Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields (35 page)

They point rifles at him. He cannot stop laughing.

“I was afraid,” he explains. “I realized I would have to kill them all. I said to God, don’t do this to me, I don’t want to do this anymore. God, give me time.”

Two of the armed men leave. Another guy goes to the bathroom.

Here is his chance. The chance he is praying that God will not let him use. He can see no way out but killing, and now he knows that is no way out.

He looks at the remaining captor.

“The guy says, ‘I don’t have a problem with you. Once, you told me to be careful or they would kill me. You did me a favor.’

“So, I am praying to God, help me! I don’t want to kill these people. And I know I can do it rapidly.

“The guy turns his back on me and says, ‘Get out, go.’”

He opens the door and runs without his shoes or clothes. He goes to his home, takes his family out the back way, and sends them to different parts of Mexico. He knows that his killers will not go after his family, because they still fear him and know he can raise some men and kill their families.

“I had no one but God now. I still had some assets. I had a pilot assigned to me, I had knowledge of the organization. I had lived fully. I had risen. Often, I would simply supervise. I might fly to a distant city on a Saturday. Then on Sunday, I would supervise an execution and make certain the individual died. Sometimes, I would give the coup de grâce. I was on a monthly salary. I had a house, a good car, all that I needed was given to me. The boss is like God because everything comes from him. You worship him. When I was kidnapped, I finally realized I had been worshipping a false god. And I turned to the real God.”

His face is stern now. He has come to the place, the very moment that has permitted him to recount the kidnappings, the tortures, the killings. He is selling, and what he is selling is God. He is believing, and what he believes, based on his own life, is that anyone can be redeemed. And that it is possible to leave the organization and survive.

“I learned more as I was running. I asked God, if I am such a tough guy, why are they letting me go? I realized no one is a tough guy. I start seeing billboards in Juárez that said you must turn toward God, actual billboards. They had always been there, but I had been blind.

“After the second kidnapping and my escape, I asked God to help me so I didn’t have to kill. Tell me, God, how are you going to get me out of this? I was trained to kill. Back in that house, I knew which one I would kill first, and it would have been easy. But I was crying, crying out of fear, because I did not want to kill. One of the kidnappers was the son of a boss, and I knew if I killed him, then I would lose my family because with such a killing, no one would respect my family. The guy who let me run, he was a rich kid, he was just there for the fun.

“There were people who would tremble when they saw me because they knew I was violent. I could go to the door of a bar and simply beckon for a guy to go with me, and he would come because he knew he had to come. I was feared. But my captors, they were only playing.”

And so he lives, and now he must explain to himself why he lives, and now he must somehow redeem himself from his earlier life. But he cannot simply denounce this life: He was feared, he was trained, he was the good soldier in his war.

“I had never had free will, I had just followed orders. You never had time to think of the killings, of the executions. If you did that, you might feel remorse. But because of the way I worked, I could leave a torture scene, I could close off my mind. Also, I was using a lot of drugs. I always had to be awake, I always had to be aware of talking on the street, of what was being said about the people I worked with.”

His thoughts are a jumble as he speaks. He is telling of his salvation, and yet he feels the tug of his killings. He feels the pride in being feared. Back at the beginning, when he first starts with the state police, that is when Oropeza, the doctor and newspaper columnist, is killed. And his killers, he now recalls, were his mentors, his teachers. He remembers after the murder, the state government announced a big investigation to get the killers. And one of them, a fellow cop, stayed at his own police station until the noise quieted, and the charade ended.

He is excited now, he is living in his past.

“The only reason I am here is because God saved me. I repented. After all these years, I am talking to you. I am having to relive things that are dead to me. I don’t want to be part of this life. I don’t want to know the news. You must write this so that other
sicarios
know it is possible to leave. They must know God can help them. They are not monsters. They have been trained like Special Forces units in the army. But they never realize they have been trained to serve the Devil.

“Imagine being nineteen years old and you are able to call up a plane. I liked the power. I never realized until God talked to me that I could get out. Still, when God frees me, I remain a wolf. I can’t become a lamb. I remain a terrible person, but now I have God on my side.

“I don’t carry a gun now.

“I carry God.”

His eyes are glowing now. He is on fire.

“God will get them out when they are ready.

“You leave without money.

“You need faith. And prayer.”

He stares at me as I write in a black notebook.

His body seems to loom over the table.

This is the point in all stories where everyone discovers who they really are. Do you believe in redemption? Do you believe a man can kill for twenty years and then change? Do you even believe such killers can exist? In every story, there is this same moment when all you hold dear and believe to be true and certain is suddenly called into question, and the walls of your life shake, the roof collapses, and you look up into a sky you never imagined and never wanted to know. I believe his conversion to Christ, I believe he can change, I believe he can never be forgiven. And I am certain my knowledge of his life and his ways will haunt me the rest of my days.

He says, “I have now relived something I should never have opened up. Are you the medium to reach others? I prayed to God asking what I should do. And you are the answer. You are going to write this story because God has a purpose in you writing this story.

“God has given you this mission.

“No one will understand this story except those who have been in the life. And God will tell you how to write this story.”

