Mexico’s Dirty War drew to a close in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and La Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre was dissolved. Rafael Aguilar was left as the most powerful man in the state. For years, as head of the DFS in Chihuahua, Aguilar had controlled the state’s highways, airports, and international bridges. He and his agents knew the names of every significant smuggler, their areas of operation, and the products they worked. Aguilar now put his position to work in the service of the drug business. “The apparatus that Aguilar controlled remained intact,” de la Rosa noted. “They just became narcos and they were no threat to the Mexican state,” he said, implying that that fact had allowed them to operate without interference. It was then that Aguilar brought together the most important smuggling groups, forging an alliance that became the Juárez cartel. Along the way he put his DFS experience to work, exterminating everyone who resisted or otherwise posed obstacles to his vision.
Rafael Aguilar thus became one of the founding members of the Juárez cartel, along with two associates: a man named Gilberto Ontiveros, who went by the nickname “El Greñas” (the shaggy-haired one); and Rafael Muñoz, the man who’d been the manager at the Las Vacas restaurant where, as a child, the mayor and his family had periodically lunched on Sundays. It was one of those strange ironies that the founding of the Juárez cartel would be so closely linked to the forces of repression that gripped the country in the 1970s as part of Mexico’s Dirty War. In 2008, when Calderón dispatched the army and the federal police to Juárez to attempt to take down the cartels, the political left severely criticized these actions, and Gustavo de la Rosa’s voice of opposition was one of the strongest. Many perceived a parallel between the government’s current intervention and the earlier intervention against the leftist guerrilla movements, even though the parallel was far from apt. While there was truth to the accusation that the government’s tactics were creating significant human rights abuses, the cartels themselves could hardly be seen as victims. Their violence was terrorizing entire communities, and the dysfunctional judicial system that had long resulted in the arbitrary detentions of innocent people was the same system that was now permitting cartel operatives and their gangs to execute people at will in the streets and to lift and torture rivals as well as the citizens who reported on their activities, all without fear of prosecution.
The Mexico of 2008 was far-removed from the one-party, autocratic oligarchy that had governed the country with an iron fist for decades until the democratic opening that led to the 2000 elections. And the leftist movements whose idealism had driven their 1960s activism were not analogous in any way to the drug cartels and their gangs. One could legitimately take issue with the Calderón government’s tactics and strategy, but only the most naïve, or the most cynical, could fail to see that the Mexican drug cartels posed a real threat to the future viability of the country.
CHAPTER 13
Román
José Reyes Ferriz went to Mexico City at the end of February 2008 to meet with federal authorities and found their response heartening: they were eager to help. But they had one precondition: the Juárez municipal police had to be cleaned up. In order to accomplish this, the entire force would have to submit to Confidence Tests administered by the federal police. It was a key plank in the federal government’s national strategy: the municipal and state police forces were the most corrupt; they were the nexus that would unravel any effort to confront the cartels. For this reason, the government was pressuring the most critical municipalities, where cartel infiltration and violence were strongest, to submit their police forces to the Confidence Tests. Given that the police functioned as the Juárez cartel’s enforcement wing, this meant depriving the cartel of a vital tool, an essential component of their business. While the Juárez cartel was still thought to be the main player within the local police, there was widespread suspicion that in recent months the Sinaloa cartel had made significant inroads into the force. Cleaning up the police was going to be a difficult, contested process. The cartels would resist it tooth and nail.
Toward the end of March, Mayor José Reyes Ferriz announced at a press conference that Guillermo Prieto and Antonio Román, the chief and the director of operations of the Juárez municipal police, respectively, would be going to Mexico City, where they would be administered the Confidence Tests at the Secretariat for Public Security, the agency headed by Genaro García Luna. Prieto would leave on April 2, while Román and four district commanders would be given appointments soon thereafter. The federal police would come to Juárez to administer the tests to the rest of the force. “We’re going to rid the police of the corruption that this administration inherited,” the mayor vowed. As part of its strategy to combat corruption within the national police forces, the federal police were developing a national database of fingerprints, iris images, and voice recordings for everyone associated with law enforcement at the municipal, state, and federal levels. The federal government was using federal funding for security needs as leverage to force the municipalities into compliance: Juárez, for example, would only receive its allotted 104 million pesos ($8.4 million dollars) in security funding upon completion of the tests.
