Gangland (13 page)

Born in the Michoacán city of Hidalgo, Paulo Sergio Gómez Sánchez emigrated to a part of Chicago populated mainly by other Mexicans. When the members of the popular band Montez de Durango broke up on Christmas Eve of 2002, many of the members re-formed as a new band called K-Paz de la Sierra, with Sergio Gómez as their singer. K-Paz, and especially the handsome Gomez, became very popular in Mexico and on Spanish-language radio in the United States. The group's success helped Gómez buy a house in Avon, Indiana, an upscale suburb of Indianapolis. He stayed mainly in the United States, but traveled back to Mexico on occasion to perform.

On December 2, he gave a concert at an open-air festival in the Michoacán city of Morelia. After the show, he and two staff members were driving to their next gig in Puerta Vallarta when their rented Dodge Neon was surrounded by a number of SUVs and forced to stop. The three men were kidnapped and driven away. After two hours of questioning, the two staff members were released.

When the band's publicist, Sergio Gómez Vega (who also went by the name Sergio Gómez), contacted police, he told them that the singer had received death threats before the show in Michoacán, but didn't take them seriously and said he felt he owed his home state a good show. Gómez Vega claimed he had no idea who would want to kill his client or why.

A few hours later, a pair of farm workers found a body by the side of the road. They could not identify his face but said they feared it was Sergio Gómez because of a recognizable tattoo he had on his left bicep. The Michoacán assistant attorney general later told the media that it was indeed Gómez and that he had been severely beaten and burned by acid before being choked to death. His body was returned to his family in Indiana.

On the same day, popular trumpeter Jose Luis Aquino went missing. Three days later, his body was found on a rural Oaxaca roadside with his hands and feet bound and a plastic bag tied over his head.

The killing of three popular musicians in less than a week shocked the nation. Neither Peña nor Gómez sang
narcocorridas
nor had either had any been known to use drugs let alone have connection to the cartels. Peña's father was a deputy prosecutor, but had not been involved in any cases involving the cartels. Aquino's father maintained that although his group, Los Condes (The Counts), did sing
narcocorridas
, he had no connection to the cartels and that his death was likely the result of a car theft. He could not explain why his son was brutally tortured before being put to death, though.

The deaths of the popular musicians not related to the drug trade indicated that nobody was safe—you no longer had to actively oppose (or favor) a cartel to be murdered, you just had to be in Mexico.

A few days later, on December 9, another brazen killing shocked Mexico. Gerardo Israel García Pimentel had just finished his shift at
La Opinión de Michoacán
, a daily newspaper with about 6,500 readers. He was riding his motorcycle to his Uruapan apartment when an SUV tried to force him off the road. He raced home as fast as his little 125cc bike could go, and was followed by the truck. He got to his apartment building, jumped off his bike and ran to his door. Just as he reached the stairwell, the men in the truck fired 45 shells from a pair of AR-15s and three from a Super .38 handgun. At least 28 of those rounds went into or through García Pimentel.

Journalists had certainly been targeted by the cartels before—look at the staff of
Zeta
—but García Pimentel was no investigative reporter causing trouble for the cartels or the police. He worked on
La Opinión
's farm beat, occasionally writing a low-ball crime story when all of the paper's more senior reporters were too busy, but nothing that would appear to endanger his life. His killing struck many Mexicans as senseless, as though the cartels were picking their targets almost at random.

Faith in local authorities took another big hit near the end of the year. On December 28, the entire 65-strong police force of Playas de Rosarito—a popular vacation spot for young Americans just outside Tijuana—was disarmed and interrogated. “We recognize that the enemy is inside our house and for this reason we are purging the ranks,” said Baja California state police chief Daniel de la Rosa Anaya. “We need to have confidence in our police.”

As 2007 drew to a close, many in Mexico openly questioned whether the army's presence in Nuevo Laredo, Michoacán and Tijuana was actually helping the overall national situation. Murders and kidnappings were down slightly, but police corruption was still rampant. Critics, like the editors of
Zeta
, pointed out one particularly chilling statistic—that arrests among minors had quadrupled since the invasion. The cartels were outsourcing their criminal tasks, including assassination, to youngsters who were much less likely to arouse suspicion and would, by constitutional law, not face stiff prison terms if caught.

Calderón stressed that the Mexican people had to be patient. He told them that the official corruption ran too deep and that the crime organizations were too powerful for his administration to fix everything right away, and warned them that the results of his actions might not begin to be seen until after his six-year term as president.

Chapter 8

Battling the Beltrán Leyva Cartel

While the forces fighting against cartels and corruption had little to celebrate at the end of 2007, they started 2008 with a bang. On January 21, the army announced that it had captured Alfredo “El Mochomo” (the Little Ant) Beltrán Leyva. Tipped off by an informant, a mixed squad of army soldiers and Federales arrested Beltrán Leyva and two associates on their way to Beltrán Leyva's home in Culiacán. He was carrying an AK-47 and two suitcases containing just over $900,000 in U.S. currency, along with a number of luxury watches valued at close to $100,000.

