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Nonfiction

Tijuana: On the Pozole-Man’s Hill

By Hector de Mauleon
Translated from Spanish by Nick Caistor

1

A writer from Tijuana told me: “If you want to know what Tijuana is all about, you have to go there.” There was the village of Ojo de Agua, in a dusty valley on the outskirts of the city, that you reach after crossing the hills dotted with houses that appear in all the stories about Tijuana. On the top of a rise, like Dracula’s castle, stands the shack of Santiago Meza López, aka The Pozole-Man1 of the Arellano Félix brothers’ cartel. A man who has dissolved the bodies of 300 people in drums of caustic soda.

Half rural, half urban, the village of Ojo de Agua is the original no-man’s land. Sewage trickles down the hillsides. On its beaten-earth streets, the houses are made of scrap: sheets of corrugated iron, car tires, planks of wood. Wherever you look, nothing but rocks and dust.

The shack is a small brick-built affair, with two-meter-high walls around it. Inside there are holes dug in the ground, industrial drums with the remains of liquids in them, a wooden bench with various tools on it: protective gloves, knives, bowls, trowels. About two hundred crushed beer cans are scattered around the floor. The pozole-man liked to wet his whistle while he was carrying out his task.

In the upper part of the shack is a bedroom with no door. Meza López used to sleep on the floor, wrapped only in a blanket. The 600 dollars he received each week from the drug-trafficker Teodoro García Simental was never enough to permit him the luxury of putting a cot in his workplace.

On January 22, 2009, an army unit from the Second Military Zone got a call from a neighbor: in a house in the Baja Season’s neighborhood, armed men had been partying for several days. There was north Mexican music, vehicles with no license plates, hookers coming and going all the time. A military team raided the place. Five minutes earlier Teodoro Simental and thirty of his gang had escaped, running off down the beach. “When the army asked for backup from the state attorney’s office, someone gave them the tip-off,” says Adela Navarro the editor of the weekly magazine Zeta.

Meza López was so high he did not realize what was going on. When the soldiers forced him face down on the sand with his hands behind his neck, he told them: “You’ve no idea who you’re getting involved with. I’m El Teo’s pozole-man.”

Before coming down to earth, he had given them names, addresses, the extraordinary details of his activities. He was presented to the press as one of the FBI’s most-wanted persons. The army showed him off like a trophy. The reporter Luis Alonso Pérez recalls: “We were taken in three military vehicles to the shack in Ojo de Agua. The pozole-man was in a Hummer, covered in a blanket. Everyone came out to look as we went by. The soldiers took him out of the truck, led him to the center of the property, and ordered him to give a reconstruction of events.”

“Who did you dissolve here?”

“I don’t know who they were. I was just sent them.”

“Did you chop them up?”

“No, I threw them whole into the drums.”

“How long did it take them to dissolve?”

“Fourteen or fifteen hours.”

“What did you do with what was left?”

“I buried it.”

“Where?”

“Here.” (His eyes pointed at the ground beneath his feet.)

Luis Alonso Pérez adds: “We reporters in Tijuana have got used to seeing everything. But what we there saw left us frozen. All that remained of some corpses were the teeth. The worst of it was that Meza López somehow felt he was innocent. He was like a butcher who says: ‘I don’t kill the cattle, I simply cut them up.’”

Meza López was known in the cartel as El Chago. For many years he had been a brickmaker. “I got into organized crime through construction,” he said later. Early in the nineties he was recruited by Ramón Arellano. After his death in 2002, Meza López came under the command of Marco Antonio García Simental, El Cris, who ordered him to deal with the first bodies. “I learned to make ‘pozole’ with the leg of a cow. I put it in a bucket, covered it in liquid, and it dissolved. I started experimenting and became a pozole-man, I began to enjoy it, that was my mistake. I became interested in it, and kept on doing it,” he declared, the night he was arrested, to members of the SIEDO 2.

The Attorney General’s office had been aware of him since 2005. Regimiro Silva Pereida, a kidnapper detained in Mexicali, declared in dossier 3694/05/208:

“I got instructions from El Cris for me and someone else known as El Flama to take the lives of three people for whom ransom had already been demanded. El Flama and I put duct tape round their faces so they would stop breathing and suffocate, until they stopped moving. Afterward, someone else I know as Chago took them somewhere I don’t know, but I learned he turned them into ‘pozole’ using water drums. You weld one drum on top of another, add two hundred liters of water, then pour in two sacks of caustic soda. The dead body is thrown in without any clothes on, and after staying in there the fourteen or fifteen hours it takes the corpse to dissolve—although not completely, because there are still bones left—the pozole is poured down the drains or onto the hillsides.”

A second kidnapper, Iván Aarón Loaiza Espinoza, declared in the same investigation:

“When I got to Tijuana I met a man called Luis, alias El Sombrero. At first he asked me to look after some cockpits, but as he began to trust me he asked me to guard some secure houses where abducted people were being kept. He took me to a place known as Los Licuados because that was where they turned people into pozole, meaning they disintegrated the corpses of kidnap victims. My first job was to help weld the drums together, because you need two to fit whole bodies in.”

I stare at the gray panorama. The pits dug round the pozole-man’s shack. Everything looks the way it did the day he was arrested. In one corner there is even a pair of bloodstained jeans. As soon as she sees me, the woman from the house next door runs to shut herself in. I knock on her door. She doesn’t open it. Other people in Ojo de Agua tell me that at night covered pickups used to arrive, and water tankers. “We make gelatin here,” Meza López would say, raising his beer can. The smell of the bodies immersed in acid mingled with that of a nearby goat farm. As the Tijuana writer who recommended I come said: “This is not insecurity, it’s something different. Something that needs another word to describe it, because it is far more terrifying: it’s not only a question of being robbed, kidnapped, beaten, assassinated. At the same time, it’s something less than that, because the terror has become an everyday occurrence, you get used to it.”

2

The arrest in August 2006 of the last of the Arellano Félix brothers—Francisco Javier, El Tigrillo, brought about a restructuring of the Tijuana Cartel. A nephew of the historic leaders, Eduardo Sánchez Arellano, alias El Ingeniero, took charge.

“The dismantling of the group led to a struggle for control of the market,” says the attorney general’s representative, Martín Rubio Millán.

Control of the market does not simply mean a corridor for shipping drugs. The cartel also controls people-trafficking, kidnapping, the sale of stolen cars, high-level robberies, slot machines, betting, prostitution, clandestine gaming, and pirating of DVDs and CDs.

A former Arellano hitman, Teodoro García Simental, known as El Teo or El Tres Letras, took over one of the most violent cells. The power he accumulated in a short time allowed him to systematically break the rules laid down by El Ingeniero: he simply sent his quota to the cartel leader, but “the moment arrived when he didn’t even answer the ‘phone to him.”

On April 25, 2007, El Tres Letras was called to account. Eduardo Sánchez Arellano demanded a meeting to discuss the “unauthorized” kidnappings his group was carrying out. According to an investigation by Zeta, that night police telephones began to ring with warnings for them to stay off the streets “because it’s going to get ugly between them.” The gunmen of both groups were summoned by radio. “We’re going to escort a boss,” they were told. It was a Friday, and most of the gunmen (some of them municipal or federal police officers) were already out enjoying themselves.

The meeting was set for dawn on Guaycura Avenue. Twenty-two vehicles rolled up, packed with men armed to the teeth, and out of their minds on drugs. The police had vanished from the streets. Not just the municipal forces, but the federal and state patrols too.

El Ingeniero sent his lieutenant El 7-7 as his advance guard. El 7-7 told him by radio that El Teo had not shown up. There were only second-rank people in the cars, who said they had been told to take the message. “Get rid of them,” ordered Sánchez Arellano. El 7-7 shot Alfredo Delgadillo Solís, known as La Máquina, in the face. A fierce gun battle ensued, which left 15 dead (El 7-7 among them), and 22 wounded. More than 1,500 rounds were fired. The war declared that night left 337 dead in 2007 and 880 in 2008.

“There is evidence that Teodoro García Simental got support from the Sinaloa Cartel, who saw this battle as a way of staking a claim in Tijuana,” says the PGR’s Rubio Millán.

The result: a trail of decapitated, smothered, strangled, and shot bodies, which turned Tijuana into the city with the third greatest number of killings, after Culiacán and Ciudad Juárez.

