Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers (21 page)

For Alejandro Alegre, these stories of corruption organized by El Chapo were hardly a novelty. He was familiar with the drug trafficker’s capacity to corrupt; in fact he’d heard it from the horse’s mouth. For he had been one of the passengers on the Boeing 727 that flew from Tapachula to Toluca on June 9, 1993, and he had heard the drug baron name all the serving and former PGR officials whom he had paid for protection.
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On the evening of October 10, 2000, Warden Leonardo Beltrán had a meeting with El Chapo, El Güero, and El Texas, on orders from Enrique Pérez. The purpose was to negotiate an end to the growing tensions. He who pays the piper, calls the tune. In the course of the meeting, Pérez tried urgently to call Beltrán. Commander Antonio Aguilar had no choice but to interrupt the meeting—to which he had not been invited—to tell his boss he was wanted on the phone. A few minutes later, Beltrán told him once again that they would be flying to Mexico City the next day.

On October 11, Aguilar walked into Pérez’s office and immediately saw he was angry.

“What is the meaning of this note?” the director general shouted at Aguilar, who took the note and read it. “Why are you giving information to my enemies?”

The note contained the report that Cisen agent Carlos Arias had sent to his superiors. But how had it come into Perez’s hands? It could only be through one of three people: García Luna, Alegre Rabiela, or Under Secretary Tello himself.

“Who are your bosses?” demanded Pérez reproachfully.

“I take orders from you. I don’t have any other bosses.”

“So why are you giving them information?”

“My breach of discipline was because Leonardo Beltrán handled the situation in a way that implied that you were aware of everything he was saying to me. That’s why I asked the Cisen officer to intervene. I understand that you are upset and angry, and for what it’s worth, I
apologize,” said Aguilar, trying to tread carefully. By this stage he had realized he was risking his life.

“I’ll kill you!” growled Pérez.

“We’ll kill each other!” Aguilar threw back.

Pérez ushered him into the meeting room where Beltrán was waiting, and showed the warden the Cisen note.

“Commander, this is an act of disloyalty,” said Beltrán angrily.

“You have no right to call me disloyal,” responded Aguilar. “You made a written pledge to uphold the Constitution and the laws deriving from it, and that commitment you have broken.”

“This situation will force me to resign, which is just as well because I was already thinking of doing just that,” said Pérez, rather puzzlingly, as he ended the meeting. Because of course he was not the one about to change jobs.

On October 13, Antonio Aguilar was given his marching orders. “You are to report for work by the 16
^th
of this month to federal penitentiary number 1 at Almoloya.” He didn’t even have time to collect his belongings from Puente Grande. It was so important that he never set foot there again, they were sent by parcel service to Toluca for him. He was replaced by Luis Fernández, who had been working in maximum security prisons since October 1999, at the express invitation of Miguel Ángel Yunes.
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News of Aguilar’s departure spread like wildfire through Puente Grande. The guards soon found out he had been sacked on El Chapo’s express orders to Enrique Pérez.
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When Aguilar travelled from Guadalajara to Mexico City for the last time, The Three remarked jokingly to the guards: “That one’s not coming back.”
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And he didn’t.

CHAPTER SEVEN
The Great Escape

J
ust before seven in the morning on January 20, 2001, when it was still not completely light, a heavily armed special commando unit of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP), wearing dark uniforms, hoods and helmets, along with sixty elite officers from the Federal Judicial Police (PJF) commanded by their new director, Genaro García Luna, took control of the Puente Grande maximum security prison and its immediate environs. They arrived six hours after the prison warden, Leonardo Beltrán Santana, had told his superiors that Joaquín Guzmán had disappeared. Mexico’s first right-wing government, under President Vicente Fox, had only recently taken office.

The PFP seized all the entrances and exits, as well as the Control Center. Then they spread out through all areas of the prison, including the staff dormitories. Meanwhile, García Luna and his people began to search the perimeter for some trace of the missing drug baron.
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At 11 o’clock the night before, Warden Beltrán had been given the bad news by a shocked-looking Commander Jesús Vizcaíno: prisoner 516 was not in his cell, and couldn’t be found anywhere.

