by Ioan Grillo
16. The killing of Nuevo Laredo police chief Alejandro Dominguez took place on June 8, 2005.
17. Bradley Roland Will, aged thirty-six, was shot dead on October 27, 2006, in Oaxaca city. At least two other people were killed in gun battles in Oaxaca city on the same day.
18. Fox made the comments on his blog, August 9, 2010.
Chapter 7: Warlords
1. Felipe Calderón, El Hijo Disobediente: Notas en Campana (Mexico City: Aguilar, 2006), 16.
2. First presidential debate, April 25, 2006.
3. I covered this for the AP agency in stories such as Ioan Grillo, “Thousands of Mexican troops ordered to arrest smugglers, burn marijuana and opium fields,” Associated Press, December 12, 2006.
4. Felipe Calderón made the comments at a Defense Department installation in Mexico City, February 10, 2007.
5. The initial Mérida Initiative agreement was for $1.6 billion over the fiscal years 2008 to 2010. The aid has continued beyond, with President Obama requesting $334 million in funding in Mexico in 2011.
6. Mexico’s federal security budget approved for 2011 included $4.7 billion for the Defense Department (Sedena), $1.46 billion for the navy and marines (Semar), $2.8 billion for the Public Security Department (SSP), and $5.76 billion for the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR)—a total of $14.72 billion.
7. Édgar Valdéz’s statement was taken and filmed by agents from the Public Safety Department (SSP) and released to the press.
8. One metric ton of cocaine is one thousand kilo bricks, or 1 million gram wraps.
9. The narco message was displayed on blankets in several cities across Mexico on February 12, 2010.
10. Paquiro, “Breve Tumba-Burros Culichi Inglés para Corresponsales (de Guerra),” La Locha, September 2008.
11. Arturo Beltrán Leyva was killed on December 16, 2009. Information about the shooting is detailed in a classified State Department memo, later released by WikiLeaks, entitled “Mexico Navy Operation Nets Drug Kingpin Arturo Beltrán Leyva” (created December 17, 2009).
12. The Mexican government’s own homicide count compared to census figures found a murder rate in Ciudad Juárez of 191 per 100,000 residents in 2009, rising to 229 per 100,000 in 2010. According to FBI statistics, New Orleans was the most violent U.S. city in 2009 with 52 homicides per 100,000 residents.
13. This estimate of ten thousand Zeta members was given by a member of CISEN, Mexico’s spy agency, in a meeting with foreign journalists in 2010.
14. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, or Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, reported at a news conference in Mexico City, November 22, 2010, it had more than a hundred files on civilians killed by police and soldiers.
15. Undersecretary of the Army Joseph Westphal made the comments at the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics, February 8, 2011.
Chapter 8: Traffic
1. The seizure statistics were provided by the Department of Homeland Security, which incorporates both the Border Patrol and Ports of Entry.
2. From the 2010 World Drug Report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
3. Border Patrol agents discovered the twenty-four-hundred-foot tunnel in Otay Mesa in January 2006. It remains the longest such tunnel discovered to date.
4. The survey is entitled “National Survey on Drug Use & Health.”
5. The surveys, entitled “What America’s Users Spend on Illegal Drugs, 1988–2000,” were prepared for the Office of National Drug Control Policy (drug czar’s office) by private consultants.
6. Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) Annual Report 2009.
7. Bank of Mexico figures based on electronic and bank transfers of small amounts.
8. Public Safety Secretary Genaro García Luna made the statement during a speech to the National Governors Conference in Puerto Vallarta, August 7, 2010.
9. Jason Lange, “From Spas to Banks, Mexico’s Economy Rides on Drugs,” Reuters, January 22, 2010.
10. The blacklist is entitled “List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons” and is released by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Department of the Treasury.
11. Written in World Drug Report 2009, by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
12. The interview was given to AP in New York in May 2007 and finally released in July 2007 after the AP attempted to corroborate sensitive information. The delay triggered conspiracy theories in the Mexican media.
Chapter 9: Murder
1. A detailed chapter on El Gitano is in Diego Osorno, El Cartel de Sinaloa (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2009), 95–109.