3

In the days following the battle on Guaycura Avenue, an escort of the ex-governor Ernesto Ruffo Appel, the ex-commander of the state ministerial police, José Ramón Velásquez Molina, was abducted by gunmen working for the Arellano brothers. He was savagely beaten and tortured. Then his torturers sat him in front of a video camera. The interrogation he was put through was copied onto CDs that were handed to several media outlets. Velásquez Molina appears badly beaten and sweating, as submissive as a lamb trying to please its slaughterers.

“Who do you work for?”

“I work for a gang run by El Chapo Guzmán and Mayo Zambada. Before that I worked for El Mayel. Some time ago, El Mayel, through his lawyer in Almoloya, told me to go to Culiacán, where I was to meet his brother El Gil, to go and see these people, so the two of us went, we were there.”

“Louder!”

“We were in Culiacán, talking to El Chapo and El Mayo Zambada . . . we were there talking for about four hours . . . El Gil promised to work for them . . . he was involved with them until he was arrested.”

“And what’s going on now?”

“I was the one who took over the link with El Chapo. And last year (with) someone called Humberto Valdez, who’s known as El Pato Valdez.”

“And who is he?”

“I was told at the time that El Pato Valdez is an adviser to the attorney general.”

“Which attorney general?”

“Antonio Martínez Luna.”

“Speak up!”

“Antonio Martínez Luna, the state attorney. They told me he wanted to work with both El Mayo and El Chapo to combat the Tijuana people . . . and that they wanted to create a group of ministerial police, 10 ministerial police who had already quit the force, to make up a cell to combat the Tijuana people . . . I took El Pato Valdez to Culiacán, where he met El Chapo and El Mayo…They came to an agreement that the state attorney’s adviser would pass them information, all the information from Tijuana . . .”

“Hang on, hang on. Who’s the boss of that cell?”

“I’m the boss of the cell we formed in Mexicali.”

“Who else?”

“I was supported by El Pato Valdez.”

[. . .]

“You and him lead the group?”

“He leads the attorney’s office people, he’s in charge of the police group.”

“What group?”

“I know they’re part of that special intelligence group the state attorney set up.”

[. . . ]

“How do they operate, and who protects them?”

“How do they operate? They operate the way everyone knows: when they’re going to kidnap a victim, the police protect them, the one who protects us is El Pato Valdez, he knows everything about the operations, and he in turn tells El Blindado about them all.”

“What about the state attorney?”

El Blindado is the name he uses.”

“What’s El Blindado’s position, what’s his name?”

El Blindado is the state attorney.”

[. . .]

And who is the state attorney connected to?”

“The state attorney is connected to the governor.”

“What’s the governor’s name?”

“The governor’s called Eugenio Elorduy Walther, but I don’t think the governor’s mixed up in this. He does back it though. He’s backed it unconditionally. His six years are almost up, but he’s still backing it.”

The interrogation continues implacably. What is that guy like? How old is he? Remember, remember, you have to remember. Does the light bother you? Tell me about the jobs you’ve done. Come on, one by one. Who are El Chapo’s people here? Give me their names and nicknames. Don’t make any mistakes. Names! Turn this way, please. Look at the camera. How did you plan things, what was the job? What other police did you pay? Are they on the payroll? What about the municipal cops…what about them?’

José Ramón Velásquez was killed the moment the interrogation finished. His body was dumped outside the house of the state attorney’s girlfriend. The storm created by this twenty-minute recording was not strong enough to cost him his job. Martínez Luna declared he did not know and had never heard of El Pato Valdez.

A short time later, a fresh video recording revealed a strange conversation that took place in the state attorney’s office. Those taking part were El Pato Valdez, the state attorney’s private secretary Julio Lamas, and the head of the Specialized Unit Against Organized Crime, Víctor Felipe de la Garza Herrada.

Valdez outlined for the officials a possible strategy for capturing a member of the Arellano gang. But not just that: he asked for “expenses” for organizing the operation.

Again, the storm that engulfed the state attorney general’s office when this video was handed to the press did not affect the state attorney. Martínez Luna was kept on in his post until the end of the six-year term of governor Elorduy (2001-2007). The then head of the Specialized Unit Against Organized Crime, Victor Felipe de la Garza, did not think the video proved a thing. He shrugged his shoulders. “I used to see lots of people who brought information or wanted to report something. The reason for the meeting was to hear a report from that gentleman, who is a lawyer here in Tijuana. That’s all I know about him. There have been very important results from our investigations, and the reality is that the citizens trust us because of this.”

4

“The only reality in Tijuana is impunity,” says the editor of Zeta, Adela Navarro. “There is no solution to this impunity, no way out, because it is supported by the state itself. In Tijuana, nearly all the police have been bought: from the municipal forces to the PDR, all the officers obey the cartel first, the state second.”

At the end of March 2009, eighteen officers from the Tijuana Municipal Police, among them a head of intelligence, were arrested by federal forces. Another thirty-nine had been detained throughout the year. Each of them charged between 500 and 800 US dollars per month to collaborate with organized crime. The money was delivered straight to police stations. A high-ranking officer was the one responsible for distributing it.

“The cartel not only controls the police, it controls the judiciary too,” Navarro continues. Zeta has been systematically documenting this for thirty years. The magazine’s archives contain both the cartel’s organizational chart and the links it has established with the authorities from the moment it began to operate. Zeta has documented how our society was left an orphan, and how it lost its capacity for astonishment.

The president of Coparmex3, Roberto Quijano, says that Tijuana is the victim of a black legend created by the press’s sensationalist desires:

‘People live normal lives here. There is a war between criminal gangs, but ordinary citizens are not part of it. The people killed and executed are the criminals themselves. Although the social fabric was damaged by the failings of the Elorduy administration, in Tijuana the vast majority of citizens live peacefully.”

However, according to the fifth National Survey on Insecurity carried out by the Citizens’ Institute of Studies on Insecurity, Tijuana is the fourth most dangerous city in Mexico (after the Federal District, the conurbation of the State of Mexico, and Acapulco) and where the third most inhabitants feel insecure (after the Federal District and the state of Tabasco). Even though not so much as a leaf appears to stir on its streets, and at first sight the city looks as harmless as a Sunday on the beach, within it there are hidden cracks, bloodstains, bullet holes. Taxi-drivers, chewing-gum sellers, shoe-shines, waiters, newspaper boys, all form a network linked to drug-trafficking. The PGR calls them “hawks”; the people of Tijuana know them as “lookouts”. Their job is to report the arrival of any military convoys, suspicious vehicles, or strange visitors. All the comings-and-goings in governmental offices are immediately reported to the cartel members.

“You don’t see the narcos coming, but they are everywhere. It’s not something just invented. Drug-trafficking has become part of our daily lives. It’s part of us. It’s part of our culture,” says reporter Luis Alonso Pérez.

Beatriz Angélica Pérez Galindo did not see the narcos coming either. She had just separated, had a ten-year-old child, and desperately needed work. One evening she went out to eat tacos with a girlfriend. Her friend introduced her to a man: “Look, this is Leonardo.” Leonardo was wearing a metal badge at his belt. He said he was “commander in the Intelligence Unit of the PGR.” He asked Beatriz Angélica what she did. “Nothing,” she replied. The man suggested: “If you don’t have work, you should become a real estate agent. You find houses for rent, sign them up for me, and I’ll give you a month’s rent as commission.” Beatriz Angélica gave him her phone number. Leonardo would not give her his: “I can’t, because I’m in the police.” He called her the next day: “Find me a big house with a garage.” Beatriz Angélica started looking among the newspaper adverts. She found a house with an 800 dollar a month rent. When Leonardo called again, they agreed he would send her the deposit money. The contract was signed. He paid her commission.

A short time later, the commander got in touch again for her to find another house. “Some people are coming from Mexico City,” he told her. Beatriz Angélica called the estate agency and found a house with three bedrooms and an intercom. 800 dollars’ rent. Leonardo sent her a voter’s identity card in the name of someone called Liliana Ortiz. “Have the contract made out in her name.”

For several months she rented houses throughout Tijuana. Sometimes it was because Leonardo’s relatives were coming; at others because he was expecting “more people from Mexico City.” Almost all the contracts were made in the name of Liliana Ortiz, or occasionally Gustavo Guajardo.

