Borderland Beat

by Alex Marentes

  On September 2, 2012 Chivis posted the arrest of comandante Diablo in a post titled ""EL DIABLO" Captured CDG Boss of NL.

  “Federal Police arrested David Rosales Guzman, Comandante

  Diablo , identified as the head of the Gulf Cartel plaza in Monterrey, said Luis Cardenas Palomino, head of the Regional Security Division of the Ministry of Public Security.

  Rosales Guzman has been linked to killings, kidnappings, extortion and attacks at various bars in Monterrey, including Makiavelo bar that left three dead on August 8, and the bar Matehuala, where nine people died on 14 March.

  Also, it is related to the killing of two men who were hanged on a pedestrian bridge in Monterrey limits and San Nicolas de los Garza,

  "He was in charge of coordinating and ordering the killings of members of rival groups, conducting extortion bars and nightclubs and drug distribution" in Monterrey, said Palomino. "provided weapons to the members under his command, which operated in Monterrey , it is known that drugs and weapons were brought from Reynosa, Tamaulipas, where other members of the Gulf Cartel, and were coordinated with David Rosales for such activities, it is known also with ties to the municipal police of Nuevo Leon" he said.”

  Just as recent as December 15, 2018 BB reporter Yaqui posted that Diablo had been sentenced; "El Comandante Diablo" Sentenced to 53 Years."

  This is just an example of the savagery that takes place in Mexico with the most horrific heinous violence anyone can inflict upon its people by some of these criminals, truly a heinous act that shocks the conscious.

  The Narco Corrido Culture

  I was born in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. We used to live in a poor neighborhood called La Cuesta in the outskirts of the city. There was no paved roads and we lived in a small house made of adobe. There was no water, we had to get the water brought in. My father used to commute daily to El Paso while working for the company Tony Lama making cowboy boots.

  Life was rough. I remember working on the side shinning boots and selling candy apples in the neighborhood to help my mother buy food.

  When I was ten years old, the workers at Tony Lama went on strike and my father was fired.

  My uncle who worked for the city of Albuquerque told my father to join him working alongside of him. My father had a visa to work in the US and came to Albuquerque to work for the city. He later was able to make arrangements to bring us all to Albuquerque. I would eventually graduate from High school, join the Marines and retire as a police officer from the city of Albuquerque.

  La Cuesta would eventually become an area infested with crime, they would always find bodies buried in this remote neighborhood. Some of the women that were killed in large numbers in Juarez were found buried in La Cuesta. I have never visited that place since I left when I was a child. In the US, I grew up watching my older brother play his Mexican music. One of the music bands I listened a lot while growing up was Los Tigres del Norte. They sang narco corridos. One of their songs “la Banda del Carro Rojo” was one of my favorites.

  Dicen que venian del sur En un carro Colorado

  Traian cien kilos de coca

  Iban con rumbo a Chicago

  Asi lo dijo el soplon

  Que los habia denunciado

  Ya habian pasado la aduana La que esta en El Paso, Texas.

  Pero en mero San Antonio

  Lo estaban esperando

  Eran los rinches de Texas

  Que comandan el condado.

  The story talks about driving from the south in a red car loaded with 100 kilos of coke on their way to Chicago. They were intercepted in San Antonio by the Texas Rangers and they got in a shootout that resulted in the casualty of four traffickers and three lawmen. One of the traffickers Lino Quintana was arrested but refused to testify. No one knew who they were or where they came from, as no one came to claim their bodies.

  I can’t say for certainty if this story is true or not, but many of the narco corridos sing about true events or famous traffickers. The narco corrido is deeply embedded in the Mexican culture. Some of the most popular bands and singers in Mexico sing narco corridos.

  I never really gave it too much thought when I was young, I just grew up listening to the music. It became almost normal, glorifying the traffickers, seemed almost like they were portrayed as heroes in the corrido. It was not until later, that I really understood the true meaning of what this whole thing actually signified.

