"Notes on the Violence in Sinaloa, Mexico" by Magali Tercero

For two weeks I sensed violence as an invisible force. I only experienced one act of direct intimidation: a thirty-something, ultra-well-dressed woman with five-centimeter nails adorned with precious stones barged into me in an OXXO grocery store while I was paying. I look her in the face, raise my voice and emit a DF-style “be my guest,” forgetting the typically Sinaloan comment “you put up with it or they kill you.” And nothing happens. No “now you’re gonna shave your head and walk straight home; and if you let your hair grow, we’ll kill your family,” as I am assured a woman ordered her hairdresser in order to silence the clientele who were applauding the arrest of Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, alias El Mochomo, on January 20, 2008 (the real beginning of the war here in Sinaloa). No, she asks my permission to put her Louis Vuitton bag on the counter. Breaking the sudden silence, the checkout lady casually remarks, “She sounded foreign. The Buchones [the Rural and Urban Drug Brigade] aren’t mad with the Mexicans.”

. . .

“Violence has already affected language, and when something affects language, it affects everything,” as the Sinaloan writer Geney Beltrán Félix told me.

. . .

One night, a thirty-seven-year-old man, from a family that works in the service sector, the one that produces the greater part of the state’s gross domestic product, takes me to a neighborhood where even the soldiers don’t go. “See those motorcyclists. They’ve got their guns under their sweatshirts. The drug gang vigilantes are around here the whole time.” We settle ourselves at the long table of an open-air roast meat stall. “Here, the killers protect us: they’re good people, they’re my friends,” Victor insists, before telling me that they killed a young boy he knew. The boy’s protector, an important drug trafficker, turned up at the funeral and said to his mother, “I want to borrow him.” And he left with the body to say his farewells. He brought it back later and the burial went on.

“And do you see those really well-built houses opposite? Ten years ago they had cardboard roofs and metal sheets on the ground. So, where did all this come from?” He points to a boy. “He’s lost several fingers. They held him for ten days. The drug traffickers’ interrogation techniques are something terrible. They’re often high on coke. They have them locked up for three or four days, cutting them into little pieces.” I tense. “They’re good people but they do that?” “Oh no! Drug trafficking is a social cancer,” says Victor, changing his tune. “I’ve known them all since I was a boy. They’re really nice. But they’re hard as nails when it comes to business. They live just for themselves ‘cos they’ve suffered so much. Their hearts got hardened. They’re ice cold.”

“How many dead were there in the shoot-out across the road?” Victor asks the owner of the stall. Looking into the dark street, the man answers: “Six, but they said four.” In this obscure corner of darkest Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa State, I learn that it wasn’t a bazooka but a grenade launcher that killed the son of the drug baron El Chapo in 2009. “That’s journalists for you.” The night ends with the story of the hanging of a well-known personage who southern landowners, enemies of Lázaro Cárdenas’s Agrarian Reform, gave a bad name. Victor’s infuriating gestures are getting on my nerves. But he continues his dizzying tale, in crescendo.

. . .

I think of Culiacán as a hellish place, but Sinaloa is a land of extreme contrasts and has paradisiacal spots like its botanical gardens, one of the most important in the world and the center of the most ambitious public art project in Latin America, sponsored by the collector Agustín Coppel. Created twenty-four years ago, it has three ecosystems—jungle, forest, and aquatic—and thirty thousand visitors a month. But the violence reached there, too, when the police came after a hit man contracted to kill a professor. Luckily, he did not achieve his objective.

. . .

The corner of Sinaloa Avenue is, at ten at night, a place of noise and confusion around which the Hummers, Lobos, Pathfinders and other luxury cars, many without license plates, drive to the eternal screech of tires. In addition to showing off their powerful motors, the owners display great, but rather banal, skill at executing every imaginable maneuver on the tarmac. In this motorized Babel, the drug trafficking corridos blare out from the speakers of the expensive stereos equipped for the party.

. . .

We introduce ourselves in a small red car one ghostly night. Three or four clinics have been set up on the Sinaloa road to attend to the wounded and half-dead traffickers; we drive along the Bulevar Francisco Madero. Instead of the traditional Sinaloan bands, we come across three mariachis, all alone due to the craze for corridos among the new drug-trafficking heroes; we pass a brothel with its traditional red light; and stop at an enormous vacant lot packed with people waiting for the El Coyote concert, the way they have fun in the provinces. There are dozens of guys drinking in the street by the open doors of their trucks, with the volume pumped up on their stereos in excess of all by-laws.

