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He gets up into the truck and with his hand he says goodbye leaving his suitcase there at the house because he was supposedly going to come back. He said he recognized many of the Zetas gathered there.[13]. In July, Coahuila state investigators gave them a nearly identical set of questions; among them: Did they know about the disappearances as they were happening? See Allende, el infierno: Los testigos de la masacre, Zcalo (Coahuila), July 10, 2017. Go fuck your mother! It's between them. En 2011, cuando el cartel de Los Zetas dominaba el noreste de Mxico, ocurri una masacre en la localidad de Allende, Coahuila, de la que poco se conoci. The 2020 U.S. arrest of Mexicos former defense secretary, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, for alleged narcotics ties has led Mexicos president, Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, tofast-track a new lawimposing strict new restrictions on U.S. personnel in Mexico and that threatens to significantly curtail the exchange of intelligence and law enforcement information. We arrived and forced our way in firing shots, from there we took [Vctor Garza], his wife [Alma Patricia Prez], and their youngest son, I think that [his name was Julio Garza.] For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. The job netted Jimnez about eight thousand pesos ($700 USD) per month, plus expenses. Most importantly, he told her that many of the Allende massacre victims were first brought to a cemetery in Piedras Negras before being taken later to the Garza ranch. History. Some portions of these files have been excerpted elsewhere, including in reports from the CNDH and the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), which cites many of these same records.But this is the first time that images of records from the case file have been published in their original form (although . [7] GAFE stands for Grupo Aeromvil de Fuerzas Especiales (Airmobile Special Forces Group). The attack at Allende began on the night of March 18, 2011, when the Zetas and their collaborators launched a coordinated three-day sweep through the town, situated only about 25 miles from the U.S. border. The wife of another victim, a heavy machinery mechanic who worked for the Garza family, also went looking for her husband on the morning of the March 19. Bri Rooke. Police acted as lookouts (halcones) for the group, collected extortion payments from local club owners on their behalf, and participated in the Zetas drug trafficking activities. They found that the Zetas committed numerous human rights abuses in Coahuila with impunity and that public institutions and officials played a role, by actions or omissions in the abuses (p.24). And when I finished tying him up, I put him in the back of the truck, and there were already bodies in the trunk.- Declaration of Zetas member, September 19, 2014. Netflix drama series Somos. Many of the victims were ordinary laborers at the Garza properties. Arts & Culture. [15], Despite a raft of damning testimony about his role in the massacre, a Mexican court released former Allende Mayor Sergio Lozano from pre-trial detention in February 2017, finding the evidence insufficient to reach a conviction. Please do not fill in this field. Declassified Investigative Dossier Examines Officials' Roles in Cartel Killings, 10th Anniversary of Worst Human Rights Episode in Mexico's Recent History, By Michael Evans, Senior Analyst, National Security Archive, For more information, contact: And there were approximately from seven to ten people that we tied up with rats tails. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico," "Somos." tells the story of a 2011 mass killing in Allende, in the Mexican state of Coahuila . And out of fear that they would do something to me if I disobeyed orders, I had to kill a person, that being Everardo Elizondo, who was about 30 or 35 years old, to whom I gave a shot in the head. The George Washington University Based on Ginger Thompson's 2017 oral history, "How the U.S. Schamus presents the trailer and key art for his new drama series Somos. At that moment, I also realized that near a large bodega that was about 70 meters away from where I was there were various people from the town, who the Zetas were shouting at and mistreating, and who I knew because they were from the [deleted] family. Much of the worst violence occurred at a pair of ranches owned by the Garza family and located outside of the city center along the highway. Germn Zaragoza Snchez, better known as El Canelo, was a top Zetas boss in Allende and managed a group hawks who monitored and reported on the movements of state and federal security forces. En el rancho Los Tres Hermanos rociaron los cuerpos con gasolina y los metieron de a uno en toneles de metal para prenderles fuego: "Despus de cinco o seis horas se cocinaron los cuerpos . Later we began to cook the corpses that we were left with, and to do this we looked for a space inside the same ranch near the corrals, and later a truck of Zetas brought some barrels and a pickaxe We made holes in the bottom and on the sides of the barrels, and they were like trash barrels made of sheet metal or iron, and after making the holes, I remember that El Chango and I took one of the bodies from the truck and put it in a barrel. The Seminar on Violence of the Colegio de Mxico had access to many of these files in preparing its groundbreaking reports on Allende and a second report on how the Zetas gained control of authority structures in Coahuila, including the state