En 2011, cuando el cartel de Los Zetas dominaba el noreste de Mxico, ocurri una masacre en la localidad de Allende, Coahuila, de la que poco se conoci. [W]hen the Zetas realized that we were there, they said to us, Youd better get the hell out of here, motherfuckers! * * * * *. And as there were three barrels we put one dead body in each barrel. Or do you want the same thing to happen to you or to your families?-Declaration of Allende fire chief, December 17, 2014. 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 . Netflix will release a series next month inspired by a story that revealed . The police radio operator said that the director, Trevio, and the commander, Hernndez, were paid as much as five times what ordinary officers were given. Investigators firstquestioned LozanoandTrevioabout the massacre in 2012. [H]e was telling me that he wanted to look for the Zetas to see what they were asking for the return of his 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. Whereas, according to a 2016 interview of Coahuila attorney general Homero Ramos Gloria, the Mexican government has identified only 28 human remains and 54 . 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. . Subscribe. I dont know who those people were, just that they were people that the police detained or his own people that he ordered be locked up when they handled themselves badly, or people with whom he had a disagreement [tuviera pedos]. And outside the house there were four people with long arms who were dressed in black and had on bulletproof vests. June 19, 2017. A fire department volunteer said he also saw many familiar faces among the victims, the Zetas, and the police officials gathered there. You know who they are., Still other witnesses said that they saw Lozano standing calmly outside his house on the night of March 20 talking on a mobile phone while the Zetas sacked a house across the street. 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. Over three consecutive days in March 2011, a series . 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. 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. We told him, Yes. And I asked him why he, as the person in direct charge of the city, the top authority, had not asked for help from the military or the state or federal government, since I had explained that we did not have the weapons or the resources to take on these people? 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. Oct. 9, 2016. Witnesses describe in graphic detail how Los Zetas undermined and criminalized the public security forces of Allende, and how the latter routinely participated in kidnappings, murders, and other crimes on behalf of the group. 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. For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. 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. 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. In March 2011, gunmen from the Zetas Cartel slaughtered innocent men, women and children in the small Mexican town of Allende in retaliation for the betrayal. The two had gone to the ranch on March 18 to get medicine for a cockfight that evening. '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 . The same year, the Zetas member known as El Cubano was arrested in the U.S. and later extradited to Mexico in connection to the case. A cartel war has transformed once-tranquil Guanajuato into one of Mexico's deadliest states. Thats the last thing I know about my family., Almas brother, Hctor Reynaldo Prez Iruegas, also witnessed part of the attack and was one of the first to file a missing persons report in the case. 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! 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. 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. She told me that around 5:30 in the afternoon she came across the pick-up truck that came for my husband, and that had been circulating up and down Calle Independencia, and that her father was on board the truck together with about five other people, and that he was in the cabin in the back, in the middle, and that the truck was followed by two black late-model cars, Malibu or Impala, and the three vehicles headed for the mountain; this being the last time they saw my husband.- Complaint of wife of victim Rodolfo Snchez Robles, November 10, 2014. Many of the victims were ordinary laborers at the Garza properties. 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. 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. We continued to advance until we reached the ranch, where I saw that there were a number of blue and white municipal police patrol cars and several police officers And these police, its like they were guarding the place. American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Trevios but never acknowledged the devastating cost. That things were going to get ugly.-Declaration of former Allende police shift commander, September 18, 2016. 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. [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. December 9, 2020, Advirti EU riesgo ante mandos mexicanos corruptos 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 rampage that punctuateda larger wave of violencein which theLos Zetas criminal groupkidnapped, murdered, and later burned the bodies of as many as 300 victims, incinerating the remains into piles of ashes, bits of teeth, and tiny bone fragments. But there was not any kind of response from the police or any other authority.. In 2019, the state had a homicide rate of about 61 . November 6, 2013, National Security Archive 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. What they saw, before fleeing for their lives, was the beginning of the grimly methodical process often used by the Zetas to destroy the bodies of their victimsto eliminate the primary evidence of the crime. 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. It is not a series of drug traffickers, but of their victims: of those who try to survive . 