The Fight to Save Juárez (5 page)

When Saulo Reyes became the number two man in the Juárez municipal
police
, many drew the inference that he was an operative of the Juárez cartel. He was leaving the world of business dealings and corporate franchises for a salary of eight hundred dollars a month. The word on the street was that he'd been placed there to be the cartel's moneyman: the Juárez cartel needed someone to manage the protection money that the municipal police picked up on their behalf, as well as to deliver payments to the police who were on the cartel payroll. But Juárez was a world where rumor and innuendo were commonplace, and those swirling about Saulo Reyes remained at the level of abstraction and gossip until his arrest in El Paso.

Saulo Reyes's arrest obviously posed problems for Héctor Murguía, who had his sights set on the Chihuahua governorship for 2010, when the term of the current governor, a man named José Reyes Baeza, was set to expire. In response, Murguía had done everything he could think of to distance himself from Saulo Reyes, blaming his appointment on pressures from Coparmex (despite the fact that from the start the organization had denounced the appointment); describing Saulo Reyes as a man with a compelling CV, “a successful business man who had a master's degree in finance” (suggesting, in other words, that he'd been appointed on the basis of his curriculum vitae, notwithstanding the fact that Saulo Reyes had no law enforcement credentials); or simply writing Saulo Reyes off as but “one of 8,000 employees in my city administration” (as if the man he had appointed second-in-command of the police department were as anonymous to him as an inspector in the sanitation department). In response to one journalist's questions, Murguía even sought to explain Saulo Reyes's behavior as an act of desperation that was perhaps due to his being a father: “Who knows what economic problems [he] might have? He's got a newborn daughter, that's what I know, and a little boy. Just look at this drama! This is a drama!” Murguía had exclaimed unconvincingly at a hastily convened press conference. But Murguía's attempts to distance himself from Saulo Reyes were disingenuous. Reyes had been anything but “one of 8,000 employees.” Murguía and Saulo Reyes had had dealings with one another for several years, and there was no question that Murguía had taken a very personal role in imposing Reyes on the police department, prompting the resignation of fourteen officials, including the chief of police.

The precise unfolding of Saulo Reyes's relationship with the cartel remains unclear. There are those who claim that prior to his appointment to the police department Reyes had simply been a successful businessman. His insider deals with the city were easily rationalized. After all, such arrangements were the bread and butter of local, state, and federal politics in Mexico, where people traded favors, “lent” their names, and profited from family ties and social relationships as a matter of course. Everyone knew that reality. It was part of a business culture that, in the span of a single
political
term, could give some people world-class wealth at the expense of the good of the nation. For decades, if not for centuries, presidents, governors, mayors, and bureaucrats of every variety had used their moment in power for personal gain, ravaging the country in the process.

This kind of corruption has been hard for reformers to break. It is so deeply ingrained in the way institutions work and the expectations that people have of public service at all levels. New legislation requiring increased government transparency was just beginning to alter the ease with which such arrangements could be put into play. Indeed, that new transparency had helped
El Diario
put its story together (for example, a database of companies doing business with municipal and state agencies in Chihuahua was now accessible via Freedom of Information requests). But there was a long way to go before that culture of corruption could be changed.

The traditional structures of corruption had become a convenient and ready-made vehicle through which the cartels worked. They provided the indispensable mechanisms that gave the cartels free reign over ports and highways and airports as well as over broad regions that served as the cartels' staging areas. However, the narco-corruption that emerged from this culture was a different kind of creature—a creature engorged and emboldened by billions of dollars in drug profits, profits that surpassed by a large margin what any legitimate business could ever hope to bring to the timeless game of power and influence.

The people who wrote off Saulo Reyes's rise to economic success as part of the same old game argued that it was only after he took over as director of police operations that he became involved with the Juárez cartel. But the view that he was involved all along was much more plausible. Proponents of this second view argued that Reyes's extensive network of franchises and businesses were far from indications of the young man's entrepreneurial prowess. Rather, they suggested that behind Reyes's success lay the obvious hand of the Juárez cartel: that his businesses were part of the cartel's complex money-laundering network and that it was
that
relationship that “nominated” him for the job as the cartel's trusted moneyman within the police department.