Once he felt he could trust her, the commander began to ask Beatriz Angélica to take food to the houses she had rented. She always met armed men who were sitting watching TV. Some of them looked like active police officers, others like “madrinas 4.” They were all well-dressed. She did not realize how drug-trafficking had become part of her life. She did not see it coming, until the evening she was arrested taking a bag of food to a secure house for organized crime. She did not realize that it comes to meet you until, after reading over her statement, she confirmed it, and put her fingerprint to it. She did not know it until she was told she was now part of an official investigation: the PGR’s dossier UEDO/087/2000.

5

The president of Coparmex, Roberto Quijano, realized during governor Elorduy’s six years in office that crime had spread to new areas. The kidnapping of a business impresario showed him how far Tijuana’s society had been infiltrated.

“They had just abducted him. I called the State Attorney’s office and told them: “He’s being kidnapped”. Two hours later, the businessman was set free. I asked myself: “So is this how things really are? Are there authorized and unauthorized abductions?”

Quijano adds: “Every administration has its priorities. For Elorduy, security was not one of them. He did not appreciate how big the problem was, and by the time he wanted to do something, it was too late. The water was lapping round his ankles, the dynamics of crime had made Baja California sick. That’s the war we’re fighting now: how to cure a body that’s been sick for so many years.”

Outside in the street, patrols go by, sirens blazing, police operations with hooded men, convoys filled with armed men who at mid-day screech along Sánchez Taboada Avenue and Paseo de los Héroes. Every day there are fresh headlines of executions on the city’s street corners. TV news showing bloody corpses. Tijuana is a running battle.

A record kept by the Citizens’ Association Against Impunity shows that between 2007 and the present, 488 people have disappeared after being picked up by armed groups who were wearing police uniforms and credentials, carrying police weapons, and had police insignia.

Forty per cent of those abducted were shopkeepers, stallholders, small businessmen. They’re the most vulnerable group in society, because the drug-traffickers don’t usually kidnap rich people. They prefer to take the owners of pharmacies, stores, butcher shops people who have no influence or contacts. Some of the victims return home; others are never seen again,” explains the general secretary of the Association, Fernando Ocegueda.

On his desk, Ocegueda has a photo album with the faces of the disappeared. They were taken at parties, family reunions, solemn occasions or days out in the country. Each of these smiles has been wiped away by a horror story. “They burst into his house to get him,” “they picked him up as he was leaving work,” “they chopped up his driver’s body and dumped it on the doorstep so that the family would pay the ransom.” Almost 500 people in just two years. Some of them had got caught up in the nets of organized crime. Others no. They were simply victims.

When the pozole-man was captured in Baja Season’s, the members of the Association took the album to the SIEDO offices.

“We were hoping he could clarify what had happened to our relatives,” says Ocegueda. “But the pozole-man said he never saw any of the dead people’s faces. That they were handed over to him with their heads covered in duct tape, and he put them like that into the drums.”

The editor of Zeta says Tijuana is a cemetery. That for every corpse that appears, there is possibly another one buried in narco-graves or security houses.

“If you’re lucky, your body is found dumped somewhere. If not, it may be because you were sent there.”

There. A dog barks in the village of Ojo de Agua, close to the wall behind which Meza López lit fires so that the bodies in the drums would disappear more quickly. The wind blows across the slopes, raising swirls of dust, disturbing the tiny mounds of earth heaped alongside the graves littered with bones and teeth.

1 Pozole is a thick Mexican soup or stew usually made with grains of corn, chunks of meat and fresh vegetables.
2 Assistant Attorney General’s Office for Special Investigations on Organized Crime.
3 Confederación Patronal de la República Mexicana, the Mexican Employers’ Confederation.
4 Nursemaids
 
English Spanish (Original)

1

A writer from Tijuana told me: “If you want to know what Tijuana is all about, you have to go there.” There was the village of Ojo de Agua, in a dusty valley on the outskirts of the city, that you reach after crossing the hills dotted with houses that appear in all the stories about Tijuana. On the top of a rise, like Dracula’s castle, stands the shack of Santiago Meza López, aka The Pozole-Man1 of the Arellano Félix brothers’ cartel. A man who has dissolved the bodies of 300 people in drums of caustic soda.

Half rural, half urban, the village of Ojo de Agua is the original no-man’s land. Sewage trickles down the hillsides. On its beaten-earth streets, the houses are made of scrap: sheets of corrugated iron, car tires, planks of wood. Wherever you look, nothing but rocks and dust.

The shack is a small brick-built affair, with two-meter-high walls around it. Inside there are holes dug in the ground, industrial drums with the remains of liquids in them, a wooden bench with various tools on it: protective gloves, knives, bowls, trowels. About two hundred crushed beer cans are scattered around the floor. The pozole-man liked to wet his whistle while he was carrying out his task.

In the upper part of the shack is a bedroom with no door. Meza López used to sleep on the floor, wrapped only in a blanket. The 600 dollars he received each week from the drug-trafficker Teodoro García Simental was never enough to permit him the luxury of putting a cot in his workplace.

On January 22, 2009, an army unit from the Second Military Zone got a call from a neighbor: in a house in the Baja Season’s neighborhood, armed men had been partying for several days. There was north Mexican music, vehicles with no license plates, hookers coming and going all the time. A military team raided the place. Five minutes earlier Teodoro Simental and thirty of his gang had escaped, running off down the beach. “When the army asked for backup from the state attorney’s office, someone gave them the tip-off,” says Adela Navarro the editor of the weekly magazine Zeta.

Meza López was so high he did not realize what was going on. When the soldiers forced him face down on the sand with his hands behind his neck, he told them: “You’ve no idea who you’re getting involved with. I’m El Teo’s pozole-man.”

Before coming down to earth, he had given them names, addresses, the extraordinary details of his activities. He was presented to the press as one of the FBI’s most-wanted persons. The army showed him off like a trophy. The reporter Luis Alonso Pérez recalls: “We were taken in three military vehicles to the shack in Ojo de Agua. The pozole-man was in a Hummer, covered in a blanket. Everyone came out to look as we went by. The soldiers took him out of the truck, led him to the center of the property, and ordered him to give a reconstruction of events.”

“Who did you dissolve here?”

“I don’t know who they were. I was just sent them.”

“Did you chop them up?”

“No, I threw them whole into the drums.”

“How long did it take them to dissolve?”

“Fourteen or fifteen hours.”

“What did you do with what was left?”

“I buried it.”

“Where?”

“Here.” (His eyes pointed at the ground beneath his feet.)

Luis Alonso Pérez adds: “We reporters in Tijuana have got used to seeing everything. But what we there saw left us frozen. All that remained of some corpses were the teeth. The worst of it was that Meza López somehow felt he was innocent. He was like a butcher who says: ‘I don’t kill the cattle, I simply cut them up.’”

Meza López was known in the cartel as El Chago. For many years he had been a brickmaker. “I got into organized crime through construction,” he said later. Early in the nineties he was recruited by Ramón Arellano. After his death in 2002, Meza López came under the command of Marco Antonio García Simental, El Cris, who ordered him to deal with the first bodies. “I learned to make ‘pozole’ with the leg of a cow. I put it in a bucket, covered it in liquid, and it dissolved. I started experimenting and became a pozole-man, I began to enjoy it, that was my mistake. I became interested in it, and kept on doing it,” he declared, the night he was arrested, to members of the SIEDO 2.

The Attorney General’s office had been aware of him since 2005. Regimiro Silva Pereida, a kidnapper detained in Mexicali, declared in dossier 3694/05/208:

“I got instructions from El Cris for me and someone else known as El Flama to take the lives of three people for whom ransom had already been demanded. El Flama and I put duct tape round their faces so they would stop breathing and suffocate, until they stopped moving. Afterward, someone else I know as Chago took them somewhere I don’t know, but I learned he turned them into ‘pozole’ using water drums. You weld one drum on top of another, add two hundred liters of water, then pour in two sacks of caustic soda. The dead body is thrown in without any clothes on, and after staying in there the fourteen or fifteen hours it takes the corpse to dissolve—although not completely, because there are still bones left—the pozole is poured down the drains or onto the hillsides.”