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. Lpez said he knew all of the municipal police very well, owing to the fact that there was a lot of contact with them.[14], Upon seeing all of those police, I realized that they were keeping watch or guarding the place. Document 1 August 25, 2007 Shutdown Slows but Doesn't Stop Central Americans Headed North U.S. Embassy in Mexico, cable, sensitive, 3 pp. Despite the unimaginable death toll and visible trail of destruction, for several years the case was largely ignored by federal, state, and local authorities. That he and the then-mayor of the city had a meeting with people from Los Zetas. 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. To me in particular they gave me 2,000 pesos [per month].-Declaration of former Allende police official, July 22, 2014. 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. The wife of another victim, a heavy machinery mechanic who worked for the Garza family, also went looking for her husband on the morning of the March 19. 1:07. 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. 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. On the night of March 20, 2011, four firefighters arrived at a ranch along a stretch of rural highway linking the northern Mexico towns of Allende and Villa Unin. But a2017 investigation by Ginger Thompson of ProPublicafound that Cuellar and Junior weretargeted for another reason: Los Zetas leaders had discovered that members of Cuellars cell were cooperating with agents of the DEA and had provided them with secret PIN codes allowing the DEA to track the mobile phones of top Zetas leaders. 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. He just asked us if we knew about what was happening. Family members lost contact with Rodolfo and his daughter, Liliana Garza de la Torre, on the night of March 18. See Allende, el infierno: Los testigos de la masacre, Zcalo (Coahuila), July 10, 2017. Herrera said he knew many of the victims as well. Prosecutors say that Reyes took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from the cartels during his 13-year career at the SIU, including large payments from the Sinaloa and Beltran-Leyva cartels, among others. Four years later, and ten years since the Allende massacre, the families of those victimized by the Zetas and other criminal groups in Coahuilaare still waitingto learn whether the ICC will take up the case. First published on Wed 6 Nov 2019 16.31 EST. The Archive pried open the files using a special provision of Mexicos access law requiring the release of information relating to human rights violations. And there were approximately from seven to ten people that we tied up with rats tails. History. follows the lives of an ensemble group of fictional characters, all inspired by real-life . He said he recognized many of the Zetas gathered there.[13]. 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. 2130 H Street, NW Hit especially hard was the extended family of Jos Luis Garza Gaytn (also known as Junior and El Wichin). Myself, and two others of my staff were driving from Monterrey, via Saltillo, on our way to Acuna, travelling on the 57 . Bri Rooke. 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. [A]t that time I lived in La Colonia Presidentes, and I knew all of these people because they were from the town. 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]. 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. . Based on Ginger Thompson's 2017 oral history, "How the U.S. When the Zetas arrived in Allende a decade ago, they infiltrated the very . Garza Gaytnwas a member of a Los Zetas cell led by Mario Alfonso Poncho Cuellar, a former Mexican federal police officer. Allende massacre. We arrived and forced our way in firing shots, from there we took [Vctor Garza], his wife [Alma Patricia Prez], and their youngest son, I think that [his name was Julio Garza.] . 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. Local media, fearing reprisals, did not report the violence until years later. The town's mayor believes 30 to 40 Allende families were exterminated, and he has a list of 34 houses that were destroyed. Another explained that he stopped cooperating with the Zetas after they kidnapped his father. 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. 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 rampage that punctuateda larger wave of violencein which theLos Zetas criminal groupkidnapped, murdered, and later burned the bodies of as many as 300 victims, many of them from Allende but also from nearby towns like Villa Unin and Piedras Negras, a city 35 miles to the north that lies just across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas. 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. In fact, the meeting only lasted around ten minutes.-Declaration of Juan Ariel Hernndez Ramos, Allende police commander, August 18, 2016. About five estacas[9]participated, and with [deleted] and [deleted] ten more joined. 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. The above account was confirmed by several others, including one of the shift commanders. After about a half an hour, my husband called my son on his cell phone but he did not answer his phone, which worried us since he always answered.- Complaint of Claudia Snchez, October 18, 2013, Snchez soon learned that there had been a number of disappearances around the city that night, and that one of Gerardos friends had also gone missing. 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. [His mother] told him that they were shooting up the house I could hear the shots and that she was shouting very desperately. 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. However, families of the victims in Allende touted the overdue government efforts as a publicity stunt. 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. For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. 8:01. 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.