The Beast (15 page)

“What dues?” I ask.

“This all comes from way up, all the way from the northern
border in Tamaulipas. There’s someone by the name of El Abuelo up there. He’s the guy who controls all the
polleros
passing through his turf. I know he’s in business with Los Zetas. He pays some sort of tax so that his
polleros
can work here, down south. And Los Zetas have people to make sure that whoever isn’t paying isn’t getting through.”

“And the kidnappings?”

A migrant comes over to us, and picks up his backpack, which sits on our table. Ismael looks at him out of the corner of his eye. He waits to respond until the man leaves.

“It started as something against the
polleros
who didn’t pay. They’d take away their
pollitos
, their little chicks, and since they already had them in their hands they figured they’d go ahead and get a ransom from their families in the US through a fast deposit from Western Union. And then it got to be a habit. They started picking up any migrant who walked alone.”

“When did all this start?”

“We started recording victims’ testimonies in the middle of 2007.”

At the end of the conversation Ismael tells me that
polleros
often pass by the shelter. “They can give you more details,” he says.

The sun begins setting, everything dimming to orange by the time a
pollero
shows up. Ismael points him out to me. He keeps them in check and knows their every movement, but says that he can’t introduce him to me. A relationship between migrant shelter workers and
polleros
would look very suspicious. Instead he gets someone else to introduce us.

“So, you’re a journalist?” the
pollero
asks.

“Yeah, and I know you were kidnapped by Los Zetas six months ago in Tierra Blanca. I just want you to tell me a bit about it. You don’t have to give me your name.”

With a sideways nod he signals me over to a mango tree. The tree is some twenty yards from the rails, across a wire fence in a large empty wasteland lot. We jump the fence and sit beneath the tree.

“Nowadays I only lead people through the Tapachula route [on the Pacific coast], because Los Zetas are on the other side and they already got me once.”

“That’s what I want to talk about.”

“Yeah, well, one has to have a sort of boss up in El Norte so that they can let Los Zetas know that you’re okay, that no one should touch you, but that time my cell wasn’t charged so I couldn’t make the call to my boss, which is when they ganged up on me and hauled me into their car. I was guiding six people. They asked me who I worked for. I told them, but they didn’t believe me. Then they tortured me, burning my back with cigarettes.”

When he’s sure no one’s watching, he lifts his dirtied white shirt as if to say, here’s the evidence. I see six round scars.

“What happened after they tortured you?”

“They asked for money. I had to cough up because if I didn’t they’d take away my migrants. I knew those people, we were close. They were two Guatemalans and four Salvadorans from Santa Ana. If I didn’t pay, I knew they’d kidnap and torture them. Anyone who says they don’t have anyone in the States to send money gets burned. I know people who’ve had fingers and ears cut off. And plenty of them just get killed.”

“And how do you know it was them?”

“People say it’s not them. They say they’re gangs of nobodies, just delinquents who work for them. The real Zetas control these guys from the northern border.”

The
pollero
says he found out how this all works in January. If it’s true, then he and the US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs found out at about the same time. The bureau’s report, published that same month, stated that Los Zetas charge
polleros
for the use of their turf.

“And your boss, what would he have done had you been able to call him?”

“He would’ve paid to get everyone released.”

“And these bosses are in contact with Los Zetas, with the infamous El Abuelo?”

“I’ve heard people talk about him. He’s in control of the Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa turfs. He’s one of the ones that pay the tax. But there are other big guys like that—El Borrado, Don Tono, Fidel. You risk a lot as a
pollero
. Because if the boss doesn’t let everyone know that you’re going, then everything gets thrown your way and you’re fucked. They kidnap you, maybe even kill you. There’s been a lot of murders. One guy got killed in Coatzacoalcos, and another in Rigo and another in some place called Las Anonas. The ones in charge of oversight go by train, many are Central American. The one who gave me away was Honduran. He got on the train at Medias Aguas.”

“How does it work? How much does the boss have to pay?”

