It is estimated that over 300 went missing or killed in March of 2011. And after five or six hours during which the corpses were cooked it was then around five or six oclock in the morning. There were other people in civilian clothes who carried long arms, and these people were Los Zetas, since I realized that there at the [Garza] ranch were [El Pala,] whose name is [Fernando Ros Bustos]; [El Canelo,] whose name is [Germn Zaragoza Snchez]; [El Cubano], whose name is [Juan Rafael Arredondo Oviedo]; [El Pjaro], whose name is [Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar]; [El Flacaman,] whose name is [Gabriel Zaragoza Snchez,] among other people, some of whom I did not know, but they seemed to be from the south since they wore sandals and carried machetes. Another explained that he stopped cooperating with the Zetas after they kidnapped his father. El Pjaro said that a group of victims that had been tied up inside the ranch house were later taken out back to the bodega where they were killed with a shot to the head. State investigative police in Coahuila said her testimony pointed to the method of operations of organized crime at that time in relation to the kidnappings in the northern region of the state of Coahuila and was one of the first clear signals that the Allende massacre was connected to many other cases around the region. About five estacas[9]participated, and with [deleted] and [deleted] ten more joined. Suite 701, Gelman Library In February, 2014, members of the Army, Navy, State, and . I stopped working for Los Zetas because they disappeared my father who worked as a security guard at a construction site from where they also kidnapped another worker and a woman who I did not know, but she seemed to be a minor At the time of the disappearance of my father I was still with the municipal police and I asked the commander for help And he told me not to involve myself in these matters and that I should go home and go to sleep.-Declaration of former Allende police transit officer, July 31, 2014. 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. 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. Una nueva serie de Netflix intenta . 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. 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. Or do you want the same thing to happen to you or to your families?-Declaration of Allende fire chief, December 17, 2014. But a few minutes later he called me saying that neither his father nor his sister were answering and that there were many trucks and armed men guarding the entrance to the ranch. Of particular importance was the November 2014 testimony of a woman from Piedras Negras whose husband, himself a member of the Zetas, had been kidnapped, detained, and later killed by the group in 2010. Criminals were shooting up the street and two police officers . And that if we didn't obey, they were going to fuck us and our families. September 26, 2019, FiftyYears After Tlatelolco, Censoring the Mexican Archives: Mexico's "Dirty War" Files Withdrawn from Public Access 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]. Beyond criminal prosecutions, the Mexican government also has a specific legal obligation to divulge information related to cases, like Allende, that constitute clear violations of human rights and humanitarian law, raising the hope that additional information may come to light through the countrys access to information law. Forensic specialists from the Mexican Federal Police examine one of the primary crime scenes from the 2011 Allende massacre on January 28, 2014. Outside the ranch entrance, the firefighters spotted officers and vehicles from the Allende police department. 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. Three and a half years later, what stood out to these firefighters was the conspicuous police presence, the brutal treatment of the captives, and the threats directed at them by Zetas members. 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.. -Declaration of Allende volunteer firefighter, December 17, 2014. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico" was published in 2017 by the investigative news agency ProPublica.. 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. MEXICO CITY The killers went to the town of Allende one weekend in March 2011 with orders to exact revenge. As CrimeOnline previously reported, the victims were part of a faith group who lived in Sonora, an established faith-based city in Mexico, around 70 miles from Douglas, Arizona. I only saw that they had them bent over with their hands behind their backs, and they put them in the back of the truck. He told her about other people from the region who the Zetas had kidnapped and killed, including a pregnant teenager and the nephew of the former mayor of Piedras Negras. Netflix drama series Somos. When they did not return or respond to phone calls, their wives became concerned. 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. 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. U.S. Prosecutions Bring Mexico Corruption into Focus Also the commander, [Hernndez Ramos], who never did anything since he also was working for the Zetas and received money, but I dont know how much And [an unnamed Los Zetas member] would come in like he was in his own house, without anyone saying a thing about it.- Declaration of former Allende police official, November 12, 2014, 17:30, Multiple witnesses said that Trevio called them to a meeting three days before the massacre began on March 18, 2011, telling them that he and Lozano had met with Los Zetas and had agreed to stand down municipal authorities for the criminal group. 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 . [18]Others have called on Mexico to prosecute top Coahuila state officials, including former governors, for allowing criminal violence to flourish. During Mexico's unknown massacre, Los Zetas carried out a systematic extermination by killing and incinerating more than 400 people in Allende and the surrounding towns. 