El Narco

by Ioan Grillo

  “You are at this time the de facto authorities in this city because the legal authorities have not been able to stop our colleagues from falling, despite the fact that we’ve repeatedly demanded it from them … Even war has rules. In any outbreak of violence protocols or guarantees exist for the groups in conflict, in order to safeguard the integrity of the journalists who cover it. This is why we reiterate, gentlemen of the various narco-trafficking organizations, that you explain what it is you want from us so we don’t have to pay tribute with the lives of our colleagues.”13

  What does such narco power mean for the future of Mexico? The frightening prospect of a “failed state” is thrown around. But when broken down, the failed-state concept is not very useful in understanding the Mexican Drug War. The Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine compile a Failed States Index every year. In 2010, Somalia was listed as number one, as the most failing state of all. Mexico was up at ninety-six, better off than such powers as India and China. A key factor is that Mexico has better public services and a wealthier middle class than much of the developing world. China or Cuba may have stronger governments, but wealth per capita is relatively low in both those countries. Meanwhile, violence has not stopped Mexico’s ability to provide electricity, water, and schooling to most of its citizens. Yet.

  More useful is the concept of “state capture.” The idea emerged to describe how oligarchs and mafia capitalists seized control of chunks of state apparatus in Eastern Europe following the fall of communism. In Mexico, cartels definitely battle over hunks of the state, particularly regional police forces. When a cartel controls a territory, it becomes a shadow local government, one that officials and businessmen have to answer to. If you are being shaken down in such a realm, you don’t know which police commanders are in the pockets of the mafia and usually prefer to pay up—or run for your life. It is a frightening reality.

  The other big gauge of Mexico’s degradation is by now an old chestnut: the Colombia comparison. Talk of Colombianization and the Andean narco insurgency has long dogged the discussion on Mexico, sliding into Clinton’s comments. Colombia’s experience of cocaine-funded guerrillas and paramilitaries is certainly worth learning from. In all the world, Colombia is the country that has faced a criminal insurgency most similar to Mexico’s.

  But in many ways, the comparison is a red herring. Colombia is Colombia; Mexico is Mexico. The nations have different histories and dynamics, and their drug wars play out in different ways. Thankfully, the Mexican Drug War has not yet slid to the depths of the Colombian Civil War in the mid-1990s, which displaced some 2 million people and cut off swathes of the country from the capital. Colombia has a Marxist guerrilla army larger than any in Mexico’s history. But that doesn’t mean Mexico is not dealing with a serious armed conflict. In South American countries, they now talk about the Mexicanization of their own drug industries and the use of sicarios and paramilitary hit squads. Mexico is becoming the new point of comparison for a criminal insurgency.

  Miguel Ortiz ran La Familia’s operations in the Michoacán state capital, Morelia, until his arrest in 2010. Before working as a mob lieutenant, he was a Familia operator for five years within the Michoacán state police. He was involved in various attacks on federal forces, including the offensive that killed fifteen officers, and hits on state officials. After his arrest, his interrogation video was released to the public.14

  It’s chilling viewing. He graphically describes techniques for cutting up corpses as well as assassinating functionaries. When it was shown on Mexican television, gasps were released from sofas and dining seats as families watched the 10:30 P.M. news. What a psychopath, people groaned. Thank God he is behind bars. That is the point of federal officials releasing such videos, to show the public they are arresting highly dangerous criminals. But interrogation films demonstrate a rather rough and skewed version of the justice system. They also tend to frighten the public more than making them feel safe, as they think about all the other psychos who are not behind bars. However, Ortiz reveals some startling insights into cartel guerrilla tactics, and his testimony is a great illustration of how the insurgency functions.

  The video shows Ortiz at twenty-eight years wearing a dark shirt buttoned up to the top. He has a squat face with a slight double chin and muscular neck that gives him a bulldog look that earned him his nickname: Tyson. He talks in cold military terms about the bloodshed, using a language that has become common in cartel paramilitaries: execution victims are targets; kidnapped people tied up in safe houses are cargo.