prison in Piedras Negras. [T]hey gave [Trevio] a quota of 10,000 pesos [about $850 USD] every 20 days, and he did not get involved in what [deleted] was doing. El 18 de marzo de 2011, sicarios de Los Zetas irrumpieron en el pequeo municipio fronterizo buscando venganza porque alguien les haba . Mexican Federal Police collect ashes, bone fragments and other bits of evidence from the Garza Ranch on January 28, 2014 (Source: Document 40: Field Criminology Opinion Report, January 28, 2014). In March 2011, gunmen from the Zetas Cartel slaughtered innocent men, women and children in the small Mexican town of Allende in retaliation for the betrayal. When Garcas wife drove past the Garza ranch the next morning she spotted a group of hooded, armed men inside while Allende police stood watch outside the entrance. Among the evidence posted today are the first complaints filed by the loved ones of those who went missing, the sworn declarations of Zetas members, Allende police and other city officials, the statements of firefighters and others who witnessed the violence, along with hundreds of pages of forensic reports, crime scene photos and related material. Because if you dont [keep quiet] theyre going to kidnap you too.. [8] The CNDH report does not name any of the victims, perpetrators or other witnesses it cites. September 29, 2020, Five Years Later, the Search Continues Nine people, including three mothers and six children, lost their lives Monday when they were shot execution-style while traveling to a wedding in Mexico. Later, [El Comandante Pala (ordered) El Ruso, El Blue, Chaln, Cabe, Meo, Flacaman, Cubano and Canelo] to take them from the house and walk them to the inside of a bodega near the house, and later to kill all of them, shooting them in the head. Photograph via . October 2, 2018, Transcripts of intercepted cell phones open new lines of investigation in Ayotzinapa case InMilenio, Diego Osorno writes aboutThe Sad Case of the Two Sergio Garzas,Juniors uncle and cousin, who were murdered, along with other family members, in March and August 2012part of a continuing effort by Los Zetas to eliminate loose ends from within the Garza family. Lilianas brother, Rodolfo Garza, Jr., last heard from her around six or seven oclock that evening. Herrera said he knew many of the victims as well. Jos Alfredo Jimnez was one of the first of the Zetas to arrive at Luis Garzas ranch that night. That report, sponsored by a government-backed victims' rights commission and undertaken by scholars at the prestigious Colegio de Mexico, says that even now Mexican authorities show "less . One former Allende police official interviewed during the investigation described how the payments were made. Access request to Mexicos National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH), Freedom of Information Act request to DEA. During Mexico's unknown massacre, Los Zetas carried out a systematic extermination by killing and incinerating more than 400 people in Allende and the surrounding towns. The National Security Archive is committed to digital accessibility. He got in the truck and returned to Allende, or at least thats what I think I dont know what happened to [Vctor] nor to his parents. She said she later learned he had been kidnapped from their house and turned over to a criminal group, probably Los Zetas. [At the meeting] were the mayor, the city council secretary , the person in charge of civil protection the police director and me. Lpez said he knew all of the municipal police very well, owing to the fact that there was a lot of contact with them.[14], Upon seeing all of those police, I realized that they were keeping watch or guarding the place. Local media, fearing reprisals, did not report the violence until years later. Despite the unimaginable death toll and visible trail of destruction, for several years the case was largely ignored by federal, state, and local authorities. El Pjaro said it was left to him and El Chucho to set fire to the house, the bodega, and everything inside, including the many dead bodies. Juan Ariel Hernndez Ramos, commander of the Allende police, who reported to the police director, is the most senior public official sentenced in the case. [5]More recently, Lpez Obradorsignaled his intentionto eliminate the autonomous state organ charged with guaranteeing access to human rights documents like these, the National Institute of Access to Public Information and Personal Data (INAI). One evening in March 2011, dozens of assassins tied to the infamous Zetas drug cartel began to arrive in Allende, a small town situated in the northern Mexico state of Coahuila, a lucrative . "How the U.S. And when we met with him, he told us that things were going to get hot. Myself, and two others of my staff were driving from Monterrey, via Saltillo, on our way to Acuna, travelling on the 57 . Among them were the director, Roberto Guadalupe Trevio, shift commander Mara Guadalupe valos, known as La Lupe, and officer Bertha Rosario Tllez Vega, known as La Chayo.