over 20,000 homicides so far. US Intelligence Helped Cause 2011 Massacre in Mexico When Garcas wife drove past the Garza ranch the next morning she spotted a group of hooded, armed men inside while Allende police stood watch outside the entrance. 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. 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. It was approximately 7:00 or 7:20 in the evening, which is the hour of the shift change. Among the evidence 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. He said that this was an injustice, since he was just a little boy. 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. 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. Outside the ranch entrance, the firefighters spotted officers and vehicles from the Allende police department. 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. It is estimated that over 300 went missing or killed in March of 2011. The targets included the families of Juniors father, Jos Luis Garza y Garza, and his unclesVctor, Rodolfo, and Sergio. 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. And as I am originally from here in Allende, and this is a small town, for this reason I know these people. [T]he director, who almost never left his office, knew all about this. Lilianas husband, Arturo, had also been unable to reach his wife or her parents. Sergio Aguayo is a prominent Mexican human rights investigator at the Colegio de Mexico, which last year launched an independent probe into the Allende massacre. Residents of the small town of Villa Union, 12 miles from Allende, said Tuesday . Family members lost contact with Rodolfo and his daughter, Liliana Garza de la Torre, on the night of March 18. FOR almost three years residents of Allende, close to the Mexican border with . Subscribe to our newsletter and join other 2,442 Justice in Mexico readers! And after that I left.- Complaint of Hctor Reynaldo Prez Iruegas, May 25, 2011. A study from the Human Rights Clinic of the University of Texas Law School examined the trial transcripts of Zetas members prosecuted for drug trafficking, money laundering, and homicide in U.S. federal courts. Lilianas brother, Rodolfo Garza, Jr., last heard from her around six or seven oclock that evening. The US shares the blame for a massacre in Mexico A story about the 2011 massacre in the Mexican border town of Allende Netflix series inspired by story of 2011 massacre in Allende, Coahuila Armando Castilla, the publisher of the newspaper Vanguardia de Coahuila, says his publication was the first to report the case, in December 2013. Somos. [6] CDN is reportedly led by Juan Gerardo Trevio Chvez (El Huevo), nephew of former Zetas leaders Miguel ngel Trevio Morales (Z-40) and Omar Trevio Morales (Z-42), according to this press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Other convictions include Germn Zaragoza Snchez (the Zetas members known as El Canelo) and Fernando Hernndez Reyes, an Allende police officer. For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. [A]t that time I lived in La Colonia Presidentes, and I knew all of these people because they were from the town. He did not take my opinion into consideration, and no one else said anything. How the DEA Triggered the Massacre of an Entire Mexican Town [12]- Statement of Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014. I want to point out that all of the police at that time were getting money from the Zetas, some by obligation and some by choice. No one is sure exactly how many were killed, and the methods used by the Zetas to dispose of the bodiesincinerating them in barrels of gasoline and diesel fuelmake it unlikely that there will ever be a definitive count of victims.[2]. Is Netflix drama Somos. based on a true story? - Radio Times 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. The files depict a town almost completely beholden to LosZetasfrom the mayors office to top police commanders to ordinary cops on the street. Some portions of these files have been excerpted elsewhere, including in reports from the CNDH and the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), which cites many of these same records.But this is the first time that images of records from the case file have been published in their original form (although . See Allende, el infierno: Los testigos de la masacre, Zcalo (Coahuila), July 10, 2017. Eastern District of Texas | High-Ranking Member of Los Zetas Cartel Ginger Thompson, ProPublica A disturbing report released today by researchers at the prestigious Colegio de Mexico provides new details about a 2011 massacre in Allende, a quiet Mexican ranching town less than an hour's drive from the United States, and suggests that many more people were killed in the incident than estimated by Mexican authorities. Local media, fearing reprisals, did not report the violence until years later. 0:04. Jeremy Schwartz. [10] How the U.S. [17] The Zetas member is not identified in the text but from context appears to be El Canelo. Whereas, according to a 2016 interview of Coahuila attorney general Homero Ramos Gloria, the Mexican government has identified only 28 human remains and 54 . The Zetas organizational structure includes counterintelligence, intelligence and tactical enforcement units.. When the Zetas arrived in Allende a decade ago, they infiltrated the very . In February, 2014, members of the Army, Navy, State, and . The six-part drama series is inspired by the Allende massacre in Mexico. Oneformer member of the Allende policeinterviewed in July 2014 told investigators that from the moment that I joined the ranks of the municipal police I realized that all of the people I mentioned previously, including the mayor, the police director, police commander, and the shift commanders, were linked to the Zetas criminal organization., One of the first witnesses to talk about the police departments links to Los Zetas was anAllende municipal official in charge of road maintenance, who in January 2014 told investigators that everyone knows about [the March 2011 Allende massacre] but is too afraid to say anything.. Prior to 1832 the settlement was known as San Juan de Mata.. Los Zetas Massacre. April 16, 2018, US: Mexico Mass Graves Raise "Alarming Questions" about Government "Complicity" in September 2014 Cartel Killings 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. 