Before Tello Quiñonez was killed, Quintano Roo—despite its desirable location on the route from Colombia to Mexico and the notoriety it gained after the Ianiero murders—had been relatively tranquil, with an average of just 12 murders a year since the Drug War began. That image was changing rapidly. “The reality is that Cancún, like the rest of Mexico, is at war,” said Cesar Muñoz Sola, editor-in-chief of Novedades Quintana Roo, Cancún's leading daily newspaper. “It's at war with the drug cartels.”
And that war came back to resort town a week later when an army special forces unit stormed the Cancún central police headquarters, disarming and interrogating every one of its officers on February 10. Cancún mayor Gregorio Sanchez Martinez said the show of force was necessary “to facilitate all types of investigations into the triple murder that happened last week.”
The army arrested Francisco “El Vikingo” Velasco Delgado, the chief of police, on suspicion that he aided and protected the 11 men accused of kidnapping, torturing and killing Tello Quiñonez and his men. Velasco Delgado, witnesses testified, had a habit of frequenting Cancún's vibrant beach strip in a Nissan Armada SUV with police markings. Investigators determined that the vehicle had been stolen in Mexico City and had been provided to Velasco Delgado as a gift from the Gulf Cartel. Inside the vehicle, they found CDs with narcocorridas celebrating the exploits of Los Zetas. He was later convicted.
The war didn't take a break in the rest of the country, either. On February 5, Federales arrested Jerónimo “El Barba” (the Beard) Gámez Garcia—cousin of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, and head of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel's logistics and finances—Pablo Emilio “El Chapiritto” (Little Shorty) Robles Hoyos—a representative of the Colombian Valle del Norte Cartel—and seven other men as they met in a restaurant in Naulcalpan, a small city just northwest of Mexico City. They seized $1 million in U.S. currency and some weapons, but no drugs.
Two months later, Gámez Garcia was being transported in secret from the airport at Tepic, not far from Guadalajara, to a nearby prison when the convoy containing the nine prisoners from the Naulcalpan raid was intercepted by a group of SUVs and pickups loaded with gunmen. Six Federales and two prison guards died in the firefight, but the attempt to free the prisoners was unsuccessful.
Brazen attacks on law enforcement continued. Ramón Jasso Rodríguez, chief of homicide investigation for the Nuevo León state police, was getting into his dark blue Chevy Malibu in front of his home at the corner of Avenida Ciudad de Pamplona and Calle Pedro Infante in the upscale Cumbres Oro neighborhood of Monterrey on February 12 when a white Nissan Sentra and a silver Chevy Equinox slowly pulled up beside him. Men burst out of the compact car and the SUV and rained 58 shells from AK-47s into Jasso Rodríguez's car. Eleven of the bullets embedded in his body. He died at the scene.
Three days later, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter was patrolling international waters about 800 miles offshore of Puerta Chiapas when it came upon a Mexican-flagged fishing vessel named Polares 1. Although it was a popular spot for commercial fishing, the Polares 1 aroused the Americans' suspicions because of the poor weather conditions and the fact that the ship seemed much lower than would be considered safe, as though it was carrying too heavy a load.
Rather than intercept, the captain of the cutter alerted the Mexican navy, which sent in a special forces team. After boarding, they found nearly eight tons of cocaine in 299 individually wrapped packages. The five men aboard—Mexican nationals José Martín Oleas Solís, Mario Partida Chiquette, Juan Martín Martínez, Joaquín Moreno Díaz and Juan José García Mexta—were arrested.
With a wholesale value of over $300 million, the cocaine taken from the Polares 1 interception angered the cartels in much the same way the Rancho Búfalo raid had years before, and they reacted in an unprecedented way.
Marching in the streets
Throughout Mexico, but mostly in three big cities on the U.S. border—Juárez, Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa—masses of people began to protest the military presence in their cities and the Calderón government in general. Thousands of people marched through the streets—Monterrey joined a few days later—disrupting commerce and blocking traffic. Eventually, the mobs—carrying placards accusing the soldiers as being “crooks,” “kidnappers” and “terrorists”—closed the borders to the U.S., crippling legitimate businesses in their cities. The mainstream Mexican media began to call them “narco-protests,” claiming that the demonstrators were protesting not so much against the government, as for the cartels.
