Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers (41 page)

In July 2009, Lorena’s former boss, Cárdenas Palomino, himself an expert in kidnappings and not precisely because he’d investigated many of them, announced the arrest of one Noé Robles and presented him to the media as a member of the Petriciolet gang, led by Abel Silva Petriciolet, which in reality had been a branch of El Apá’s organization for several years. At the press conference, Cárdenas showed one of his famous videos—many of which were recorded under torture, and have no legal validity—where Robles states that he killed Fernando Martí, and that El Apá and Lorena were not part of the gang.

People close to Alejandro Martí say he obtained permission to speak to Robles in the prison where he was being held.

“Why did you kill my son?” he demanded.

“Because you didn’t pay what we asked for.”

“But I did pay,” said Martí desperately.

“Well, the Federal Police only gave us some of it,” shrugged the hired crook.

On July 20, 2009, Javier Paredes’s chauffeur, who had been kidnapped along with Martí’s friend’s son, declared before the Mexico City authorities that he recognized Noé as the person who had guarded them during their captivity. And he recognized El Apá, without a shadow of a doubt, as the man who had gone to visit them in the safe house during their captivity. He confirmed that both were members of the same gang.

The SSP were feeling cornered. On September 2 they arrested José Jiménez, El Niño, and accused him of belonging to the Beltrán Leyva organization and of taking part in the kidnappings of Fernando Martí and another boy, Marco Antonio Equihua. Later in the month they arrested Abel Silva himself, who also “confessed” to the kidnappings, and declared that neither El Apá nor Lorena were involved. This refrain was no longer credible, and his testimony was soon contested by Alejandro Martí, who was becoming ever more of a nuisance for the SSP. Martí exposed every one of Silva’s contradictory assertions, so that despite García Luna and his cronies’ best efforts, the case against El Apá and La Comandante

Lore was beginning to look solid.

In September 2009 the SSP once more detained George Khouri Layón, El Koki, the yuppie businessman from Polanco who in 2005 had boasted of his connections in both the criminal and police worlds. But the arrest was surreptitious: his friends thought he might have been kidnapped. The SSP was only pre-empting the PGJDF, to prevent the Federal District authorities from questioning him. They announced the arrest in late November, when they accused him of attempting to murder an unspecified member of the force. Later, the PGJDF found witnesses who would link El Koki to El Apá.

The fact is that El Apá and his various kidnapping cells were all part of the same organization, and all have been linked to Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán.

Igor Labastida, Edgar Millán, and Comandante Lore were behind the kidnappings, torture and unimaginable abuse committed against youngsters like Fernando Martí, Marco Antonio Equihua, and numerous others. An internal document from the Mexico City
Attorney’s Office (PGJDF) directly accuses Millán and Labastida of protecting Sergio Ortiz, El Apá.
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Ortiz died in jail in November 2009, of respiratory failure. Two other cells of the organization, as well as El Apá’s sons who have been directly accused by some kidnap victims, remain at large. In January 2013, Comandante Lore was still pleading her innocence in jail. Other arrests have been made. The case continues.

The search for justice has cost Alejandro Martí dearly. It is said he received death threats from the heads of the SSP, before it was dissolved under Peña Nieto. At the time of the kidnapping, the avalanche of mud loosened by the García team’s foul deeds was only just beginning to pour down.

From Monterrey to the Desierto de Leones

After the Valle Hermoso pact, Garay Cadena was sent by García Luna to Nuevo León state, where he began to protect The Federation’s new “friends.” At the time the Public Prosecutors, attached to the PGR, were about to carry out a series of raids on warehouses and homes, and arrest members of the Gulf Cartel they had already identified. Following his new orders, Garay contacted Jaime González, El Hummer, one of Heriberto Lazcano and Miguel Treviño’s main associates, told him what was going to happen, and proposed a deal. The proposal seemed reasonable to the drug trafficker, who told him sort out the details with another Zeta, Sigifredo Talamantes, El Canicón. The PFP commander, with his “triple anti-corruption vetting,” asked El Canicón for a million dollars. Permission was sought from Treviño, El Z40, who agreed, not without misgivings. “Goddam Feds,” thought José Puga Quintanilla, Pitufo, who was working for the Gulf Cartel and would be the one to hand over the bribe.