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. And outside the house there were four people with long arms who were dressed in black and had on bulletproof vests. [Rodolfo] came home all covered in grease, ate, and later, as we sat outside smoking a cigarette, he told me, Things are getting to be a real pain in the ass, but he didnt tell me anything else, and we were there for about ten minutes. Thompsons reporting and the U.S. investigations strongly suggest that the former SIU chief may have been part of a criminal conspiracy that sparked the Allende massacre. It was the case that among them I recognized several, since I knew them, because we were from the same municipality of Allende, Coahuila, where I live.- Declaration of Zetas member Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014. 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. 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. Tracing the missing. Some cooperated more than others. [I]n fact, he sometimes came and went inside the cells to beat those who were locked up. 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. 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. September 29, 2020, Five Years Later, the Search Continues 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. And also El [Chucho] killed a person, but I did not see who. Zaragoza said up to 60 Zetas assassins may have participated in the Allende operation, sweeping up people in the surrounding towns and dropping them off at the Garza Ranch. 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. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico," "Somos." tells the story of a 2011 mass killing in Allende, in the Mexican state of Coahuila . Nine people, including three mothers and six children, lost their lives Monday when they were shot execution-style while traveling to a wedding in Mexico. It is not a series of drug traffickers, but of their victims: of those who try to survive . Netflix will release a series next month inspired by a story that revealed . Oct. 27: A police officer is seen outside a car wash after gunmen burst into the shop and killed at least 15 people in Tepic, Mexico. 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. I would ask you the same thing, she replied. 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. 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. [His mother] told him that they were shooting up the house I could hear the shots and that she was shouting very desperately. Other witnesses said that the citys top official ignored urgent pleas that he request assistance from state or federal law enforcement to help quell the violence. September 27, 2019 1:06 PM EDT. Lilianas husband, Arturo, had also been unable to reach his wife or her parents. In fact, the meeting only lasted around ten minutes.-Declaration of Juan Ariel Hernndez Ramos, Allende police commander, August 18, 2016. 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. 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. 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. Most of the victims were later shot and killed, after which the Zetas crudely cremated the bodies, dousing them in gasoline and diesel fuel and burning them overnight until nothing remained but ashes and tiny bone fragments. Known as El Pjaro (The Bird), Jimnez was hired by the Zetas in the summer of 2010 as a halcn (hawk) to monitor the movements of rival gangs, state and federal security forces, and anything else that might threaten Los Zetas. 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. Later we took these people to the Garza ranch where we put them in the same house where we had the others. Finally, the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice recently confirmed, in a FOIA denial letter to the National Security Archive, that its investigation of the DEAs links to cartel violence in Mexicofirst announced in 2018is ongoing, a probe that may have significant implications for the Allende case and for U.S.-Mexico security cooperation more broadly. 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. His wife, Sarah Angelita Lira, said that Liliana had called to tell him that their uncles ranch was on fire, and that she was leaving the ranch, and that they were closing the gate., So my husband left. . One installment revealedthat officials from the Mexican Army and the top civilian intelligence agency (CISEN) within days knew key details about the massacre, including that Poncho Cuellar had fled to the U.S. with a stash of cartel money and was talking to the DEA. 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. American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Trevios but never acknowledged the devastating cost. And after that I left.- Complaint of Hctor Reynaldo Prez Iruegas, May 25, 2011. The missing from the Allende massacre are among the 13,000 the . For reference to U.S. training and other background, see our previous Electronic Briefing Book, especially Document 1 and Document 2. 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 . Later we began to cook the corpses that we were left with, and to do this we looked for a space inside the same ranch near the corrals, and later a truck of Zetas brought some barrels and a pickaxe We made holes in the bottom and on the sides of the barrels, and they were like trash barrels made of sheet metal or iron, and after making the holes, I remember that El Chango and I took one of the bodies from the truck and put it in a barrel. 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. According to multiple local media reports, the massacre happened on Wednesday afternoon when an armed group opened fire at the city hall of San Miguel Totolapan, resulting in the . He said his hands were tied, so he stepped aside . They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. And the mayor commented on what was happening in the city, but never said if he was going to ask for help or if he had advised anyone of what was happening. What actions had they taken to guarantee the security of the people of Allende? 