  Ortiz joined the police force when he was eighteen in 1999. At twenty-one, he says, he began to moonlight for La Familia, just as the mob was establishing itself in Michoacán. He picked the winning team. In the next few years, La Familia would mushroom in power to dominate the region. Working in the police force, he could arrest targets and hand them to Familia gunmen or even dispose of victims himself. This shows the classic modus operandi developed by gangs such as the Zetas and Juárez Cartels—where the local police once shook down crooks, the officers now work as executioners for the mob. It’s state capture in action.

  Ortiz left the police force in 2008 to work full-time for La Familia. But he would still ride around in police cars, wear a uniform, and work with other officers, he says. The benefits of owning a member of the police force were too good for the mafia to give away.

  In July 2009, La Familia launched a major attack on federal police bases. Ortiz was called at five in the morning and told he had to work. Familia gunmen from the countryside drove into Morelia for the insurgent attack, and Ortiz supported them with as many state police vehicles as he could move. State police backing for an assault on federales is a startling example of the fragmentation of the Mexican state. After the insurgents had shot up the federal police base, one Mitsubishi minivan full of sicarios got a punctured tire. So Ortiz quickly transferred the hit men into patrol cars, drove them to a Walmart, and put them in taxis. The sicarios got away to fight another day.

  The next month, Ortiz was rewarded with the powerful job of head of the Morelia plaza, a position known in Spanish as encargado de la plaza. Familia operatives took him deep into the Tierra Caliente countryside for the promotion ceremony on a burning-hot August weekend. He passed through the city of Apatzingán and onto the winding mountain road up to Aguililla, where they stopped the car and walked for two hours into the mountains. Arriving at a ranch, he was greeted by La Familia’s top brass, including Nazario “El Más Loco” Moreno and Servando “La Tuta” Gómez themselves.

  “It was very brief. They say the less you see them the better; we lasted at the most ten, fifteen minutes in the talk. They said what they had to say and said from this moment you are the encargado de la plaza of Morelia and your direct commander is Chuke [another code-named operative].”

  This organizational structure of La Familia, described by Ortiz, is derived from that of the Zetas, who trained them. Plaza heads run cells, which are semiautonomous. They make money in their turf and kick back to the commander, who in turn deals with the capos. Lower down the ranks are the sicarios, and below them halcones, or hawks, who work as the eyes and ears of the cartel. Everyone is given nicknames to limit the information they have on each other. When sicarios are given a job, they normally have no idea why the person is targeted. They just carry out orders.

  The Zetas initially modeled this chain of command based on the Mexican army they came from. Ranks included first commanders and second commanders, just as in the military. But the war evolved their structure to become closer to Latin America’s guerrilla armies or right-wing paramilitaries, who use autonomous cells to coordinate thousands of men at arms. The Zetas trained La Familia members in this guerrilla warfare in 2005 and 2006, before the Michoacán mob betrayed them to claim the turf.

  Ortiz instructed new recruits in his cell in the use of terror. He describes one night when about forty Familia mobsters gathered on a hill outside Morelia. Captured prisoners were brought up s
o rookies could be blooded.

  “That is how we put the new people to the test. We made them kill. Then we made them quarter the bodies, because the new people coming in lose their fear by cutting off an arm or a leg or something. It is not easy. You have to cut through the bone and everything. But we need them to suffer a bit so they lose fear little by little. We used butcher’s knives or little machetes about thirty cm [ten inches] long. It would take the new people about ten minutes to cut off an arm, as some of them were nervous. But I could do it in three or four.”

  Carlos, the intelligence officer who follows La Familia, says the gangsters are particularly adept at cutting up bodies because many of the original members were butchers. More recent recruits, he says, often worked in taco joints. Their skills for cutting up sizzling pork are applied to human flesh.