Testing the currently active members of the Juárez municipal police would be no small undertaking. The mayor leased an old empty warehouse on Lerdo Street that had previously been home to the AC Nielsen Company. Thirty-six specialists from the federal police arrived at the end of April and beginning of May to begin administering the tests. They estimated that they would be able to process up to fifty-eight municipal police agents a day and that the entire process would take them approximately six weeks. It was decided that it would be less disruptive for the results to be announced at the end of the process rather than piecemeal.
. . .
Felipe Calderón’s security cabinet came to Juárez on May 8 to assess the status of Operación Conjunto Chihuahua. It was the third time in as many months that they had visited the city, and an orchestrated wave of bad news welcomed them. The bloodletting of the police was starting anew. There had already been seventeen police executions since the start of the year, but now, after a lull, the pace again quickened. In the forty-eight hours prior to the official visit, five municipal police and one commander had been ambushed and wounded in two separate incidents. In a third incident, José Roberto Ortiz, recently named to head the Babícora sector, had gone on the police radio to exhort his troops to do good work on behalf of the force. Moments later, a cavernous voice jumped on the same police frequency to berate the “kiss ass” cops, shouting this threat in reference to Ortiz: “Let’s see how long this son of a bitch lasts you!” The answer was not long in coming; Ortiz and his two bodyguards were executed within hours of the threat.
It was impossible to miss the conclusion that the rash of assassinations and attempted assassinations were related to the announced start of the Confidence Tests and the fact that Calderón’s national security cabinet was meeting in Juárez. Nevertheless, the governor of Chihuahua, José Reyes Baeza, attempted to dampen such speculation. “They don’t have the [security cabinet’s] agenda,” the governor said in reference to the cartels. “The killings take place whether or not the authorities are having meetings.” But the newspaper headlines that greeted president Calderón’s security cabinet upon its arrival in Juárez said it all: “Six More Yesterday,” “Six Assassinated: So Far 29 in 9 Days.” It was only early May and already, at 291, the year’s tally of the dead was about to break the city’s record-setting 301 executions for 2007.
The press conference following the security cabinet’s meeting was a somber affair. It included the head of the Secretariat for Public Security, Genaro García Luna; the heads of the army and navy; the federal attorney general, Eduardo Medina-Mora; and the secretary of the interior, Camilo Mouriño. It fell to the secretary of defense, Guillermo Galván Galván, to summarize the facts that would hopefully reassure the populace that the federal government’s efforts were producing results. The general ticked off t
he numbers: hundreds arrested, tons of marijuana and kilos of cocaine seized, and tens of thousands of dollars recovered. It was then left to Camilo Mouriño, the secretary of the interior, to try to explain that the city was witnessing a full-blown war between cartels for control of the Juárez plaza. What Mouriño could not explain was what was in most need of explanation: the temerity of the assassins, the rising tally of the dead, and the failure to generate the most important, indispensable metric of all, a sense of stability and hope among the people of Juárez.
Following the Juárez meetings, the security cabinet returned to Mexico City. The president had sent the cabinet to Juárez in part as an effort to reassure and to convey the high priority and importance that he gave to turning back the tide of violence in Juárez. Timing the arrival of his key cabinet members with the initiation of the Confidence Tests and the police cleanup was part of the same message: that the federal government was in Juárez to take care of business. But the cartels were media-savvy. They understood the president’s intended message all too well, and they were more adept at conveying their own message. The cartels had no need for press conferences; they created events that of necessity drew the media and became front-page copy.