Pitufo met a representative of Garay’s at the Gonzalitos fire station in Monterrey, and showed him the money. However, his instructions were to give it to nobody but the prosecutor they were meant to be buying off. Z40 had told Pitufo to take advantage of the meeting to fix future deals with Garay as well. But the appointment with the prosecutor, supposedly arranged by Garay, never materialized. The man sent by Commander Garay had to tell Pitufo that in fact there
was no arrangement with the prosecutor, and that his boss was like that sometimes.

El Hummer immediately called Garay, who tried to explain that although the prosecutor had backed out, they should give him and his people the money anyway: they would simply refuse to accompany the prosecutor on his projected raids, and “there’s no way he’s going to arrest anyone on his own.” But El Hummer wasn’t stupid. He ordered El Canicón to fetch Commander Garay from the hotel where he was staying, and take him to Tampico. Garay didn’t want to come out, and ordered his men to resist. Two of them were seized, and tortured to death; the other three were shot dead in the hotel doorway.

El Canicón’s phone soon rang. It was Garay Cadena, quaking in his boots. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t kill me, I only did it because the guys lied to me, they said they were going to raid warehouses and arrest people, but they were really investigating things that didn’t matter,” whimpered the police chief, fully aware that he had tried to cheat the Gulf Cartel by charging for a non-existent favor, and that it had gone badly wrong.

After Millán’s death in May 2008, García Luna made Garay acting commissioner of the PFP. After all, he already knew what the orders were and who was giving them. But the more untouchable Garay felt, the more unruly he became.

After the split in The Federation, Garay received a counter-order from El Chapo Guzmán and El Mayo Zambada’s organization. He had to stop protecting the Gulf Cartel and the Beltrán Leyva brothers, who he’d been dealing with since 2005.

In October 2008, Commissioner Garay Cadena, Senior Commander Edgar Bayardo, and Francisco Navarro, director general of the Federal Support Forces Coordination at the Federal Police, led an operation that covered them in glory, and soon after in shame. It took place in the early hours of October 16, at a mansion in Desierto de los Leones, on the edge of Mexico City. The police chiefs burst into the ornate building—which had its own zoo with white tigers, panthers, gorillas, and lions—during a party organized by their target, the Colombian Harold Poveda, one of the main suppliers of
cocaine to the Beltrán Leyva organization. Poveda got away. The police managed to capture eleven other suspect guests, including Teodoro Fino Restrepo, alias La Gaviota, The Seagull—a Colombian with links to the Valle del Norte Cartel.

On October 19, the under secretary for police strategy and intelligence, Facundo Rosas, announced the “successful” operation. He said it was the result of at least two years’ painstaking intelligence work. Marisela Morales, then head of SIEDO (the specialized organized crime investigations unit) before becoming President Calderón’s last Attorney General, assured the press that this was one of the most important operations carried out in recent times.

Days later, a number of García Luna’s principal aides were exhibited to the press in the same SIEDO office, accused of links with drug traffickers. They included Gerardo Garay, Edgar Bayardo, and Francisco Navarro, as well as Luis Cárdenas Palomino and Mario Arturo Velarde (another veteran member of the inner circle).
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It turned out that the operation in Desierto de los Leones hadn’t been quite as impeccable as was made out. The four days it lasted were an orgy of sex and violence. Thanks to the testimony of two Colombian women arrested, Ángela María Quintero
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and Juliana López, believed to be Poveda’s partner, the truth came out. That night Garay Cadena decided to forget his responsibilities as a lawman; he chose four women from the thirty alleged prostitutes present, ordered cocaine for them and shut himself in the jacuzzi. While that was going on, Bayardo and Navarro tortured several of the men at the party, plunging them in a tub full of ice. After that, they went with other police officers to rob the homes of four of those detained, taking both money and jewellery.
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Eye-witnesses say that during those four outrageous days, Luis Cárdenas Palomino called in on the house, but did nothing to check the abuses. At the end of it all, $500,000 had disappeared from the “war chest” stolen from the drug barons; it seems Garay and Bayardo fought over who was to keep it.

The war of extermination between former members of The Federation turned out to be much more efficient than that of the government, perhaps because it was more deeply felt. The police operation in Desierto de los Leones was not the fruit of patient intelligence work, as Rosas had claimed: it happened because El Chapo
and El Mayo’s camp tipped them off. And the murkiest part of the affair was still to emerge. The following week, in response to the police attack on the Beltrán Leyvas’s friends and suppliers, something happened that would give a sudden new twist to the story of drug trafficking in Mexico.