  When Ortiz’s sicarios carried out killings, they would leave a message signed “La Resistencia,” or the Resistance, a title used by certain cells in La Familia. The name celebrates rebellion, but for authorities it was a mark of intimidation. Ortiz confesses to being personally involved in the murder of a Michoacán state undersecretary for security. That attack was ordered because the official angered La Familia by messing with its system of police protection, Ortiz says. He then went higher up the chain after the State Security Secretary Minerva Bautista. First he put a hawk on her trail.

  “We put a trustworthy lad to follow her for ten days—where she ate, where she slept, what time she went to the office and everything. We found the best day for the attack.”

  As Bautista left a state fair with her entourage, Ortiz and his assassins blocked a narrow highway passage with a disabled truck and opened fire from two sides. An incredible twenty-seven hundred bullets were shot at Bautista’s heavily armored SUV. Two of Baustista’s bodyguards died and the secretary took a bullet. The gunmen left believing the target was dead. But Bautista miraculously survived the hit.15 Shortly after the bungled attack, federal agents nabbed Ortiz in a Morelia safe house.

  “I heard rumors that they were getting close to me. Then they got me. I always had it in my mind that one day I was going to be arrested.”

  To try to make sure gunmen do hit their targets, cartels have developed training camps. The first such camps were discovered in northeast Mexico and linked to the Zetas, but they have since been found all across the country and even over the border in Guatemala. Most are built on ranches and farmlands, such as one discovered in the community of Camargo just south of the Texas border. They are equipped with shooting ranges and makeshift assault courses and have been found storing arsenals of heavy weaponry, including boxes of grenades.

  Arrested gangsters have described courses as lasting two months and involving the use of grenade launchers and .50-caliber machine guns. A training video captured by police in 2011 shows recruits running across a field, taking cover on the grass, and firing assault rifles.16 Sometimes training can be deadly. One recruit drowned during an exercise that required him to swim carrying his backpack and rifle. The discovery of these camps has sparked the obvious comparison to Al Qaeda training grounds in Afghanistan.

  But however much schooling they give, cartels still love gunslingers with real military experience. In the first decade of democracy, up until 2010, one hundred thousand soldiers had deserted from the Mexican military.17 There is a startling implication: country and ghetto boys sign up for the army, get the government to pay for their training, then make real money with the mob.

  A crucial ingredient to sustain paramilitaries is access to military-grade weaponry. This has been no problem for cartels, which keep themselves supplied with an insane abundance of assault rifles and bullets. Who can fire two thousand seven hundred rounds in a hit unless they have more ammo than sense? Browning machine guns keep spitting fat .50-caliber shells while hundreds of grenades have been thrown in single battles. Where is all this firepower coming from? Mexican officials point their fingers straight north over the Rio Grande. Uncle Sam, they say, arms to the teeth the same narco insurgents it pays the Mexican government to fight. It is a seething indictment. But is it true?

  The gun trade from America to Mexico has been a bone of contention for decades that has heated up through the Mexican Drug War. Mexican officials scream again and again that the United States needs to clamp down on illegal weapons sales. America promises new measures that will miraculously stop the flow of firepower. They fail. As bodies keep piling up, and the media keeps highlighting the role of American guns, U.S. authorities have been incapable of stopping the trade.

  America’s gun lobby is supersensitive about the issue. Why should American gun enthusiasts suffer because of Mexico’s problems? they cry. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Reports on the issue are posted on pro-gun Web sites along with angry comments, sometimes personally insulting the journalists.

  I followed this gun trail closely from seizures in Sinaloa to gun shops in Texas and Arizona. In the United States, I met some upstanding gun-shop owners and enthusiasts who make some valid points. The war in Mexico, they point out, is sustained by many factors besides guns, such as corruption in Mexican police forces. They are absolutely right.

