Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers (28 page)

Both God and the Devil

Arturo Beltrán Leyva became a top drug baron in his leadership of the Juárez Cartel. In Colombia he developed links with the dangerous drug boss José Vicente Castaño Gil, El Profe. Along with his brother Carlos, El Profe has been identified as a founding leader of
the now-dissolved, far-right paramilitary group, Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, AUC), notorious for drug trafficking, extortion, robbery, kidnapping, and terrorism. This sinister partner of El Barbas is even accused of murdering his own brother in order to keep control of the AUC.

So close was the oldest of the Beltrán Leyva brothers to El Profe that in 1997 he did him the favor of ordering the killing of another trafficker, Raúl Ibarra, who operated in upper Sinaloa state and owed the Colombian $7 million. El Profe may now be leading a third generation of paramilitary groups in Colombia, known as the Águilas Negras (Black Eagles), although some believe he was killed in March 2007.
²⁶

Mexican drug traffickers played an important role for the then all-powerful Colombians. It wasn’t just that they controlled the porous US border. They were also building an extensive and essential distribution and retail network inside the United States. At present the Mexican drug cartels, especially the Sinaloa Cartel, are the only ones able to operate in every part of the US and are seen by the Justice Department as the “single greatest drug trafficking threat.”
²⁷
This predominance of Mexican organized crime inside the US is largely the work of El Barbas—and it greatly increased his standing and power within the Pacific organization.

El Barbas suffers casualties

A number of those who worked most closely for El Barbas in the 1990s have been arrested; others were executed. All those who fell were rapidly replaced. There is no shortage of would-be kingpins among the rank and file of organized crime. Some end up rotting in jail, after being used as cannon fodder. Others, if they’re lucky, get a narco-corrido
²⁸
written about them and become legends, even if they are later extradited. Only a select few acquire immortality; some magically disappear from the most-wanted list and become unrecognizable corpses to be interred in a splendid mausoleum, while in reality they are enjoying their retirement or still operating, without unwelcome attention from the media or the courts. Others again are simply untouchable.

In spite of the official protection given to the Sinaloa Cartel during the presidency of Vicente Fox, one of El Barbas’s deputies, Albino Quintero, was arrested on May 26, 2002 in Veracruz, as he tried to flee from the Mexican army across the roofs around the safe-house where he and his bodyguard had been holed up. In his statement, Quintero said he had enjoyed the protection of the former governor of Quintana Roo state, Mario Villanueva. When he was arrested, one of his guards was Óscar Barrón, a serving member of the judicial police force rebranded as the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI), then under the command of Genaro García Luna. But of course Albino was arrested not as a result of official diligence, but because he was betrayed by his bosses. They’d found out that their efficient deputy had also been working for the Gulf Cartel, an unforgivable treachery.

Federal police commander Rodolfo García Gaxiola, El Chipilón, was executed in May 1998 in Sonora. He too was riding two horses at once. The Carrillo Fuentes organization discovered he was also working for the Arellano Félix brothers. Drug barons don’t like public officials who work for two cartels at the same time, especially if the others are the enemy. No servant can serve two masters well. In exchange for the large sums of money they pay, they expect loyalty and efficiency. On his death, El Chipilón left almost $10 million to his widow.
²⁹
Later, the PGR admitted that one line of investigation into the murder of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio had pointed towards García Gaxiola.
³⁰

In 1997, Rodolfo’s brother and accomplice Filemón García Gaxiola, who also worked for the PGR in Guaymas, was arraigned on charges of helping to transport cocaine from Tapachula in Chiapas to Mexico City, on board a PGR plane. He soon walked free.
³¹
In 1999 another arrest warrant for him was issued, but apparently never used.
³²
In spite of the direct accusations against him, and although the Calderón government knew exactly where he was, it made no move to arrest him. Indeed, in 2008 and 2009, Filemón received substantial funds from the public purse through the program for Agricultural Marketing Services and Support (ASERCA), run by the Secretariat of Agriculture. It is not clear if the former police commander still protects drug traffickers, or continues to combine lawful and unlawful activities as before.