At about 10:30 p.m., Vizcaíno and two other commanders had gone to the dormitory with orders finally to move Joaquín Guzmán to the Observation and Classification Center.
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They went straight to Unit 3 and up to level 1-A. Stopping at the cell of Guzmán’s “private secretary,” Jaime Valencia Fontes, they asked for “Mr. Guzmán.” There were torn photographs and other papers on the floor of the cell. Looking dejected and smelling of alcohol, Fontes smiled wryly
and mumbled something that only one of the commanders, Juan José Pérez, understood. To judge by his expression, it wasn’t good news.

They rushed to El Chapo’s cell, whose bars were covered by a beige sheet. “Mr. Guzmán, get dressed and pack your things,” said Pérez as he drew back the makeshift curtain. Nobody answered. He pulled back the blankets on the bed and realized that El Chapo wasn’t there: instead he saw two pillows arranged to look like the outline of a body. As he ran down the corridor, distraught, the commander could only yell “He’s busted out!”
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A government for change

President Fox’s administration began on December 1, 2000. It rapidly transferred all of the Interior Secretariat’s police powers to a newly created Secretariat of Public Security, with the exception of those of the intelligence service, Cisen. Although one of Fox’s campaign promises had been to rid government institutions of the PRI—the party which had run Mexico for the last seventy years—he strangely left in post many of the officials responsible for public security and the prison service.

Fox made Santiago Creel, from his own party the PAN, Secretary of the Interior, while he appointed as head of Cisen someone with absolutely no experience in intelligence or investigations, Eduardo Medina Mora—whose only known merits were that he had been on the board of the leading private TV company, Televisa, and that his brother was a top executive at Banamex.
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Alejandro Gertz Manero was named secretary of public security. He had been in charge of public security for the Mexico City federal district during the PRD administration of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. Jorge Tello Peón stayed on in the new role of under secretary for public security, with the same responsibilities he had had when security was a department of the Interior. These included the management, operation and oversight of federal prisons. Enrique Pérez Rodríguez continued in his post as director general of prevention and rehabilitation, that is, as the immediate head of the prison service. And, of course, Leonardo Beltrán and Luis
Fernández kept their jobs as warden and assistant warden of Puente Grande.

“Intelligence” tasks inside the prison were the remit of the Federal Police. They were in charge of the surveillance cameras, microphones, and other means of monitoring what went on inside the jail.

When the new government came in, some staff at the prison thought things would change. One of them was the head of the prison’s Control Center, Guillermo Paredes, in charge of the security cameras. For two years he had witnessed, through the lenses of those same cameras, all the anomalies taking place in the prison. At last, at the beginning of December 2000, he thought he saw an opportunity to stop the rot. Some of the Federal Police who came to replace the intelligence officers from Cisen, among them Armando Ruiz, asked him about the irregularities.
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Paredes told them that El Chapo, El Güero and El Texas had complete control of the prison, and he also warned them that the situation was very delicate.

A few days later, Ruiz told Paredes that he’d already spoken to his boss, Humberto Martínez, director general of technical services at the PFP, about the corruption. What neither Ruiz nor Paredes knew was that Martínez was one of Tello’s men. Without a doubt, the fact that many such officials continued to run the prison system allowed El Chapo Guzmán to enjoy that year’s Christmas festivities in peace.

Instead of taking up the matter himself, Martínez sent word that if anyone wanted to make a complaint, they should raise it directly with him. Paredes was no fool. He decided to keep quiet.

The last Christmas in Puente Grande

It was after 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve. The silence hanging over the broad freeway between Guadalajara and Zapotlanejo was broken by the roar of a convoy of SUVs, speeding towards the prison. At the junction outside the gates, there was a temporary checkpoint where perimeter guard José Luis de la Cruz stood watch with a colleague. He’d had specific orders from the deputy director for perimeter security not to let anybody in; he’d even been told to park a pick-up truck transversally across the road, to block access to the jail.

