El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin

by Charles Bowden

  This wall that the United States is building on the border with Mexico? This wall is impressive, and built into this wall are gates that will allow armored trucks to pass through. What does this tell us? It tells us that in any moment, if the narco-trafficking organizations actually take control in Mexico, the United States will have its border well protected.

  And speaking of people who are kidnapped, los levantados, even if they have protection, they will always, always have to pay the price. For every ten people who are kidnapped, if two of them remain alive, it is because those two had a good relationship with those in power, the narcos.

  Remember that I showed you how a long time ago the narcos already had cell phones that we called “bricks”? The narcos were the only ones at the time who had the money to acquire this equipment. Before any police had them, the narcos had them, and they worked with American phone lines. No one else had the resources to pay for them.

  How is it possible to say, for example, when they have recovered some $200 million from a mansion in Mexico City, that the narcos do not have a huge amount of money stored away? How could $200 million be handled on the street? How could such huge amounts of money and drugs be moved around the country? How? That’s an easy question. You do it with the help of the authority. And who has authority now? It belongs to the narco-trafficking organizations. It is a disgrace.

  The government has already tried to take back some control from the cartels and has tried to begin in the prisons. And what has happened? There have been uprisings, not just in a few but in many prisons all over the country. Cynically, the narcos come and take people out of the prisons as if they were just going into their own houses, and they take out twenty or thirty people right under the noses of the government. It is all arranged.ab

  THE SYSTEM, 3

  To be a sicario during that time became a real profession. But like I told you, it isn’t like that any longer. Now you can look on the Internet and find a sicario. You can find someone advertising: “You want to kill someone? I’m a sicario. I will do it for you for $5,000.”

  And you are supposed to believe that for $5,000 you can get somebody killed just because you don’t like him? This started to happen a lot and then what? You would see cars all shot up like a pincushion. You would see people who are not even connected to narco-trafficking but who might be fighting over a stall in a flea market. In Mexico they might use bus drivers. But this is not the work of a sicario. This is the work of imitators.

  The sicario knows his job. He knows exactly when to strike, he knows his objective. And the sicario would never, never advertise or publicize his work. He is someone who is always among the people. He has relationships with the people. He could be playing baseball with his kids or he could be attending a meeting in the town council at city hall. He knows how to behave, he knows how to dress. He knows how to conduct himself, he knows how to talk. He is well educated. This is what the narco-trafficking organizations know, and this is what they are willing to pay for by cultivating people in many places and for years, to ensure that their work is properly carried out.

  When this stuff started happening on the Internet, not only did the source of money for killing people start to diminish, but also, you started to see something else. They created “a line,” La Linea, and it has been operating now for years. And this “line” says: “All of you people, you are going to stop killing people.” So what did “the line” do? They said, “So if you want to be imitators, you will be eliminated.” And they began to eliminate a lot of people. And that began to create the problem that Mexico is living through right now, thanks to these imitators.

  The narcos pay the investigative organizations. And the personnel of these organizations are the main eyes and ears of the narco-trafficking organizations. The government is in charge of training these people in the academies all over the Republic of Mexico, and they are then delivered to the narco-trafficking organizations, already trained and instructed in military tactics and ready for the battle. There are many different kinds of academies for specialized training, and many of those who are trained will go straight to work for the narcos. I will tell you that of fifty elements trained in the academies, at least fifteen are already mixed up with the narcos and another fifteen are just about to be corrupted. Because the police are so badly paid, what they would get in two weeks the narcos will pay in one day. It’s that simple.

  So what’s happening? The narcos are empowered by this, and they have their eyes and ears everywhere. And the pressure on the Mexican government and the assistance received from the United States and other countries to do away with the narco-trafficking groups will never make any headway without the loyalty among the high government leaders.

  The cartels no longer have the same control over the academies that they had in the past. Why? Because the people no longer want to join the police forces. The people no longer have any confidence, and they are afraid to join the police. They are afraid that if they join the police, they will face this choice: “Do you want us to pay you with gold? Or lead?” This is a nine-millimeter bullet.

  He draws the bullet.

  You either take the money, or we kill you.

  So what did they start to do? They began to bring people from other countries, such as maras [marasalvatruchas—gangsters from Central America]. They start to bring people from gangs in the United States. But there is one thing I can assure you: All of these people they are bringing in? They all have to be trained and instructed by sicarios who have learned it from the ground up. It is not very simple to let loose a group of one hundred or two hundred gangsters and expect that you can use them to control a city. That is very difficult, very difficult.

  What you have to do, and what the narco-trafficking organizations are doing, is taking small groups of five or ten into the sierra to receive military training, and then letting them loose, here and there in the cities a few at a time. And then, little by little, they are killing and getting killed. How do they get to the cities? In planes and also in buses and trucks, overland.