2. José González, El Negro del Negro Durazo: La biografia criminal de Durazo, escrita por su Jefe de Ayudantes (Mexico City: Editorial Posada, 1983), 22.
3. Tabio Castillo, Los Jinetes de la Cocaina (Bogotá: Editorial Documents Periodisticos, 1987), 11.
4. Homicide statistics by Colombia’s National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Science.
5. Police shot dead Pablo Escobar in Medellín on December 2, 1993.
6. The Colombian youth unemployment figure of 22 percent—about double the overall unemployment rate—was from March 2010, when I conducted the interview.
7. The song “Oficio Pistolero” is by norteño band Grupo Cartel.
8. The scandal of prisoners going out to commit murders was broken on July 25, 2010, causing a political firestorm.
9. Mexico’s 2010 census counted 1,328,000 residents in the municipal boundaries of Ciudad Juárez.
10. From the government-funded study Todos Somos Juárez, Reconstruyamos La Ciudad (Ciudad Juárez: Colegio de la Frontera Norte, March 2010), 4.
11. The maxium sentences for minors vary according to Mexican states and ages, with nowhere allowing more than five years. In Morelos state, those under sixteen can only be sentenced to three years, a fact that gained public attention following the December 2010 arrest of fourteen-year-old alleged killer Edgar Jimenez, alias El Ponchis.
Chapter 10: Culture
1. From the first recorded Robin Hood rhyme in the fifteenth century.
2. Édgar “the Barbie” Valdéz’s statement was taken and filmed by agents from the Public Security Department (SSP) and released to the press.
3. Vicente T. Mendoza, El Romance Español y El Corrido Méxicano: Estudio Comparativo (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1939), 219.
4. Américo Paredes, With His Pistol in His Hand (University of Texas Press, 1958), 3.
5. Sam Quinones, True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001).
6. The murder of Valentín Elizalde took place in Reynosa on November 25, 2006.
7. The tomb of Valentín Elizalde is in the Sinaloan town of Guasave.
Chapter 11: Faith
1. Cardinal Norberto Rivera of Mexico City wrote one statement conceding and condemning the widespread use of narco alms in the parish newspaper Desde la Fe, October 31, 2010.
2. The words are from the song “Corrido a Malverde” by Julio Chaidez.
3. Before the Spanish conquest of 1521, Mexico City was known as Tenochtitlán and included the modern-day historic center, with Tepito and other neighborhoods on the outskirts.
4. Actress and dancer Niurka Marcos, originally from Cuba, married actor Bobby Larios in a ceremony headed by David Romo in February 2004.
5. Romo’s church was registed with the Interior Ministry (Gobernación) as Iglesia Católica Tradicional México-EEUU. Gobernación annulled the registration in April 2007.
6. The life and death of Jonathan Legaria is also told in detail in Humberto Padgett, “Vida, Obra y Fin de Padrino Endoque, el ahijado de la Santa Muerte,” Emeequis, September 1, 2008.
7. The corpses were found in the state of Yucatán, August 28, 2008. The three alleged perpertrators of the killings were arrested in nearby Cancún, September 2, 2008.
8. Mictecacihuatl is
also known as Catrina and is represented by a skull figure, similar to La Santa Muerte.
9. The gangsters carried out the notorious atrocity in the town of Uruapan, September 6, 2006.
10. John Eldredge, Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001).
11. Armando Valencia Cornello, alleged to be a powerful kingpin in Michoacán, was arrested on August 15, 2003.
12. Published in La Voz de Michoacán, November 22, 2006.
13. Servando Gómez, alias La Tuta, phoned up host Marcos Knapp live on the program Voz y Solución, July 15, 2009.
14. Nazario Moreno was allegedly shot dead in Apatzingán on December 9, 2010. He was forty years old.
Chapter 12: Insurgency
1. Breaking Bad, produced by Vince Gilligan, Series 2, Episode 7, April 19, 2009.
2. Alejandro Almazán, Entre Perros (Mexico City: Grijalbo Mandadori, 2009).
3. John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Cartel v. Cartel: Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency,” Small Wars Journal, January 26, 2010.
