[18]On homicide rate, see this report from the University of San Diegos Justice in Mexico program; On impunity, see, Mexicos bloody drug war is killing more people than ever, Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2017. After about a half an hour, my husband called my son on his cell phone but he did not answer his phone, which worried us since he always answered.- Complaint of Claudia Snchez, October 18, 2013, Snchez soon learned that there had been a number of disappearances around the city that night, and that one of Gerardos friends had also gone missing. About five estacas[9]participated, and with [deleted] and [deleted] ten more joined. Zetas. And that if we didn't obey, they were going to fuck us and our families. And I did not know exactly what happened with them.- Declaration of Allende firefighter Jess Gerardo De Len Ramos, December 17, 2014, 14:50, The former fire department volunteer described a similar scene as the victims, including several elderly captives, were led to slaughter. He told me that we were not up for parties, she said. [10] How the U.S. They massacred 26 people in two days, including women and children . May 12, 2015, Documenting Mexicos Recurring Nightmare And after that I left.- Complaint of Hctor Reynaldo Prez Iruegas, May 25, 2011. Subscribe to our newsletter and join other 2,442 Justice in Mexico readers! The cartel allegedly turned this storage shed, which held equipment and animal feed, into an incinerator for the . The situation was especially dire in Piedras Negras, where Los Zetas had turned the state prison into a center of operations. 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. [1] Translations throughout the text by Michael Evans. 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 . [T]hey brought them there to the Los ngeles Cemetery near the Piedras Negras city seminary, and also more people. All threereceived lengthy sentences, but with no bodies to build a murder case, they were convicted only of aggravated kidnapping, a charge that seems woefully inadequate given the nature of the crimes. 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. I could see that the owners of the ranch were there, since I could identify [Jos Luis Garza,] Mrs. [Alma Patricia,] their son [Julio Csar Garza, Rodolfo Garza, and] his daughter, whose name was [Nora Liliana Garza de la Torre.] First published on Wed 6 Nov 2019 16.31 EST. Washington, D.C., 20037, Phone: 202/994-7000 FOR almost three years residents of Allende, close to the Mexican border with . The slowly unfolding investigation of the Allende massacre finally gained some momentum with the establishment of a special task force in 2014. [T]he municipal police received monthly payments of amounts that ranged from 2,000 to 3,000 pesos, and these were delivered in yellow envelopes [W]hen they arrived to divide it up they said, the little chicks [los pollitos] have arrived.- Declaration of former Allende police official, November 12, 2014, 15:20. 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. And once they had killed the people, between [Chucho] and I we began to spray the diesel and the gasoline all around the house and the bodega with the bodies inside After this, we set fire with the help of diesel and gasoline to the bodega with all those dead people inside, and we were there for many hours until we cooked all the people, and with so much fire that it melted the roof of the bodega.- Declaration of Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014, El Canelo admitted to having helped burn the body of at least one victim. Source: ProPublica. Some cooperated more than others. Criminals were shooting up the street and two police officers . 8 min de lectura. Allende is a small town southwest of Piedras Negras, Mexico and is the site of a massacre by the drug cartel, Los Zetas. A cartel war has transformed once-tranquil Guanajuato into one of Mexico's deadliest states. With the help of these same police, we put them in the patrol vehicle. I recall that he was light-skinned, thin, of medium height, around 20 or 25 years of age, and they brought him in with his hands and feet tied up and with his face covered with tape.- Declaration of Zetas safe house guard, part 2, March 2, 2016, After a few days, he said, members of Los Zetas came and took him away in the bed of a pick-up truck, adding that he heard that they were going to turn him into roast beef, which is to say, that they were going to cook him.. 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. Early in the morning on March 19, Arturo called his own mother, Elvira Espinoza, and told her that neither Liliana, who worked for her fathers ranch business, nor her parents were answering their phones. He said that as many as ten of his family members disappeared that day, including Vctor, Alma, and their youngest son Julio Csar. He told her to cancel the birthday party they were planning for her the next week. Schamus presents the trailer and key art for his new drama series Somos. At the moment the cooking of the corpses was finished, the ashes were thrown in a well, and later covered with earth, and they flattened it so that no one could see anything.