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. A fire department volunteer said he also saw many familiar faces among the victims, the Zetas, and the police officials gathered there. She toldProPublicathat, after separating the children from their parents, the kidnappers held them for several days before leaving the two older kids at a park. 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 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. That he and the then-mayor of the city had a meeting with people from Los 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.. On the afternoon of March 20, aman reported the March 18 disappearance of his wifes parents and five other family members. [I]n fact, he sometimes came and went inside the cells to beat those who were locked up. 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. The slowly unfolding investigation of the Allende massacre finally gained some momentum with the establishment of a special task force in 2014. Closer look at massacre in Mexico reveals glimpse of corruption While many of the corpses were probably destroyed in these larger fires, the Los Zetas cook interviewed on September 19, 2014,gave an especially detailed description of how he and El Chango together burned the bodies of at least three victims in individual barrels filled with diesel fuel. 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 . Guanajuato: Tourist Mecca Turned to Killing Field Relatives of victims wait in anguish for news after a shooting July 1 at a drug rehabilitation center . Please do not fill in this field. Mexico has again witnessed a brutal incident of gun violence, where a gunman opened fire and killed at least 18 people at San Miguel Totolapan City Hall on Wednesday. To date, prosecutors have managed only a handful ofconvictions in a case that involves dozens of crime scenes, hundreds of victims, and the documented participation of numerous Zetas and public officials. Other witnesses confirmed the testimony of the police commander. [At the meeting] were the mayor, the city council secretary , the person in charge of civil protection the police director and me. And after five or six hours during which the corpses were cooked it was then around five or six oclock in the morning. 1:07. Another explained that he stopped cooperating with the Zetas after they kidnapped his father. It's between them. Go fuck your mother! 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 . 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. 'Somos' Review - The Hollywood Reporter 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. There were not many of us. Or do you want the same thing to happen to you or to your families?-Declaration of Allende fire chief, December 17, 2014. The next day,investigators requested, andlater received, a list of Allende police officials active in 2011 and began to interview them systematically. Or do you want the same thing to happen to you and your family? And they also told us that we were prohibited from going out to any reports. One of the cooks told investigators that his involvement in the Allende massacre began a few days earlier when he was awakened with dousing of cold water. 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. Tracing the missing. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. Elizondos wife,Etelvina Rodrguez, said she soon realized that many of the wives of those who worked at the Garza ranch were looking for their husbands.. That report, sponsored by a government-backed victims' rights commission and undertaken by scholars at the prestigious Colegio de Mexico, says that even now Mexican authorities show "less . 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. First published on Wed 6 Nov 2019 16.31 EST. World News Day: A town, a massacre, a decade of silence in Mexico's Allende 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. For the family members, nothing has changed. A fire department volunteer described the scene as they approached. Many thousands disappeared in Mexico's drug war. Warning: violence in San Miguel de Allende : r/digitalnomad - reddit Allende is a small town southwest of Piedras Negras, Mexico and is the site of a massacre by the drug cartel, Los Zetas. And when we met with him, he told us that things were going to get hot. The job netted Jimnez about eight thousand pesos ($700 USD) per month, plus expenses. "How the U.S. October 2, 2018, Transcripts of intercepted cell phones open new lines of investigation in Ayotzinapa case [5] The Mexican government signaled its intention to soften some of the more severe restrictions imposed by the new law. 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. . Forensic specialists from the Mexican Federal Police examine one of the primary crime scenes from the 2011 Allende massacre on January 28, 2014. That if any citizens asked us for help that we would not pay attention to avoid getting into trouble. Following the title sequence is a short paragraph introducing the story of Allende, a Mexican border town unexpectedly overtaken by a powerful drug cartel that . Prosecutors said at least a dozen specially trained police officials may also have been involved. Seven people are gunned down at a streetside taco stand. San Miguel de Allende might be voted the nicest town in Mexico by many travel magazines, but it is not safe at the moment and I advise you not to come here right now. Remembering the Allende Massacre. An important moment seems to have come in March 2015, when state investigatorssaw a familiar patternemerge in three seemingly unrelated cases. [W]e all went in shooting and tied up all the people that were found inside the ranch. [11], [A]round nine oclock at night, I found myself at the circus that had set up in town, when suddenly a person by the name of [deleted] came up to me and told me that in the house of [my sister] they were hearing shots. 