“He pays 10,000 dollars a month and he has to let everyone know that you work for him and how many ‘chicks’ you have with you. Then no one can touch you. This all started last year, first in Coatzacoalcos, and then they took over Tierra Blanca in the beginning of January because they know that that’s where the two routes merge.”

He’s referring to the two main railways, the one that borders the Atlantic coast and the one that goes upcountry, closer to the Pacific.

The
pollero
is nervous. He smiles, purses his lips, smiles again. He doesn’t stop moving his hands and feet. A lot of
polleros
are addicted to cocaine, amphetamines, or caffeine pills that they use to stay awake through the night.

“What about the police?”

“They’re all connected! That time they got me there were police watching and they didn’t do a thing. After that I’ll never work for anyone. That’s why I don’t guide people anymore. Because if they see me again, I know I’m dead.”

COATZACOALCOS

Having arrived on the same train that brought Arturo and José from Tenosique, about twenty-five undocumented migrants are
inside the church hostel. Most of them are resting on cots. Some of them are washing clothes. A few are sitting with their gaze fixed on nothing. They look worn out. At ten in the morning there were fifteen people picked up by Migration who are now on their way to being deported.

We’re in an industrial zone, one of those places that seem half factory and half town, not quite what you would call a city. There’s one main drag, a partly dirt road, that’s flanked on both sides by industrial warehouses. There are almost 300,000 people living here, mostly in narrow rows of wood-and-tarp shacks that run alongside the train tracks.

The word
Coatzacoalcos
comes from the Nahuatl, an indigenous language of Mexico, and means The Snake Den.

After an entire night riding the train, the newly arrived migrants do what they do at every stopping point: they ask and they listen. And what they hear today, news from a Honduran man, convinces them all to register their names at the hostel. “This morning,” the Honduran tells the crowd, “fifteen people were held up at gunpoint in front of a house just down the way.”

It’s typical. Eduardo Ortiz, from NCHR, explains: “At least ten people a day give themselves up to Migration authorities here.”

After a night of shootings, kidnappings, murder, white trucks and car chases, the migrants realize that they’ve arrived at what may be the worst leg of the journey. And yet from Coatzacoalcos they still have to get through Tierra Blanca, Orizaba, and Lechería.

A group huddles in the bunkroom to talk about the kidnappings. Some of them have tales to tell and others are just listening, imagining what may be in store. The Honduran is talking to Pedro, who’s also Honduran and is resting in his bunk. The first man talks of a friend who was kidnapped. Pedro looks visibly distressed, and then goes on to tell his own story.

He says that it all started here in Coatzacoalcos, in a house along the tracks. The ambush was well-orchestrated, he explains. He says he’ll have to keep on heading north; he doesn’t have any other option. He insists that anybody
who has family in the United States should never admit it. To anybody. Ever.

“There was this woman named Mother,” Pedro says. “She was the coyote. She charged 2,500 dollars to get you across the border. Everything seemed good, all the way to Reynosa. But that’s where they kidnapped me. They threatened me with a pistol and smacked me around. I’m pretty sure they were Zetas. They took the 800 dollars I had on me and got 2,500 from my wife. Then, after a month and eighteen days, they finally let me go. And the police,” Pedro concludes, “were working with them.” He lies back on his cot and settles into silence.

There are some places where the fear is so thick you breathe it. For a migrant, Coatzacoalcos is one of those places. The stories tumble over each other:

“They kidnapped me on my last try.”

“I escaped from a kidnapping yesterday.”

“Three months ago I saw two women being grabbed.”

Just this morning, among a group of ten migrants waiting in the shelter, seven of them had stories of either being kidnapped or knowing someone who had been kidnapped.

I tell Ortiz, of NCHR, that right in front of us there are loads of kidnapping victims; that people are getting kidnapped blocks from his office, right where the train rails snake through town. But he’s not surprised. Kidnappings are his daily bread.