Then we embrace and pray. I can feel his hand on my shoulder probing, seeking the power of the Lord in me.

I have my work to do now.

And so we go our separate ways.

In the parking lot, he moves with ease, in a state of grace. The sun blazes, the sky aches blue. Life feels good. His eyes relax and he laughs. And then I see him memorize my license plate in a quick and practiced glance. He has told me he is bathed in the blood of the lamb, but his eyes remain those of the wolf.

The pace roars in December,
and then, just around Christmas, there is a faint slowing. But on December 30, three go down. Number 1,600 is a man who resisted a robbery in an auto repair shop. After him, a guy is murdered on the street when he walked out of a money exchange. Another person is snatched, and his fate left to the imagination. Then, a man is murdered in his boutique dress shop. His customers are beaten and robbed. By New Year’s Eve, 1,602 are dead and 195 people had been slaughtered in December, a month rivaling August, when 228 died.

Then, they go down until just minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve, and then there are 1,607 dead. The final body is an act of love, according the Juárez tabloid,
P.M.
:

A man who began celebrations to welcome the New Year with a woman
was shot to death near midnight in the colonia Plutarcho Elias Calles
thus becoming the last mortal victim of 2008, number 1,607.

According to residents of the neighborhood
just a few days ago, the woman broke off her relationship with another man
who had been planning some kind of revenge fueled by jealousy
and thus, he could be the author of the criminal act.

It is said that it could have been a crime of passion, although state
authorities will investigate
to find out if this was the motive of the aggression.

It occurred near the stroke of midnight marking the end of 2008 and the
beginning of the New Year
at the intersection of Isla Santo Domingo and Isla Quisca streets in the
aforementioned colonia.

According to first reports to Emergency 066, three individuals who looked
like
cholos
one of them riding a bicycle
shot at a white car where a man and woman apparently were
resulting in the death of the man.

The deceased, identified by the nickname “El Mango,” twenty-eight years old
received several gunshot wounds in different parts of his body
including the head according to witnesses
who said they had seen the woman’s ex-boyfriend among the aggressors
and so now, the authorities are looking for him.

They added that the woman who accompanied the victim was not injured
and she managed to get out of the car and hide in her house which was near
the scene of the crime.

According to some sources, “El Mango” had intended to get some
bodyguards
but these guys abandoned him and after running a little way
they fell dejected and downhearted in the street.

State agents came to the scene and it is presumed that they interviewed the
surviving woman
in order to get some facts about the possible identities
of the aggressors.

At 2:40 A.M., the first person is gunned down in the New Year. The next kill comes at 4 A.M. The year of our Lord 2009 is launched.

The next morning, the city is spent. Green, yellow, red, orange, blue, and white balloons flap from a palm tree in front of the club Beach, and the sidewalk is littered with confetti and garbage bags broken open with their reeking contents attracting clusters of pigeons.

On January 6, the day of the three wise men, a huge holiday sweet bread that is over a mile long feeds fifteen thousand people in a park in Ciudad Juárez. Late that afternoon, Mario Escobedo Salazar and his son Edgar Escobedo Anaya have visitors to their law office. The elder Escobedo Salazar, fifty-nine, is killed at his desk. The son runs and is slaughtered just down the block. His own brother, Mario Escobedo Anaya, was executed by the Chihuahuan state police in 2002 after representing a defendant accused of the murder of a group of women found buried in a cotton field. His law partner, Sergio Dante Almaraz, also represented one of the accused in that case. He was executed in January 2005 in downtown Juárez. Almaraz had publicly predicted his murder and said he would be killed by the Chihuahuan state government. Some message has been delivered, some circle closed, but the only part of the statement fully understood by everyone is death.

There is supposed to be an answer to such a number of killings. Some kind of explanation and then, following this explanation, a solution achieved through an orderly series of steps. I go to see El Pastor, and he prays for me, a thankless task for which I thank him.

The year has not been easy for El Pastor. He watches his city die around him. He has men come with guns demanding money. He is at a stoplight one afternoon and sees a man executed three cars ahead of him.

I ask him, “Tell me what the slaughter of the year 2008 means.”

He says, “Not even in the Mexican revolution did they kill so many in Juárez. This year of death shows the brutality inside the Mexican government—death comes from inside the government. Not from the people. The only way to end the violence is to let organized crime be the government.

“The crime groups are fighting for power. If the toughest guy wins, he will get everything under control.

“Now there is no respect for the president.

“People now say to the president, ‘Fuck you, man.’

“I am a miracle, but I am not a martyr. I don’t want to be killed.”

We sit outside his house. His red car stares at us with a front plate that says, WITH GOD, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE.

As we enjoy the blue sky and the warmth falling from heaven, more die in the city.

That is the answer.

Both the sun.

And the blood.

Miss Sinaloa goes on and on. Her name changes as does her face. Every day, week, month, she shows up in the city with a new identity with her face made up, her high-heeled shoes, tight skirt, and fragrance. And each time she comes to the city, she is adored, raped, thrown in the trash, and lives on with a maimed mind. She never forgets, and the city always forgets her.