Gangland (24 page)

Although no physical evidence was ever recovered, Mexican authorities were making a case based on testimony from people on their side of the border as well as Tiffany. On October 10, Homicide Detective Rolando Armando Flores Villegas went on local television to discuss the case and mentioned the names of two suspects, both known to be associated with Los Zetas. On the morning of October 13, his head was found in Ciudad Miguel Alemán, just feet away from the bridge to Roma, Texas.

The discovery sparked outrage and fear in Texas. “The beheading has such strong resonance with Islamic fundamentalism that it raises the specter of groups in Mexico being as fanatical and as bloodthirsty as Osama bin Laden and his gang,” said Gary Freeman, a political science professor at the University of Texas. “They seem to be copying some of their techniques, and that might be deliberate.” The Tamaulipas police issued a statement that pointed out that Detective Flores Villegas was working on a number of cases and that they saw no link between his assassination and the Hartley case.

California debate on the legalization of marijuana

While fear of Mexican violence spilling over the border was growing in the U.S., attitudes towards drugs—at least marijuana—were changing. In California—with 37.3 million residents, it had more people than any other state or Canada—possession of small amounts of marijuana was still illegal, but was punished by a $100 fine and no chance of jail. That changed slightly on October 1, when Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill introduced by Democrat Senator Mark Leno decriminalizing the offence. Under the new rules, people caught with small amounts of marijuana would still pay the $100 fine, but the offence would be treated much like a parking ticket with no court appearance (unless the accused demanded it) and no criminal record. Schwarzenegger, who admitted to marijuana use when he was younger, said that the new legislation changed little aside from freeing up the state's courts and saving a lot of money on trials. “The only difference is that because it (was) a misdemeanor, a criminal defendant (was) entitled to a jury trial and a defence attorney,” he said. “In this time of drastic budget cuts, prosecutors, defence attorneys, law enforcement, and the courts cannot afford to expend limited resources prosecuting a crime that carries the same punishment as a traffic ticket.”

That legislation came into effect during the hotly contested debate on California's Proposition 19, better known as the
Regulate, Control & Tax Cannabis Act
. It was a bill that, if passed, would legalize sales of marijuana to Californians 21 and older, and allow county governments to regulate and tax its use. It was an unprecedented document as no legislature in the world has legalized recreational marijuana use—not even the Netherlands or Jamaica, where the sale marijuana and its use have been open for decades.

Supporters—who included former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Edwards, Vicente Fox, many notable California politicians, police chiefs and newspapers—claimed the law would generate at least $1.4 billion in revenue for the state annually and would save a similar amount on enforcement. Critics—who included Schwarzenegger, former Governor Jerry Brown, both California senators, U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske and Mothers Against Drunk Driving—claimed that the current law was permissive enough and that legalization of marijuana would not affect organized crime. The RAND Corporation determined that Proposition 19 would lead to at most a 20 percent drop in the revenues of the Mexican cartels (perhaps promoting more violence as cartels fought for what remained of the revenue) and that if California replaced Mexico as the major supplier of marijuana, cartels exporting it to other states could relocate or be formed there.

The November 2 election, in which Democrat Brown regained the governor's office over Republican Meg Whitman (who also opposed Proposition 19), saw the proposition defeated 5,333,359 votes (53.5 percent) to 4,643,761 (46.5 percent). Notably, none of the seven counties closest to the Mexican border voted in favor of Proposition 19. Similar propositions failed by even larger margins in Oregon, Arizona and South Dakota.

According to published reports, none other than
El Chapo
officially thanked the U.S. government for keeping drugs illegal. “Whoever came up with this whole War on Drugs,” one of his top lieutenants told a reporter, “I would like to kiss him on the lips and shake his hand and buy him dinner with caviar and champagne. The War on Drugs is the greatest thing that ever happened to me, and the day they decide to end that war, will be a sad one for me and all of my closest friends. And if you don't believe me, ask those guys whose heads showed up in the ice chests.” According to the report,
El Chapo
elaborated, saying: “I couldn't have gotten so stinking rich without George Bush, George Bush Jr, Ronald Reagan, even El Presidente Obama; none of them have the
cojones
to stand up to all the big money that wants to keep this stuff illegal. From the bottom of my heart, I want to say,
gracias amigos
, I owe my whole empire to you.”

