But there was not any kind of response from the police or any other authority.. 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.. The George Washington University 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. Somos. And this began to occur more or less in the years 2010 and 2011, which was about when Los Zetas got started in the region.- Declaration of former Allende police official, November 12, 2014, 15:20. And I remember what he said to me: Don't be an ass. [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. Many of the nine women and children killed on a remote stretch of highway in northern Mexico Monday were shot at point-blank range -- victims of a targeted assassination that Mexican authorities . San Miguel de Allende might be voted the nicest town in Mexico by many travel magazines, but it is not safe at the moment and I advise you not to come here right now. I didnt know which of them woke me up with cold water since Id been asleep. To me in particular they gave me 2,000 pesos [per month].-Declaration of former Allende police official, July 22, 2014. The destruction of the 2011 Allende massacre is still evident to this day. SALTILLO, Mexico In the waning days of January 2014 state and federal security forces along with military troops fanned out across the scrubland of Coahuila in northern Mexico, reportedly in search of human remains.. Over 20 days, some 250 masked agents combed the ranches and towns of Allende, Nava, Acua and Piedras Negras, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, for the victims of a . [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. Many thousands disappeared in Mexico's drug war. The series, called Somos., which means "we are," was . May 12, 2015, Documenting Mexicos Recurring Nightmare Leaving aside the role of the DEA and the wider implications of the case, todays posting focuses on the most revealing documents among the facts-on-the-ground evidence gathered by the state of Coahuila. Other witnesses confirmed the testimony of the police commander. She told me that around 5:30 in the afternoon she came across the pick-up truck that came for my husband, and that had been circulating up and down Calle Independencia, and that her father was on board the truck together with about five other people, and that he was in the cabin in the back, in the middle, and that the truck was followed by two black late-model cars, Malibu or Impala, and the three vehicles headed for the mountain; this being the last time they saw my husband.- Complaint of wife of victim Rodolfo Snchez Robles, November 10, 2014. Another told investigators that the local Los Zetas chief acted like he was in his own house during frequent visits to the Allende police station. In March 2011, gunmen from one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in the world, the Zetas cartel, swept through Allende, a quiet ranching town not far from the Texas border. Outside the ranch entrance, the firefighters spotted officers and vehicles from the Allende police department. 'We are.', Miniseries of Netflix which is based on the report by journalist Ginger Thompson, fiction this harsh reality. 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. According to testimony, Vasquez did so because he and other Los Zetas wanted the father to suffer. "This new law is requiring all foreign agents to report any interaction with Mexico. Forensic specialists from the Mexican Federal Police examine one of the primary crime scenes from the 2011 Allende massacre on January 28, 2014. [W]e passed by the entrance of the ranch where I saw people practically in the street with hoods and black vests who had rifles [W]e passed by again on the way back to Allende, and through the opening I could seebecause from the road you could see all the way to the backthat there were about five or seven trucks, many people with rifles, and I also saw people piled up, like this was where the fire was coming from [I]t was something big like a bodega. By Theodore Bunker | Friday, 06 August 2021 02:11 PM EDT. Seven people are gunned down at a streetside taco stand. They massacred 26 people in two days, including women and children . We continued to advance until we arrived at the ranch, where I saw that there were several police patrols from this city, colored white and blue, and a number of police, among others I remember [deleted], [Mara Guadalupe Avalos,] [deleted,] the director And it seemed like the police were guarding the place. Later on the following Sunday, with all of those people locked up at the ranch, around 8:30 or 9:00 at night, I accompanied Comandante 7 and [Comandante Pala], together with various estacas, among others that I recall were [El Canelo, El Cubano, El Chilero, El Panda, El Ruso, El Flacaman, El Cabe and El Meno,] together with a municipal police patrol [in which were riding police officers Guadalupe valos Orozco, La Lupe, and Jess Alejandro Bernal Guerrero,] to a house on [Cuauhtmoc] Street in the Center of Allende, which is where Vctor Garza lived. [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. In fact, sometimes [deleted] would come to the municipal jail and take people away. Over three consecutive days in March 2011, a series . [A]t that time I lived in La Colonia Presidentes, and I knew all of these people because they were from the town. [I]n fact, he sometimes came and went inside the cells to beat those who were locked up. "How the U.S. And outside the house there were four people with long arms who were dressed in black and had on bulletproof vests. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico, by Ginger Thompson, ProPublica, June 12, 2017. It was the case that among them I recognized several, since I knew them, because we were from the same municipality of Allende, Coahuila, where I live.- Declaration of Zetas member Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014. American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Trevios but never acknowledged the devastating cost. His wife recalled the ominous last moments she spent with her husband on March 18, 2011, the night that he and his friend, Hector Lara, disappeared. In the worst cases, civilian authorities were little more than subcontractors of the Zetas criminal organization, involved in shakedowns, kidnappings, drug trafficking and numerous murders, not over a period of weeks or months, but for many years. Reading Pulitzer Prize-winner Ginger Thompson's oral history of a little-known 2011 massacre in the Mexican border town of Allende, and of the role, the U.S. government played in triggering it, is an experience at once intimate and vast.Hearing the voices of survivors, whether they were perpetrators . 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). This was at about 7:30 or 8:00 AM on Saturday, March [19], 2011 Just past the entrance I could see some Allende municipal police trucks, and beneath these were armed people who I recognized as police.- Complaint of wife of victim Csar Alfonso Garca Ramrez, May 23, 2014. Despite the brutality of the case, major U.S. TV and print outlets have largely ignored the kidnapping and murder of hundreds of people from Allende, Coahuila. 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. [4] The thinking behind the special exception measure is simple: Human rights crimes affect both the immediate victims and society as a whole, and in such cases there is a society-wide interest in full transparency to ensure that such grave abuses do not reoccur. Bone fragments found among the burned out ruins of the Garza Ranch, January 28, 2014 (Source: Document 41: Forensic Anthropology Technical Report, April 11, 2014). Oct. 9, 2016. Two days after the Zetas caravan of death had gotten underway it had arrived at the residence of Juniors uncle, Vctor Manuel Garza Garza, and his wife Alma Patricia Prez. For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. Based on Ginger Thompson's 2017 oral history, "How the U.S. A cartel war has transformed once-tranquil Guanajuato into one of Mexico's deadliest states. The majority of these cases happened in Allende, so that time referred to as the Allende Massacre. 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]. [4]Mexicos National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) has sinceposted the declassified volumeson its website, but they are not easy to find without a direct link. Witnesses said the recent killings came after CDN members entered the town days earlier in search of rival gang members. He said his hands were tied, so he stepped aside . The Allende massacre - in which, according to the families of the victims, there were more than 300 people dead or missing - remained hidden for almost two years. Edited by Michael Evans. Relatives of victims wait in anguish for news after a shooting July 1 at a drug rehabilitation center . And he said this openly, because almost all the police received money from those people And that according to that meeting, they had told him that if we saw strange things related to Los Zetas, that we would not do anything or say anything. 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. After three days of abuse, on the night of March 20, the Zetas took him to the Garza ranch and put him to work managing the incoming truckloads of corpses along with a few living hostages. The National Security Archive is committed to digital accessibility. The name "Allende" is in honor of Ignacio Allende, a hero of Mexico's War of Independence.The town's folk hero is Arnulfo Gonzlez who was gunned down in the mid-1920s, and has a "corrido" sung by artists such as Vicente Fernndez and many others. That is to say, to transfer them to the Los ngeles Cemetery of this city and later to the ranch of the [deleted] to finish them off. 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. People from the town stole the furniture, vehicles, and machinery [from the houses] and sold it for scrap metal.- Declaration of Germn Zaragoza Snchez (El Canelo), April 8, 2014, 10:00am. THE DOCUMENTS. Leave them. Mexican Federal Police document bits of teeth recovered at the Garza Ranch, January 28, 2014(Source:Document 41: Forensic Anthropology Technical Report, April 11, 2014). A center for car manufacturing northwest of Mexico City, Guanajuato averaged at least nine homicides a day in 2020, one of the highest murder rates in the country. 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 . 