  A Narco corrido (Drug Ballad) is a type of Mexican music and song tradition which evolved out of the norteño folk corrido tradition. This type of music is heard on both sides of the US–Mexican border. It uses a danceable, accordion-based polka as a rhythmic base. The first corridos that focused on drug smugglers has been dated to the 1930s. Other music critics have compared the narco corrido music to Gangster Rap.

  Between 2006 and 2008, over a dozen prominent Mexican musicians, many of them connected to the narco corrido genre, were murdered. The violence came in the midst of the Mexican drug war. Experts and musicians themselves say that the murders can be explained by many Mexican musicians’ proximity to drug traffickers.

  The most popular musicians killed were Valentín Elizalde and Sergio Gomez, the lead singer of Chicago based Duranguense band K-Paz de la Sierra. On December 2007, both men were nominated posthumously for Grammy Awards in the banda category.

  In the third season of The Shield, the episode entitled "Safe", a narco corrido is found. It was a song about an unrequited love, and the man killed her. However, several bodies are found, from meth lab exposure. Later evidence proves that she is alive and living with the boyfriend, so the narco corrido turned out to be fake. In real life detectives have used corrido lyrics to close cases from stories that are found to be true. But many times, it is hard to establish if a corrido is a fable or something related by a narco from true accounts.

  Even my all-time favorite television series Breaking Bad that was filmed in and around Albuquerque had Mexican cartel themes in some of their episodes. The second season episode, Negro Y Azul of Breaking Bad, opens with a narco corrido about events within the show's story played by Los Cuates de Sinaloa.

  “The cartel’s running hot

  Because they weren't getting respect

  They talk about some ‘Heisenberg’

  Who controls the market now

  No one knows anything about him

  Because they've never seen him

  The cartel’s about respect and they never forgive

  But that guy’s dead already, he just doesn’t know it yet.”

  The Mexican government has made attempts to change the narco corrido culture, in which they feel it contributes to the problem of narco violence. Mexican youth grow up listening to the corridos of men making a lot of money, having beautiful women by their side and driving expensive cars. They look at it as a possible way out of poverty and misery. The songs paint a picture of romantic adventures in trafficking drugs as a means to be the boss of bosses.

  In November 24, 2010 The Smurf published a story about narco corridos related to Los Tucanes de Tijuana.

  “Since last November, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, one of the most recognizable bands in the Mexican norteño regional genre, are banned from playing in their hometown and namesake, the border city of Tijuana.

  The ban is a result of a 2008 concert in which the band's lead singer sent his regards from the stage to the city's most notorious and wanted men, "El Teo and his compadre, El Muletas." The city's get-tough police chief, Julian Leyzaola, was outraged.

  Leyzaola pulled the plug on shows by Los Tucanes as they prepared to perform at the city's storied Agua Caliente racetrack in November. Leyzaola said the band's polka-driven narcocorrido songs glorify drug lords and their exploits and are therefore inappropriate to play in a city that has suffered soaring drug related violence in recent years. The band, with millions of record sales and a fan base as broad as the international border, hasn't been allowed to play in Tijuana since.

  Authorities in Mexico wid
ely disapprove of norteño bands that sing about the drug trade, banning their songs from radio airwaves and even threatening jail time for narcocorrido producers (link in Spanish). The effort is especially vigilant in Tijuana, as Marosi reported in a story in 2008.

  Last year, another iconic norteño band, Los Tigres del Norte, was banned from performing a popular song titled "La Granja" at an awards ceremony in Mexico City. The song's allegorical lyrics are critical of the government's strategy against the drug cartels. Los Tigres del Norte pulled out of the show, inevitably boosting the song's profile among fans.

  Narcocorrido singers walk a fine line between merely commenting on the larger-than-life figures in Mexico's drug war and singing their praises -- sometimes at their own risk. Several norteño performers have been hunted down and killed, such as Valentin Elizalde and, in June, Sergio Vega. Some of the most well-known narcocorridos describe news events in coded details, such as the song Los Tucanes de Tijuana released about Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most wanted man.

