The Cartel (58 page)

“What about what Jimena and Marisol told us?”

“On deep background,” Óscar says. “Don’t use their names, just write that some citizens in the valley believe that the army is favoring the Sinaloa cartel in the struggle, something like that.”

All three articles run that week.

—

Juárez is a horror show.

The Juárez cartel and their Zeta allies put up banners promising to kill a police officer every forty-eight hours until the new police chief—a former army officer—resigned.

After the first two officers were murdered, the chief did resign. The Zetas then sent the Juárez mayor a message that if “you put in another asshole working for Barrera, we’ll kill you, too.” Signs went up around the city promising to decapitate the mayor and his family. He moved his wife and children to El Paso but, contrary to rumor, stayed in Juárez himself, albeit under heavy round-the-clock security.

The administration sent five thousand more troops into Juárez.

The new police chief was another former army general, and the mayor disbanded the entire municipal police force and announced that the army would take over all city police duties.

In effect, Juárez is under martial law.

—

Summer burns off spring.

Sweltering becomes scorching.

And the violence in and around Juárez goes on.

On the first official day of summer, eighteen people are killed in Juárez. Pablo, Ana, and Giorgio hop around the city like drops of grease on a hot pan. One of the bodies, found out in the desperately poor
colonia
of Anapra, just along the border, is decapitated and dismembered, just a trunk in a bloody T-shirt.

Pablo’s glad that he, and not Ana, caught this call.

By week’s end, three more are killed, although the headline story is that the $1.6 billion Mérida Initiative has gone into effect.

In July, the police commander in charge of antikidnapping is himself kidnapped, and the chief of Juárez’s prison system is gunned down in his car along with his bodyguard and three other people.

By August, Pablo thinks he has seen it all when he gets a call to go out to the
colonia
known as First of September in the southwest part of the city to something called CIAD #8.

Center for Alcohol and Drug Integration.

A rehab clinic.

It’s about 7:30 on a Wednesday night, still light out, enough to see the blood on the sidewalk outside the newly whitewashed little building. The metal gate that leads onto a front patio is open. Cops are everywhere.

Pablo counts seven bodies on the patio, and by now he’s experienced enough to know that these men—recovering addicts and alcoholics—were dragged out here, shoved against the wall, and executed with shots to the back of the head.

He looks up.

A lifeless body, bullet holes punched in the back, still grips the rungs of a fire escape ladder.

The outraged neighbors are eager to tell the story. An army truck pulled up at the end of the block and stopped. Then another vehicle—some say it was a Humvee, others a Suburban, roared up and started blasting.

The neighbors screamed for help, phoned emergency services, ran down to the army truck and pleaded. The truck never moved, the soldiers didn’t help, emergency services never came. The survivors and neighbors loaded the twenty-three wounded into the center’s old van in shifts, until finally a Red Cross ambulance came to take several of the rest.

Pablo examines shell casings before the cops take them away. He’s not concerned about contaminating evidence, knowing by now that there will be no arrests, never mind trials.

Like most Juarense reporters now, Pablo has become a semi-expert in forensics. The casings are from 9mms and 7.62s, and 5.56s. The 7.62s could be from AKs—the narco weapon of choice—or military weapons. The 5.56s are consistent with several of the NATO weapons used by the Mexican army. The 9s are Glock or Smith and Wesson sidearms.

Pablo sees a cop he knows from…who knows what recent killing. “You have any suspects?”

“What do you think?”

“There were soldiers fifty yards away,” Pablo says. “They didn’t do anything.”

“Didn’t they?”

True, Pablo thinks. They blocked the street, maybe they were lookouts, maybe they scared the police and the EMTs from coming.

“Why would anyone want to kill rehab patients?” Pablo asks.

“Because the cartels use them to hide gunmen,” the cop says. “Or because they’re afraid of what a clean and sober ex-gunman might confess to. I don’t know. Unless you have some answers for me, Pablo, get the fuck out of my way. I have to collect evidence that will never be used.”

“The weapons might have been military.”

“Go have a beer, Pablo, huh?”