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 . [10] How the U.S. I saw that they took two people out of the house, but I could not distinguish who they were. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. 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. 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. The six-part miniseries examines the lives of the victims of a cartel massacre at the Mexican border town of Allende. Most of them, he said, were killed and cremated inside the state prison in Piedras Negras. [13] Bracketed items identified in portions of the Herrera Estrada declaration published by Zcalo. Investigators firstquestioned LozanoandTrevioabout the massacre in 2012. That things were going to get ugly.-Declaration of former Allende police shift commander, September 18, 2016. Prosecutors disagreed, arguing that Lozano collaborated with Los Zetas, was aware of the attacks before they began, and had failed in his obligation to protect the people of Allende. December 9, 2020, Advirti EU riesgo ante mandos mexicanos corruptos 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. Subscribe. 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. Victim associations report about 300 people dead or missing from the Allende massacre. Authorities investigating the massacre reported numerous hijackings of passenger buses on Mexican Federal Highway 101 in San Fernando, and the kidnapped victims were . "How the U.S. 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. Local media, fearing reprisals, did not report the violence until years later. 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. [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). In a country where murders and disappearances are troublingly common, the scale and the horrific details of the Allende massacre case still stand out. 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. And he was waiting for his brother-in-law [Later,] he told me that they spent the entire night looking for his family; that he had entered the ranch from the back through an opening, and that he realized that he was alone in the ranch house, and that he was there with the expectation that they were holding his sister and his niece and nephews all with the last name Espinoza Garza, who on the day of the acts were seven months, three years, and six years of age.- Complaint of Sarah Angelita Lira, November 11, 2014. 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. Whereas, according to a 2016 interview of Coahuila attorney general Homero Ramos Gloria, the Mexican government has identified only 28 human remains and 54 . Yesterday I heard machine guns right outside my door on Independencia. Many of the nine women and children killed on a remote stretch of highway in northern Mexico Monday were shot at point-blank range -- victims of a targeted assassination that Mexican authorities . Somos. [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. Washington, D.C., 20037, Phone: 202/994-7000 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. 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 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 . Bri Rooke. The plan, he said, was to kidnap and kill everyone. When more Zetas and various patrols of the municipal police arrived later they knocked down the main gate of the Garza ranch by ramming it with a truck, according to Jimnez. 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 . The Zetas started out as an enforcer gang for the Gulf Cartel . American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Trevios but never acknowledged the devastating cost. In Coahuila we were hearing the word being passed from municipality to municipality, about a large scale Zeta massacre in several towns of "The Five Springs", (Los Cinco Manantiales) including Allende. 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. 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 the first to be rounded up were people connected to El Wichins uncle, Rodolfo Garza, who owned a ranch directly adjacent to that of his brother Luis. The destruction of the 2011 Allende massacre is still evident to this day. 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. 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. In 2017, a group led by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)submitted a communicationto the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) detailing crimes committed against the civilian population in Coahuila, including murder, illegal imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture and sexual violence, not just from March 2011 but from a seven-year period from 2009-2016. That he and the then-mayor of the city had a meeting with people from Los Zetas. 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. The Zetas told the other children he was too little and cried too much to leave him there with them, according to Espinoza. Garza Gaytnwas a member of a Los Zetas cell led by Mario Alfonso Poncho Cuellar, a former Mexican federal police officer. The Zetas organizational structure includes counterintelligence, intelligence and tactical enforcement units.. Through the gate, she could see what appeared to be bodies piled up next to a burning building. And they went to the Ranch but did not find anyone, and told us that they had scoured the place but had not found anyone.- Complaint of Elvira Espinoza, November 4, 2011. And as there were three barrels we put one dead body in each barrel. June 19, 2017. 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. Mauricio, the infant son of Liliana lvarez and Arturo Espinoza, was never seen again. Most importantly, he told her that many of the Allende massacre victims were first brought to a cemetery in Piedras Negras before being taken later to the Garza ranch.
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