  So when you have these elements well trained and instructed, here he is:

  He draws the sicario as he learns his craft.

  When he has passed through all of these little steps and tests—he goes through primary school, he learns to crawl, to walk, he begins to trot, to run, he can almost fly, now he has learned to fly—at this stage, when he is fully trained, you cannot ask him to do the same kind of work he did when he was barely crawling. That is really hard. Now he is trained to kill, to execute, and to do it well. He can no longer do the work of a beginner.

  Remember that orders are carried out, not discussed. Unfortunately, sometimes there are errors in our plans. And the only one who can make a mistake is the boss. And since he is the boss, if he makes a mistake he can order the job to be done again. But if the sicario makes a mistake, no matter how big he is or how good he is at the job, he will also fall. That will be the end of him.

  I mention that back in 1991—the year of Oropeza’s murder—newspapers called it the bloodiest year in the city’s history. A total of 134 people were murdered in 1991 in Juárez.

  Wow! And now, in just one month, more than three hundred people are murdered.ac Back in those days, it was rare to see an executed person on the street. Back then, there was some kind of respect. Now there is no respect. Respect is gone. But you have to consider that back then, in addition to counting the people who are murdered in the open, you also have to count the reports of disappeared persons. And there were many people disappeared that some years later come to light when clandestine burials are discovered. And many disappeared who were never counted.

  I have seen foolish executions carried out by children. There is no longer any respect. Some kid will say, “I like this girl, but she is with you. ... But I want her, she should be with me. . . .” And that can be enough for a murder . . . executions carried out by kids of fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old.... Education must begin at home, but no
w the media, the TV news, the newspapers report all of this. Sure, it is better to have the information than to have it hidden like it was before, when only the privileged would have information. But this information must be handled very carefully.

  What is the message that is being given out to the young kids now? In the media and on the Internet, the message sent out more than any other is “sicario, sicario, sicario, sicario, sicario, sicario” . . . so what happens is that every child wants to be a sicario. To be a sicario is a big deal. It comes out in the news that you can earn a lot of money, and it is easy for them since they are kids. So what do they have, really? Maybe in the moment, a little happiness and money. But they are completely destroying their lives. They don’t realize it. But it is not a profession to be a sicario. At some time in the past, maybe there was some kind of professionalization, but now this idea of being a sicario is a game, a temptation, like when a child cries for something and you give him a popsicle just to make him happy in the moment.

  It was very different back in the time of the operation against Dr. Oropeza. Plans were made. Very well-trained people were contracted, and every aspect of the job was checked out. Now there is such audacity. The level of corruption among the authorities is so high. Back then, there were many corrupt officials also, but not so many as now.

  And what about Señor Vasconcelos? Maybe it was an accident after all, and the plane crashed. But what if it was an assassination? It was very well done if that is the case, if those pilots were part of the plot. Because these people who were killed were very important to the president—these men were very close to him. Mouriño was a man he trusted, they say one of his closest friends, like a member of his family. I think that the president of Mexico must be very careful of who he places in these high positions. It is as if they are his family and he must depend on them for his peace and his security. No one, not even a minor narco boss, will allow his family to be touched. But this president is careless, and he has allowed these things to happen to those closest to him, like his secretary of Interior [Gobernación], and so he seems weak and things will keep on happening to him. This man was like a member of the president’s family and so Calderón realizes that he has been hit and that they will continue to attack him. He makes agreements. Or he allows others to make agreements with some narcos and not with others.

  This government is very vulnerable. The narcos will continue to be on the attack. The government has some successes, but only up to a point. The successes have mostly been due to the experiments that the DEA is carrying out now in Mexico, and the president is doing what the DEA orders. I think that the United States law enforcement needs to take advantage of the Calderón government, because he will allow them to do whatever investigation they want. Many other governments will not allow them to go so far. Another government will not allow the same cooperation and the availability of their military to work with the United States. The United States needs to take advantage of this situation.

  Sadly, some good men become casualties in this system. Many years ago, Oropeza was a man who published his articles in a newspaper here on the border, and many people read them. His articles were strong, clear, and concise. His punches really hit home. No one ever knew where he got the information that he published, but it was always strong and clear. And for being a strong, clear, and concise journalist, he was killed. In the same way, Señor Vasconcelos, for being a good policeman—clear, honest, and concise—he was killed also.

  THE LIFE, 4

  So what are you left with? What can you do? You try to keep yourself in the middle, you try to maintain a balance. And you know what? Sometimes this balance is right there for us, and it passes us by and we don’t even know it.