Pablo goes him eight better. He’s working on nine when he gets a phone call from Ana.

The army has taken away Jimena Abarca’s older son.

—

The sergeant at the gate won’t admit them to see Colonel Alvarado.

But when they insist that they won’t leave until they do, and that television trucks will be there soon, the colonel finally comes out to the gate.

At first, he denies any knowledge of Miguel Abarca.

“At least ten people saw soldiers throw him into an army truck,” Jimena says.

“Unfortunately,” Alvarado says, “the narcos sometimes use stolen army uniforms and vehicles.”

“Are you really saying,” Ana presses, “that you’re so careless with your equipment that you allow it to be stolen by the very people you’re supposed to be controlling? Do you have an inventory of these missing vehicles?”

Alvarado will neither confirm nor deny that his unit is holding Miguel.

“But you can check,” Pablo says. “Presumably you keep better track of people than you do of equipment.”

Glaring at Pablo, Alvarado sends a lieutenant to check the day’s paperwork. The subordinate comes back with a report that they do indeed have an “Abarca, Miguel,” age twenty-three, in custody.

“On what charges?” Jimena asks.

“Suspicion,” Alvarado answers.

“Of being my son?” Jimena asks.

“Of colluding with narcotics traffickers.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Marisol says. “Miguel is a baker.”

“Osiel Contreras was a car salesman,” Alvarado says. “Adán Barrera was an accountant.”

“I want to see him,” says Jimena.

“That’s not possible.”

“As an official of the Valverde town government,” Marisol says, “I demand access to Miguel Abarca.”

“You have no authority here.”

“As his physician, then.”

“Perhaps,” Alvarado says, “if his mother weren’t so busy attending demonstrations and spent more time supervising her children, her son wouldn’t be in this difficulty.”

“Is that what this is about?” Jimena asks.

“Isn’t it?” Alvarado asks. “Aren’t you just a publicity seeker? I noticed you brought the media with you.”

“They’re my friends.”

“Exactly.”

Pablo looks around and sees that the commotion in front of the gate has attracted a few onlookers. Within minutes word gets around, people start to walk down the dirt street toward the post, and a crowd forms around the gate. The people in Práxedis know the Abarcas, and Marisol Cisneros is their doctor.

Someone shouts an insult at the soldiers.

Someone else throws a rock.

Then a bottle smashes against the wire.

“Don’t do that!” Jimena shouts.

“You see?” Alvarado says. “You’re causing an incident.”

Pablo sees that the soldiers are getting nervous. Rifles are unslung, bayonets fastened.

“Please, don’t throw anything!” Marisol yells.

The missiles stop, but one of the townspeople starts to holler, “Miguel! Miguel! Miguel!” and the rest pick up the chant,
Miguel! Miguel! Miguel! Miguel!

“These people are not doing your son any favors,” Alvarado says.

But the chant keeps up—
Miguel! Miguel! Miguel!
—and more people come down the street. Cell phones come out—calls are made, pictures and video taken. The whole valley will be alerted soon.

“I will clear this street,” Alvarado says to Jimena, “and hold you personally responsible for any civic unrest.”

“We hold
you
responsible for civic unrest,” Marisol says.

When Giorgio starts taking pictures of the crowd, Alvarado yells at Ana, “Tell him to stop that!”

“I’ve never been able to control him.”

“Release my son,” Jimena says.

“I do not respond to threats.”

“Neither do I.”

Arms outstretched, Jimena and Marisol move the crowd back about twenty yards from the gate, but more people keep coming until about two hundred are gathered in the long light of the summer evening.

Two television news trucks pull up.

“You’ll be on the Juárez news tonight,” Marisol tells Alvarado. “The El Paso news by morning. Why don’t you just let him go? I know Miguel—he isn’t even politically active.”

“If Señora Abarca would agree to mind her own business from now on,” Alvarado says, “perhaps something could be worked out.”

“So Miguel is a hostage.”

“Your word, not mine.”

“I will call the governor,” Marisol says, “I will call the president, if I have to. I am not without influence.”

“Indeed, you are out of your social setting, Dr. Cisneros.”