Notwithstanding its size, Juárez is a small town. Mayor Reyes Ferriz knew who Saulo Reyes was and had interacted with him through business organizations such as Coparmex. Ferriz had always felt ill at ease around him. “I never trusted the man,” Reyes Ferriz told me. Reyes Ferriz counted as one of his blessings that he had listened to his instincts when, as the newly elected mayor, he'd made the decision not to renew Saulo Reyes's contract. Instead, he reinstated Guillermo Prieto as police chief, the man who had resigned in January 2007 in protest over the Saulo Reyes appointment.

The Saulo Reyes affair exemplified the kind of corruption and insider
arrangements
that had historically pervaded Mexican government and politics. However, the age-old disease of corruption had gradually evolved, morphing into a more insidious phenomenon, a phenomenon that made drug cartel influence exponentially more powerful and corrosive than anything Mexico had ever known. There were those who would later accuse José Reyes Ferriz of the former vice, that is, of making insider deals, not so much as a matter of personal gain but as a matter of “honoring” the kinds of debts and obligations that come with working one's way to the top in politics. But Reyes Ferriz did not have the taint of the latter vice, the taint of this new creature, a creature so powerful and bold that it was on the verge of bringing a great country to its knees.

C
HAPTER 3

A Meeting in Chihuahua

On January 17, 2008, the day following the arrest of Saulo Reyes in El Paso, a man named Patricio Patiño arrived in Chihuahua City, the state capital of Chihuahua, to confer with the governor and the state's attorney general. Patiño was one of García Luna's men; he was the undersecretary for police strategy and intelligence for the federal police.

Patiño's meeting with the state attorney general, a woman named Patricia González, was shrouded in secrecy and there had been considerable misinformation surrounding it, which only served to stir speculation. All morning, González's office had denied that the meeting was taking place at all. The governor, José Reyes Baeza, claimed that he had no knowledge as to where the meeting would take place, saying only that the state attorney general would announce it “at the opportune moment.” Finally, reporters had been told that the meeting would take place in Juárez, 215 miles to the north, rather than in the capital city. It was all a ruse to minimize media coverage.

Patricia González and Patricio Patiño met in a private dining room at an upscale restaurant near the attorney general's office, which is where reporters tracked them down after they'd been tipped off about the location. As they left the restaurant following the two-hour meeting, the persistent journalists intercepted the officials. Patiño simply told them that he had no comment to make at the moment. González, visibly annoyed at the reporters' presence, offered only a terse statement wrapped in bureaucrat-speak to the effect that the two had discussed “strategy and intelligence issues.” The Chihuahua attorney general did acknowledge that the state was experiencing “an upsurge” in violence between “two organized crime groups,” but when specifically pressed as to whether or not El Chapo Guzmán had operatives in the state of Chihuahua, the attorney general flatly denied that possibility. The two officials were then spirited away by their security detail for a closed-door meeting with governor Reyes Baeza at the Palacio de Gobierno, the state government offices.

The heightened interest in the Patiño meeting had begun two days earlier, following a press conference in which governor Reyes Baeza had stated that
federal
intelligence had alerted him to the possibility of an impending eruption of violence between “two organized crime groups” (the phrase had obviously become the agreed-upon convention for referring to the Juárez and Sinaloa cartels). The impetus for that press release had been a dramatic shootout in Chihuahua City on January 13 in which a brand-new, silver-gray armored Audi, with tinted windows and no license plates, had been traveling at high speed on a freeway called Periférico de la Juventud, prompting a ministerial police patrol car to give chase. The passengers in the Audi had managed to put sufficient distance between themselves and the patrol car in pursuit that they were able to pull to a stop in the center lane and run across the freeway to a nearby upscale shopping mall, where a group of well-armed confederates were waiting. When two ministerial police officers exited their patrol car to give chase, they were cut down by a fusillade of gunfire, leaving them severely wounded.

