Gangland (12 page)

It demonstrated many of the factors that put the Mexican Drug War into play—corruption in government, demands for bribes to get work done, a disregard for established investigative protocols or even getting to the bottom of difficult cases and the relative ease with which Mexicans can get away with murder or even disappear in the unlikely case where a suspect's identity is discovered.

Miguel G, a former Tijuana journalist who now lives in California, couldn't help but laugh at the credulity with which Canadians greeted the case. “It's always been this way in Mexico,” he told me. “In murder cases, the police don't look for
the
killer, they look for
a
killer—if the victims' family hadn't opened their mouths, someone would be behind bars right now. It probably wouldn't be the right guy, but there would be a guy.” The part of the whole drama that he thought could best teach North Americans about the mindset of Mexican authorities was how quick they were to blame other Canadians despite no evidence to support the claim. “Your media quickly decided it was all a master plan to make Cancún look safe for tourists,” Miguel G said. “That is probably part of it, but there is an old tradition there of blaming someone else for our problems, it's usually the Americans, sometimes the Europeans or Guatemalans or Colombians ... that time it was Canada.”

An “accident” in Acapulco

The Ianiero case was still broiling when another Canadian was killed under suspicious circumstances in Mexico. Adam De Prisco, a 19-year-old from Woodbridge, went to Acapulco with his best friend, Marco Calabro. The boys, who liked to go nightclubbing together in Toronto's entertainment district, were excited because it was their first trip without their parents. De Prisco told his friends on Facebook that he was “so hyped” to be going away. He was thin, but muscular, and liked to dye his short, spiky hair blond. His family described him as a happy, hard-working kid, while his friends said he had a reputation as a big talker who liked to play himself off as a ladies' man, a real player.

On January 7, 2007, the boys' second night in Mexico, De Prisco made a big mistake. At a giant nightclub then called Extravaganza (now called Mandara) on Las Brisas hill overlooking Acapulco Bay, the pair separated. “He wanted to go dancing, he's a dancer,” Calabro said. “He likes to pick up girls.” Calabro, who didn't like to dance, stayed at the bar, unable to see the dance floor.

De Prisco began to dance with a young woman. Her husband objected, and he and De Prisco got into a loud heated argument. The club's bouncers escorted De Prisco from the building and onto the street.

That much is agreed upon. After that, the Mexican authorities claimed he was a victim of a fatal hit-and-run accident. De Prisco's family said he was beaten to death by the husband's friends. Calabro, who didn't see the actual scuffle or anything that happened outside, only left the bar when another Canadian they had met in Acapulco told him De Prisco had been turfed. “I ran, right away,” Calabro said. “I begged and pleaded to know where he was. One bouncer was laughing and pointed me in the direction [of the door].” Once outside, he saw what he thought was a dead body. He didn't realize it was De Prisco and panicked. “My eyes ... I didn't think it was him,” he said. “I wouldn't believe it.” He thought about hailing a taxi back to the hotel, but realized he had to find his friend.

He went back to the body and recognized De Prisco, who was badly injured and bleeding from the head. Calabro managed to get a passerby to call 066 (Mexico's 911) for an ambulance and stayed with De Prisco until he died. “It was so bad, I don't even want people to know,” he recalled. “The first hour he was awake and he said his last word to me. He looked at me and I [saw] he needed help.” He later told media that he was appalled at the treatment he and his friend received in the hospital. “It was a joke,” he told them. “Doctors were laughing at us, police were laughing at us; everything to them was a joke because we weren't Mexican.” In a pathetic twist, the boys' hotel room was burgled and cleaned out in De Prisco's final hours. Calabro has since said that she believes the robbery was part of a complicated plan that started with the tussle in the nightclub.

After being notified by Mexican police about the accident, De Prisco's uncle, Sandro Bellio, and aunt, Stephanie Pannozzi, rushed to Acapulco and arrived just before he died on the evening of the January 9. When they saw De Prisco, the wounds he had—mainly around his head—did not look to them like they had come from a collision with a car. Pannozzi asked a neurologist who had been working the case what had killed De Prisco. She said that he told her it was likely a metal rod or a rock, not a hit-and-run. Bellio backed her up. “The injuries and the doctors said that it wasn't a car accident,” he said. “He had no marks on his body—all the trauma was on his face and head.” Bellio also said he spoke with eyewitnesses who said that they saw De Prisco being beaten and of a water truck that washed the blood [and any other evidence] from the scene, but none was willing to talk to police.