4. Report entitled Joint Operating Environment 2008 by the Virginia-based United States Joint Forces Command.
5. Clinton made the comments at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, September 8, 2010.
6. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., 2003.
7. Statement by Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department, February 9, 2011.
8. Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959).
9. Stephen Metz, “The Future of Insurgency,” Strategic Studies Institute, December 10, 1993.
10. The interrogation of Marco Vinicio Cobo was undertaken by military intelligence following his arrest on April 3, 2008, in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca.
11. Servando Gómez, alias La Tuta, phoned up host Marcos Knapp live on the program Voz y Solución, July 15, 2009.
12. Gunmen killed PRI candidate Rodolfo Torre on June 28, 2010. His brother took over his candidacy and was elected governor of Tamaulipas.
13. Front-page editorial in El Diario de Juárez, September 19, 2010.
14. The interrogation of Miguel Ortiz was conducted by members of the Secretaria de Seguridad Pública, Mexico’s Public Saftey Department.
15. The attack on Minerva Bautista took place on the outskirts of Morelia, April 24, 2010.
16. The training video of alleged members of La Resistencia was released in February 2011.
17. Numbers released by Mexico’s Defense Department (Sedena).
18. Report entitled Combating Arms Trafficking released by the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, May 2010.
19. The bust took place in Laredo, Texas, May 29, 2010.
20. Nick Miroff and William Booth, “Mexican drug cartels’ newest weapon: Cold War–era grenades made in U.S.,” Washington Post, July 17, 2010.
21. Marines shot dead Ezequiel Cárdenas in Matamoros on November 5, 2010.
22. From report entitled Advisory: Explosives Theft by Armed Subjects released by United States Bomb Data Center, February 16, 2009.
23. The confession of Noe Fuentes was released by the Public Safety Department following his arrest in Juárez on August 13, 2010.
24. The corpses were found in the state of Yucatán, August 28, 2008.
Chapter 13: Prosecution
1. The first scandal broke in 2005, with reporting led by Alfredo Corchado in the Dallas Morning News. The second scandal broke in 2009 and was reported by various news organizations.
2. Andrés López, El Cartel de los Sapos (Bogotá: Planeta, 2008).
3. Details of Cárdenas’s case were revealed in a series of stories published by Dane Schiller in the Houston Chronicle in 2010.
4. Richard Nixon speech, September 18, 1972.
Chapter 14: Expansion
1. From FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 2004–10.
2. Figure provided by the Phoenix Police Department.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. National Drug Intelligence Center, Cities in Which Mexican DTO’s Operate Within the United States, April 11, 2008, updated in National Drug Threat Assement 2009, January 2009.
6. Indictment from U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, United States of America v. Arturo Beltrán Leyva.
7. From excellent documentary Blood River: Barrio Azteca, Series 5, Episode 4, History Channel’s Gangland series, released June 18, 2009.
8. The attacks on the consulate officials took place in Ciudad Juárez, March 13, 2010.
9. Revealed in court case and reiterated in appeal documents entited Rosalio Reta v. State of Texas, from the 49th Judical District Court, Texas, filed March 3, 2010.
10. From report entitled Precursors and chemicals frequently used in the illicit manufacture of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, by the International Narcotics Control Board, February 19, 2009.
11. General Julian Aristides Gonzalez was shot dead in Tegucigalpa on December 8, 2009.
12. The funeral took place in in Tegucigalpa on December 9, 2009.
Chapter 15: Diversification
1. Six million pesos was worth approximately $500,000 in 2011.
2. Study released by Mexico’s lower chamber of Congress (Cámara de Diputados) based on official figures, September 7, 2010.
3. The heads of Juárez’s Chamber of Commerce and Assemby Plant Association publicly called for UN intervention in November 2009. UN officials said they would need direct pleas from Mexico’s federal government.
4. Daniel Arizmendi was arrested in Naucalpan, Mexico State, on August 17, 1998. He is serving a maximum fifty-year sentence.
5. Vicente Fernández later said that he offered to transplant his own fingers to his son, but a doctor advised against it.
6. Rosario Mosso Castro, “Secuestradores Vienen de Sinaloa,” Zeta (2007 edition 1721).
7. Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, Informe especial sobre los casos de secuestro contra migrantes, June 15, 2009.