  That is what happened to me. I saw these signs, these big, luminous messages. I would see them along the way to the places I was sleeping, the places I was staying. I did not understand what these signs meant at this time in my life. It was when I had stopped drinking, smoking, and using drugs.

  At this time, I was sleeping in different places. I was not sleeping at home because I did not trust myself. I was afraid I might do something to harm my family. What were these signs, these announcements? It was something I had seen in all of my dreams, and it was like a mixed-up reprise, a revoltura, of all the things I had done in my life.

  And so I started to gather together money that I had put away here and there in various bank accounts, hidden in different places so that I would be okay. And I sent money to my house so that my family would be okay. But it isn’t good enough just to send money home. Money doesn’t raise children. The father figure in the home is what is needed to raise your children. Money does not raise children.

  He bangs on the tablet as he says this. And he begins a kind of dialogue with himself....

  In these moments you don’t realize—when you are trying to clean up your act—when you keep seeing these signs....

  “So, hey, what is going on with you?”

  “They are following me.”

  “You are a professional. You know that they are going to kill you, but it is not the right moment because you haven’t done anything yet. And you have not made any mistakes.”

  What you did was to quit your bad habits—you quit drinking, smoking, and taking drugs, and sometimes fooling around with women. When you leave these things behind, it’s strange, because it changes your attitude. But what is really strange is that everywhere you look you start to see all these little signs. And I’m not going to tell you that these are signs that say, “You have to come to this church,” or, “You have to join this religion. . . .”

  No, these are little signs that say:

  CALL IF YOU NEED HELP. HE IS WAITING FOR YOU.

  And you run into these signs everywhere. And you can see them everywhere. You can even see them from your house.

  When fear arrives at your own home, when you fear for your own family, when you have to sleep in other houses so that you will not hurt your own family.... This fear becomes not cowardice, cobardia, rather, it becomes courage and fortitude, passion and rage, coraje.ad First, it is triangulated courage, three-sided courage. And then a circle that encloses you.

  And then you realize that, yes, there is hope and, yes, there is salvation. And that this salvation cannot be controlled by a man. A man whose only accomplishment, whose only achievement, is to have power and money. And he has so much, he possesses such abundance, that he always wants more. And more. And more.

  And it does not matter to him that in acquiring such power and money that one or two or three die. ... But it is never only one or two or three. No, it is 100 or 200 or 300 people.... It doesn’t even matter to him if it is 4,500 people whose lives are on his conscience. All that matters to him is that he can say: “I am in control, I am the one who gives the orders, yo soy el que manda.”

  But every day there are these little signs that distract you and guide you day after day. And you realize now that the only thing your bosses are offering you is $500 or $1,000 so that you will keep watch over some stupid little car all day. Or that you are just “the Eyes” watching to see if someone passes by, and you have to wait around all day for nothing. When you know that, instead of being the Eyes, you could be earning $5,000 to execute somebody. You could be getting paid $25,000, $75,000. There are people with prices on their heads worth up to $5 million. People who are on the run and people they are looking for.

  And now you realize that to everyone—to the organization, to the bosses—what you really are is nothing.

  You realize that you are completely alone in the world. All you have is a weapon in each hand. But if you end up out in the cold with nothing, you are not going to find anyone, there will be no one who will be close to you or who will protect you. You are alone. There is no one. Except, if you have one, your family may be there with you.

  And the only One who will be looking after your family is The Lord, El Señor. It will not be anyone who calls himself “Master,” or someone
who dares to call himself “Boss,” “Patron,” “Number One,” or “Bad Ass” [Fregon].

  None of these can compare with the One who through all of the filth that you have been living all of this time has been guarding and taking care of your family. And He is waiting to tell you that there is hope. And there is hope to get you out of this. And that if you accept Him, He will accept you. And that nothing, none of this, will ever affect you in your life anymore.

  You must take precautions. You must be very careful. You must be jealous. Not jealous of your wife, but jealous of your actions. Because this Lord who is the Ruler of everything, is jealous of His children, and He loves them, and He protects all of His children.

  When you encounter Him and He gives you peace and He reunites you with the half of what you have lost—your family and the person you really are—and they are united in the Holy Trinity and they are with the Lord, you know what? This peace and tranquility that you live in this moment begins to grow, and you become a new man. And this new man is not afraid of any other man. He fears only God.

  And to the man who calls himself “Patron,”

  To the man who calls himself “The Boss,”

  To the man who calls himself “Number One,”

  To the man who calls himself “Master” ...

  What are they masters of?

  Masters of shit!

  When God called me, He made me roll around in all of this filth. He took away the very last cent that I had made from all of this.