“The scope of the criminal gangs,” he explains, “has increased by about 200 percent. We have many reports saying that their modus operandi is the same here as in Tierra Blanca. Each kidnapper covers about fifteen ransoms. Which makes me think that the money wiring companies must know [based on the number of wires a single person receives] who they’re dealing with. We have trustworthy reports that municipal police have detained migrants and handed them over to the kidnappers.”

“I have three testimonies,” I tell him, “where someone who was kidnapped claims that another from his group who managed
to escape came back after having been beaten, saying that he went to the local police to report the crime. And the police, instead of investigating, sent him straight back to the kidnappers.”

“Yes,” Ortiz responds, “it’s not that we don’t know about these cases. We know that the migrants get delivered. We haven’t heard about exactly this type of situation, but we know that the police are involved, that there is co-participation. We’ve had meetings with the Municipal President of Tierra Blanca, along with the of Salvadorean and Honduran Consulates in Veracruz, and an INM [National Institute of Migration] delegation. Usually the officials claim that what’s going on is not going on, and get uncomfortable when we start talking about kidnappings. Actually, only a month after they denied the abundance of kidnappings, the army stepped in and rescued twenty-eight victims. In the last few months everything has been happening in the light of day, with or without the presence of authorities. There are migrants who have told us: ‘The army patrols were passing by. They turned and saw that we were being held on the ground at gunpoint. And they kept on going.’

“It’s no joke. There are cases of one hundred people being held in a single house. All the neighbors know what’s going on, but nobody says anything. Nothing happens and nothing is going to keep happening to those who are passing through, because nobody claims to hear anything.”

Erving Ortiz (no relation to Eduardo), the Salvadoran consul, denounced this past August of 2008 that there are “about forty undocumented migrants kidnapped every week” in the state of Veracruz. He made the claim after the army rescued the twenty-eight victims in Coatzacoalcos. And this time the most influential newspapers in the country,
Reforma
and
El Universal
, picked up the story.

I try for the tenth time to contact Alfredo Osorio, the municipal president of Tierra Blanca, but he doesn’t answer my call. His secretary, Rafael Pérez, after promising me a few minutes on the
phone, doesn’t pick up either. In the mayor’s office another secretary answers, and tells me that both Pérez and Osorio will be away all week. I call the press secretary at INM and they feed me more of the same, that they’re looking for the right person to answer my questions. I reach another of Osorio’s secretaries who tells me that the best person to talk with at INM (though I never learn this person’s name) is out of the office and will be for another few days. When pressed they say that they don’t know when he’ll be returning.

Meanwhile, just down the street from these same offices, the kidnappings continue. It’s so well-known, I figure, that there’s no way that if I finally did get an official on the phone they’d be able to answer me without a resounding yes. And with that yes they would be admitting that migrants are being systematically kidnapped just outside of their offices. Which is why, I figure, they don’t pick up their phones.

On April 4, 2008, the head of INM, Cecilia Romero, along with the secretary of the interior, Juan Camilo Mouriño,
²
received a forty-page document titled “Kidnappings and Organized Crime.” The document contained a detailed account of what was occurring nationwide, along with three personal testimonies of victims. It was sent out by Leticia Gutiérrez, director of the Pastoral Dimension of Human Mobility, a Catholic organization that runs thirty-five migrant shelters across the country, including in the cities of Tierra Blanca, Coatzacoalcos, and Reynosa. But neither Romero nor Mouriño ever responded.

The upspoken question becomes evident. How is it possible that the kidnappings are still happening when the local governments, the countries of origin, the media, the Mexican government, and the US government all know exactly what’s going on?

The NCHR continues to document cases and, about once a year,
publishes recommendations and files official complaints calling for action. And the data are specific: these government agents, of this agency, on this date, in front of these witnesses, committed this violation of human rights. But it’s almost impossible to file complaints of omission—that, for example, a government patrol passed the scene of an in-process kidnapping without lifting a finger. And the smattering of migrants who, out of legitimate fear, are willing to stick around to file a complaint cannot help prove what the government did
not
do.