8. Amnesty International, Mexico: Invisible Victims. Migrants on the Move in Mexico, April 28, 2010.
9. The survivor made contact with the marines on August 23, 2010. The massacre is believed to have taken place on August 21 or August 22.
10. From government study Encuesta Nacional de Ocupación y Empleo Instituto Nacional, released by Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (Inegi), August 13, 2010.
11. Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
12. Estimates provided by Pemex.
13. Pemex yearly report for 2010, March 1, 2011.
Chapter 16: Peace
1. Zedillo, Gaviria, and Cardoso put their arguments in a document entitled Drogas y democracia: Hacia un cambio de paradigma, February 11, 2009.
2. Estimate from a paper by Harvard professor Jeffery Miron and New York University’s Katherine Waldock, The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition (Cato Institute, 2010).
3. The treaties include the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971, and the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961.
4. Mexico’s law decriminalizing possession of small quantities of narcotics was enacted on August 20, 2009.
5. Rand Corporation, Legalizing Marijuana in California Will Not Dramatically Reduce Mexican Drug Trafficking Revenues, October 12, 2010.
6. The marijuana was seized on October 18, 2010. The recovering addicts were shot dead on October 24.
7. Classified State Department memo, later released by WikiLeaks, “Mexico Navy Operation Nets Drug Kingpin Arturo Beltrán Leyva” (created December 17, 2009).
8. Classified State Department memo, later released by WikiLeaks, “Scenesetter for the Opening of the Defense Bilateral Working Group” (created January 29, 2010).
9.
Interview I conducted with Gaviria in Mexico City on February 22, 2010.
10. Figure was given to reporters by Mexico City education secretary Mario Delgado on December 6, 2010.
11. Leoluca Orlando was mayor of Palermo from 1985 to 1990 and 1993 to 2000.
Acknowledgments
Foreign journalists wouldn’t get one inch into covering the Mexican Drug War without the work and help of Mexican journalists and academics who labor day in and day out under incredibly difficult conditions. I am continually impressed by the professionalism and generosity of my Mexican colleagues. Thanks especially to those below. I also want to give special thanks to all the people who agreed to be interviewed for this book and told their own stories of crime, tragedy, and survival—often at a personal risk. As well as those mentioned in the text, dozens of other interviewees have helped shape the narrative. They include many agents from the ATF, DEA, FBI, PGR, federal police and Mexican army, members of Congress, lawyers and activists, as well as many gang members, smugglers, drug addicts, and a fair few drunks.
Mexico City: Diego Osorno, Alejandra Chombo, Daniel Hernández, Alejandro Almazán, Luis Astorga, José Reveles, John Dickie, Marcela Turati, Alfredo Corchado, Dudley Althaus, Guillermo Osorno, Gustavo Valcarcel, Mark Stevenson, Eduardo Castillo, Wendy Perez, Laurence Cuvilliert, Matthieu Comin, Jonathan Roeder, Jason Lange, José Cohen, José Antonio Crespo, Lorenzo Meyer, Federico Estevez, Ciro Gómez Leyva, Alejandro Sánchez, Alberto Najar. Enrique Marti, Jorge Barrera, Marco Ugarte, Olga Rodriguez, Louis Loizides.
Sinaloa: Fernando Brito and El Debate de Sinaloa, Fidel Duran, Javier Valdez (and the staff of El Guayabo), Ismael Bohorquez, Froylan Enciso, Vladimir Ramírez, Raul Quiroz, Barbara Obeso, Cruz Serrano, Emma Quiroz, Bobadilla, Arturo Vargas and everyone from La Locha, Elmer Mendoza, Lizette Fernández, Francisco Cuamea, Manuel Insunza, Socorro Orozco, Mercedes Murillo.
The Rest of Mexico: Miguel Perea, Justino Mirando, Francisco Castellanos, Magdiel Hernández, José Maria Álvarez, Vicente Calderón, Victor Jaime, Victor Clark, Luis Perez, Martha Cazares, Miguel Turriza, Jorge Machuca, Jorge Charez.