One of the founders of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel, Alfredo Beltrán Leyva was its undisputed leader and was second only to Sinaloa chief Joaquín Guzmán Loera himself in their cartels' alliance. According to Mexican authorities, Alfredo was in charge of transporting drugs over the Mexicali–Calexico crossing, was also involved in money laundering and even commanded a number of
sicarios
, a Mexican slang word for assassins, derived from classical Roman times. His arrest was a huge boost to the president's plan, and was praised by the Americans as well. “Today was a significant victory for Mexican armed forces,” said Tony Garza, American ambassador to Mexico. “This arrest demonstrates once again the ongoing commitment of President Calderón and his administration to hit the criminal organizations where it hurts.”

Alfredo's brother Arturo (the cartel's new boss) was so enraged by the arrest that he ordered the assassinations of the acting chief of the Federales, Édgar Eusebio Millán Gómez, and other top officials. On May 8, his team cornered Millán Gómez and two bodyguards at 2:30 a.m., just after he exited his white Chevrolet Trailblazer SUV outside of the high red fence in front of his home at 132 Calle Camelia in the Guerrero neighborhood of Mexico City and opened fire. Millán Gómez was hit eight times in the chest and once in the hand. He died the following day in Metropolitan Hospital. He was the tenth member of the Federale management team killed that month.

Somehow, one of Millán Gómez's seriously wounded bodyguards, Warrant Officer Daniel de la Vega Hernández, managed to wrestle one of the assailants to the ground and arrest him. The man, 34-year-old Alejandro Ramírez Báez, was wearing latex gloves, had a pistol with a silencer and appeared to be drunk or high. Although he had been convicted for a couple of car thefts in the past, he was not known to be a cartel member.

Under questioning, he revealed that he had been sent by the Sinaloa Cartel to exact revenge for the arrest of Alfredo Beltrán Leyva. His information led to the arrest of low-level cartel members José Antonio Martín Garfias, Virginia Juana González Bravo, María Teresa Villanueva Aguirre, Jose and Jorge Ortega Lugo and Alejandro Ramírez Báez Gallegos. A search of a nearby house used as a staging area for the attack revealed dozens of assault rifles (both AK-47s and AR-15s), pistols, grenade launchers, 30 hand grenades and bulletproof vests marked with the letters “FEDA”—which the Federales claimed stood for Fuerzas Especiales de Arturo “Special Forces of Arturo.” All of the suspects were later implicated in the assassination of Roberto Velasco Bravo, senior director of the Federales' organized crime unit, and the possession of illegal radio equipment and listening devices.

While the murder of Millán Gómez was the most prominent in Mexico that week—his funeral was attended by Calderón and most of the top military brass—it was just one of more than 100 assassinations kicked off by that of Velasco Bravo.

And while Millán Gómez was still clinging to life, another hit squad was at work. Just as the chief of Mexico City's investigative police force, Esteban Robles Espinosa, was getting into his Ford Fiesta at 8:30 a.m. on his way to work, his way was blocked by a gray Nissan Quest minivan. When the side door slid open, masked gunmen jumped out and shot 13 handgun bullets at Robles Espinosa. Eight hit him, including two in the head and another two in the chest. He was unarmed because a girlfriend had left with his gun after an argument the night before.

Although most media sources believed the police assassinations were a sign of goodwill from the Sinaloa cartel to the Beltrán Leyva brothers, they did not improve relations between the two groups. In fact, Arturo Beltrán Leyva believed that Guzmán Loera had actually tipped off the Federales and was responsible for Alfredo's arrest. And he wanted revenge.

Realigning alliances in the cartels

At 8:30 in the evening of the day after Millán Gómez was shot, three SUVs roared into the parking lot of the City Club supermarket on Boulevard Universitarios in the north end of Culiacán. As soon as they stopped, some 15 masked men opened fire with pistols and assault rifles. The three targeted men were too surprised to draw their weapons or flee. Two of them were killed at the scene and one was critically injured. One of the dead men was Edgar Guzmán Lopez, Guzmán Loera's 22-year-old son. He was in his second year at Sinaloa Autonomous University, studying business administration and had a two-year-old daughter with his girlfriend, Frida Muñoz Roman. More than 500 cartridges were recovered by investigators and 20 vehicles were damaged beyond repair.

It was clear that the Beltrán Leyvas could no longer work with the Sinaloa Cartel. Instead, they aligned with (but did not join) the Gulf Cartel, dealing particularly with Los Zetas. This shift in the balance of power also affected relations between the Sinaloa and the Juárez cartels. Although weakened by the loss of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel's support, the Sinaloa Cartel had since absorbed the Colima Cartel, Sonora Cartel, Milenio Cartel and what remained of the original Guadalajara Cartel. Now it was the Juárez Cartel who appeared to be the weakest and most vulnerable of all the major gangs, despite controlling some of the most lucrative crossings into Texas.