The challenge that Calderón and the men in his security cabinet faced, the problem that all of Mexican society faced, had been in the making for years. The dysfunctional institutions were so tightly entwined with the social fabric that an anthropologist might have concluded that they’d become part of the culture itself. Mexicans had lived with overt, daily corruption on the part of the police forces for generations. It was not new and it was not a surprise; it was a thoroughly familiar fact of life. Mexican society had permitted PEMEX, the national oil company, to operate with unbridled graft and corruption. It had allowed the teachers union to destroy the country’s once-proud educational system. And it had permitted generations of politicians to plunder the public coffers without restraint and without fear of consequence. The president had labeled the cartels “a cancer,” but this was the medium that bred that cancer. The cartels were merely exploiting an extant disease that had well-near broken the spirit of the country and spawned the pervasive cynicism that undermined even well-intentioned efforts to reset the great nation’s course. This is what the men of the president’s security cabinet, heads of the most influential government institutions in the country, were really facing. It was a challenge that was bigger than their collective powers combined, and all the more elusive because the problem was interwoven and burrowed deep within the core of the society itself. Even for people with the best intentions, the conundrum was too complex, appearing to defy solutions.
. . .
On the day of the security cabinet’s arrival, Guillermo Prieto officially started the cleanup of the police force. One of the first things Prieto did was transfer control of the city’s emergency response number, 066, to the army. The intent was to send a signal to citizens that it was now safe to call and report suspicious activity. There was consensus between the mayor, Guillermo Prieto, and the federal authorities that a key to winning the city back was to regain the trust of the public so that actionable information could flow into the system. The city’s security team considered the transfer of the Emergency Response Center to the army to be an important step toward creating a safer city.
Later that afternoon, Guillermo Prieto and Juan Antonio Román, the department’s chief of operations, met in Prieto’s office. The chief, in a celebratory mood, pulled out a bottle of tequila. The two heads of the Juárez municipal police marked the day’s accomplishments with a shot. One shot then led to another. Prieto and Román started reminiscing and reflecting on the hard road they had been traversing. The recent death of their friend and colleague Francisco Ledesma was still fresh and weighing heavily on their minds. Ledesma had been gunned down in late January, just days before his name had appeared on the Sinaloa cartel’s “For those who did not believe” list. Both men were acutely aware of the fact that Román’s name topped the “For those who still do not believe” list. Many on this second list were now dead.
That evening Román told Prieto how much he missed the simple things, such as going to restaurants with his family or hanging out with his friends. The marked man now traveled with a heavy security detail at all times. Later that night, Román decided to call one of his compadres: “Let’s go play dominoes. Get some friends together,” Román told him.
Perhaps Román felt assured that he had not been followed. Perhaps he felt safe in the hands of the friends who he’d be joining at the domino table. Or perhaps he was simply exhausted and the tequila had lulled him into dropping his guard. Whatever the reason, once Román arrived at his friend’s house, he dismissed his bodyguards. “I’m going to be here late,” he told them.
Román and his friends played dominoes, drank, and talked until nearly three in the morning before Román decided it was time to head home. He left his friend’s house alone. Somehow, through the network of informants and collaborators, the would-be assassins had learned that Román had released his security team, which meant that he was defenseless. Someone recognized the unusual opportunity to execute the police’s second in command, and by the time Román arrived at his house, a cartel commando unit lay in wait for him. When Román pulled up to his house, he was killed in a hail of gunfire.
At home in bed, Reyes Ferriz received a call from Guillermo Prieto. The police chief was breathless, running to Román’s house. “He was extremely agitated,” the mayor would later remember. “They’ve just attacked Román!” Prieto screamed into the phone, and when he was close enough to verify the report, he seemed to break down: “It’s him! Damn it! Why him? Why him?”