When de la Cruz saw the vehicles approaching without switching off their lights, he nervously swiveled his weapon and chambered a round, thinking it could be an attack. The driver of the lead vehicle suddenly slammed on the brakes, opened the door and jumped out.
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The guard’s fears vanished when he recognized the smiling face of prison commander Juan Raúl Sarmiento. “It’s us,” he shouted jovially, like someone arriving at a party. De la Cruz moved his truck to let the line of vehicles pass. Joaquín Guzmán’s relatives were traveling in some of them; Héctor Palma’s in others. There was also a big group of mariachis and 500 liters of alcohol for the Xmas party.
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The sumptuous feast arrived a few minutes later. It had been prepared at the last moment, but the menu was first-class: lobster bisque, filet mignon, roast potatoes, prawns, green salad, and trays of nibbles, with canned sauces to spice up the dishes after reheating.

El Chapo and El Güero had been planning the celebration for weeks. They sent for a brighter yellow paint than that usually used in the prison; the prison guards themselves worked overtime painting the walls. The corridors and cells of Units 3 and 4 were hung with Christmas lights and decorations. Guzman’s outside gofer, El Chito, had been entrusted with organizing the banquet and buying the family gifts, as well as getting special food and drink for the ordinary prison inmates.

Corruption had been rife in Puente Grande for the last two years, but this cynical display of power was unprecedented. The party went on for three days. El Chapo and El Güero’s relatives stayed until December 26, taking advantage of the authorities’ extreme laxity. Although it had looked as if the change of government might mean the drug barons would lose their privileges, they were acting with extraordinary confidence. In fact, one of the guests at the party was the prison warden himself; Leonardo Beltrán never let go of the briefcase full of wads the traffickers had given him for Christmas.
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With the supposed democratic transition in Mexico, something had certainly shifted, deep down in the creaky structures of the old system; but they had not been weakened, quite the contrary. Now that the presidential office was occupied by Vicente Fox, a very
special place in the pantheon of drug traffickers was being prepared for Joaquín Guzmán. The story of a second-rate gangster trussed like a pig in the back of an old pick-up truck was about to change profoundly, thanks to the Fox government.

January 2001

Once the festive season was over, El Chapo stepped up his recruitment drive—but now he wanted people to work for him not on the inside, but on the outside, as if he knew for certain that he would soon be free. Although there were a number of charges still pending against him, the only one he lost any sleep over was the request for extradition to the United States. Many drug traffickers hardly fear going to jail, because they know that in Mexico their power to corrupt means they can continue to do business from inside, via their relatives or associates. But in the US it’s a different story; extradition is a sentence to living death.

Prison guard José Salvador Hernández Quiroz testified to several disturbing approaches made to him in those January days.
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One evening a prison commander, Miguel Ángel Godínez, came up and said:

“Mr. Guzmán told me he was to be freed shortly, which means he’s looking for men to work for him outside. I thought of you as a good candidate.”

“No way,” said Hernández tersely.

“Think about it,” said El Chapo’s ad hoc head hunter. “You’d get between twelve and fifteen thousand pesos a month. The work might be in Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit, or Sinaloa.”

Days later, Jaime Flores Sánchez told him he’d also been invited, directly by Guzmán, and he was going to accept.

“Don’t rush into anything,” advised Hernández. “Your family’s peace of mind is on the line when you get mixed up with such people. Godínez asked me, but I said no.” He warned off another guard two days afterward; but he was beginning to feel cornered. Before long Miguel Ángel Leal confessed to him that he’d accepted, too, largely because El Chapo had again offered to pay all his son’s medical expenses. Other people were bribed with cash up front.

Puente Grande was abuzz. In the corridors, restrooms, meeting rooms, and visiting areas—places where Cisen had powerful microphones planted—all the talk was of El Chapo’s imminent escape. Yes, but how? And when? And who would be helping him?