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. The collection is at once a narrow and graphic examination of the events of March 18-20 and a broader look at the combination of bribery, intimidation, and ruthless violence used by Los Zetas (and now, CDN) to turn local security forces into instruments of their criminal operations. Justice in Mexico 5998 Alcal Park, San Diego, CA. 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. 202-994-7000 ornsarchiv@gwu.edu, Special thanks to former National Security Archiveintern Emily Taylor for her assistance with this collection. Go fuck your mother! LAS CRUCES - On Feb. 10, 1990, two men walked into a Las Cruces bowling alley and shot seven people execution style including four children robbed the bowling alley's safe and set . [12]- Statement of Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. They picked me up, and, for having fallen asleep, they gave me ten blows on my buttocks with a board, and they gave me shocks [sapones] to the head [T]hey tied up my feet and hands with tape. While many of the corpses were probably destroyed in these larger fires, the Los Zetas cook interviewed on September 19, 2014,gave an especially detailed description of how he and El Chango together burned the bodies of at least three victims in individual barrels filled with diesel fuel. 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. There was a fire coming from a small building inside the ranch alongside armed men who did not seem like they were police, according to the former volunteers statement. That they did not want to see us going out to extinguish the houses. Arts & Culture. Washington, D.C., 20037, Phone: 202/994-7000 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. 2130 H Street, NW Access request to Mexicos National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH), Freedom of Information Act request to DEA. I want to point out that I did not know any of the dead And when we had them in the barrels [deleted] began to bathe the corpses in diesel so that they could then be set on fire, and I was then sent to keep a lookout a few meters from there to make sure that no one was coming. It was around March 15, 2011, the then-director of the municipal police called all the elements to a meeting in the offices of the municipal police. And as there were three barrels we put one dead body in each barrel. 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. Armando Castilla, the publisher of the newspaper Vanguardia de Coahuila, says his publication was the first to report the case, in December 2013. That if any citizens asked us for help that we would not pay attention to avoid getting into trouble. He told me: "The United States . The six-part miniseries examines the lives of the victims of a cartel massacre at the Mexican border town of Allende. 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. Elvira Espinoza told investigators about the day, about a week later, when she found two of her three missing grandchildren at an orphanage in Piedras Negras. 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 . And there were approximately from seven to ten people that we tied up with rats tails. 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. Prosecutors said at least a dozen specially trained police officials may also have been involved. Passing by the Garza property, she noticed a group of workers gathered there, waiting to be paid. [5] The Mexican government signaled its intention to soften some of the more severe restrictions imposed by the new law. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico," "Somos." tells the story of a 2011 mass killing in Allende, in the Mexican state of Coahuila . 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? Document 1 August 25, 2007 Shutdown Slows but Doesn't Stop Central Americans Headed North U.S. Embassy in Mexico, cable, sensitive, 3 pp. An Army unit was sent to Rancho Garza to investigate. De Len said that he already knew that all of the municipal police of Allende were associated with or worked for the Zetas., When I saw all those police I realized that they were keeping watch or guarding the place, that is to say the [Garza] ranch In addition to the police I already mentioned, I noticed that there were more people wearing civilian clothes, some hooded, some not. Over the course of six episodes, "Somos." gives a platform to the victims of the Allende massacre to tell their stories. December 9, 2020, Advirti EU riesgo ante mandos mexicanos corruptos An important moment seems to have come in March 2015, when state investigatorssaw a familiar patternemerge in three seemingly unrelated cases. 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. So the moment that we were leaving the place out of fear from the threats made by these people, and because the police were attending to them, the people of Los Zetas put the entire [deleted] family into the bodega or large barn I mentioned, along with various other people who I saw clearly but who I did not know. 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. January 28, 2015, Mexico's San Fernando Massacres: A Declassified History 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.