Several things about the incident were perplexing. Chihuahua had long been a private reserve of the Juárez cartel, and a number of key cartel operatives lived in Chihuahua City. It was well known that the Perférico de la Juventud was patrolled by La Línea, the Juárez cartel's armed wing. This sometimes meant gunmen patrolling in SUVs, but just as often it meant the state ministerial police, who were controlled by the cartel. Inside the Audi the authorities found two AK-47s, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and four cell phones. The scenario suggested that either there was a dispute within the cartel or, alternatively, that another cartel had entered Juárez cartel territory. It was at the press conference he'd called to address this incident that the governor had disclosed the federal intelligence reports in what became the first public statement in the state of Chihuahua about an impending cartel war. Thus, when rumors began circulating about the undersecretary's visit, many assumed that it had something to do with the governor's announcement.

Curiously, neither the governor nor the state attorney general had referred to either the Juárez cartel or the Sinaloa cartel by name in their remarks. José Reyes Ferriz, the mayor of the city most likely to bear the brunt of the prognosticated violence, was not notified of Patiño's visit, much less invited to participate. Neither was Reyes Ferriz later briefed about what had transpired during the meeting. The ordinary chain of command was that mayors did not typically deal directly with federal authorities (other than federal employees who might be stationed in their cities); those contacts were mediated through the offices of state governors. In addition, the Saulo Reyes affair had just broken the day prior to Patiño's visit, and it had already become a significant crisis in Juárez, one that was absorbing the mayor's attention.

Coincidentally, just a week prior to Patiño's arrival in Chihuahua and prior to the Saulo Reyes affair, Reyes Ferriz had formally requested that the
governor
send more state ministerial police to Juárez. Having ended 2007 with a record number of executions, the mayor was concerned about rising crime. It was obvious that Juárez needed reinforcements, and the normal recourse was for the mayor to request assistance from state authorities. However, the response to the mayor's request was anemic at best. He was told that the CIPOL (the crack state police “intelligence” group, which is charged with managing major law enforcement contingencies in the state of Chihuahua) was otherwise occupied in the Sierra Tarahumara, where cattle thefts were rampant. He was further told that “to the extent that it is possible” the state ministerial police would address his concerns. To Reyes Ferriz it was clear that he was getting the brush-off. Tensions were already becoming evident between the Juárez municipal government and the governor and the state attorney general, tensions that would only deepen as Juárez began to veer more definitively toward the abyss.

In an atmosphere defined by Patiño's silence and the equivocation of the state authorities, a lone voice appeared that seemed to have grasped the severity of the present circumstance from within the official posturing and half-statements. Juárez's
El Diario
published an editorial demanding immediate intervention by the federal government: “It is urgent that the words of the Federal Secretary for Public Security be made a reality,” the editorial noted. “As Genaro García Luna said just yesterday: ‘Where crime threatens citizens that is where the federal forces will be, protecting society and confronting the threat.'
”
El Diario
went on to call upon federal and state authorities to “live up to their promises and responsibilities.” There was something desperate in the tone of the editorial; it was an unmistakable plea for help.

.   .   .

Two weeks prior to Patiño's visit, Guillermo Prieto Quintana, the chief of the Juárez municipal police, arrived at the Juárez Police Academy. The academy is housed in a handsome, modern building whose gently curving, three-story entrance is constructed of Chihuahua-quarried, cream-colored cut stone. Tall brass letters and an imposing emblem identify the structure. The police chief was there to participate in a force-wide training due to new judicial reforms that were being instituted with great fanfare throughout the state. After almost a decade of wrangling and foot-dragging, the Mexican congress had finally passed a series of laws that ostensibly paved the way toward greater transparency in judicial proceedings, including oral arguments before judges, and brought to a halt the long-standing practice of corrupt behind-closed-door proceedings. The new guidelines were supposed to mark an end to the presumed-guilty-until-proven-innocent philosophy (a holdover from the days of the Holy Inquisition) that as often as not translated into abusive practices on the part of the police and innocent people languishing in over-crowded and stench-filled prisons.