After he signed all the papers and made arrangements to transport De Prisco's body, Bellio asked police if there was anything else he needed to do. “Before we left even, this police officer was asking for a tip, for money, for his time,” he said. ‘I looked at him like, you gotta be joking me.”

After hearing little from the Mexican police in the days after the murder, the De Prisco family hired Greenspan. As with the Ianieros, rumors immediately circulated online in Canada that linked De Prisco to organized crime and that he was related to the Ianieros. Actually, he was, but very distantly. Bellio told a reporter that one of De Prisco's second cousins married a nephew of the murdered couple. A Canadian autopsy was noncommittal, determining that De Prisco could have died either by being beaten or by being struck by a car. Ironically, Extravaganza's slogan, borrowed from Las Vegas, was “Remember what happens in Acapulco stays in Acapulco.”

Since then, at least a dozen Canadian tourists have died in Mexico under suspicious circumstances. In all of the cases, the families of the deceased have refused to accept the explanations offered by Mexican authorities, including three who they claimed fell or jumped off hotel balconies.

Despite such incidents and severely worded warnings from their own government, Canadian tourism to Mexico has actually increased since the Ianieros' murder. Through aggressive marketing and very low prices, travel agents and tour operators have doubled the number of Canadian trips to Mexico between 2005 and 2009, peaking with more than 1.2 million visits per year. Over the same period, American trips to Mexico have declined significantly.

Chapter 7

Calderón Versus the Cartels

The federal election of 2006 may have been the most tense in Mexican history. Such a long history of rigged outcomes had put many watchful eyes—both domestic and international—on the campaigns, polling stations and vote counts. Fox's term had achieved some economic success, but many criticized him and his party PAN for not taking a harder line on the drug cartels as organized crime-related murders climbed into the thousands during his tenure.

PAN nominated Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa as Fox's successor, a career politician from Michoacán whose father had helped create the party. After losing the election, the PRI had since split into two groups. The socialist Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution or PRD) had spun off in 1989 and by 2006 appeared to be even more powerful than the traditional PRI. Its candidate was Mexico City's mayor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The PRI in alliance with the Green Party ran Roberto Madrazo Pintado, who was later caught cheating at the Berlin Marathon.

The vote was close enough to force a series of recounts. They eventually determined that Calderón had 15,000,284 votes (35.89 percent) and won 16 states; López Obrador received 14,756,350 votes (35.31 percent) and won 15 states plus the Federal Capital District; while Madrazo took 9,301,441 votes (22.26 percent) and won no states. It looked very much like an even standoff between the Conservative north against the Socialist south.

A tribunal appointed by the Mexican Supreme Court, with the approval of the European Union, named Calderón president over the peaceful protests of López Obrador and the PRD. Calderón's first moves were popular. He worked hard to stabilize corn prices, which had risen sharply with the sudden rise in popularity of ethanol as a fuel, and started an incentive program for first-time job seekers. To help quell government corruption, he put a cap on how much top government officials could earn and announced significant pay raises for the military and the Federales. He announced a War on Drug Trafficking, making it clear that his enemies were not users, but importers and exporters.

He made good on his word almost immediately. On December 12, 2006, less than two weeks after taking office, Calderón ordered a force of 4,000 soldiers and Federales into his home state, to launch Operation Michoacán.

La Familia Michoacáno

Michoacán had long been seen as something of a safe haven for organized crime. It was known worldwide for growing top-quality marijuana—though the business had become far less profitable in recent years because of competition from growers in the United States and Canada—and as a transit point for cocaine. The people—who had a lot in common with those in Chiapas—had long been aware of the existence of La Familia Michoacáno (The Michoacán Family), which began as a quasi-religious group of vigilantes and activists who served primarily to settle disputes between locals who did not trust the federal or state governments. They financed themselves first by “taxing” local businesses, then turned to trafficking marijuana and later cocaine in close association with the Gulf Cartel. They also distributed bibles and cash to the needy and supported schools and anti-government activists.

Based in Apatzingán, their leader was Nazario “El Mas Loco” (the Craziest) Moreno González. He had published a book of his thoughts, and claimed it was his and the organization's divine right to murder their enemies and anyone else who hindered their path. The DEA described La Familia as having a “Robin Hood mentality,” honestly believing they were protecting the people from a corrupt government and the other drug cartels. It also described them as “unusually violent.” Like most other cartels, they also took part in other operations, like pirating DVDs, smuggling people across borders and kidnapping, usually while wearing police uniforms.