A second kidnapper, Iván Aarón Loaiza Espinoza, declared in the same investigation:

“When I got to Tijuana I met a man called Luis, alias El Sombrero. At first he asked me to look after some cockpits, but as he began to trust me he asked me to guard some secure houses where abducted people were being kept. He took me to a place known as Los Licuados because that was where they turned people into pozole, meaning they disintegrated the corpses of kidnap victims. My first job was to help weld the drums together, because you need two to fit whole bodies in.”

I stare at the gray panorama. The pits dug round the pozole-man’s shack. Everything looks the way it did the day he was arrested. In one corner there is even a pair of bloodstained jeans. As soon as she sees me, the woman from the house next door runs to shut herself in. I knock on her door. She doesn’t open it. Other people in Ojo de Agua tell me that at night covered pickups used to arrive, and water tankers. “We make gelatin here,” Meza López would say, raising his beer can. The smell of the bodies immersed in acid mingled with that of a nearby goat farm. As the Tijuana writer who recommended I come said: “This is not insecurity, it’s something different. Something that needs another word to describe it, because it is far more terrifying: it’s not only a question of being robbed, kidnapped, beaten, assassinated. At the same time, it’s something less than that, because the terror has become an everyday occurrence, you get used to it.”

2

The arrest in August 2006 of the last of the Arellano Félix brothers—Francisco Javier, El Tigrillo, brought about a restructuring of the Tijuana Cartel. A nephew of the historic leaders, Eduardo Sánchez Arellano, alias El Ingeniero, took charge.

“The dismantling of the group led to a struggle for control of the market,” says the attorney general’s representative, Martín Rubio Millán.

Control of the market does not simply mean a corridor for shipping drugs. The cartel also controls people-trafficking, kidnapping, the sale of stolen cars, high-level robberies, slot machines, betting, prostitution, clandestine gaming, and pirating of DVDs and CDs.

A former Arellano hitman, Teodoro García Simental, known as El Teo or El Tres Letras, took over one of the most violent cells. The power he accumulated in a short time allowed him to systematically break the rules laid down by El Ingeniero: he simply sent his quota to the cartel leader, but “the moment arrived when he didn’t even answer the ‘phone to him.”

On April 25, 2007, El Tres Letras was called to account. Eduardo Sánchez Arellano demanded a meeting to discuss the “unauthorized” kidnappings his group was carrying out. According to an investigation by Zeta, that night police telephones began to ring with warnings for them to stay off the streets “because it’s going to get ugly between them.” The gunmen of both groups were summoned by radio. “We’re going to escort a boss,” they were told. It was a Friday, and most of the gunmen (some of them municipal or federal police officers) were already out enjoying themselves.

The meeting was set for dawn on Guaycura Avenue. Twenty-two vehicles rolled up, packed with men armed to the teeth, and out of their minds on drugs. The police had vanished from the streets. Not just the municipal forces, but the federal and state patrols too.

El Ingeniero sent his lieutenant El 7-7 as his advance guard. El 7-7 told him by radio that El Teo had not shown up. There were only second-rank people in the cars, who said they had been told to take the message. “Get rid of them,” ordered Sánchez Arellano. El 7-7 shot Alfredo Delgadillo Solís, known as La Máquina, in the face. A fierce gun battle ensued, which left 15 dead (El 7-7 among them), and 22 wounded. More than 1,500 rounds were fired. The war declared that night left 337 dead in 2007 and 880 in 2008.

“There is evidence that Teodoro García Simental got support from the Sinaloa Cartel, who saw this battle as a way of staking a claim in Tijuana,” says the PGR’s Rubio Millán.

The result: a trail of decapitated, smothered, strangled, and shot bodies, which turned Tijuana into the city with the third greatest number of killings, after Culiacán and Ciudad Juárez.

3

In the days following the battle on Guaycura Avenue, an escort of the ex-governor Ernesto Ruffo Appel, the ex-commander of the state ministerial police, José Ramón Velásquez Molina, was abducted by gunmen working for the Arellano brothers. He was savagely beaten and tortured. Then his torturers sat him in front of a video camera. The interrogation he was put through was copied onto CDs that were handed to several media outlets. Velásquez Molina appears badly beaten and sweating, as submissive as a lamb trying to please its slaughterers.

“Who do you work for?”

“I work for a gang run by El Chapo Guzmán and Mayo Zambada. Before that I worked for El Mayel. Some time ago, El Mayel, through his lawyer in Almoloya, told me to go to Culiacán, where I was to meet his brother El Gil, to go and see these people, so the two of us went, we were there.”

“Louder!”

“We were in Culiacán, talking to El Chapo and El Mayo Zambada . . . we were there talking for about four hours . . . El Gil promised to work for them . . . he was involved with them until he was arrested.”

“And what’s going on now?”

“I was the one who took over the link with El Chapo. And last year (with) someone called Humberto Valdez, who’s known as El Pato Valdez.”

“And who is he?”

“I was told at the time that El Pato Valdez is an adviser to the attorney general.”

“Which attorney general?”

“Antonio Martínez Luna.”

“Speak up!”

“Antonio Martínez Luna, the state attorney. They told me he wanted to work with both El Mayo and El Chapo to combat the Tijuana people . . . and that they wanted to create a group of ministerial police, 10 ministerial police who had already quit the force, to make up a cell to combat the Tijuana people . . . I took El Pato Valdez to Culiacán, where he met El Chapo and El Mayo…They came to an agreement that the state attorney’s adviser would pass them information, all the information from Tijuana . . .”

“Hang on, hang on. Who’s the boss of that cell?”

“I’m the boss of the cell we formed in Mexicali.”

“Who else?”

“I was supported by El Pato Valdez.”

[. . .]

“You and him lead the group?”

“He leads the attorney’s office people, he’s in charge of the police group.”

“What group?”

“I know they’re part of that special intelligence group the state attorney set up.”

[. . . ]

“How do they operate, and who protects them?”

“How do they operate? They operate the way everyone knows: when they’re going to kidnap a victim, the police protect them, the one who protects us is El Pato Valdez, he knows everything about the operations, and he in turn tells El Blindado about them all.”

“What about the state attorney?”

El Blindado is the name he uses.”

“What’s El Blindado’s position, what’s his name?”

El Blindado is the state attorney.”

[. . .]

And who is the state attorney connected to?”

“The state attorney is connected to the governor.”

“What’s the governor’s name?”

“The governor’s called Eugenio Elorduy Walther, but I don’t think the governor’s mixed up in this. He does back it though. He’s backed it unconditionally. His six years are almost up, but he’s still backing it.”

The interrogation continues implacably. What is that guy like? How old is he? Remember, remember, you have to remember. Does the light bother you? Tell me about the jobs you’ve done. Come on, one by one. Who are El Chapo’s people here? Give me their names and nicknames. Don’t make any mistakes. Names! Turn this way, please. Look at the camera. How did you plan things, what was the job? What other police did you pay? Are they on the payroll? What about the municipal cops…what about them?’

José Ramón Velásquez was killed the moment the interrogation finished. His body was dumped outside the house of the state attorney’s girlfriend. The storm created by this twenty-minute recording was not strong enough to cost him his job. Martínez Luna declared he did not know and had never heard of El Pato Valdez.

A short time later, a fresh video recording revealed a strange conversation that took place in the state attorney’s office. Those taking part were El Pato Valdez, the state attorney’s private secretary Julio Lamas, and the head of the Specialized Unit Against Organized Crime, Víctor Felipe de la Garza Herrada.

Valdez outlined for the officials a possible strategy for capturing a member of the Arellano gang. But not just that: he asked for “expenses” for organizing the operation.

Again, the storm that engulfed the state attorney general’s office when this video was handed to the press did not affect the state attorney. Martínez Luna was kept on in his post until the end of the six-year term of governor Elorduy (2001-2007). The then head of the Specialized Unit Against Organized Crime, Victor Felipe de la Garza, did not think the video proved a thing. He shrugged his shoulders. “I used to see lots of people who brought information or wanted to report something. The reason for the meeting was to hear a report from that gentleman, who is a lawyer here in Tijuana. That’s all I know about him. There have been very important results from our investigations, and the reality is that the citizens trust us because of this.”

4

“The only reality in Tijuana is impunity,” says the editor of Zeta, Adela Navarro. “There is no solution to this impunity, no way out, because it is supported by the state itself. In Tijuana, nearly all the police have been bought: from the municipal forces to the PDR, all the officers obey the cartel first, the state second.”