Joel Malacón, a crony of El Barbas’s tame PJF commander Julio Moraila, had the brilliant idea of setting up shrimp and fish farming businesses which, naturally, would be located on the Pacific coast. In Nayarit state he used a prawn culture laboratory as a warehouse for his bosses’ cocaine. Currently, Malacón, who witnesses have accused of extensive participation in shipping drugs for the Pacific Cartel, is the owner of a pisciculture company called Granja Acuícola La Vecina, based in Navolato, Sinaloa.

Malacón is not only free; he receives financial support from the government for his business. One of the drug trade’s most important tasks is moving “dirty money” into clean businesses, which in turn become operational centers. In recent years one way the drug traffickers have sought to place their businesses above board is to receive public funds from central government, mainly through the agriculture and economy secretariats. Malacón is on the executive committee of the Sinaloa State Committee for Aquaculture and Public Health, as a representative for the North Navolato region.

While he continues to go about his business unmolested, Malacón’s family have been the victim of executions. In March 2008, his sister Patricia was shot in Navolato, but survived; her son, Arsenio, was shot dead in October that year in the same area. On September 28, 2009, a hit man shot his brother Jorge, aged fifty-three, in a supermarket car park. The Culiacán papers described him as the “owner of a trucking company.” He was badly wounded. In a second attempt, two days later, they didn’t fail again. Armed men burst into the clinic where he was being treated and shot him dead.

Humberto and Jesús Loya Pérez are also continuing with impunity along their criminal path. They have acquired considerable power in recent years. Allied to El Chapo Guzmán within a cell that includes the boss’s brother, Ernesto Guzmán, they are based in Sinaloa with influence in Sonora, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Michoacán, and Jalisco.

Sergio Fierro Chávez is also at large. In 1999 the front man of his aviation company Aerotonalá, the pilot Jaime Madrid Sánchez, had a close shave after flying a Learjet 24D 1974, with Mexican registration number XA-RMF, from Brownsville to Lexington. In Lexington the DEA, which had been tipped off, found traces of marijuana and a secret
compartment. After a tussle in the district court, Madrid could not prevent the aircraft being embargoed, but he himself got off scot-free.

In 2002 Jaime Madrid was arrested for the execution of nine people, including a woman, in the hamlet of Los Mendoza, in Michoacán state. The media was shocked by this atrocity. The Attorney’s Office of Michoacán discovered that Los Mendoza was one place where locals in the pay of the Sinaloa Cartel would pick up packets of merchandise tossed out of a helicopter. The employees were killed for having tried to keep some for themselves. It was a foretaste of the violence that in years to come would overtake the whole country.

The Federation

Bolstered by Guzmán’s escape from prison, the Sinaloa Cartel soon began to show its strength. This came not only from the government protection it enjoyed, but also from the fact that El Chapo was not alone. He became the chief of an ambitious criminal alliance, known as The Federation, which brought together the main members of Amado Carrillo Fuentes’s old organization.

In October 2001, a historic gathering was held in the city of Cuernavaca and in the capital, which changed forever the rules governing the drug business both inside and outside the cartels. With it, the history of Mexico also changed forever. The choice of Cuernavaca was significant; it had been one of Carrillo Fuentes’s favourite operational locations, as well as his home. And Mexico City, despite the presence there of all the federal authorities, is more popular as a narco rendezvous than one would think.

The idea for the meeting was Guzmán’s, with the support of El Mayo Zambada. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible. It was nine months since El Chapo had left Puente Grande. Just recently, his fixer while in prison, El Chito, had given himself up and taken the blame for the escape, but things were still tense. Calling the meeting had been a titanic effort. Many must have thought it was a trap. What’s more, a climate of suspicion and unspoken discontent prevailed among the group: Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, El Viceroy, who formally had taken over the position of his brother Amado, was not living up to expectations.

