And also El [Chucho] killed a person, but I did not see who. It was the case that among them I recognized several, since I knew them, because we were from the same municipality of Allende, Coahuila, where I live.- Declaration of Zetas member Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014. An important moment seems to have come in March 2015, when state investigatorssaw a familiar patternemerge in three seemingly unrelated cases. And he was waiting for his brother-in-law [Later,] he told me that they spent the entire night looking for his family; that he had entered the ranch from the back through an opening, and that he realized that he was alone in the ranch house, and that he was there with the expectation that they were holding his sister and his niece and nephews all with the last name Espinoza Garza, who on the day of the acts were seven months, three years, and six years of age.- Complaint of Sarah Angelita Lira, November 11, 2014. [H]e was telling me that he wanted to look for the Zetas to see what they were asking for the return of his family. Gunmen Storm Wake in Mexico, Killing at Least Nine At the same time, President Lpez Obradors desire to weaken or abolish the institution charged with guaranteeing those rights, INAI, represents a looming threat to human rights transparency in Mexico. Herrera said he knew many of the victims as well. And each estaca is made up of four assassins, but there were trucks that brought more people in the trailers. He gets up into the truck and with his hand he says goodbye leaving his suitcase there at the house because he was supposedly going to come back. That we would turn a blind eye. . According to testimony, Vasquez did so because he and other Los Zetas wanted the father to suffer. The National Security Archive marks this grim anniversary by publishing an extensive evidentiary history of the Allende massacre focusing on key documents and testimony from a 4,000-page dossier of investigative records that prosecutors in the state of Coahuila only began to compile almost three years after the fact. How DEA Informers Sparked a Massacre in Mexico - The Daily Beast Horrifying Allende massacre still haunts Mexico. With the help of these same police, we put them in the patrol vehicle. The truth is I accepted them, one said of the payments, because I needed to take care of my family, and also because they told us that we had to enter the ring, because if we didnt, they were going to harm us, or kill us or someone from our family. He explained why, after16 years on the force, he finally quit the Allende police late in 2011. He said that this was an injustice, since he was just a little boy. At that moment, I also realized that near a large bodega that was about 70 meters away from where I was there were various people from the town, who the Zetas were shouting at and mistreating, and who I knew because they were from the [deleted] family. Victim associations report about 300 people dead or missing from the Allende massacre. [4] The thinking behind the special exception measure is simple: Human rights crimes affect both the immediate victims and society as a whole, and in such cases there is a society-wide interest in full transparency to ensure that such grave abuses do not reoccur. Jimnez told authorities that local Zetas leaders sent him to the ranch as part of an all-out assault on people and properties associated with the Garza family. 92110 United States [email protected] +1 619-260-2299. The town's mayor believes 30 to 40 Allende families were exterminated, and he has a list of 34 houses that were destroyed. And when I finished tying him up, I put him in the back of the truck, and there were already bodies in the trunk.- Declaration of Zetas member, September 19, 2014. The plan, he said, was to kidnap and kill everyone. When more Zetas and various patrols of the municipal police arrived later they knocked down the main gate of the Garza ranch by ramming it with a truck, according to Jimnez. Thompson later turned the original report into amulti-episode podcast. Mexican cartel war transforms Guanajuato into a deadly place - Los The Zetas organizational structure includes counterintelligence, intelligence and tactical enforcement units.. He said that Los Zetas commanders then forced him and another Zeta, who he identified as Chucho, to kill two of the hostages, including Everardo Elizondo, the ranch hand who had stopped by the ranch to prepare for the cockfight. A fire department volunteer said he also saw many familiar faces among the victims, the Zetas, and the police officials gathered there. Beginning as a group of deserters from an elite unit of the armed forces at the service of the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas would go on to become one of the most powerful and feared cartels in Mexico before infighting and the loss of leaders started the organization's decline. Following the title sequence is a short paragraph introducing the story of Allende, a Mexican border town unexpectedly overtaken by a powerful drug cartel that . They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. Many thousands disappeared in Mexico's drug war. So I left the ranch in my truck and went home, and since that date I dont know anything about what happened to my husband.- Declaration of wife of heavy machinery mechanic for Rodolfo Garza, July 23, 2014. Allende is a small town southwest of Piedras Negras, Mexico and is the site of a massacre by the drug cartel, Los Zetas. December 9, 2020, Six Years On, Ayotzinapa Investigations Advance The perilous path Central American migrants take while traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S. border has been an area of . They watched as gang members led their victims into a larger shed near the back. And there were approximately from seven to ten people that we tied up with rats tails. That is to say, to transfer them to the Los ngeles Cemetery of this city and later to the ranch of the [deleted] to finish them off. Prior to 1832 the settlement was known as San Juan de Mata.. Los Zetas Massacre. Later we took these people to the Garza ranch where we put them in the same house where we had the others. Lpez said he knew all of the municipal police very well, owing to the fact that there was a lot of contact with them.