Tijuana troubles

Desperate for some good news after the Falcon Lake incident and the defeat of Proposition 19, Mexican authorities announced a huge bust on October 18. It started in the morning when a tractor trailer surrounded by SUVs approached a routine Tijuana police traffic stop. When it became clear the convoy was not going to stop, a short gunfight broke out, injuring one suspect and one cop. The police called for reinforcements, and once the convoy was surrounded by superior firepower, the 11 men in it surrendered. The trailer, bound for the U.S., was full of neatly packaged marijuana. Under interrogation, they revealed the whereabouts of the warehouse at which they had loaded the trailer.

When the raid on the warehouse was finished, General Alfonso Duarte Mujica claimed that they had seized 105 tons of marijuana, which they valued at $334 million. Alejandro Poiré Romero, Mexico's spokesman for national security affairs, called it “the largest seizure in the country's history of marijuana prepared and packed for sale and distribution.” He pointed out that Mexico had confiscated more than 7,400 tons of marijuana already in 2010 and echoed comments Calderón had made about Tijuana—with huge reductions in violence in recent months—being something of a success story. “This administration has maintained an important effort in the eradication and confiscation of illicit substances,” he said. “This is an important milestone that demonstrates the ability of the Mexican state when security forces in three levels of government coordinate and take responsibility around a common goal.”

About a week after Mexican authorities were congratulating themselves for turning Tijuana around, the city became the site of the latest drug rehab massacre. Melquiades Hernández Esperanza, head of
El Camino a la Recuperación
(The Way to Recuperation), an unlicensed drug clinic, was in a dormitory counseling nine patients when she heard gunshots. When she got to the second-floor window to see outside, Hernández Esperanza said she saw four masked men with assault rifles leave the building. They left behind 13 dead men. A patient who had stepped out for a bite to eat just before the attacks told reporters that other surviving patients had told him they were all ordered to lie face down on the floor while the gunmen killed the people they recognized.

Although some tourists had returned to Tijuana in recent months as violence levelled off, the Americans and their comparatively free spending habits, had stayed away. After the most recent massacre, many businesspeople in Tijuana resigned themselves to the idea tourists were not coming back. “It is something really troubling,” said Edmundo Guevara Márquez, president of the city's Business Coordinating Council. “Above all, since various authorities say we are among states that, in terms of security, have advanced and done it strongly.”

A few hours before the attack in Tijuana, an unknown voice over police radios threatened that Tijuana would get “a taste of Juárez” that night. It wasn't just an idle taunt, and could be interpreted as an announcement that the Juárez Cartel was moving into the area, or just a harbinger of terror from Mexico's most violent city.

Frightening the youth

Just the night before the Tijuana shooting, in a working-class neighborhood of Juárez, a boy named Francisco López Arteaga was celebrating his 14th birthday with family and friends in a small concrete house at 2069 Calle Félix Candela rented by the boy's father for the celebration. Masked gunmen stormed their way in—it's still one of the few houses on the block without wrought iron gates—and opened fire indiscriminately. Fifteen partygoers between the ages of 12 and 30 were killed and 20 more were injured, the youngest a 9-year-old boy. López Arteaga and his father survived, but his mother was killed. Her 3-month-old daughter—sleeping in a stroller beside her—was unharmed. “I feel so much pain and rage,” Francisco López Arteaga's father—who had hidden his son and six other children in a closet during the attack—said. “I am sure they will never catch the people who did this.”

Social media was on fire throughout Mexico as people—who felt they could no longer rely on media reports for any explanations—discussed the shocking massacre in real time. The majority of them agreed that the killing was a signal to youth throughout Mexico, especially places like Juárez where the cartels held sway, that if they didn't work with the cartels, they too would be targets. It was like the
plata y plomo
offer the police had been given. López Arteaga and his friends, mostly older than him, had reputedly rebuffed offers to work for the cartels in the past.