At the end of March 2009, eighteen officers from the Tijuana Municipal Police, among them a head of intelligence, were arrested by federal forces. Another thirty-nine had been detained throughout the year. Each of them charged between 500 and 800 US dollars per month to collaborate with organized crime. The money was delivered straight to police stations. A high-ranking officer was the one responsible for distributing it.

“The cartel not only controls the police, it controls the judiciary too,” Navarro continues. Zeta has been systematically documenting this for thirty years. The magazine’s archives contain both the cartel’s organizational chart and the links it has established with the authorities from the moment it began to operate. Zeta has documented how our society was left an orphan, and how it lost its capacity for astonishment.

The president of Coparmex3, Roberto Quijano, says that Tijuana is the victim of a black legend created by the press’s sensationalist desires:

‘People live normal lives here. There is a war between criminal gangs, but ordinary citizens are not part of it. The people killed and executed are the criminals themselves. Although the social fabric was damaged by the failings of the Elorduy administration, in Tijuana the vast majority of citizens live peacefully.”

However, according to the fifth National Survey on Insecurity carried out by the Citizens’ Institute of Studies on Insecurity, Tijuana is the fourth most dangerous city in Mexico (after the Federal District, the conurbation of the State of Mexico, and Acapulco) and where the third most inhabitants feel insecure (after the Federal District and the state of Tabasco). Even though not so much as a leaf appears to stir on its streets, and at first sight the city looks as harmless as a Sunday on the beach, within it there are hidden cracks, bloodstains, bullet holes. Taxi-drivers, chewing-gum sellers, shoe-shines, waiters, newspaper boys, all form a network linked to drug-trafficking. The PGR calls them “hawks”; the people of Tijuana know them as “lookouts”. Their job is to report the arrival of any military convoys, suspicious vehicles, or strange visitors. All the comings-and-goings in governmental offices are immediately reported to the cartel members.

“You don’t see the narcos coming, but they are everywhere. It’s not something just invented. Drug-trafficking has become part of our daily lives. It’s part of us. It’s part of our culture,” says reporter Luis Alonso Pérez.

Beatriz Angélica Pérez Galindo did not see the narcos coming either. She had just separated, had a ten-year-old child, and desperately needed work. One evening she went out to eat tacos with a girlfriend. Her friend introduced her to a man: “Look, this is Leonardo.” Leonardo was wearing a metal badge at his belt. He said he was “commander in the Intelligence Unit of the PGR.” He asked Beatriz Angélica what she did. “Nothing,” she replied. The man suggested: “If you don’t have work, you should become a real estate agent. You find houses for rent, sign them up for me, and I’ll give you a month’s rent as commission.” Beatriz Angélica gave him her phone number. Leonardo would not give her his: “I can’t, because I’m in the police.” He called her the next day: “Find me a big house with a garage.” Beatriz Angélica started looking among the newspaper adverts. She found a house with an 800 dollar a month rent. When Leonardo called again, they agreed he would send her the deposit money. The contract was signed. He paid her commission.

A short time later, the commander got in touch again for her to find another house. “Some people are coming from Mexico City,” he told her. Beatriz Angélica called the estate agency and found a house with three bedrooms and an intercom. 800 dollars’ rent. Leonardo sent her a voter’s identity card in the name of someone called Liliana Ortiz. “Have the contract made out in her name.”

For several months she rented houses throughout Tijuana. Sometimes it was because Leonardo’s relatives were coming; at others because he was expecting “more people from Mexico City.” Almost all the contracts were made in the name of Liliana Ortiz, or occasionally Gustavo Guajardo.

Once he felt he could trust her, the commander began to ask Beatriz Angélica to take food to the houses she had rented. She always met armed men who were sitting watching TV. Some of them looked like active police officers, others like “madrinas 4.” They were all well-dressed. She did not realize how drug-trafficking had become part of her life. She did not see it coming, until the evening she was arrested taking a bag of food to a secure house for organized crime. She did not realize that it comes to meet you until, after reading over her statement, she confirmed it, and put her fingerprint to it. She did not know it until she was told she was now part of an official investigation: the PGR’s dossier UEDO/087/2000.

5

The president of Coparmex, Roberto Quijano, realized during governor Elorduy’s six years in office that crime had spread to new areas. The kidnapping of a business impresario showed him how far Tijuana’s society had been infiltrated.

“They had just abducted him. I called the State Attorney’s office and told them: “He’s being kidnapped”. Two hours later, the businessman was set free. I asked myself: “So is this how things really are? Are there authorized and unauthorized abductions?”

Quijano adds: “Every administration has its priorities. For Elorduy, security was not one of them. He did not appreciate how big the problem was, and by the time he wanted to do something, it was too late. The water was lapping round his ankles, the dynamics of crime had made Baja California sick. That’s the war we’re fighting now: how to cure a body that’s been sick for so many years.”

Outside in the street, patrols go by, sirens blazing, police operations with hooded men, convoys filled with armed men who at mid-day screech along Sánchez Taboada Avenue and Paseo de los Héroes. Every day there are fresh headlines of executions on the city’s street corners. TV news showing bloody corpses. Tijuana is a running battle.

A record kept by the Citizens’ Association Against Impunity shows that between 2007 and the present, 488 people have disappeared after being picked up by armed groups who were wearing police uniforms and credentials, carrying police weapons, and had police insignia.

Forty per cent of those abducted were shopkeepers, stallholders, small businessmen. They’re the most vulnerable group in society, because the drug-traffickers don’t usually kidnap rich people. They prefer to take the owners of pharmacies, stores, butcher shops people who have no influence or contacts. Some of the victims return home; others are never seen again,” explains the general secretary of the Association, Fernando Ocegueda.

On his desk, Ocegueda has a photo album with the faces of the disappeared. They were taken at parties, family reunions, solemn occasions or days out in the country. Each of these smiles has been wiped away by a horror story. “They burst into his house to get him,” “they picked him up as he was leaving work,” “they chopped up his driver’s body and dumped it on the doorstep so that the family would pay the ransom.” Almost 500 people in just two years. Some of them had got caught up in the nets of organized crime. Others no. They were simply victims.

When the pozole-man was captured in Baja Season’s, the members of the Association took the album to the SIEDO offices.

“We were hoping he could clarify what had happened to our relatives,” says Ocegueda. “But the pozole-man said he never saw any of the dead people’s faces. That they were handed over to him with their heads covered in duct tape, and he put them like that into the drums.”

The editor of Zeta says Tijuana is a cemetery. That for every corpse that appears, there is possibly another one buried in narco-graves or security houses.

“If you’re lucky, your body is found dumped somewhere. If not, it may be because you were sent there.”

There. A dog barks in the village of Ojo de Agua, close to the wall behind which Meza López lit fires so that the bodies in the drums would disappear more quickly. The wind blows across the slopes, raising swirls of dust, disturbing the tiny mounds of earth heaped alongside the graves littered with bones and teeth.

1 Pozole is a thick Mexican soup or stew usually made with grains of corn, chunks of meat and fresh vegetables.
2 Assistant Attorney General’s Office for Special Investigations on Organized Crime.
3 Confederación Patronal de la República Mexicana, the Mexican Employers’ Confederation.
4 Nursemaids
 

Tijuana: En la colina de El Pozolero

Uno
Un escritor tijuanense me dijo: “Si quieres saber de qué se trata Tijuana debes ir alla”. Allá era el ejido Ojo de Agua, un valle polvoriento a las afueras de la ciudad al que se llega luego de atravesar los cerros sembrados de casas que aparecen en todas las crónicas de Tijuana. En lo alto de una loma —un castillo de Drácula región cuatro— se encuentra el rancho de Santiago Meza López, El Pozolero del cártel de los Arellano Félix. Un hombre que disolvió los cuerpos de 300 personas en tambos de sosa cáustica.

barril

Mitad rural, mitad urbano, el ejido Ojo de Agua es todo menos un lugar. Hilillos de aguas negras bajan por las cuestas. En las calles, de tierra apisonada, aparecen casas levantadas con materiales de desecho: láminas, llantas, tablones. Para donde se mire, sólo existen piedras, sólo existe polvo.