There is a long history of paying people to protest in Mexico—depending on a person's status, the cause and the sponsors, the fee for a protest can range from a free lunch to a new car—and that's what the government claimed was happening in the border cities. José Natividad González Parás, governor of Nuevo León (Monterrey's state), accused Los Zetas, then still part of the Gulf Cartel, of orchestrating the demonstrations. “There are reasons to believe that the Gulf Cartel is behind the protests,” he said. General Edgar Luis Villegas Meléndez, commander of the Eighth Military Zone in Reynosa, went further, claiming he had actually seen cash change hands between masked men and the protest leaders. At least two protestors (who refused to be named) told a British reporter that they had been paid to march.
Human rights activists around the world called for an investigation into the military's conduct in Mexico, but even non-government officials within the country itself openly questioned the ethics and goals of the protestors, and whether they were simply a peasant army recruited by the traffickers. “It's a hypothesis you have to consider,” said Jorge Chabat, a security expert at Mexico City's Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (Center for Research and Teaching in Economics). “Someone is organizing these protests. They don't seem spontaneous. Whoever the organizer happens to be, is not showing their face.”
The tension erupted into violence on the morning of February 17. Police stopped a black Jeep Grand Cherokee at a routine checkpoint in an upscale neighborhood of Reynosa, across the Rio Grande from Hidalgo, Texas, and not far from the much larger city of McAllen. Despite being right in front of the playground at Felipe Carrillo Puerto middle school and across from the busy Plaza Real shopping mall, the men in the Jeep opened fired with assault rifles as did the occupants of the silver Chevy Suburban behind them. Inside the school, children ducked for cover. “We were hearing the gunfire,” said the school's assistant director, Enrique Marquez Perez, who used its public address system to tell “everyone to stay calm, to exit (on the other side of the building) calmly.” None of the children was hurt, but the school remained closed until February 19.
As the gunmen fled, some of them forced drivers to block intersections to delay police pursuit. When it was over, there were four people (two civilians and two gunmen) dead and one of the gunmen from the Suburban was severely injured. The suspect was taken to a nearby hospital under heavy guard and died later that day. Although Mexican authorities never revealed his identity, U.S. officials announced he was Hector Manuel “El Karis” Sauceda Gamboa, head of the Reynosa branch of the Gulf Cartel.
Although Reynosa Mayor Oscar Luebbert Gutiérrez repeatedly called for people to stay calm and get back to business as usual, the city changed. Few people were seen on the streets after 6:00 p.m., restaurants and nightclubs were empty and those parents who didn't keep their children home from school began to pick them up and drop them off as quickly as possible.
Juárez: a hotbed of violence
It was Juárez, though, that has taken the crown of most violent city in Mexico from Tijuana. The least protected but one of most traveled of major border crossings, the Juárez–El Paso corridor attracted the attention of the Sinaloa and Gulf Cartels, who were fighting with the traditional Juárez Cartel for the territory. The U.S. State Department issued a warning about traveling to the city of 1.5 million, which it said suffered 1,800 murders (including 71 police officers), 1,650 carjackings and 17,000 auto thefts in 2008. That gave it a murder rate far higher even t
hat Baghdad, Khandahar or Beirut. On the day after the Reynosa gunfight, second-in-command of the Juárez police force, retired army captain Sacramento Perez Serrano and three other officers were ambushed and sprayed with assault rifle fire when their four-door Ford pickup stopped at a red light in the upscale Zona Dorado neighborhood. Perez Serrano and two others died at the scene, while the other officer was severely injured.
Later that day, signs appeared all over the city threatening that one police officer would be killed every 48 hours until the chief of police resigned. The chief, retired army major Roberto Orduña Cruz, had taken over in May after his predecessor, Guillermo Prieto Quintana, fled to El Paso. He was tough, firing and replacing half of the city's 1,600-member police force. Initially he stood firm against the threats, but when the bodies of a police officer and a jail guard were found a few hundred feet from his office with another note threatening him on February 19, he stepped down. “Respect for the life that these brave officers risk every day on the streets for Juárez residents obliges me to offer my permanent resignation,” Orduña Cruz said.