“Meaning that I’m not an
indio
?”

“Again, your words,” Alvarado says. “I am only stating that I see you more in a Mexico City salon than on a dusty street in rural Chihuahua.”

“My family have been here for generations.”

“As landlords,” Alvarado says. “As
patrones.
Perhaps you should consider acting as such.”

“Oh, I am, Colonel.”

Off to the side, away from the crowd, Jimena breaks down in Ana’s arms. “They’re going to hurt him. They’re going to kill him, I know it.”

“No they’re not,” Ana says. “Not now. There are too many eyes watching them now.”

Pablo gets a call from Óscar.
“Are you all right? Are you safe?”

“We’re fine.”

“How’s Jimena holding up?”

“As might be expected.”

“Tell Giorgio I need his photos.”

“I will.”

“Do you think they’ll release him?”

“No,” Pablo says frankly. “This Alvarado guy would lose too much face now.”

It settles into a siege.

When darkness finally comes, the candles come out and the vigil begins.

Marisol calls the governor and is told that he will “certainly look into it.” Then she takes the humiliating step of calling her ex-husband for help. He phones a friend, who phones a friend, who talks to someone at Los Pinos, who promises to “look into it.”

They don’t release Miguel that night, or the next morning.

The crowd fades away, but somehow it’s arranged that a few people always wait by the gate, with signs demanding Miguel’s release.

And Jimena Abarca goes on a hunger strike.

—

The hunger strike of Jimena Abarca doesn’t make international news.

Or even national news.

Óscar, though…Óscar makes it a daily, above-the-fold headline, telling his staff, “If we’re not here to cover something like this, we’re not here for anything at all.”

For three days straight he makes it front-page news, running stories under Ana’s and Pablo’s bylines about injustice in the valley, about the suspension of human rights, about the army running roughshod.

Pablo is there when the first phone calls start to come in. At first they’re official—the general in command calls to ask Óscar why he’s taking sides.

“We’re not taking sides,” Óscar says, perhaps a bit disingenuously. “We’re reporting news.”

“You’re not reporting our side.”

“We’d love to,” Óscar says. “What is your side? You can give it to me over the phone or I’ll send Ana right over. You know Ana, yes?”

“We’re not giving interviews at this point.”

“And if that’s your side of the story,” Óscar responds, “I’ll print that.”

A flack from the governor’s office phones to ask basically the same question and to observe that the other papers aren’t making this front-page news.

“I’m not the editor of other papers,” Óscar answers. “I’m the editor of this one, have been for quite some time, and in my experience this is front-page news.”

He hangs up, taps his cane on the side of his desk a few times, and then says, “The publisher will call next. Not until after lunch, though, when he thinks I’m mellowed by a glass of wine and a full stomach.”

The call comes at 2:05, ten minutes after Óscar has returned to the office. El Búho listens to his complaints, sympathizes with the angry calls he’s had to endure from the Defense Department, the governor’s office, and even Los Pinos, and then kindly says he will do nothing different than what he’s doing except to add an angry editorial for tomorrow’s edition.

He puts the phone on speaker so Pablo and Ana can listen.

“News articles are one thing,”
the publisher says.
“Editorials are quite another.”

“I have built my professional life on that principle,” Óscar says, smiling at Pablo. “I’m glad we agree.”

“So you intend to commit this paper to the position that the army is committing an outrage in Práxedis.”

“In the whole Juárez Valley,” Óscar says.

“I don’t know if the board can accept that.”

“Then the board had better fire me,” Óscar says.

“Now, Oscar, no one said anything about—”

“As long as I’m the editor of this paper,” Óscar says, “I will
be
the editor, and, by definition, the editor writes the editor
ials.
”

It’s classic Óscar—firm, decisive, authoritative—but Pablo notices that he’s aged. The mischievous glint in the eye has dimmed a little, his blinks are more frequent, his hip seems to hurt him a little more, and Pablo knows that the events in Juárez have played on their boss. On all of us, I guess, Pablo thinks.

Two more days into the hunger strike and Óscar’s scathing editorial, the other calls come in.