But the Juárez Cartel was willing to fight. Back in January, someone had taped a poster to the police memorial in Juárez that showed the names and pictures of 12 high-ranking police officers and described them as “executable.” It was addressed to “those who still don't believe.” For much of that year, someone hacked into the police radio frequency and threatened individual cops over their two-way radios. The day after Guzmán Lopez was killed, Juan Antonio Roman Garcia, the second-in-command of the Juárez police force, was headed to a family party when his official car was intercepted by two trucks. Without getting out of their vehicles, the gunmen pumped 50 rounds into Roman Garcia and his car. He was the eighth victim of the 12 officers on the executables list. Hours after Roman Garcia was killed, his boss, police chief Guillermo Prieto Quintana quit and moved to El Paso, Texas. He didn't make any elaborate excuses; he was just scared.

On a giant billboard that read “Juárez Needs You! Join up and become part of the city police,” someone had painted “Los Zetas want you—we offer good salaries to soldiers.” Less than a week later, a banner was stretched across Nuevo Laredo's Avenida Reforma reading: “Los Zetas operations group wants you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer you a good salary, food and attention for your family. Don't suffer hunger and abuse anymore.” In smaller text there was note that pointed out Los Zetas did not serve their men instant ramen noodles, a jab at the military's rations. Not to be outdone, the Gulf cartel put one up in Tampico that read: “Join the ranks of the Gulf Cartel. We offer benefits: life insurance, a house for your family and children. Stop living in the slums and riding the bus. A new car or truck, your choice.”

News of more violence—some of it against U.S. nationals—from that weekend emerged. Three men driving a gray Ford Crown Victoria home from a horseracing track stopped at a red light on Avenida Vicente Guerrero in downtown Nuevo Laredo and were showered by more than 70 shots from assault rifles from a white van. Lorenzo Juárez Aguayo and Agustin Damian Navarrete died, while backseat passenger Juan Verdugo was critically wounded. It is believed they were shot because their Crown Victoria looked like an undercover police or DEA vehicle. And four more Americans from El Paso—Juan Manuel Contreras Machado, Luz Elena Velazquez, Jorge Jimenez and Alejandro Vazquez—were shot as they exited the Arriba Chihuahua nightclub in Juárez. They were not known to be connected to the drug trade.

The U.S. government increased its warnings to Americans about traveling to Mexico, especially to border cities like Juárez, Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo where the violence had been most frequent. “It's almost like a military fight,” said Jayson Ahern, the deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “I don't think that generally the American public has any sense of the level of violence that occurs on the border.”

But at the same time, they indicated that people should not be worried about the violence if they stayed north of the Rio Grande. “We just trust and believe that it will not come across to our side of the border,” acting El Paso county sheriff Jimmy Apodaca said. “If it does, we are ready.”

Later that month, the cartels set a new and disturbing precedent. Previously, when the army and/or Federales surrounded one of their houses or clubs, the men inside would surrender. But on May 28 that changed. A raid on a house containing suspected Sinaloa Cartel members took place that evening as, but this time, the men inside decided to fight their way out. Seven Federales were killed in the ensuing melée. Two men were arrested, but they were just foot soldiers, the important cartel members having escaped. It had been abundantly clear that the cartels were as well armed as the police (if not better) and were now willing to fight to stay out of custody.

The weapon of choice—the AK-47

One of the guns confiscated in the raid was a Romanian-made copy of an AK-47. The AK-47—arguably the world's favorite weapon—is an assault rifle developed by Soviet general Mikhail Kalashnikov just after World War II. It is capable of firing ten 7.62 mm cartridges a second at 1,600 miles per hour for an effective range of about 330 feet. Its simple, rugged construction makes it a reliable weapon in any climate and under strenuous conditions, and keeps its price down. The AK-47, variants and copies, have been produced in more than two dozen countries and have been used by countless armies, both official and rebels, around the world. It has even appeared on national flags.

What was interesting about this particular AK-47, though, was the fact that it could be traced by the FBI. Four months earlier, a 21-year-old American named Cameron Scott Galloway walked into X Caliber Guns, a weapons shop in a sleepy strip mall next to the Little Shoppe of Hair in northwestern Phoenix, not far from the Phoenix National Forest. He paid $3,000 for six AK-47s, getting an impressive deal. The FBI tracked him down, arrested him, but reduced the charges after he became a cooperative witness. He told them that all he knew was that a co-worker's brother had offered him $3,600 for the guns and all he had to do was sign for them. He knew they were going to Mexico, but claimed he did not know that they were to be used by people in organized crime.

Digging further, the FBI traced the gun back to the factory, getting a clear indication of how these dangerous weapons get into the hands of cartels, despite being illegal not just in Mexico, but also in the U.S. The gun was manufactured at the Regia Autonom
pentru produc
ia de Tehnic
Militar
(RATMIL) factory in Cugir, a small town in the Transylvanian district of Romania. RATMIL makes both military and civilian versions of the rifle. The civilian models are heavily modified, with features such as automatic fire removed.