Two minutes later, someone pulls in ahead of us to stop and chat with his friends. Cuamea tries to reverse but a guy pulls up behind and blocks us in. She purses her lips, does a sharp maneuver and avoids the trap. I don’t look at our aggressor. I’ve already learned that in Culiacán you can go from thinking to acting in the blink of an eye. Gloria sums it up: “Life has no value here. Drivers can have their children in their left arm, hold the steering wheel and answer their mobiles all at the same time.”

“They’re restricting our personal freedom. It’s a drugtatorship. And it’s everywhere. They arrest the children of the heads of the gangs in Mexico City. It’s only a matter of time before they take over the streets. The bodies start appearing, the police find them. It’s a culture of abuse of power based on impunity and corruption,” says our Virgil.

From Cuando llegaron los bárbaros, vida cotidiana y narcotráfico [When the Barbarians Arrived: Everyday Life and Drug-Trafficking].Published 2011 by Planeta. © 2011 by Magali Tercero. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012 by Christina MacSweeney. All rights reserved.

For two weeks I sensed violence as an invisible force. I only experienced one act of direct intimidation: a thirty-something, ultra-well-dressed woman with five-centimeter nails adorned with precious stones barged into me in an OXXO grocery store while I was paying. I look her in the face, raise my voice and emit a DF-style “be my guest,” forgetting the typically Sinaloan comment “you put up with it or they kill you.” And nothing happens. No “now you’re gonna shave your head and walk straight home; and if you let your hair grow, we’ll kill your family,” as I am assured a woman ordered her hairdresser in order to silence the clientele who were applauding the arrest of Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, alias El Mochomo, on January 20, 2008 (the real beginning of the war here in Sinaloa). No, she asks my permission to put her Louis Vuitton bag on the counter. Breaking the sudden silence, the checkout lady casually remarks, “She sounded foreign. The Buchones [the Rural and Urban Drug Brigade] aren’t mad with the Mexicans.”

. . .

“Violence has already affected language, and when something affects language, it affects everything,” as the Sinaloan writer Geney Beltrán Félix told me.

. . .

One night, a thirty-seven-year-old man, from a family that works in the service sector, the one that produces the greater part of the state’s gross domestic product, takes me to a neighborhood where even the soldiers don’t go. “See those motorcyclists. They’ve got their guns under their sweatshirts. The drug gang vigilantes are around here the whole time.” We settle ourselves at the long table of an open-air roast meat stall. “Here, the killers protect us: they’re good people, they’re my friends,” Victor insists, before telling me that they killed a young boy he knew. The boy’s protector, an important drug trafficker, turned up at the funeral and said to his mother, “I want to borrow him.” And he left with the body to say his farewells. He brought it back later and the burial went on.

“And do you see those really well-built houses opposite? Ten years ago they had cardboard roofs and metal sheets on the ground. So, where did all this come from?” He points to a boy. “He’s lost several fingers. They held him for ten days. The drug traffickers’ interrogation techniques are something terrible. They’re often high on coke. They have them locked up for three or four days, cutting them into little pieces.” I tense. “They’re good people but they do that?” “Oh no! Drug trafficking is a social cancer,” says Victor, changing his tune. “I’ve known them all since I was a boy. They’re really nice. But they’re hard as nails when it comes to business. They live just for themselves ‘cos they’ve suffered so much. Their hearts got hardened. They’re ice cold.”

“How many dead were there in the shoot-out across the road?” Victor asks the owner of the stall. Looking into the dark street, the man answers: “Six, but they said four.” In this obscure corner of darkest Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa State, I learn that it wasn’t a bazooka but a grenade launcher that killed the son of the drug baron El Chapo in 2009. “That’s journalists for you.” The night ends with the story of the hanging of a well-known personage who southern landowners, enemies of Lázaro Cárdenas’s Agrarian Reform, gave a bad name. Victor’s infuriating gestures are getting on my nerves. But he continues his dizzying tale, in crescendo.

. . .