Three days later, in another chilling demonstration of what happened to people who didn't join—at least according to social media—the cartels shocked Mexico. Tepic is the capital and largest city in the sleepy Pacific coast state of Nayarit. Long an agricultural backwater, Nayarit had for a few years received federal funds to develop and market itself as a tourist destination, with miles of largely undiscovered beaches. The marketing campaign pointed out how safe Nayarit's beaches were in comparison to others in Mexico as it actually had seen very little of the violence suffered by its neighbors, particularly Sinaloa, Jalisco and Zacatecas. The only time Nayarit came into national consciousness during the Drug War was on April 22, when 12 bodies, eight of them incinerated, and several destroyed SUVs were found on a remote part of a ranch near a small village called San Jose de Costilla. Authorities claimed they were members of the Gulf Cartel whose bodies had been dumped there by the Sinaloa Cartel.

But at 9:45 on the morning of October 27, a local man on a small motorcycle pulled up to the
Auto Lavadas Colima
(Colima Carwash) on Avenida Ignacio Potrero, a few blocks from Rio Suchiate, the main drag of the Lázaro Cárdenas neighborhood. While they were chatting outside the open-air car wash (it's really just a small cinder-block office with about 40 feet of corrugated metal leaning from its roof to a shorter building nearby and some hoses) at 9:57, three SUVs pulled up and the men inside them opened fire. The man on the motorcycle, all 13 Colima employees and a bystander who was leaving the Mini Super Lupita fruit market across the street were killed. Two other passers-by were injured.

Of the dead, only the man at the fruit market was older than 23. According to police, most of the victims had been associated with a nearby drug rehab clinic. Social media throughout Mexico was filled with stories and speculation that the victims were killed because they refused to work with the cartels. In a speech, Calderón agreed that the three massacres were linked and that the victims were targeted because they had chosen not to be part of the drug trafficking industry. “These are acts perpetrated by unscrupulous criminals who snatch life from innocent people, most of them young people with life ahead of them, young people struggling to build a future, to overcome addictions, to study,” he said.

Beheading the Gulf Cartel

With little positive to report over the last violent two and a half weeks, Mexican authorities made a headlines again on November 5. After a six-month investigation, they managed to track down Antonio “Tony Tormenta” (Tony Storm) Cárdenas Guillén, leader of the Gulf Cartel, in the Fraccionamiento Victoria neighborhood of Matamoros. With a force of 150 Naval Infantry supported by a small army unit, Federales, state and local police, they moved in. When Cárdenas Guillén and his men saw three helicopters circling their hideout, they moved to another safe house, but were caught on surveillance video.

As the land force approached, the Gulf Cartel members greeted them with assault rifle fire and grenades. Almost as soon as the battle started, area residents captured it on video and uploaded it to YouTube. Many started tweeting updates, telling relatives they were safe and warning others not to come to Matamoros. One, typical of those sent that day, read: “Shelter, everyone! Don't leave your houses please. Pass the word.” The gunfire could be heard across the Rio Grande and the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College told their students to go home, rescheduling several weekend events.

After a number of his bodyguards—said to be members of Los Escorpiones—were killed. Tony Tormenta made a desperate attempt to flee. His armored SUV had been considered bulletproof, but it was no match for .50-caliber shells. Almost as soon as he turned the key, he was hit by 20 of them.

Cárdenas Guillén was dead, as were four of his men, two Naval Infantry and journalist Carlos Guajardo Romero. A crime reporter with the local daily
Expreso Matamoros
, Guajardo Romero, was leaving the scene to speak with a contact in the federal government when soldiers mistook his unmarked pickup truck for that of a fleeing
sicario
. He too was shot 20 times.

Records taken from the building they fled from indicated that Cárdenas Guillén had enjoyed the protection of many officials in Tamaulipas for years. Despite years of purges and desertions, as many as half of the state police were still thought to have received some kind of payment linked to the Gulf Cartel. Authorities said that leadership of the Gulf Cartel was assumed by Jorge Eduardo “El Coss” Costilla Sánchez. He was best known for a 1999 incident in which he helped detain DEA and FBI agents at gunpoint.