- Declaration of Zetas member, September 19, 2014, The focus on eliminating physical evidence and destroying crime scenes almost certainly played at least an ancillary role in impeding justice in the Allende case. Villa Unin, just a 20-minute drive from Allende, has been the site of numerous acts of violence linked to the CDN in recent years. 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. 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. Lilianas husband, Arturo, had also been unable to reach his wife or her parents. Senior officers, including the police director, commander, and shift commanders, were paid more handsomely than regular cops. De Len also remembered the moment, as they were leaving, when he saw the Zetas lead the victims into the bodega. In March 2011 witnesses say the notorious Zetas cartel abducted at least 300 people in northern Mexico, but a local investigation still has a long way to go to identity all the perpetrators - and . [8] The CNDH report does not name any of the victims, perpetrators or other witnesses it cites. Leave them. [18]Others have called on Mexico to prosecute top Coahuila state officials, including former governors, for allowing criminal violence to flourish. The Zetas started out as an enforcer gang for the Gulf Cartel . 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 . [F]rom the road you could see smoke coming from inside the ranch. So they formed them into rows of people and later took them to the ranch of the [deleted] where they killed and burned them together with people from Allende. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. 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. With the passing of the days, the identity of 14 of the victims from Guatemala have been confirmed (the police estimate there are 15, and the rest are possibly Mexicans). -Declaration of Allende volunteer firefighter, December 17, 2014. " We will try to look upon those individuals who caused the Allende Massacre. 8:01. And there were approximately from seven to ten people that we tied up with rats tails. 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. Meanwhile, Mexico has announced the arrest of police officers allegedly involved in the killings. See Vanguardia, March 18, 2019.. After what happened to my spouse in May 2010, approximately one year later, in June 2011, [his captor] started looking for me according to him because my ex-spouse put him in charge of telling [me] what had happened to him He told me many things related with acts of violence in the region and I knew from his own words that he was an assassin for the Zetas cartel, and as we built some trust, I asked him various things.- Complaint of wife of murdered Zeta, November 13, 2014, He told her how the Zetas had killed someones grandson, probably a reference to Mauricio Espinoza, whose grandmother, Elvira Espinoza, was one of the first to report disappearances in Allende. June 19, 2017. Arriving at the ranch that night with three others from the department, Herrera said he could see that what was burning was a small room that was near the ranch. He saw that there were units of the municipal police out front. They watched as gang members led their victims into a larger shed near the back. The six-part drama series is inspired by the Allende massacre in Mexico. 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: The mini-series is created by James Schamus, who divides the real-life emotional fable into 6 . Many of the victims were ordinary laborers at the Garza properties. One U.S. law enforcement officialsaid that [Reyes] Arzates corruption as the highest-ranking officer in the MFPs Sensitive Investigative Unit allowed violent cartels to continue the flow of drugs through the region without consequence.. He said the process reduced the corpses to pure butter., [I]n those days they kidnapped many people [Where] they killed them and burned them was a ranch There, they made me burn one body since I saw what was happening Others were burned at the [deleted] ranch, but nothing was left, because they told me that only pure butter remained after cooking them.- Declaration of Germn Zaragoza Snchez (El Canelo), April 8, 2014, 10:00. Because if you dont [keep quiet] theyre going to kidnap you too.. This same Allende city officer tried once more the following day, advising the mayor to tell someone about what was happening; that he talk to the governor. In April of 2014 . Sep 28, 2022, 5:00 AM SGT. May 29, 2021. October 2, 2018, Transcripts of intercepted cell phones open new lines of investigation in Ayotzinapa case He said his hands were tied, so he stepped aside . And after five or six hours during which the corpses were cooked it was then around five or six oclock in the morning. 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. 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. Washington, D.C., March 18, 2021 - Ten years ago, the Mexican municipality of Allende was the site of one of the worst human rights atrocities ever seen in the country: a three-day wave of violence in which the criminal group known as Los Zetas kidnapped, murdered, and later burned the bodies of an estimated 300 .
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