[1]. Alone on a remote mountain road after witnessing the slaughter of nine close relatives, the wounded children who had survived a cartel ambush in . A longtime resident of Allende, Herrera knew or was familiar with many of the people he saw at the ranch, including the Zetas, their police accomplices, and many of the victims. When the Zetas became aware of our presence, and that we were there to put out the fire, they said to us: You guys get the fuck out of here! [11], [A]round nine oclock at night, I found myself at the circus that had set up in town, when suddenly a person by the name of [deleted] came up to me and told me that in the house of [my sister] they were hearing shots. [N]othing remained of them at all, in addition to which they burned and razed their houses. Subscribe to our newsletter and join other 2,442 Justice in Mexico readers! Hours later, his daughter was one of the last people to see him alive. [6] CDN is reportedly led by Juan Gerardo Trevio Chvez (El Huevo), nephew of former Zetas leaders Miguel ngel Trevio Morales (Z-40) and Omar Trevio Morales (Z-42), according to this press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Mexico's defense secretary, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, was in charge of the military garrison in Allende when the massacre took place but has deflected responsibility for failing to stop the killings. For this reason, it can be inferred and there exists reasonable certainty that the disappeared people given the time and the place where they disappeared, have been kidnapped by people linked to organized crime, specifically by [deleted] and using the same operational methods. I dont know who those people were, just that they were people that the police detained or his own people that he ordered be locked up when they handled themselves badly, or people with whom he had a disagreement [tuviera pedos]. The mayor of Allende in the Cinco Manantiales region of Coahuila said at the time of the slaughter that he was helpless to prevent the massacre. In towns like Allende, Los Zetas relied mainly on local recruits and corrupt officials to protect their narcotics operations, shake down local businesses, and keep watch for rival gangs and other threats. . Mexican President Consoles Family of Massacre Victims. Finally, the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice recently confirmed, in a FOIA denial letter to the National Security Archive, that its investigation of the DEAs links to cartel violence in Mexicofirst announced in 2018is ongoing, a probe that may have significant implications for the Allende case and for U.S.-Mexico security cooperation more broadly. In February, 2014, members of the Army, Navy, State, and . The police radio operator said that the director, Trevio, and the commander, Hernndez, were paid as much as five times what ordinary officers were given. Many needed the money. Claudia Snchez last saw her son, Gerardo Heath, around 9:30 PM on March 18 when he left their home in Piedras Negras to visit a friend who lived down the street. Since the acts occurred on the dates of March 18, 19 and 20 of 2011, they were committed under the same mechanics not just in the city of Allende, Coahuila, but also in other municipalities in the northern region of the state, among others Piedras Negras, Coahuila.- Memorandum on links between various cases, March 5, 2015. When we arrived at the ranch, they went inside the houses and I began to hear many shots fired and people shouting, and they began to throw the bodies of dead people in the bed of the truck, and later they tellme Get down here, asshole, and tie up this fucking bitch I tied up a man who seemed to be a worker at the Garza ranch, but I did not know this person. So I left the ranch in my truck and went home, and since that date I dont know anything about what happened to my husband.- Declaration of wife of heavy machinery mechanic for Rodolfo Garza, July 23, 2014. A new detention order for Lozano was issued in March 2018, after the publication of the CNDH report, but little is known about how the case has progressed, and it is unclear whether prosecutors have ever filed charges against police director Trevio, who was seen outside the Garza Ranch and who witnesses say knew about the attacks ahead of time.[16]. Zaragoza said up to 60 Zetas assassins may have participated in the Allende operation, sweeping up people in the surrounding towns and dropping them off at the Garza Ranch. Following the title sequence is a short paragraph introducing the story of Allende, a Mexican border town unexpectedly overtaken by a powerful drug cartel that . September 26, 2019, FiftyYears After Tlatelolco, Censoring the Mexican Archives: Mexico's "Dirty War" Files Withdrawn from Public Access Oscar nominated screenwriter/producer James Schamus makes his television debut with 'Somos,' a six-part Netflix drama about a real-life cartel massacre in the Mexican town of Allende. Police commander Juan Ariel Hernndez Ramos (who served under police director Trevio) said that Lozano had called top city officials to a special meeting to discuss the ongoing violent attacks around the city. She told investigators what she learned from a series of telephone conversations with her husbands captor. The plan, he said, was to kidnap and kill everyone. When more Zetas and various patrols of the municipal police arrived later they knocked down the main gate of the Garza ranch by ramming it with a truck, according to Jimnez. Or do you want the same thing to happen to you and your family? And they also told us that we were prohibited from going out to any reports. And they went to the Ranch but did not find anyone, and told us that they had scoured the place but had not found anyone.