Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers (40 page)

The warnings were explicit. At the end of May 2008, a banner appeared in Culiacán with a chilling message on it: “
THIS IS FOR YOU AGUILAR PADILLA [THE STATE GOVERNOR], EITHER YOU MAKE AN ARRANGEMENT OR I’LL ARRANGE YOU. THIS WHOLE GOVERNMENT WORKING FOR EL CHAPO AND EL MAYO IS GOING TO DIE.”
A few days earlier, the governor had already received an anonymous phone call
falsely claiming that one of his sons had been murdered. Arturo Beltrán Leyva began to leave dozens of banners in the streets of Culiacán that became a sort of criminal mural newspaper: “
LITTLE LEAD SOLDIERS AND STRAW POLICEMEN, THIS TERRITORY BELONGS TO ARTURO BELTRÁN.”
No one does more certain damage than a friend who becomes a foe. The fight between El Chapo and El Barbas was to the death. In this battle of titans, the first victims were from García Luna’s ranks. They began to fall like flies, dead or captured.

García Luna’s casualties

The first of García’s men to fall was Roberto Velasco, a recent appointee to the Federal Police who had previously worked in a department store. On the afternoon of May 1, 2008, he was returning to his home in the Irrigación district of Mexico City. Close to the house, two men intercepted his vehicle and shot him three times in the head. He died a few hours later. The US embassy in Mexico was quick to condemn the “brutal” murder, and paid tribute to Velasco for his “outstanding work in the front line of the battle against drug trafficking.” The truth is he had a bad reputation, and was accused by several people of links with the drug business.

That same day, Francisco Hernández, who had just been moved from Cancún to a new post as deputy representative of the AFI in Victoria, Tamaulipas, was kidnapped by a group of heavily armed men in AFI uniforms. The following day his body was found dumped outside a stadium in Culiacán, on the other side of the country. However, by a bureaucratic mix-up not uncommon in Mexico, the body was handed over to the wrong family. Since his own family and the authorities continued to search for him, seven days later someone hung a banner on the stadium railings which read: “
STOP LOOKING FOR ME IN TAMAULIPAS, BECAUSE I WAS BETRAYED AND KILLED OUTSIDE THE BANORTE STADIUM IN CULIACÁN ON MAY 2.”

For at least a year, Hernández had been working for The Federation enabling planes full of drugs or money to land at Cancún international airport. His second-in-command, José Luis Soledana, another García Luna man, had already been murdered in November 2007.

The third member of García’s team to be murdered was Aristeo Gómez, aged thirty-four. On May 2, 2008, he was talking to a woman colleague in a parked vehicle in the Romero de Terreros neigh borhood of Mexico City, when two men pulled him out of the car and tried to force him into a van. His companion moved to intervene but they warned her off, shouting, “The problem isn’t with you!” When Aristeo resisted, they shot him at point-blank range.

The fourth to die was Commander Igor Labastida. On June 26, 2008, he was shot down in a cheap diner near the AFI offices where he still worked, even though by then he was employed in the Federal Preventive Police. A lone assassin emptied two weapons, a 9mm Uzi and a .380 caliber, into him and his bodyguard. Outside the restaurant Labastida’s Cadillac was parked with $1 million in the trunk, according to unofficial information from the Defense Secretariat.

The previous month, Labastida, who was then director of Traffic and Contraband at the PFP, revealed a delicate secret to an attorney friend in Nuevo León: he was trying to contact the US authorities with a view to becoming a protected witness, and revealing all he knew about the corruption in the AFI and the SSP. He was the one who had complained that García Luna and Cárdenas Palomino gave him all the dirty work.
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The two Edgars

Hardest of all for García Luna, however, was an earlier killing. At dawn on May 8, at 132 Camelia Street, in a densely populated and notorious part of Mexico City called Tepito, nine shots felled Edgar Millán, García Luna’s close friend and one of his most trusted and powerful subordinates. As well as being reputedly among the most highly trained and educated of the commanders, Millán had specialized as a police observer for United Nations missions, and was the SSP’s contact person with the US Government for the exchange of sensitive information. Days earlier he had been the target of an attack at Federal Police headquarters by a sniper with poor aim. His death
was a shocker. Millán was ranked third in the hierarchy of the SSP, behind Secretary García Luna and Under Secretary for Police Intelligence Facundo Rosas.