  On March 27, 2015 DD posted this

  "A brief history of early attempts at censoring narco-corridors from the book Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas, by Elijah Wald.

  ‘While both drugs and crime cause real problems for society at large, and for many individuals, I am extremely dubious about the purposes of such censorship. It seems to me to be a attempt by politicians to get publicity as defenders of public morals and safety without doing any of the difficult things that would be necessary to genuinely deal with the problems, such as providing poor people with other ways to improve their economic situation.’

  I am not a fan of narco-corridors, but I think attempts at censorship, which is a form of prohibition, will be just as unsuccessful as the prohibition on drugs has been. If you think they have not become part of the culture both in Mexico and to a fast-growing extent in the US, just go to YouTube and do a search "narco-corridors" and you will get 217,000 results which suggests Mexico has no hope of pulling the plug on the music."

  On June 20, 2009 a story was posted on the execution of narco corrido singer Valentin Elizalde titled "The Strange and Tragic Story of Valentin Elizalde."

  "Now you know who you're dealing with, come and test your luck." - from "To My Enemies.”

  Nicknamed "The Golden Rooster," Valentin Elizalde, 27, was well known in Northern Mexico for his brass based traditional "banda" music: polka-inspired and with gritty lyrics. Musicians like him along the Mexico-Texas frontier have long documented the trials of border life and have turned the region's drug lords into living legends.

  In August 2006, on the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube.com, someone posted a photo slideshow depicting a succession of bullet-riddled bodies set to Elizalde's song "A Mis Enemigos" ("To My Enemies") as the soundtrack.

  The gory collection had a partisan theme: it was taunting the Gulf Cartel, showing only victims aligned with it and its enforcement arm, known as Los Zetas. And just so nobody missed the point, the screen name of the person who shared the gloating documentary was "matazeta," or Zeta killer.

  Volleys of foul-mouthed insults soon began to be posted to the site, resulting in a strange dialogue between self-described supporters of the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels, which are locked in a turf battle over lucrative smuggling corridors into the United States.

  On the YouTube site, the rhetoric escalated in the days before Elizalde was slated to play in Reynosa a border town in the heart of Gulf Cartel territory. "Videos like this cause the death of Chapitos," warned a Gulf supporter in a posting one day before the concert, using a slang term for El Chapo's followers.

  On November 25, Elizalde played his set in Reynosa, opening and closing it with "To My Enemies."

  As he left the fair, two vehicles chased his Chevrolet Suburban and opened fire with automatic weapons in front of dozens of onlookers. Elizalde, his driver and manager were killed. Elizalde had been hit 28 times and died on the scene. As many as 70 cartridges were found.

  A cryptic message was posted on YouTube almost immediately after the shooting. "Just because of this video, they filled the Rooster with lead, hahahaha. He cried like a bitch," another poster who sided with the Gulf Cartel wrote.

  When Elizalde was gunned down, he was in the passenger seat, his limp body slumped toward the door.

  These details are clearly visible in another video posted on YouTube, a 50-second clip of the crime scene.

  Meanwhile, the comments on the videos continued. Some comments referred to the ousting of Gregorio "El Goyo" Sauceda from the Gulf Cartel leadership after a rift with other bosses. El Goyo's fall had not been reported anywhere, but matched intelligence that U.S. authorities had gleaned from contacts in Mexico.

  If there were other nuggets of truth buried among the poorly spelled curses, they are now lost. YouTube yanked the video and comments Nov. 27, citing violation of terms of service.

  But other versions of the Elizalde video surfaced immediately on YouTube, one opening with machine gun fire and closing with a video clip of an execution.

  In the territory disputed by the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels the names of cartel leaders are mentioned only in whispers, if at all. But under the anonymity bestowed by the Internet, whispers became pronouncements.

  It wasn't the first time an assassination was foretold on the Internet. On a Weblog in August, in a similar vitriolic back-and-forth, a threat to kill Monterrey investigator Marcelo Garza y Garza became reality just weeks later.