I think of Culiacán as a hellish place, but Sinaloa is a land of extreme contrasts and has paradisiacal spots like its botanical gardens, one of the most important in the world and the center of the most ambitious public art project in Latin America, sponsored by the collector Agustín Coppel. Created twenty-four years ago, it has three ecosystems—jungle, forest, and aquatic—and thirty thousand visitors a month. But the violence reached there, too, when the police came after a hit man contracted to kill a professor. Luckily, he did not achieve his objective.

. . .

The corner of Sinaloa Avenue is, at ten at night, a place of noise and confusion around which the Hummers, Lobos, Pathfinders and other luxury cars, many without license plates, drive to the eternal screech of tires. In addition to showing off their powerful motors, the owners display great, but rather banal, skill at executing every imaginable maneuver on the tarmac. In this motorized Babel, the drug trafficking corridos blare out from the speakers of the expensive stereos equipped for the party.

. . .

We introduce ourselves in a small red car one ghostly night. Three or four clinics have been set up on the Sinaloa road to attend to the wounded and half-dead traffickers; we drive along the Bulevar Francisco Madero. Instead of the traditional Sinaloan bands, we come across three mariachis, all alone due to the craze for corridos among the new drug-trafficking heroes; we pass a brothel with its traditional red light; and stop at an enormous vacant lot packed with people waiting for the El Coyote concert, the way they have fun in the provinces. There are dozens of guys drinking in the street by the open doors of their trucks, with the volume pumped up on their stereos in excess of all by-laws.

Two minutes later, someone pulls in ahead of us to stop and chat with his friends. Cuamea tries to reverse but a guy pulls up behind and blocks us in. She purses her lips, does a sharp maneuver and avoids the trap. I don’t look at our aggressor. I’ve already learned that in Culiacán you can go from thinking to acting in the blink of an eye. Gloria sums it up: “Life has no value here. Drivers can have their children in their left arm, hold the steering wheel and answer their mobiles all at the same time.”

“They’re restricting our personal freedom. It’s a drugtatorship. And it’s everywhere. They arrest the children of the heads of the gangs in Mexico City. It’s only a matter of time before they take over the streets. The bodies start appearing, the police find them. It’s a culture of abuse of power based on impunity and corruption,” says our Virgil.

From Cuando llegaron los bárbaros, vida cotidiana y narcotráfico [When the Barbarians Arrived: Everyday Life and Drug-Trafficking].Published 2011 by Planeta. © 2011 by Magali Tercero. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012 by Christina MacSweeney. All rights reserved.

Apuntes sobre la violencia en Sinaloa, México

Magali Tercero acaba de publicar el libro Cuando llegaron los bárbaros, vida cotidiana y narcotráfico. De la primera parte, entresaco los siguientes pasajes.

Durante catorce días percibo la violencia como una fuerza invisible. Sólo me toca una intimidación directa: la de una treintañera extra-arreglada, con uñas de cinco centímetros adornadas con piedras brillantes, que me da un empujón en un OXXO[1] mientras pago. Busco su mirada, alzo la voz y le suelto un “¡pásale!” defeño sin recordar el tan culichi “te aguantas o te matan”. Y nada pasa. Ningún “ora te vas rapada y caminando a tu casa; y si te dejas crecer el pelo matamos a tu familia”, como aseguran que ordenó una mujer a su estilista para callar a la clienta que aplaudía la detención de Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, alias el Mochomo, el 20 de enero de 2008 (el verdadero inicio de la guerra aquí). No, ella me pide permiso para poner su bolsa Louis Vuitton. Interrumpiendo el súbito silencio, la cajera opina con desparpajo: “La oyó fuereña. El coraje de los buchones [la infantería del narco rural y urbanizado] no es con los de México.”

. . .

“La violencia ya tocó el lenguaje, y cuando algo toca el lenguaje ya tocó todo”, me dijo el escritor sinaloense Geney Beltrán Félix.

. . .

Una noche un hombre de unos 37 años, de una familia dedicada al sector de los servicios, el que más producto interno bruto produce en el estado, me lleva a un barrio donde no entra ni un soldado. “Mira a esos motociclistas. Sus armas están debajo de la sudadera. Todo el tiempo pasan los vigilantes de los narcos.” Nos instalamos en la mesa larga de una taquería de carne asada al aire libre. “Aquí nos protegen los asesinos: son buena gente, son mis amigos”, recalca Víctor antes de contar que mataron a un joven que él conocía. Su protector, un narcotraficante importante, llegó al velorio y dijo a la madre “préstemelo”. Y se fue con el cadáver a despedirlo. Luego lo regresó y el sepelio continuó.

