El Narco (51 page)

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.

Central and South America:
Alfredo Rangel, Oliver Schmieg, John Otis, Wenceslau Rodriguez, Juan Carlos Llorca, Lourdes Honduras, Mery Carcamo, Kenya Torres, Noe Leiva, Karla Ramos, Gustavo Duncan, Otilia Lux.

The United States:
Michael Marizco, Mike “Mad Dog” Kirsch, Elijah Wald, Chris Shively, Darlene Stinston, Dane Schiller, Jim Pinkerton, Tracey Eaton, Tim Padgett, Howard Chua, Tony Karon, Stephanie Garlow, Mark Scheffler, Tomás Mucha, Charles Sennot, Jorge Mujica, George Grayson, Rob Winder.