The king in check

According to the AFI agents, it all began with an anonymous call to the PGR, reporting that at number 430, Calle Wilfrido Massieu, in the San Bartolo Atepehuacán area of Mexico City, they would find armed men from El Mayo Zambada’s group. AFI agents attached to the PGR went to check it out. Nearby they spotted a Volkswagen Polo carrying two men with rifles. When challenged, the car veered into the driveway of the reported address, and more men began to fire from inside the house.

A month earlier, on September 23, 2008, a group of AFI officers had demonstrated in the street against García Luna’s proposal to unify the police forces. As they marched along Reforma, the main avenue in the center of Mexico City, the agents carried banners that read: “Out with corrupt PF commanders from the AFI,” and “Out with Genaro, he favors the bandits.” Far from owning up to the deep reasons for the protest of these men who had been working for him for six years, García Luna insulted them, in many cases unfairly, claiming they didn’t want to submit to trustworthiness tests. He never imagined that the officers would pay back the affront by bringing his pact with El Chapo to the verge of collapse.

In the gunfight in San Bartolo Atepehuacán, the federal agents stood their ground and managed to capture four of the shooters. The others were about to escape when reinforcements arrived from the Mexico City security department, three of whom were wounded. The battle continued for some time.

The drug baron who had his base in that bourgeois neighbourhood was not Ismael El Mayo Zambada but another, almost as sizable, fish: Jesús Zambada, alias El Rey (The King), his younger brother. As we saw, El Rey controlled the capital’s airport for El Mayo and El Chapo’s group. For an hour and a half, as the bullets flew,
nearby residents cowered in their homes. It was impossible to tell the goodies from the baddies. On one side, in the street, were federal agents and Mexico City police officers trying to detain a drug boss; on the other, on the roof of the house, were police officers on the drug trafficker’s payroll, trying to cover his escape.
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El Rey, in despair at the firefight raging around him, sought help. He called Commander Bayardo, who only a few days earlier had been up to his pranks in Desierto de los Leones. “I’ll be right over, godfather,”
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answered Bayardo, giving him to understand that he was riding to the rescue. But time passed, and nothing happened. Terrified that he was about to be captured, El Mayo’s brother called again.

“Where are you, godson? We’re getting screwed to hell, we’re about to be taken by the others,” cried the drug baron, possibly referring to authorities who hadn’t been bribed by them or were answering to the Beltrán Leyvas.

“Hang in there, I’m on my way,” replied Bayardo.

El Rey and his son Jesús, aged twenty-two, were on the roof of the surrounded house. Zambada made another call, this time to the Mexico City security department, and without saying the name of the person he was talking to, begged urgently: “Listen son, you’ve got to send in the
pitufos
,
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because I don’t know if these guys are the others or the government.”

About eight minutes later a detachment of Mexico City police officers did arrive, but because officers from the same force were already in combat on the scene, they could do nothing to help their man. “Call him again, get him to come and help us,” pleaded young Jesús, from behind the water tank. El Rey phoned Bayardo again: “What’s going on, godson? What’s going on?” As a helicopter circled overhead, the drug trafficker, beside himself, told Bayardo: “Okay, you take care of my kids, I’m through, I’m not going to let them catch me, I’ll kill myself first.” El Rey took his pistol and raised it to his head, but his son jumped out from his hiding place and stopped him committing suicide.

In the end, Jesús El Rey Zambada was arrested along with his son, his stepson Richard Arroyo—the son of his Colombian partner, Patricia Guízar—and thirteen other members of the organization.
That same day the PGR issued a news release informing that sixteen people had been arrested. Four of them were being held at the SIEDO, and the others were in medium security detention in the PGJDF building. Neither institution revealed that one of them was Jesús Zambada; instead he was presented under the name Víctor Rosas Montes. Nor did they say that two of his sons had been captured. These hours were precious. As long as the public didn’t know the importance of one of the prisoners, there was still a chance to set him free. It is said that the US government started pressing the Mexicans to reveal that Víctor Rosas was in fact El Rey Zambada, one of the most prolific traffickers of cocaine and methamphetamine from South America.