In Tepito, where he was killed, Millán had been a familiar figure ever since his family moved there ten years earlier. Camelia is one of the most dangerous streets in the area, because of the amount of drug peddling that takes place there. It’s said there is a small store where they sell drugs right in front of the building where Millán’s parents owned several apartments.
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A few doors further down is a well-known brothel. The federal police commissioner, however, was very respectful towards his dodgy neighbors, and his frequent presence did nothing to deter them from lawlessness.

Everyone made it their job to turn Commander Millán into a hero. In his public tribute, Calderón declared: “The Mexican government expresses its profound grief at the cowardly murder of an exemplary official like Edgar Millán, who was committed to keeping Mexican families safe.” García Luna lamented the death of his friend and colleague in rousing terms: “The country has lost one of its most valiant men, a true professional at the service of the nation.… Rest in peace, Edgar Millán, with the honor of knowing you did your duty.”

The death of Edgar Millán was treated like an occasion for national mourning. The US ambassador himself, Tony Garza, joined the emotive chorus:

I am deeply saddened by the murder of Edgar Millán Gómez, Coordinator of Regional Security at the Preventive Federal Police. Struck down by criminals in the prime of his life, Mr. Millán was an example of the highest professional standards and a broad dedication to public service.… Mexico has lost another hero. Another life has been lost, and this is a cause of indignation to all of us who admire and respect the thousands of officials who selflessly devote their lives to the betterment of their country.

Judging by what the authorities said of Millán, it seemed that all the negative reports about him, all the accusations of corruption and complicity with criminals, were nothing but idle gossip. Now the
press room in the SSP headquarters bears the name of Edgar Eusebio Millán, following the example of the DEA in calling its El Paso building after the agent killed in 1985, Enrique Camarena.

Also on May 8, 2008, at 8 p.m. in the parking lot of the Culiacán’s City Club shopping mall, a barrage of AK-47 rifles and a bazooka riddled dozens of vehicles, according to press reports, and killed Edgar Guzmán López—the twenty-two-year-old son of El Chapo and Griselda López. With him died Arturo Meza Cázares, the son of Blanca Cázares, known as The Empress, who handled finances for El Mayo Zambada.

The body of the apprentice drug baron lay face down on the tarmac, covered in blood, outside the Bridgestone Tyre Center. A month later an iron cross was erected on that spot, above a stone plinth with the inscription: “We will always love you.” El Chapo Guzmán’s pain was real, and ran deep. He was certain that Arturo Beltrán had ordered his son’s killing as revenge.

The US government was growing increasingly alarmed at the violence in Mexico. It feared the gangs might start targeting members of President Calderón’s cabinet. Within weeks, those fears would become reality. Meanwhile, the paranoia at the SSP intensified. They had upset a lot of people.

The narco-hero

On May 9, 2008, six federal policemen dressed in navy blue carried the weighty casket of Edgar Millán past the luxurious SSP offices on Mexico City’s Avenida Constituyentes. The casket was draped in the national flag, for a hero’s send-off. President Felipe Calderón, Genaro García Luna, Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño, Defense Secretary Guillermo Galván, Navy Secretary Mariano Saynez, and Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora, lined up in a guard of honor for the fallen commander. This image will be remembered as one of the most emblematic of what was really going on in the “war on drugs” launched by the Mexican government, this theater where nothing is what it seems. The true story of Edgar Millán is a far cry from all those honors bestowed at his death.

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Back in June 2007, Arturo Beltrán Leyva had summoned two senior SSP officials to receive their instructions. The meeting took place at one of his houses in Cuernavaca, where he spent most of his time. He asked his brother Alfredo to join them. The purpose of the meeting was to inform the federal police chiefs of the conciliatory agreements reached between The Federation and the Gulf Cartel. Joaquín Guzmán and his partners had a new brief for the SSP: they were to stop arresting members of the Gulf Cartel, and instead give them the same protection already being provided to themselves.