Juárez's PRI mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz tried to put a positive spin on it, saying that Orduña Cruz “didn't blink” in the staredown with the cartels, but had decided to fight them in other ways. His tough talk sounded somewhat hollow a day later when the El Paso police force revealed that Reyes Ferriz had fled north of the border and was guiding Juárez's government business from the basement of a friend's house. “We received information that the Juárez mayor lives in El Paso, and that possibly (the cartels) were going to come to El Paso to get him,” El Paso Detective Carlos Carrillo said. “He has not asked us for our help, but it's our duty to protect any resident of our city who may be under threat.” With the violence just yards from the border and a frequently threatened official in its midst, Texas took action, activating “Operation Border Star Contingency Plan,” which put local, state and federal officials on high alert. “The most significant threat Texas faces is spill-over violence from Mexico's drug cartels,” Steve McCraw, the state's homeland security director, said at a presentation to the state senate. “You can never be too prepared.”
On February 28, Calderón sent 1,800 more soldiers to Juarez to bolster the 5,000 soldiers and Federales already there.
Perhaps emboldened by how they had terrorized the government of Juárez, the cartels continued to pursue official targets, including some big game. On February 22, the three-car motorcade of Chihuahua's PRI Governor José Reyes Baeza Terrazas stopped at a red light in the capital city, also named Chihuahua, when they were ambushed and fired upon by masked men. In what was probably a case of mistaken identity, the would-be assassins fired only at the trailing car, killing a bodyguard (Alejandro Chaparro Morales) and injuring two others, while the governor's car, in the lead, was untouched.
Two days later, on Mexican Flag Day, Calderón delivered a firebrand speech about how he would never give up the war against the cartels. An hour after that, at 5:20 p.m., Octavio Manuel Carrillo Castellanos, mayor of Vista Hermosa, a suburb of Calderón's hometown of Morelia, was assassinated by two masked gunmen as he got out of his car in front of his house.
• • •
It was also in February 2009 when American consciousness (outside of El Paso) of the Mexican Drug War intensified. Miguel Angel Caro Quintero—former head of the Sonora Cartel and younger brother of Rafael Caro Quintaro, who was involved in the Camarena incident—had been in a Mexican prison since his arrest in 2001. At the time, he claimed to be an innocent rancher and said, “If I had a cartel, I'd have a lot of money and my brother wouldn't be in prison.” But in February 2009, he was extradited to the U.S. where he pleaded guilty to a number of charges, admitting to personally sending at least $100 million from the U.S. to Mexico, and was sentenced to 17 years in an American maximum-security facility.
On the same day he was extradited, February 24, the DEA announced that it had arrested 755 people in California, Maryland and Minnesota under Operation XCellerator. At least 50 of them, U.S. attorney general Eric Holder said, were members of the Sinaloa Cartel. Conducted with data from Mexican and Canadian police forces, the raid also allowed the DEA to seize $59.1 million in U.S. currency, over 26,000 pounds of cocaine, 16,000 pounds of marijuana, 1,200 pounds of methamphetamine, 18 pounds of heroin, 1.3 million ecstasy pills, 149 vehicles, three airplanes, three seaworthy boats and 169 firearms. Michele Leonhart, acting administrator of the DEA, also said that her forces uncovered a “super meth lab” capable of manufacturing 12,000 hits of methamphetamine a day.
On the same day as it was reporting on Operation XCellerator, The New York Times published an investigative piece that alleged that over 90 percent of all firearms seized in the Mexican Drug War originated as legal purchases in the U.S. This re-ignited a decade-old debate in the U.S. about the legality of stripped-down versions of military assault rifles like the AR-15 and the WASR-10.
Citing a study that Mexican cartels had dealings with contacts in at least 230 American cities and that kidnappings and murders had significantly increased in Phoenix, Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama, where the Mexican cartels were very significant players in the drug trade, Director of Homeland Security Roger Rufe outlined a plan to use the U.S. National Guard as a threat to prevent the Drug War from spilling northward. He suggested that the two countries were nearing a “tipping point,” after which sending in U.S. military forces to protect Texas would be inevitable. While he admitted that the Mexican cartels were the greatest organized crime threat to American security, President Barack Obama said he did not see a “tipping point” in the future and reiterated his intention not to militarize the border.