They announced their independence for the Gulf Cartel in November 25, 2006 in a bizarre and cruel manner. As revelers partied at Apatzingán's Sol y Sombra nightclub, 20 armed men stormed in, firing their weapons in the air. Two of them, who were carrying large bags, walked to the edge of the dance floor and rolled five severed heads in among the horrified dancers and left a note that read: “La Familia doesn't kill for money. It doesn't kill women. It doesn't kill innocent people, only those who deserve to die. Know that this is divine justice.” The heads belonged to men affiliated with the Gulf Cartel.

The club's manager, Carlos Alvarez Olmos, leapt to La Familia's defense when questioned by an American reporter. “These men didn't come here to hurt anyone,” he said. “They work against bad people; those men whose heads they cut off were like bugs.” The reporter described him as “nervous.”

After severing ties with the Gulf Cartel, La Familia aligned with the more powerful and geographically closer Sinaloa Cartel. Sinaloa's Guzmán Loera introduced La Familia to the manufacture of methamphetamine, and Apatzingán quickly became the meth-making capital of the entire world with several factories, the DEA claims, each capable of producing 300 pounds of product a day.

The army moves in

Whether it was because it was his home state, was due to the outrage over the Sol y Sombra incident or because they were the newest and presumably weakest cartel, Calderón struck La Familia first. The heavily armed soldiers—most of them wearing facemasks so that cartel members would not recognize them and undertake retribution against their families—met little resistance at first patrolling major roads and squares and setting up roadblocks and curfews. There was so little action in the beginning, many critics accused the conservative Calderón government of targeting not the cartels, but the Zapatistas and other activist movements in the south.

He quickly followed Operation Michoacán with Operation Baja California (widely known in the media as Operation Tijuana) on January 2, 2007. With help from the navy, 3,296 soldiers and Federales, using 21 airplanes, nine helicopters, 28 ships, 247 tactical vehicles and 10 drug-sniffing dogs, took control of Tijuana in the middle of a record cold snap that had left a light dusting of snow on the city. If Operation Michoacán—taking place in a largely agrarian, heavily indigenous state—could be compared to the American military taking over New Mexico, the invasion of a large, diverse port city of Tijuana would be like taking over Seattle.

Their first major arrests were police officers. On January 26, video surveillance captured a group of Federales and state police taking a bribe—a $100 bill and a 200-peso note are clearly seen changing hands—to allow a luxury SUV to pass through a checkpoint. As an experiment, the army disarmed all local and state police in Tijuana—on the pretext that they were checking their weapons for fingerprints and other evidence—and, according to
Zeta
, petty crime surged by 50 percent in those two weeks.

Major arrests

On January 20, Calderón delivered on a campaign promise to break with Mexican tradition and extradited convicted Gulf Cartel kingpin Osiel Cárdenas Guillén and 14 other convicted traffickers to the United States on the understanding that prosecutors there would not pursue the death penalty. This was a move that impressed many Mexicans, as Cárdenas Guillén had been taunting Mexican authorities by throwing lavish children's parties in his own honor all over northern Mexico, which he coordinated from his prison cell. Children in the area referred to him as “Abuelo Coca” (Grandpa Coke).

Back in Tijuana, on April 3, 2007, the army made headlines when they arrested Víctor Magno “El Matapolicías” (the Cop Killer) Escobar Luna, a former Baja California state police officer who led a small army of kidnappers and assassins for the Tijuana Cartel. In 2005, the corpse of his brother Ricardo had been dumped at a busy intersection in the Bonita neighborhood, likely the work of assassins from the Sinaloa Cartel.

Two weeks later, the army captured cartel member Teodoro “El Teo” Garcia Simental. He was injured in the raid and taken to Tijuana's General Hospital. On April 18, the cartel led its first offensive against the military when a group of armed, masked men stormed the hospital searching for Garcia Simental, and taking hostages at the same time. In the resulting three-hour firefight, an army private, a Federale and a hospital custodian were killed. After one of the gang's leaders, Ernesto Sánchez Vega, was captured, the raiders abandoned their plan and retreated. Their vehicles were later intercepted by state police who let them pass. Five of the officers were identified by eyewitness accounts and arrested soon after the incident. Their official excuse was that they believed they were too outgunned to apprehend the fleeing suspects.