Arturo Beltrán Leyva recorded the whole meeting on audio and video. On the tapes you can clearly see the faces of Edgar Millán, who at the time was acting commissioner of the Preventive Federal Police (PFP) and general coordinator of regional security, and Gerardo Garay Cadena, the supervisory chief of the central region of the PFP. According to the SSP, Garay had “triple anti-corruption credentials,” having been vetted by the DEA, the FBI, and the SSP (in the form of the PFP) itself. This account is contained in the sworn statement of a protected witness, José Puga, who the PGR gave the code name of Pitufo.
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Neither Millán nor Garay were aware of El Barbas’s habit of photographing and recording his meetings with government officials, which went back to 2005. Millán, Garay, and Igor Labastida all appear receiving bribes in a number of such recordings, according to Pitufo. The tapes were made, he said, so that if the officials ever went back on their agreements, they could be shown to the media.

Later in 2007, the recordings of Millán and Garay negotiating with members of The Federation fell into the hands of Los Zetas. In fact they were given to Miguel Treviño, El Z40, by Arturo Beltrán himself, as proof that they had already told the SSP to lay off the Gulf Cartel.

Everything indicates that Millán was not killed for his valiant stand against the drugs trade, but because he betrayed the drug barons he had been protecting, and from whom he had presumably received millions of dollars in bribes for himself, his colleagues, and his superiors. It was he who was in charge of the Federal Police when the operation was mounted to capture Alfredo Beltrán, in January 2008.

But Millán’s was not the only corpse that now disturbed García Luna and his team. On July 31, in a car trunk in the south of Mexico City, they found the lifeless body of a fourteen-year-old named Fernando Martí. The boy had been snatched a few weeks before.

Crime and punishment

By 2007, Mexico City’s fearsome kidnapper, Sergio Ortiz, El Apá, was once more on the job. He sent the family of one kidnapped woman a video of the moment when she was being sexually abused. Then, as proof of life, he sent them her ears. And once the $5-million ransom had been paid, the only thing the family got back was her head. Emboldened by the protection he apparently received from the AFI during Vicente Fox’s government, Ortiz now decided to look for bigger fish.

To this end, El Apá became interested in a group of businessmen who liked to race cars. During the week they’d meet at the Hermanos Rodríguez circuit and show off their ability to drive very expensive sports cars, very fast. Among the habitués of these get-togethers were the main proprietor of Televisa, Emilio Azcárraga, the owner of a sports chain, Alejandro Martí, and his friend, Óscar Paredes. Early in 2008 El Apá kidnapped Óscar’s son, Javier Paredes. Months after, he kidnapped Alejandro’s son, Fernando Martí.
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Javier was freed after a sum of millions of dollars was paid; Fernando was murdered, even though his father had paid the ransom. But the matter of the boy soon became a nightmare for El Apá, García Luna, and his crooked team.

The grief and indignation of Alejandro Martí was contagious. Mexican public opinion was moved as seldom before. The PGJDF arrested El Apá in September 2008. At almost the same time, they arrested a woman called Lorena González, who had been named in previous investigations as an active accomplice of El Apá and the La Flor group. They accused her of being a member of the gang, and of putting up a roadblock with AFI signs on it to facilitate the kidnapping of Fernando. The boy’s chauffeur identified González by sight.

Lorena González was no ordinary kidnapper. In fact, she was the deputy head of the Federal Police’s anti-kidnapping unit when she
set up that roadblock, and was still in the post the day she was arrested.
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Her bosses were Luis Cárdenas Palomino and Facundo Rosas, and she was so close to their cabal that she was a regular guest at their select parties. After she was arrested, the SSP tried to wash its hands of her. Rosas announced that she had worked in the AFI, but never in the Secretariat. García Luna said the same, incriminating himself even further. It was untrue. Thus a war began between the SSP and the PGJDF.

From prison, González sent greetings and a message to her pals in the Secretariat: either they got her off the hook, or she would tell everything. García’s team jumped to it, but they were working against the clock. They had at all costs to separate El Apá and González from the case of Fernando Martí. But the deputy head of the anti-kidnapping unit was in a tight spot. Back in 2007, an accomplice of El Apá’s gang had testified to the PGJDF that Lorena—La Comandante Lore, as she was known—and another federal officer, Gerardo Colín Reyes, El Colín, had been in the gang since the time of the Fox administration, when both of them were serving in the AFI. The witness stated that they had not only provided protection, but had taken active part in the kidnappings. However, as the case was turned over to the Federal Police’s Department of Kidnappings and Theft, where La Comandante was section head, naturally the investigations went nowhere.