That month, Calderón secretly purchased six Eurocopter EC 725 heavy transport helicopters from the French military and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the U.S. was delivering eight more Black Hawks to Mexico.
Arrests at a Quinceañera
As winter turned to spring in 2009, Calderón's forces made a series of stunning arrests. While the news on the morning of March 19 mostly centered around the discovery of five severed heads and notes threatening the Sinaloa Cartel in the small Jalisco town of Ixtlahuacán del Río, Federales and soldiers in Tijuana were quietly surrounding the massive ornate Mezzanine banquet hall. It was the setting of a quinceañera, the traditional 15th birthday celebration thrown for girls throughout Latin America.
But this particular girl had some notable relatives. The army stormed the party and detained 58 guests, including the band and several members of staff. After questioning, 26 people were arrested. The real prize, though, was Ángel Jácome Gamboa—his nickname “El Kaibil” is a reference to the Mayan rebel Kay'bil B'alam who evaded capture by the conquistadores; it is also a name he shares with the Guatemalan military's special forces, which have recently been linked to Los Zetas. A former state police officer, Jácome Gamboa was said to be second-in-command of the Tijuana Cartel and his primary responsibility was to manage a staff of sicarios. He was charged with ordering the murders of 12 police officers in Rosarita Beach, along with trafficking and gangsterism.
At the scene, police seized Jácome Gamboa's gold-plated 9mm handgun. On it, were two revealing carvings. Embossed on the left side of the handle was an illustration of Santa Muerte (Saint Death). A mixture of Catholic and indigenous beliefs symbolized by a Grim Reaper-like character, Santa Muerte is a cult of sorts that is condemned by the Catholic Church, but adhered to by millions in Mexico, particularly people of lower social and financial classes, including prostitutes, thieves and drug traffickers. It is often linked with folklore hero Jesús Malverde, a mythical Robin Hood-like character from Sinaloa who is revered by many in Mexico and believed to grant miracles to true believers. He is known as El Rey Guei de Sinaloa (the People's King of Sinaloa) and is considered the patron saint of drug traffickers.
On the other side of the gun's handle was an inscription reading “EL TEO,” the nickname of Tijuana Cartel boss Teodoro García Simental, whom
police alleged gave Jácome Gamboa the weapon as a gift.
Also arrested were Jácome Gamboa's 18-year-old brother Bartolo and eight police officers, two of whom had been employed as bodyguards for Baja California's PAN governor José Guadalupe Osuna Millán.
Acting on information from accomplices arrested at a Sinaloa hub in Chicago as part of Operation XCellerator, Mexican army officers surrounded a luxurious mansion in the exclusive Jardines de Pedregal neighborhood of Mexico City on the morning of March 19. They arrested its owner, 34-year-old Jesus Vicente “El Mayito” Zambada Niebla, son of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, second-in-command of the Sinaloa Cartel. Zambada Niebla was alleged to be responsible for the cartel's logistics and to have the authority to order assassinations, and was wanted in the U.S. for importing at least $50 million in drugs. He was arrested with four bodyguards and police seized three AR-15s, three .38-caliber handguns, three bulletproof luxury cars and $67,480,866 in U.S. currency. Zambada is a known fugative.
On March 25, two days after the Mexican government published a wanted poster of their 37 highest targets in the cartels, and the same day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Mexico City for a summit meeting with Calderón, the military surrounded a luxury car dealership in San Pedro Garza García, a suburb of Monterrey. They arrested its owner, Héctor “El Burra” (the She-Donkey) Huerta Ríos, one of the 37 faces on the poster. Four of his bodyguards—Gilberto Treviño Herrera, Jorge Barrera Lozano, José Donato Moreno Bustos and Manuel Ruperto Martínez—were arrested with him and two AK-47s, an AR-15, a submachine gun, four handguns and four fragmentation grenades were confiscated, along with 18 luxury cars and cash.
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