At a hastily assembled press conference later that day, a shaken Reyes Ferriz attempted to put a brave face on it all. “This administration will not waver in the face of these attacks by organized criminals who want to destabilize the [police] department,” he said. But behind the public pronouncements lay a more desperate reality: the cartels were continuing to decimate his police force, tearing it apart and systematically eliminating its leadership. Back in Mexico City, the morning after their visit to Juárez, the members of Calderón’s security cabinet awoke to the news of Román’s assassination. It was the cartels’ response to the government’s plans for saving Juárez.
. . .
The day of Antonio Román’s funeral the words he’d spoken four months earlier at the funeral services for Francisco Ledesma seemed hauntingly prescient: “When you die in battle, confronting a criminal, that’s nice,” Román had said at Ledesma’s graveside. “That’s how police want to die,” he’d continued.
“He always said: ‘If they’re going to kill me I want to go down shooting,’” the mayor would later tell me. “And he did. He fired six shots from his pistol that night.”
When asked if he was going to resign from the police force after his name had appeared on the “For those who still do not believe” list, Román had replied in the negative. “This is a real bitch,” he’d said, “but I’m continuing here. When it’s your time to die you’re going to die.” At the time of his death, Román was the last one on the infamous list who was still on the force. The remaining sixteen individuals were either dead or had resigned. Román’s loyalty to Guillermo Prieto was the reason most often cited for the fact that he’d stayed on. Just a month earlier, Prieto had talked Román into remaining on the force after the mayor had convinced Prieto himself to stay on until the army could launch Operación Conjunto Chihuahua.
José Reyes Ferriz felt this assassination more personally than most, because he’d had considerable contact with Román. “He was a strong, brave guy who wasn’t afraid to get into things,” the mayor said. He recalled one of the last times he’d seen Román, not long before his assassination. At the time, the police were feeling the pressure of the threats and the reality of so many executed comrades, and, as everyone was all too aware, Román’s name topped the “unbelievers” list. “He
came into the presidencia and he was wearing his bulletproof vest,” the mayor recalled. With inch-and-a-half-thick steel plates, the vest reputedly could withstand the impact from an AK-47 round. “I could see it in his eyes,” the mayor recalled. “The fear. He was afraid of being killed.” The mayor continued after a moment, “I thought he was an admirable man,” he said. “It was tough, hard, very tough emotionally. They say that JL personally came to kill him,” the mayor added. “JL” was the man running the Juárez plaza for Vicente Carrillo Fuentes and the Juárez cartel. Although the Sinaloa cartel had been behind the “unbelievers” list, Reyes Ferriz believed that the Juárez cartel also wanted Román killed because he had been cooperating with the federal government’s Confidence Tests. Being hunted by both cartels had reduced Román’s likelihood of survival to zero.
Evidence marker at execution scene. Photo copyright © Raymundo Ruiz.
. . .
One detail about Antonio Román’s funeral caught the attention of nearly every observer: Guillermo Prieto, the police chief, was not present. Nor was he present at the subsequent news conference in which José Reyes Ferriz addressed Román’s execution. This immediately set off a flurry of speculation as to his whereabouts and whether he had resigned.
Román had been assassinated in the early hours of Saturday morning. Later that afternoon, Prieto himself had received death threats. The police department was already decimated. With Román dead, all of the section heads had either been killed or left the force. Prieto put in a call to Reyes Ferriz. “I’m going to resign,” he told the mayor. Reyes Ferriz went directly to police headquarters where the chief was holed up to talk with Prieto in person. The chief told him he was going to El Paso. It took some convincing, but the mayor and Prieto reached an agreement: Prieto would take refuge in El Paso, but he would not formally resign. Instead, he would continue running the department over the phone while Reyes Ferriz looked for his replacement. It was a desperate measure to preserve the illusion that the police department was not in utter shambles. Prieto issued a press release saying that because of the threats against him he would remain at an undisclosed location for security reasons, but that he continued as chief of the Juárez municipal police.
The Fight to Save Juárez Page 14