El rancho es una construcción pequeña, de tabique, con muros de dos metros de alto. Adentro hay agujeros cavados en la tierra, tambos industriales con residuos líquidos y una mesa de madera con varios instrumentos de trabajo: guantes de carnaza, cuchillos, recipientes, cucharas de albañil. Unas 200 latas de cerveza, aplastadas, están diseminadas por el terreno. A El Pozolero le gustaba refrescarse la garganta mientras llevaba a cabo su labor.

En la parte alta del rancho hay una habitación sin puertas. Meza López dormía en el suelo, envuelto sólo con una cobija. Los 600 dólares que cada semana le entregaba el narcotraficante Teodoro García Simental no le permitieron nunca el lujo de colocar un catre en su lugar de trabajo.

El 22 de enero de 2009, elementos del ejército adscritos a la II Zona Militar recibieron una denuncia ciudadana: en una casa de la colonia Baja Season’s, hombres armados llevaban días enteros de fiesta. Había música norteña, vehículos sin placas y sexoservidoras que entraban y salían. Un convoy militar cayó sobre el lugar. Cinco minutos antes, corriendo por la playa, habían escapado Teodoro García Simental y 30 de sus allegados. “Cuando el ejército solicitó el apoyo del Ministerio Público, alguien de la PGR les dio el pitazo”, cuenta la directora del semanario Zeta, Adela Navarro.

Meza López estaba tan intoxicado que no se dio cuenta de lo que ocurría. Cuando los militares lo tendieron con las manos en la nuca sobre la arena de la playa, les dijo:
—No saben con quién se meten. Yo soy El Pozolero de El Teo.

Antes de regresar a la tierra había entregado nombres, domicilios, el patrón sorprendente de sus actividades. Fue presentado como uno de los 20 criminales más buscados por el FBI. El ejército lo exhibió ante la prensa como un trofeo. Recuerda el reportero Luis Alonso Pérez:

—Nos llevaron en tres camiones militares hasta el rancho del ejido Ojo de Agua. El Pozolero iba en una Hummer, tapado con una cobija. Toda la colonia salió a mirar el desfile. Los militares lo bajaron de la camioneta, lo llevaron al centro de la finca y le ordenaron que hiciera la reconstrucción de los hechos.
—¿A quiénes deshacías aquí?
—No sé quiénes eran. A mí sólo me los daban.
—¿Los despedazabas?
—No, los echaba enteros en los tambos.
—¿Cuánto tardaban en deshacerse?
—Catorce o quince horas.
—¿Qué hacías con lo que quedaba?
—Lo enterraba.
—¿En dónde?
—Aquí (mientras apuntaba con los ojos al suelo, bajo sus pies).

Agrega Luis Alonso Pérez:

—Los reporteros de Tijuana nos hemos acostumbrado a ver de todo. Pero esto nos dejó congelados. De algunos cuerpos sólo quedaban los dientes. Lo peor es que, de algún modo, él se sentía inocente. Era como un carnicero diciendo: “Yo no mato a las reses, nomás las destazo”.

Meza López era conocido en el cártel como El Chago. Se había dedicado durante muchos años a la elaboración de ladrillos. “Entré al crimen organizado por el lado de la construcción”, dijo después. A principios de los noventa fue reclutado por Ramón Arellano. A la muerte de éste, ocurrida en 2002, quedó bajo las órdenes de Marco Antonio García Simental, El Cris, quien le encargó la desaparición de los primeros cuerpos. “Aprendí a hacer ‘pozole’ con una pierna de res, la cual puse en una cubeta, le eché un líquido y se deshizo. Comencé a hacer experimentos y me convertí (en pozolero), agarrándole la movida, y ese fue mi error. Le puse más interés y por eso me quedé”, declaró, la noche de su detención, ante agentes de la SIEDO.

Desde 2005 la PGR estaba al tanto de sus actividades. Regimiro Silva Pereida, un secuestrador detenido en Mexicali, había asentado en la averiguación previa 3694/05/208:

Recibí instrucciones de El Cris para que yo y otro, de apodo El Flama, priváramos de la vida a tres personas por las que ya se había pedido rescate. Entre El Flama y yo les colocamos cinta adhesiva color canela en la cara para que dejaran de respirar y murieran por asfixia, hasta que dejaron de moverse. Después, otra persona a la que conozco como Chago se llevó los cuerpos a un lugar que desconozco, pero me enteré que los hicieron “pozole”, utilizando unos tambos de agua, de los cuales se pegan uno encima de otro con soldadura, se agregan casi doscientos litros de agua y se vierten dos sacos de sosa cáustica. Luego se arroja el cuerpo humano, sin ropa de vestir, y después de permanecer aproximadamente catorce o quince horas que tarda el cuerpo en desintegrarse, pero no completo, sino que quedan restos óseos, es arrojado el “pozole” al drenaje o en cerros.

Un segundo secuestrador, Iván Aarón Loaiza Espinoza, había declarado en la misma averiguación:

Al llegar a Tijuana conocí a una persona de nombre Luis, alias El Sombrero. Me invitó a trabajar para que le cuidara unas galleras pero con el tiempo me gané su confianza y me invitó para que yo le cuidara casas de seguridad en las cuales tenían personas secuestradas. Me llevó a un rancho conocido como Los Licuados, ya que en ese rancho “pozolean” a las personas, desintegran los cuerpos de las personas secuestradas. Mi primera función fue la de ayudar a soldar los tambos, ya que se requieren de dos para que quepan los cuerpos completos.

Miro aquel panorama gris. Las fosas cavadas en el rancho de El Pozolero. Todo luce como el día de su detención. En un rincón aparece incluso un pantalón de mezclilla manchado de sangre. La propietaria de la casa vecina corre a encerrarse en cuanto me ve. Toco la puerta. No la abre. Los vecinos del ejido Ojo de Agua dicen que por las noches llegaban hasta este sitio camionetas cerradas y pipas de agua. “Aquí hacemos gelatinas”, les decía Meza López, empuñando su lata de cerveza. El olor de los cuerpos sumergidos en ácido solía confundirse con el de un criadero de chivos ubicado a unos metros. Transcribo las palabras del escritor tijuanense que me recomendó venir: “Esto no es inseguridad, sino algo distinto. Algo que tendría que tener otro nombre, porque es más terrorífico: no se trata sólo de ser robado, secuestrado, golpeado, asesinado. Y a la vez, es algo menos, porque ese terror ya se hizo cotidiano, te terminas acostumbrando”.

Dos
En agosto de 2006 la detención del último de los hermanos Arellano Félix —Francisco Javier, El Tigrillo—, provocó un reacomodo en la estructura del Cártel de Tijuana. Al frente de la organización quedó un sobrino de los líderes históricos: Eduardo Sánchez Arellano, alias El Ingeniero.

—El desmembramiento del grupo provocó una pugna por el control de la plaza —dice el delegado de la PGR, Martín Rubio Millán.

El control de la plaza no significa sólo tener un corredor para el trasiego de drogas. El cártel controla también el tráfico de personas, los secuestros, la venta de autos robados, los asaltos de alto impacto, las máquinas tragamonedas, las apuestas, la prostitución, el juego clandestino y la “piratería”.

Un antiguo sicario de los Arellano, Teodoro García Simental, conocido como El Teo o El Tres Letras, ocupó la dirección de una de las células más violentas. El poder que acumuló en poco tiempo le permitió violar de modo sistemático las reglas impuestas por El Ingeniero: se limitaba a enviar su cuota al líder del cártel, pero “llegó el momento en que ya ni el teléfono le contestaba”.

El 25 de abril de 2007 El Tres Letras fue llamado a cuentas. Eduardo Sánchez Arellano le exigió una reunión para discutir los secuestros “no autorizados” que su grupo estaba cometiendo. Según una investigación del semanario Zeta, esa noche los teléfonos de la policía comenzaron a sonar para advertir a los agentes que se mantuvieran lejos de la calle “porque el asunto entre ellos se va a poner feo”. Los gatilleros de ambos grupos fueron requeridos por radio. “Vamos a escoltar a un jefe”, les dijeron. Era viernes y la mayor parte de los sicarios (algunos de ellos, policías municipales y ministeriales) estaban “enfiestados”.