More than twenty-five top drug traffickers traveled from all over Mexico to the meeting, in response to the invitation from El Mayo Zambada. If he was the convener, that was because he deserved to be. Among those who came were Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, Vicente Zambada, El Mayo’s son, Ignacio Coronel Villareal, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, and his brother Alfredo, in lieu of El Azul Esparragoza. Armando Valencia Cornelio was also there, along with a representative of the Amezcua organization. They all turned up armed to the teeth. At first the atmosphere was very tense. It seemed like the clock was ticking on a time bomb.

After the death, or disappearance, of Amado Carrillo Fuentes in July 1997, it’s said there was much jostling over who would take over the leadership of his flourishing organization. Vicente Carrillo Leyva, his son, was still too young. Some members thought that Juan José Álvarez Tostado, El Compadre, would make a bid. A discreet money-laundering specialist with the air of a businessman, he was one of Amado’s closest collaborators.

It is also said that in the middle of the succession process, El Mayo and El Compadre clashed over the former’s ambition to lead. El Compadre apparently stopped him short, saying firmly, “You traffic drugs because I let you.” To avoid a bloodbath, Juan José Esparragoza proposed forming a council to run the organization created by Amado Carrillo, which was then one of the most powerful in Latin America. Eventually, command was handed to Vicente Carrillo, El Viceroy.
³³
Everyone accepted the choice, albeit through gritted teeth. El Mayo withdrew to Sinaloa and asserted his control over the state; Amado’s son, Vicente Carrillo Leyva, distanced himself from his uncle, while Arturo Beltrán Leyva asserted his loyalty. The result was that the various cells of the Carrillo Fuentes organization became dispersed and weakened, although they continued to conduct their dirty business very actively.

When El Chapo Guzmán left Puente Grande, his partners were skeptical. Of course, nobody believed the tale about the laundry cart. They were more inclined to think he’d been freed so that the authorities could use him to track and capture the organization’s leaders. El Chapo, from his first hideouts in Nayarit and Quintana Roo, sought out two people: his cousin Arturo Beltrán Leyva, and El Mayo
Zambada.
³⁴
At first, Arturo kept his distance. El Mayo, on the other hand, saw an opportunity finally to take control of the cartel, and was the only one to support Guzmán, including financially.

The main item on the agenda of the historic meeting called by El Chapo and El Mayo in Cuernavaca and the Federal District was the consolidation of the different strands of the Pacific Cartel into one national organization, pooling their separate efforts. Once the drug barons at the meeting agreed to join together, each brought a territory and a payroll of employees, within their organizations and within the government, to put at the service of the new association. The only one who brought nobody was El Chapo. But he brought something better: the support of the federal government. This was the capital he offered the new criminal body.

El Chapo introduced the first point in The Federation’s agreement. He proposed that they eliminate the Arellano Félix brothers, with whom Guzmán had begun a war in the 1990s which he still hadn’t forgotten. In previous epochs, none of the cartels would have dared to declare war on another, nor would any government have allowed it. But the promise of protection for El Chapo and the rich pickings offered by the Tijuana Cartel’s territory led them to tear up the rules and support the war, which would be waged on two fronts: The Federation’s own fight, hand to hand, bullet for bullet, against the Arellano Félixes, and the one the Fox government would fight, using the country’s security forces. During the Fox administration, El Chapo sought the death of his enemies and the fall of their empire with the help of the Mexican government, and the information he had leaked to US agencies while he was in prison.

Rapid results

In the spring of 2002, the Arellano Félix organization began to collapse under the blows to its heart and nervous system. First came the murder of Ramón Arellano Félix, and the arrest of Benjamín Arellano Félix. The former was a matter of destiny, the latter was down to the Fox government’s support for the Sinaloa Cartel. In a short space of time, almost 1,000 employees of the Tijuana Cartel had been arrested, on both sides of the border. The US administration
applauded the Mexican government’s decision to fight the drug gangs, but its reading of events was mistaken. The authorities weren’t fighting the drug trade—just the enemies of The Federation. There are many who think the brilliant idea of creating a drug traffickers’ union came from the DEA, whose agents visited Guzmán in jail to get information from him about the Arellano Félix brothers.