[14], Upon seeing all of those police, I realized that they were keeping watch or guarding the place. And outside the house there were four people with long arms who were dressed in black and had on bulletproof vests. When they did not return or respond to phone calls, their wives became concerned. Inside the gate, a small building was burning. They are included here in brackets. I recall that he was light-skinned, thin, of medium height, around 20 or 25 years of age, and they brought him in with his hands and feet tied up and with his face covered with tape.- Declaration of Zetas safe house guard, part 2, March 2, 2016, After a few days, he said, members of Los Zetas came and took him away in the bed of a pick-up truck, adding that he heard that they were going to turn him into roast beef, which is to say, that they were going to cook him.. How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico ProPublica The Seminar on Violence of the Colegio de Mxico had access to many of these files in preparing its groundbreaking reports on Allende and a second report on how the Zetas gained control of authority structures in Coahuila, including the state prison in Piedras Negras. Netflix's 'Somos.' gives a human face to unspeakable tragedy We continued to advance until we arrived at the ranch, where I saw that there were several police patrols from this city, colored white and blue, and a number of police, among others I remember [deleted], [Mara Guadalupe Avalos,] [deleted,] the director And it seemed like the police were guarding the place. Yesterday I heard machine guns right outside my door on Independencia. [7] GAFE stands for Grupo Aeromvil de Fuerzas Especiales (Airmobile Special Forces Group). Washington, D.C., March 18, 2021 - Ten years ago, the Mexican municipality of Allende was the site of one of the worst human rights atrocities ever seen in the country: a three-day wave of violence in which the criminal group known as Los Zetas kidnapped, murdered, and later burned the bodies of an estimated 300 . [3] Some portions of these files have been excerpted elsewhere, including in reports from the CNDH and the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), which cites many of these same records. One former Allende police official interviewed during the investigation described how the payments were made. Access request to Mexicos National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH), Freedom of Information Act request to DEA. The story of the Allende Massacre from the words of eye witnesses Washington, D.C., 20037, Phone: 202/994-7000 There was also a man by the name of [Everardo Elizondo,] who raised fighting cocks, and [Csar Alfonso Garca Ramrez] And how the people from the Zetas were shouting, hitting and mistreating these people!-Declaration of Allende volunteer firefighter Luis Gerardo Herrera Estrada, November 23, 2014, The chief of the fire department, Christian Alejandro Lpez Tamez, told investigators in a revised statement that, just like his colleagues, he was able to identify many of the faces he saw there, including the director and other top officials from the Allende police department. And after that I left.- Complaint of Hctor Reynaldo Prez Iruegas, May 25, 2011. And once they had killed the people, between [Chucho] and I we began to spray the diesel and the gasoline all around the house and the bodega with the bodies inside After this, we set fire with the help of diesel and gasoline to the bodega with all those dead people inside, and we were there for many hours until we cooked all the people, and with so much fire that it melted the roof of the bodega.- Declaration of Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014, El Canelo admitted to having helped burn the body of at least one victim. A fire department volunteer described the scene as they approached. Descendants of 1918 Porvenir Massacre Fight For Recognition - Time And this began to occur more or less in the years 2010 and 2011, which was about when Los Zetas got started in the region.- Declaration of former Allende police official, November 12, 2014, 15:20. First published on Wed 6 Nov 2019 16.31 EST. The soldiers found doors torn off, the building sacked, spent shell casings, dead animals, burned buildings, and a pick-up truck riddled with bullet holes, but no people. You know who they are., Still other witnesses said that they saw Lozano standing calmly outside his house on the night of March 20 talking on a mobile phone while the Zetas sacked a house across the street. Remembering the Allende Massacre - BlogTest And out of fear that they would do something to me if I disobeyed orders, I had to kill a person, that being Everardo Elizondo, who was about 30 or 35 years old, to whom I gave a shot in the head. I dont know who those people were, just that they were people that the police detained or his own people that he ordered be locked up when they handled themselves badly, or people with whom he had a disagreement [tuviera pedos]. How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico - Magazine [W]e all went in shooting and tied up all the people that were found inside the ranch. As ocurri la brutal y olvidada masacre de Allende - BBC News Mundo Seven people are gunned down at a streetside taco stand. ProPublica and National Geographic set out to piece together how the U.S. contributed to a massacre executed by a drug cartel in Allende, Mexico. When Garcas wife drove past the Garza ranch the next morning she spotted a group of hooded, armed men inside while Allende police stood watch outside the entrance. How the U.s. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico Police witnesses described a variety of illegal activities they facilitated for the Zetasfrom the most shocking to the most mundanein exchange for relatively modest bribes. By Theodore Bunker | Friday, 06 August 2021 02:11 PM EDT. But a2017 investigation by Ginger Thompson of ProPublicafound that Cuellar and Junior weretargeted for another reason: Los Zetas leaders had discovered that members of Cuellars cell were cooperating with agents of the DEA and had provided them with secret PIN codes allowing the DEA to track the mobile phones of top Zetas leaders.