La cita fue concertada en la madrugada, en el paseo conocido como el Guaycura. 22 vehículos con hombres armados hasta los dientes, y drogados a morir, llegaron hasta ese sitio. La policía había desaparecido de las calles. No sólo la municipal: también “se habían abierto de la zona” las patrullas de las policías federal y estatal.

El Ingeniero envió como avanzada a su lugarteniente, El 7-7. Éste le informó por radio que El Teo no se había presentado. En los autos sólo había personajes de segunda línea: “puros claves R”, que dijeron que tenían la orden de recibir el recado. “Acaben con ellos”, ordenó Sánchez Arellano. El 7-7 le disparó en la cara a Alfredo Delgadillo Solís, conocido como La Máquina. Se desató una cruenta balacera que dejó 15 muertos (entre ellos El 7-7) y 22 heridos. Más de mil 500 cartuchos fueron percutidos. La guerra que se decretó esa noche dejó 337 muertos en 2007 y 880 en 2008.

—Existen indicios de que Teodoro García Simental se había cobijado en el Cártel de Sinaloa, una organización que encontró en esta pugna la oportunidad de infiltrarse en Tijuana —afirma el delegado Rubio Millán.

El resultado: una estela de decapitados, encobijados, estrangulados y acribillados, que en ese tiempo convirtió a Tijuana en la tercera ciudad con mayor número de ejecuciones, luego de Culiacán y Ciudad Juárez.

Tres
En los días que siguieron a la batalla del Guaycura, un viejo escolta del ex gobernador Ernesto Ruffo Appel, el ex comandante de la Policía Ministerial del estado, José Ramón Velásquez Molina, fue secuestrado por sicarios al servicio de los Arellano. El ex comandante fue golpeado y torturado. Luego, sus verdugos lo sentaron frente a una cámara de video. El interrogatorio al que lo sometieron fue entregado en un disco compacto a diversos medios de comunicación. Velásquez Molina aparece golpeado y sudoroso, con la mansedumbre de un cordero que desea agradar en todo a sus verdugos.

—¿Para quién trabajas?
—Trabajo para una célula de El Chapo Guzmán y Mayo Zambada. Antes trabajaba para El Mayel. Hace tiempo, El Mayel, por medio de su abogado en Almoloya, me habló para decir que me fuera a Culiacán, que me iba a encontrar con su hermano El Gil, para ir a ver a estas personas, los dos fuimos, estuvimos allá.
—¡Más fuerte!

arma

—Estuvimos en Culiacán… platicando con El Chapo y El Mayo Zambada… Estuvimos ahí como unas cuatro horas platicando… El Gil se comprometió para trabajar con ellos… estuvo sosteniendo relaciones con estas personas hasta que lo detuvieron.
—¿Y qué está pasando ahorita?
—La relación de El Chapo se quedó conmigo. Y el año pasado (con) una persona de nombre Humberto Valdez, le dicen El Pato Valdez.
—¿Él quién es?
—El Pato Valdez es, me dijeron en ese tiempo, un asesor del procurador.
—¿Qué procurador?
—Antonio Martínez Luna.
—¡Hable más fuerte!
—Antonio Martínez Luna, el procurador. En ese tiempo me dijeron que el procurador Antonio Martínez Luna quería trabajar tanto con El Mayo como con El Chapo para combatir a la gente de Tijuana… y que querían formar un grupo de agentes ministeriales, 10 agentes ministeriales ya dados de baja, para conformar una célula para combatir a la gente de Tijuana… Yo llevé a El Pato Valdez a Culiacán, se entrevistó con El Chapo y con El Mayo… se tomaron acuerdos como que el asesor del procurador quedó de darles información, toda la información de Tijuana…
—Pérate, pérate. ¿Quién dirige esa célula?
—La célula que se formó en Mexicali la dirijo yo.
—¿Y quién más?
—Apoyado por El Pato Valdez.
[…]
—¿Tú y él dirigen esa célula?
—El grupo de la Procuraduría lo dirige él, él dirige a los agentes.
—¿Qué grupo?
—Sé que están en el grupo especial ese de inteligencia que el procurador formó con ese nombre.
[…]
—¿Cómo operan y quién los protege, cómo operan y quién los protege?
—¿Cómo se opera? Pues se opera de la forma en que todo el mundo sabe, o sea, cuando se va a levantar a una víctima, lo protegen a uno los agentes, el que nos protege es el licenciado Pato Valdez, él tiene pleno conocimiento de los operativos, a la vez él le comunica a El Blindado de todos los operativos.
—¿Y el procurador?
—El Blindado en este caso, es la clave que él utiliza.
—¿Quién es El Blindado, dónde, cómo se llama?
—El Blindado es el procurador.
[…]
—¿De dónde está agarrado el procurador?
—El procurador está agarrado del gobernador.
—¿Cómo se llama el gobernador?
—El gobernador se llama Eugenio Elorduy Walther. Pero yo no creo que el gobernador esté metido en esto. Pero sí lo apoya. Incondicionalmente lo ha apoyado. Ya van a ser los seis años y lo sigue sosteniendo igual.

El interrogatorio sigue, implacable: ¿Cómo es ese cabrón? ¿Qué edad tiene? Acuérdate, acuérdate, tienes que acordarte. ¿Te molesta la luz? Háblame de los trabajos que han hecho. A ver, de uno por uno. ¿Quién es la gente de El Chapo aquí? Di nombres y apodos. No te equivoques. ¡Nombres! Cárgate para acá, por favor. Veme a la cámara. ¿Cómo planearon las cosas, cómo fue el jale? ¿A qué más ministeriales les pagaron? ¿Están bien cuajados o qué onda? ¿Están cuajados? Y los municipales… ¿qué me dices de la municipal?

José Ramón Velásquez fue asesinado en cuanto terminó el interrogatorio. Abandonaron su cadáver frente a la casa donde vivía la novia del procurador. La tormenta que desataron 20 minutos de grabación no bastó para que el funcionario fuera removido del cargo. Martínez Luna declaró que no conocía, ni había oído hablar jamás de El Pato Valdez.

Al poco tiempo, una nueva videograbación reveló una extraña conversación sostenida en las oficinas de la Procuraduría estatal. Los protagonistas eran El Pato Valdez, el secretario particular del procurador, Julio Lamas, y el titular de la Unidad Especializada contra el Crimen Organizado, Víctor Felipe de la Garza Herrada.

Valdez detallaba ante los funcionarios una posible estrategia para lograr la captura de un miembro del grupo de los Arellano. No sólo eso: les pedía la entrega de “viáticos” para montar el operativo.

El huracán en que se vio envuelta la Procuraduría estatal cuando la videograbación fue entregada a los medios, tampoco hizo en mella en el procurador. Martínez Luna fue sostenido en el puesto hasta que terminó el sexenio del gobernador Elorduy (2001-2007). El entonces titular de la Unidad Especializada contra el Crimen Organizado, Víctor Felipe de la Garza, no consideró que el nuevo video constituyera una prueba de nada. Se encogió de hombros: “Yo recibía a muchas personas que aportaban información o presentaban denuncias. El objetivo de esa reunión fue recibir la denuncia de ese señor, que es un abogado de aquí de Tijuana. Yo lo conozco nada más de eso. Ha habido resultados muy importantes en las investigaciones, y la realidad obedece precisamente a esta confianza que tiene en nosotros la ciudadanía”.

Cuatro
—La única realidad de Tijuana es la impunidad —dice la directora de Zeta, Adela Navarro—. Se trata de una impunidad sin remedio, sin salida, porque es proveída por el mismo estado. En Tijuana, prácticamente todas las policías han sido compradas: de la municipal a la PGR, los agentes obedecen al cártel antes que al estado.

A fines de marzo de 2009, 18 oficiales de la Policía Municipal de Tijuana, entre los cuales se encontraba un jefe de Inteligencia, fueron detenidos por fuerzas federales.

zapato

Otros 39 habían sido consignados a lo largo del año. Cada uno de ellos cobraba entre 500 y 800 dólares al mes a cambio de colaborar con el crimen organizado. El dinero era enviado a los mismos cuarteles de la policía. Un oficial de alto rango era el encargado de repartirlo.