“¿Ves esas casas de enfrente tan bien construidas? Hace diez años tenían techo de cartón y láminas sobre la tierra. A ver, ¿de dónde sale todo eso?” Señala a un muchacho. “Le faltan varios dedos. Lo tuvieron diez días secuestrado. Los calentamientos de los narcotraficantes son terribles. Muchas veces andan en coca. Los tienen tres días o cuatro encerrados, cortándolos en pedacitos.” Me tenso. “¿Son buenas personas pero hacen calentamientos?” “¡Ah no! El narcotráfico es un cáncer social”, revira Víctor. “Los conozco a todos desde niño. Son muy amables. Pero para el negocio son durísimos. Viven para sí mismos pues han sufrido mucho. Su corazón se endureció. Son friísimos.”

“¿Cuántos muertos hubo en la balacera de enfrente?”, pregunta al propietario. Mirando la calle oscura, este contesta: “Eran seis, pero dijeron que cuatro.” En esta esquina perdida del Culiacán más negro me entero de que no fue una bazuca lo que mató al hijo del Chapo sino un lanzagranadas. “Así son los periodistas.” La noche termina con el relato sobre el ahorcamiento de un personaje a quien terratenientes del sur, enemigos de la Reforma Agraria de Lázaro Cárdenas, forjaron una leyenda negra. El crispante gesticular de Víctor me enerva. Pero él continúa su relato, vertiginoso, in crescendo.

. . .

Pienso a Culiacán como un lugar infernal, pero Sinaloa es tierra de contrastes extremos y cuenta con sitios paradisíacos como su Jardín Botánico, uno de los más importantes del mundo y eje del proyecto de arte público más ambicioso de América Latina, impulsado por el coleccionista Agustín Coppel. Creado hace 24 años, cuenta con tres ecosistemas –selvático, boscoso y acuático– y con 30 mil visitantes por mes. La violencia también llegó aquí con la persecución policíaca de un sicario contratado para asesinar a un profesor. Por suerte no logró su objetivo.

. . .

La esquina de la avenida Sinaloa es, a las diez de la noche, un lugar de ruido y confusión donde circulan, en inacabable chirriar de llantas, las Hummer, las Lobo, las Pathfinder y otras camionetas lujosas, muchas nuevas y sin placas. Sus dueños exhiben, además de motores potentes, una grandísima y banal destreza para ejecutar sobre el asfalto todo tipo de suertes. En esta Babel motorizada los corridos del narcotráfico suenan desde las bocinas de costosos estéreos habilitados para el reventón.

. . .

A bordo de un pequeño auto rojo, nos introducimos en una noche fantasmagórica. Hay tres o cuatro clínicas instaladas a la salida a Sanalona para atender a los traficantes heridos y rematados en sus camas; recorremos el bulevar Francisco Madero. En lugar de las tradicionales bandas sinaloenses, nos topamos con tres mariachis, solitarios debido al auge del corrido sobre los nuevos héroes narcotraficantes; pasamos frente a un prostíbulo con el tradicional foco rojo; y vamos a dar a un inmenso lote baldío atiborrado por una multitud pendiente del concierto de El Coyote, una forma de fiestear en provincia. Hay decenas de chavos bebiendo en la calle, con las puertas abiertas de sus camionetas y con el volumen de sus estéreos sobrepasando todas las normas.

En dos minutos alguien nos cierra el paso por la izquierda para detenerse a platicar con sus amigos. Cuamea intenta dar reversa pero un tipo se pone atrás y nos deja encerrados. Aprieta los labios, maniobra hábilmente y elude la trampa. No miro al agresor. Ya aprendí que en Culiacán se pasa del pensar al actuar en un parpadeo. Gloria define: “Aquí la vida no tiene valor. Los automovilistas traen a los niños en el brazo izquierdo, y manejan y hasta contestan el celular.”

“Están coartando la libertad individual. Es una narcodictadura. Está en todas partes. Es en el Distrito Federal donde detienen a los hijos de los capos. Ahora sólo es cuestión de que tomen sus calles. Los muertos aparecen, la policía los encuentra. Es una cultura de la prepotencia derivada de la impunidad y la corrupción”, afirma nuestro Virgilio.

[1] Cadena de tiendas de abarrotes.