Mexican authorities extended their targets beyond the obvious, but Calderón's next move was a public relations disaster. Zhen-Li “El Chino” (the Chinaman) Ye Gon was a Shanghai-born businessman who came to Mexico in 2002, becoming a citizen later that year. One of his many businesses was a pharmaceutical firm called Unimed Pharm Chem. With it, he received a license to import huge quantities of pseudoephedrine and its precursor, raw ephedrine, into Mexico from China. Of course, while pseudoephedrine is the basic active ingredient in many over-the-counter decongestants, it is also the primary ingredient for methamphetamine. When Ye Gon allowed his import license to lapse in the summer of 2005, the DEA alleged that he was continuing to import pseudoephedrine for the sole purpose of making methamphetamine and named him as a member of the Sinaloa Cartel.

On March 15, 2007, Federales entered his $2–million house in the posh Las Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood in northwest Mexico City. Inside, they found $207 million in U.S. currency, 18 million pesos, 200,000 euros, 113,000 Hong Kong dollars and 11 centenarios (Mexican gold coins). The police also uncovered a high-output, medical-quality laboratory. They arrested nine people, including Ye Gon. Four of those arrested were Chinese citizens.

Ye Gon denied being involved in the drug trade or having ties with the cartels. He explained that he did not realize his license had lapsed and that the money was not actually his. Ye Gon claimed that they were illegal contributions to the Calderón presidential campaign and that Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano Alarcón forced him to hide them, by threatening his life, saying “coopera o cuello” (cooperate or it's your neck).

His story became an overnight sensation, with much of the media referring to the story as “coopela o cuello,” making fun of Ye Gon's accent. Although Calderón and Lozano Alarcón denied the allegations and were never indicted, many believed Ye Gon's story and there is still a thriving business printing T-shirts, bumper stickers and house signs reading
Creo que el Chino
(I believe the Chinaman). Ye Gon was not indicted and did not appear in court.

The Cartels' brutal retaliation

National attention returned to the cartels on May 14. In Mexico City, Federal Prosecutor Jose Nemesio Lugo was driving to work in a Pontiac minivan when he was surrounded by gunmen with AR-15s. He was working on a case against the Arellano Félix brothers when he was killed. A few hours later, an army patrol in a crime-ridden neighborhood came across a body. It was that of Jorge Altriste Espinoza, head of the Tijuana's police's special forces. He had been brutally tortured and there were three bullet holes in the back of his head.

In June, the U.S. State Department warned Americans to exercise extreme caution when visiting Mexico. In response, the Mexican government criticized the Americans for their contributions to the Drug War. Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora called Washington “cynical” for maintaining that the existence of the cartels was just a Mexican problem, saying that the Americans had done nothing effective to reduce demand for illegal drugs. He also called U.S. gun control laws “absurd” and blamed easy access to high-powered and easily concealed weapons for allowing the cartels to become as well-armed and confident as they had become. This was a break from the Fox government, whom many critics had accused of being subservient to Washington.

Adding to the confusion in Tijuana, a new player stepped into the fray. On August 27, 2007, city workers found three headless corpses in a dump. Investigators later found the men's heads and a note threatening the Tijuana Cartel, specifically mentioning the Arellano Félix brothers. The consensus among the media and public was that the Sinaloa Cartel was taking advantage of the siege, hoping to eliminate the local traffickers and stake the territory for themselves once the army left.

Headless corpses with notes quickly became the calling card for all cartels. “Why do you decapitate people?” Bruce Bagley, a professor at the University of Miami who researches U.S.–Latin American relations, explained to American reporters who were trying to understand the macabre habit. “They are doing this to intimidate authorities, other gangs and the civilian population. The bitterness of the fight has intensified. There's a very unsettled and uncertain set of strategic alliances between these groups that are changing from day to day.”

New targets: musicians and journalists

While things were largely calm in the northeast compared to Tijuana, all of Mexico was shocked by what happened there at the beginning of winter. Three days after former Rio Bravo Mayor Juan Gajardo Anzaldua, his brother, two bodyguards and an innocent bystander were mowed down by machine gunfire—an act that forced the army to secure the town—on November 29, a masked man kicked down the door of Room 11 of the Motel Mónaco in nearby Matamoros and opened fire with an AK-47. He hit and critically wounded Zayda Peña Arjona—the popular lead singer of the band Zayda y Los Culpables (Zayda and the Guilty Ones)—and killed her friend Ana Berta Gonzalez and the motel's manager Leonardo Sanchez. The following day, a group of armed men broke into the hospital that was treating her and intercepted her on the way out of emergency surgery. “One can't confront those people, there are more patients around,” said a hospital employee who did not want to be named. “What can you do about it?” Seconds after finding her, one of the men put two bullets into Peña Arjona's head. There was no evidence that she was ever linked to the drug trade, and the media postulated that Peña Arjona had angered the cartels by refusing to sing
narcocorridas
.