—El cártel controla a la fuerza pública, y controla también al poder judicial —prosigue Navarro—. Zeta lo ha documentado sistemáticamente durante 30 años. En los archivos del semanario no sólo está el organigrama del cártel, sino también los vínculos que éste ha establecido con las autoridades desde los tiempos en que comenzó a operar. Zeta ha documentado el modo en que nuestra sociedad se fue quedando en la orfandad, y perdió el asombro.
El presidente de la Coparmex, Roberto Quijano, asegura que Tijuana es víctima de una leyenda negra tejida por los afanes sensacionalistas de la prensa:
—La gente vive con normalidad. Hay una guerra entre grupos criminales, pero los ciudadanos no forman parte de esa pugna. Los muertos, los ejecutados, son los propios criminales. Aunque el tejido social fue dañado por las omisiones cometidas durante la administración de Elorduy, en Tijuana la mayor parte de los ciudadanos hacemos nuestra vida con tranquilidad.

La Quinta Encuesta Nacional sobre Inseguridad, realizada por el ICESI (Instituto Ciudadano de Estudios sobre la Inseguridad) coloca, sin embargo, a Tijuana como la cuarta ciudad más peligrosa del país (después del Distrito Federal, la zona conurbada del Estado de México y Acapulco), y la tercera donde la población se siente más insegura (luego del DF y el estado de Tabasco). Aunque en las calles no parece agitarse ni una hoja, y a primera vista la ciudad luce tan inofensiva como un domingo en la playa, en sus pliegues hay grietas, manchas de sangre, agujeros de bala. Taxistas, vendedores de chicles, boleros, meseros, repartidores de diarios, forman una red social asociada al narcotráfico. La PGR los conoce como “halcones”; la gente de Tijuana los denomina “punteros”. Su trabajo consiste en reportar la llegada de convoyes, de autos sospechosos, de visitantes extraños. Todo movimiento ocurrido en las oficinas gubernamentales es reportado de inmediato a los operadores del cártel.

—Al narco no lo ves venir, pero te sale al paso en todas partes. No es una construcción imaginaria. Está metido en la vida cotidiana. Forma parte de nosotros. El narco es ya nuestra cultura —dice el reportero Luis Alonso Pérez.

Beatriz Angélica Pérez Galindo, tampoco lo vio venir. Acababa de separarse, tenía un hijo de 10 años, necesitaba trabajo con urgencia. Una noche salió a comer tacos con una amiga. Esa amiga le presentó a un hombre. “Mira, este es Leonardo”. Leonardo traía una placa metálica encajada en el cinturón. Dijo que era “comandante de Inteligencia de la Procuraduría General de la República”. Le preguntó a Beatriz Angélica a qué se dedicaba. “A nada”, dijo ella. El hombre le sugirió: “Ya que no tiene trabajo, debería dedicarse a la correduría de bienes raíces. Usted busca casas en renta, las contrata para mí y yo le doy un mes de renta de comisión”. Beatriz Angélica le dio su número telefónico. Leonardo se negó a darle el suyo: “Como soy de la policía no se lo puedo dar”. La llamó al día siguiente: “Búsqueme una casa grande, que tenga cochera”. Beatriz Angélica se puso a revisar los anuncios del periódico. Encontró una casa de 800 dólares al mes. Cuando Leonardo volvió a llamarle, se pusieron de acuerdo para que él le enviara el dinero del depósito. Se firmó el contrato. Le pagó su comisión.

Al poco tiempo el comandante volvió a buscarla para que consiguiera otra casa. “Va a llegar gente de la ciudad de México”, le dijo. Beatriz Angélica llamó a la inmobiliaria y consiguió una casa con tres recámaras y portón eléctrico. 800 dólares de renta. Leonardo le mandó una credencial de elector: pertenecía a una tal Liliana Ortiz. “Sáqueme a nombre de ella el contrato”.

Durante varios meses la mujer anduvo rentando casas a lo largo de la ciudad. A veces, porque iba a llegar de visita la familia de Leonardo; otras, porque éste estaba esperando “más gente de México”. Casi todos los contratos salieron a nombre de Liliana Ortiz, y en algunas ocasiones a nombre de Gustavo Guajardo.

Cuando se hicieron de confianza, el comandante comenzó a pedirle que llevara comida a las casas que había rentado. En ellas encontraba siempre a hombres armados que miraban la televisión. Unos parecían policías efectivos, otros tenían aspecto de “madrinas”. Todos llevaban ropas de calidad. No se dio cuenta de cómo el narcotráfico se había metido en su vida. No lo vio venir, hasta la tarde en que la detuvieron llevando una bolsa de comida a una casa de seguridad del crimen organizado. No supo que en Tijuana el narco te sale al paso, hasta que, previa lectura de su dicho, lo ratificó, firmó y estampó su huella dactilar. No lo supo hasta que le dijeron que había pasado a formar parte de una averiguación. La PGR/UEDO/087/2000.

Cinco
El presidente de la Coparmex, Roberto Quijano, comprendió en el sexenio del gobernador Elorduy que el crimen había tocado nuevas esferas. El secuestro de un empresario le reveló el nivel de la infiltración.

—Acababan de secuestrarlo. Llamé a la Procuraduría para decirles: “Se lo están llevando”. A las dos horas, el empresario fue liberado. Me pregunté: “¿De veras la cosa es así? ¿Existen secuestros autorizados y no autorizados?”.
Agrega Quijano:
—Cualquier gobierno tiene prioridades. Para Elorduy la seguridad no fue una de ellas. No dimensionó el problema, y cuando quiso tomar cartas en el asunto era demasiado tarde. El agua le había llegado a los tobillos, la dinámica delincuencial había enfermado a Baja California. Esa es la lucha que ahora se está dando: cómo sanar a un cuerpo que lleva tantos años enfermo.

Afuera, en la calle, hay patrullas con las sirenas encendidas, operativos policíacos con encapuchados, convoyes repletos de hombres armados que al mediodía transitan a vuelta de rueda por Sánchez Taboada y el Paseo de los Héroes. Todos los días hay primeras planas que anuncian en las esquinas nuevas ejecuciones. Noticiarios de televisión que exhiben cuerpos ensangrentados. Tijuana es una balacera.

Un registro de la Asociación Ciudadana contra la Impunidad señala que, de 2007 a la fecha, 488 personas han desaparecido después de ser levantadas por comandos que portaban uniformes, credenciales, armas largas y logos de la policía.

—En el 40 por ciento de los casos se trató de secuestros de comerciantes, tianguistas y pequeños empresarios. Ellos forman el grupo más vulnerable de la sociedad, pues los narcotraficantes no acostumbran secuestrar a la gente pudiente. Prefieren secuestrar a los dueños de farmacias, de tiendas, de carnicerías: aquellos que no tienen influencia ni contactos. Algunos secuestrados regresan a sus casas; otros no vuelven a aparecer jamás —explica el secretario general de la asociación, Fernando Ocegueda.

En su escritorio, Ocegueda tiene un álbum que contiene los rostros de los desaparecidos. Son fotos tomadas en festejos, reuniones familiares, ocasiones solemnes y días de campo. Cada una de esas sonrisas ha sido borrada por un cuento de terror. “Entraron por él a su casa”, “lo levantaron al salir del trabajo”, “descuartizaron al chofer y lo fueron a tirar en la puerta para que la familia pagara el rescate”. Casi 500 personas en sólo dos años. Unas se habían metido en las redes del crimen organizado. Otras no. Fueron simplemente víctimas.

Cuando El Pozolero cayó en Baja Season’s, los miembros de la Asociación llevaron el álbum a las oficinas de la SIEDO.

—Teníamos esperanza de que él nos aclarara el destino de nuestros familiares —dice Ocegueda—. Pero El Pozolero contestó que nunca vio a las caras de los muertos. Que se los entregaban enteipeados, con la cabeza envuelta en cinta canela, y que de ese modo los metía en los tambos.

La directora de Zeta afirma que Tijuana es un cementerio. Que por cada muerto que aparece posiblemente hay otro enterrado en narcofosas o en casas de seguridad.

—Si tienes suerte, encuentran tu cuerpo por ahí tirado. Si no la tienes, posiblemente es porque te mandaron allá.
Allá. Un perro ladra en el ejido Ojo de Agua, cerca de la tapia tras la cual Meza López encendía fogatas para que los cuerpos metidos en tambos desaparecieran más pronto. El viento pega en las cuestas, levanta remolinos de polvo, agita los montoncillos de tierra que descansan junto a las fosas sembradas de huesos y dientes.

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