- Complaint of Elvira Espinoza, November 4, 2011. Contemporaneous records from the Mexican military, obtained through a separate access-to-information request, confirm that the Army receivedmultiple reports about the ongoing violence in and around Allende. But there was not any kind of response from the police or any other authority.. The majority of these cases happened in Allende, so that time referred to as the Allende Massacre. Yesterday I heard machine guns right outside my door on Independencia. That they will help us and will help the people. She is the goddaughter of Salvador Allende , the first socialist president of Chile who was her father's . The perilous path Central American migrants take while traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S. border has been an area of . With the help of these same police, we put them in the patrol vehicle. To date, prosecutors have managed only a handful ofconvictions in a case that involves dozens of crime scenes, hundreds of victims, and the documented participation of numerous Zetas and public officials. They are included here in brackets. [12]- Statement of Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014. For which reason I left the circus and I parked about two blocks from the house And outside the house I saw a red, four-door, Chevrolet pick-up truck with a bull bar [tumba burros] on the front. A study from the Human Rights Clinic of the University of Texas Law School examined the trial transcripts of Zetas members prosecuted for drug trafficking, money laundering, and homicide in U.S. federal courts. Oct. 27: A police officer is seen outside a car wash after gunmen burst into the shop and killed at least 15 people in Tepic, Mexico. The next day, the wives of other ranch workers came by the Snchez Robles house, looking for their missing spouses. The attack . Isabel Allende was born on August 2, 1942, in Lima, Peru, to Toms and Francisca Allende. The newly released files on Allende, including evidence gathered in the weeks and months immediately following the massacre, show just how inadequate these investigations have been. The collection of testimonies found in the files of Coahuila state prosecutors depict a town almost completely beholden to the criminal groupfrom the mayors office to top police commanders to ordinary cops on the street. For reference to U.S. training and other background, see our previous Electronic Briefing Book, especially Document 1 and Document 2. [A]t that time I lived in La Colonia Presidentes, and I knew all of these people because they were from the town. I only saw that they had them bent over with their hands behind their backs, and they put them in the back of the truck. Audio series examines DEA culpability in 2011 Allende massacre. Relatives of victims wait in anguish for news after a shooting July 1 at a drug rehabilitation center . There was also a man by the name of [Everardo Elizondo,] who raised fighting cocks, and [Csar Alfonso Garca Ramrez] And how the people from the Zetas were shouting, hitting and mistreating these people!-Declaration of Allende volunteer firefighter Luis Gerardo Herrera Estrada, November 23, 2014, The chief of the fire department, Christian Alejandro Lpez Tamez, told investigators in a revised statement that, just like his colleagues, he was able to identify many of the faces he saw there, including the director and other top officials from the Allende police department. [7]A2005 FBI evaluationfound that the original Zetas had a military-style organizational structure that included counterintelligence, intelligence and tactical enforcement units. By 2010, Los Zetas had broken with the Gulf Cartel and independently controlled key narcotics smuggling corridors and strategically located cities in northeastern Mexico near the U.S. border. About five estacas[9]participated, and with [deleted] and [deleted] ten more joined. American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Trevios but never acknowledged the devastating cost. Zcalo, a regional paper in Saltillo, Coahuila, also published portions of the testimony. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico, by Ginger Thompson, ProPublica, June 12, 2017. Jimnez told authorities that local Zetas leaders sent him to the ranch as part of an all-out assault on people and properties associated with the Garza family. However, families of the victims in Allende touted the overdue government efforts as a publicity stunt. I still love Mexico. The 2011 massacre carried out by the Zetas drug cartel in Allende, Mexico was a shocking reminder of the brutality of the black market, which thrives under governmental drug . 1:07. Hit especially hard was the extended family of Jos Luis Garza Gaytn (also known as Junior and El Wichin). The series, called Somos., which means "we are," was . The same year, the Zetas member known as El Cubano was arrested in the U.S. and later extradited to Mexico in connection to the case. The 2011 San Fernando massacre, also known as the second massacre of San Fernando, was the mass murder of 193 people by Los Zetas drug cartel at La Joya ranch in the municipality of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico in March 2011. He always knew what was happening here.- Declaration of former Allende police official, November 12, 2014, 17:30. The files also include a statement from the caretaker of a Los Zetas safe house where the younger Sergio was held for several days after his abduction in August 2012 and before being killed and cremated by Los Zetas. On the night of March 20, 2011, four firefighters arrived at a ranch along a stretch of rural highway linking the northern Mexico towns of Allende and Villa Unin. The study sought to determine the treatment and reparations of the State to the victims of the massacre of 72 migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, in August 2010, and the disappearance of an unknown number of people in Allende, Coahuila, in March 2011.