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. [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. Authorities investigating the massacre reported numerous hijackings of passenger buses on Mexican Federal Highway 101 in San Fernando, and the kidnapped victims were . In a prior incident, testimony revealed that Vasquez participated in the massacre of numerous people in Piedras Negras and Allende, Coahuila, Mexico, at the hands of Los Zetas members in March of 2011. 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. Her brother-in-law, who also worked for the Garzas, arrived later and told her that her husband had been kidnapped. 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. In March 2011, The Zetas They carried out a massacre in the municipality of Allende, Coahuila, which did not receive the attention of the media at the time, until many years later. Over the course of six episodes, "Somos." gives a platform to the victims of the Allende massacre to tell their stories. She spoke by phone to Fernando Purn, the mayor of Piedras Negras who told her that her son was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He told her the most likely outcome was that Gerardo would be released because it was a mistake. Speaking again later that night, around 3:30 AM on March 19, she said the mayor told her that it hurt him very much, what we were going through, and he hung up. 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. [4] The thinking behind the special exception measure is simple: Human rights crimes affect both the immediate victims and society as a whole, and in such cases there is a society-wide interest in full transparency to ensure that such grave abuses do not reoccur. He said the process reduced the corpses to pure butter., [I]n those days they kidnapped many people [Where] they killed them and burned them was a ranch There, they made me burn one body since I saw what was happening Others were burned at the [deleted] ranch, but nothing was left, because they told me that only pure butter remained after cooking them.- Declaration of Germn Zaragoza Snchez (El Canelo), April 8, 2014, 10:00. His wife recalled the ominous last moments she spent with her husband on March 18, 2011, the night that he and his friend, Hector Lara, disappeared. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico," "Somos." tells the story of a 2011 mass killing in Allende, in the Mexican state of Coahuila . Allende massacre. Jos Alfredo Jimnez was one of the first of the Zetas to arrive at Luis Garzas ranch that night. Mexico Mormon massacre: US victims were shot at point-blank range Some of those interviewed during the investigation said the rampage started as an act of revenge by top Zetas leaders against Cuellar, Junior, and other deputies, who they accused of pocketing millions of dollars in stolen drug money. September 27, 2019 1:06 PM EDT. [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. The six-part miniseries examines the lives of the victims of a cartel massacre at the Mexican border town of Allende. Tracing the missing | The Economist 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 . Remembering the Allende Massacre - JUSTICE IN MEXICO And once they had killed the people, between [Chucho] and I we began to spray the diesel and the gasoline all around the house and the bodega with the bodies inside After this, we set fire with the help of diesel and gasoline to the bodega with all those dead people inside, and we were there for many hours until we cooked all the people, and with so much fire that it melted the roof of the bodega.- Declaration of Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014, El Canelo admitted to having helped burn the body of at least one victim. 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. The attack at Allende began on the night of March 18, 2011, when the Zetas and their collaborators launched a coordinated three-day sweep through the town, situated only about 25 miles from the U.S. border. 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. Arts & Culture. In March 2011 witnesses say the notorious Zetas cartel abducted at least 300 people in northern Mexico, but a local investigation still has a long way to go to identity all the perpetrators - and . [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). 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. He said that he and Rodolfo Jr., his brother-in-law, were going out to look for them. [T]he municipal police received monthly payments of amounts that ranged from 2,000 to 3,000 pesos, and these were delivered in yellow envelopes [W]hen they arrived to divide it up they said, the little chicks [los pollitos] have arrived.- Declaration of former Allende police official, November 12, 2014, 15:20. Netflix's 'Somos.' gives a human face to unspeakable tragedy People from the town stole the furniture, vehicles, and machinery [from the houses] and sold it for scrap metal.- Declaration of Germn Zaragoza Snchez (El Canelo), April 8, 2014, 10:00am. 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. The next day, the wives of other ranch workers came by the Snchez Robles house, looking for their missing spouses. 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. How a Mexican Cartel Demolished a Town, Incinerated Hundreds of Victims Mauricio, the infant son of Liliana lvarez and Arturo Espinoza, was never seen again. The attack . The two had gone to the ranch on March 18 to get medicine for a cockfight that evening. premiering June 30. 92110 United States [email protected] +1 619-260-2299. [11] A portion of the Prez Iruegas complaint was previously published by Zcalo, revealing some of the parts that were redacted in the version released by CNDH (shown here in brackets).