  Last Wednesday, Norteño singer Javier Morales Gomez of the group Los Implacables del Norte was gunned down in the plaza of Huetamo in Michoacan state. Three days earlier, singer Lupillo Rivera was shot at as he drove in Guadalajara.

  On Sunday, a large crowd awaited the arrival of Elizalde's body at the airport in Ciudad Obregon. Two police cars then escorted Elizalde's body to his hometown of Jitonhueca, about 60 miles southeast, where a memorial service was to be held at his mother's home, the government news agency Notimex reported. Along the way, the funeral procession was greeted by the strains of norteno music. Some fans applauded from the side of the road. Others tossed flowers or laid out votive candles.

  The song in question, framed as a tribute video:

  It's not surprising that there's violence when you're talking about drug cartels, but besides the obvious unfortunate fate of Elizalde (who's survived by his three daughters), I thought this was notable just because of how odd this was.”

  In Search for La Linea

  Albuquerque is a sister city of the city of Chihuahua, Mexico. The Mayor of Albuquerque at the time was Martin Chavez who was said to have an amiable distant relationship with the Mayor of Chihuahua, Mayor Juan Blanco. For the most part, the alliance of the cross-border mayors was a good thing, it allowed both side of the border to collaborate in constructive projects and forged a spirit of cooperation between both cities. Albuquerque Police used to provide some support to the Chihuahua police in training and equipment. I remember our department delivering expired ballistic vest to the police of Chihuahua.

  Most of this training by some of the Albuquerque police officers took place in the city of Chihuahua. But some of the Mexican officers who participated in the training were officers from the whole state of Chihuahua, including Ciudad Juarez. There was a police officer with the City of Albuquerque who had been police chief of Sunland Police Department. Sunland is a community right outside the city limits of El Paso, Texas. This officer had a lot of contacts with officers and politicians in Chihuahua and assisted many officers abroad with coordinating with training.

  It was during this time that a met several police officers from the Ciudad Juarez municipal police. I would not say they were close friends of mine, but I knew their acquaintance. Some were ranking members of the police department and we had a distant amiable friendship. I felt this might be an opportunity for me to find out more about the so called Línea.

  Ever since I had found out that the father of little Alicia
had been a ranking member of La Línea, I could not get it off my head. I really wanted to know more, I had this deep craving to learn about who they were and how they operated relative to the Juarez Cartel. I knew Ciudad Juarez was saturated with thousands of military and federal police. How did they move in the city and operate in the open? At the time not many people had heard of La Línea, except for the people in Juarez.

  I started to focus on the cartel violence in Ciudad Juarez, being the closest proximity to where I lived. The federal police were suspected of cooperating with the Sinaloa cartel in efforts to destroy the Juarez Cartel. The state and municipal police forces were accused of colluding or joining forces with their hometown Juarez Cartel.

  What is certain is that La Linea had suffered much more damage from federal police forces in Juarez than the Sinaloa cartel cells. I had heard a rumor once that the Linea was primarily made up of Juarez police officers. I just did not have enough information to form any type of conclusion.

  I had to go to the source.

  Back in 2007 I was introduced to an active ranking police officer from Ciudad Juarez that might be willing to talk to me about La Línea or at least facilitate someone to talk to me freely about it. This commander, that I had actually met in Albuquerque, was going to be my point of contact. He indicated that I would have to make a trip to Ciudad Juarez, the most dangerous city in the world at the time. I was not very comfortable travelling to Juarez and meeting with someone to talk to me about criminal organizations.

  Although I somewhat trusted this commander, I also knew that may times you will have operatives working for both cartels and leaking information, perhaps to someone that might have an interest to do you harm. People had been killed for much less. I would not be armed, so I would be totally dependent on others for my safety. Some of the videos I had seen posted on social media of people being tortured and executed flashed across my mind. I was not naive of the high risk this trip posed.

  I was nervous, but my contact had questioned me if I truly trusted him, and the ultimate test would be if I truly trusted him with my life. “I will make sure nothing happens to you. You have to trust me as I trust you.”