  But the ugly truth is that a huge number of weapons made or sold in the United States go to Mexican cartels. This is an irrefutable fact. Mexico itself has almost no gun stores and weapons factories and gives away few licenses. Almost all weapons in the hands of cartel armies are illegal. In 2008, Mexico submitted the serial numbers from close to six thousand guns they had seized from gangsters to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. About 90 percent, or 5,114 of the weapons, were traced to American gun sellers.

  The ATF and Obama administration acknowledged America’s responsibility in this tragedy. But the gun lobby still refused to concede the point. What about tens of thousands of other seized weapons in Mexico that hadn’t been traced? gun activists said. The Mexican government, they alleged, was only tracing guns that looked as if they had come from America to sway the debate. So to make it easier to trace weapons seized in Mexico, the ATF introduced a new computer system. Between 2009 and April 2010, this traced another 63,700 firearms to U.S. gun stores.18 And those are only the ones they have captured. People can argue endlessly about the exact percentages, but the underlying fact is that tens of thousands of guns go from American stores to Mexican gangsters. However much anyone supports the right to bear arms, they must admit this is a pressing problem.

  American stores are not the only source of weapons for Mexico’s mafias. They also steal them from the Mexican security forces and have been found taking huge caches from the Guatemalan military. International arms traffickers have also long moved guns through Central America and the Caribbean. If Mexican cartels didn’t buy firearms from America, gun advocates argue, they would just get them from these sources. Maybe. But a flow of weapons into seaports or up through Central America would be slower and easier to fight, making guns and ammo more expensive. The flood of guns over the two-thousand-mile border from the United States is a tide as tough to stop as the drugs and migrants going north.

  Global production and sale of small arms is a key factor making modern criminal insurgents so lethal. America is a big part of this. The AR-15 assault rifle, the civilian version of the M16, is one of the preferred weapons of Mexican mobsters. The gun is built by Colt and sold freely in Texas and Arizona, among other states.

  The preferred cartel gun is of course the Kalashnikov, or AK-47, fondly known as the Goat’s Horn. That is not American, gun enthusiasts point out, it is Russian. Actually, the Kalashnikov is now manufactured in at least fifteen countries, including the United States, by firms such as Arsenal Inc. in Las Vegas. Gun stores in Arizona and Texas also sell a huge quantity of imported Kalashnikovs from China, Hungary, and other countries. Guns, like drugs and dollars, go through their own surreal journeys in modern commerce: weapons are built in Beijing, sold in San Antonio, and used to murder in Matamoros. American stores only sell semiaut
omatic versions of the AK. But these are easy for Mexican mobsters to customize into fully automatic weapons. The vast majority of killings in the Mexican Drug War are committed with assault rifles.

  Many versions of these weapons were prohibited by the assault weapons ban, which came in under Bill Clinton in 1994. That ban was lifted under George W. Bush in September 2004—exactly the time the Mexican Drug War erupted on the Texas border. Relaxed gun control was not the main cause of the conflict, but it surely threw oil on the fire.

  In downtown Phoenix, Arizona, I walk into glass-paneled ATF offices to meet Peter Forcelli, who runs the anti-firearms-trafficking squad. Forcelli is a lively New Yorker with an accent as broad as it is long. “Can I speak Spanish?” he says. “No, I can’t even speak English.” He takes me down in the elevator to the basement vault where all the guns captured from smugglers are kept. It is arsenal fit for a militia.

  Kalashnikovs and AR-15s in all shapes and sizes line racks or are shoved into huge buckets. In one corner sit some ultramodern rifles that look like something out of Starship Troopers, which are made by Belgium’s Fabrique Nationale and sold in Arizona stores. There are also some Fabrique Nationale 5.7 pistols, known as cop killers because of their ability to fire armor-piercing ammunition. The same type of gun was in the hand of Chapo Guzmán’s son when he lay bleeding dead on the Culiacán concrete. Overall, the Phoenix stash is one of the biggest stockpiles of captured weapons in all America. “I saw more Kalashnikovs here my first week than in fifteen years in the New York police,” Forcelli tells me.