In April of 2014 . This same Allende city officer tried once more the following day, advising the mayor to tell someone about what was happening; that he talk to the governor. With the passing of the days, the identity of 14 of the victims from Guatemala have been confirmed (the police estimate there are 15, and the rest are possibly Mexicans). . And he said this openly, because almost all the police received money from those people And that according to that meeting, they had told him that if we saw strange things related to Los Zetas, that we would not do anything or say anything. [10] How the U.S. For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. Members of the criminal group Los Zetas could be seen unloading barrels next to a storage shed near the back of the property. History. Inside the gate, a small building was burning. Juan Ariel Hernndez Ramos, commander of the Allende police, who reported to the police director, is the most senior public official sentenced in the case. In return for the departments cooperation, most officers received 2,000 to 3,000 pesos per month (about $175-260 USD) from Los Zetas. 8:01. 92110 United States [email protected] +1 619-260-2299. Mexican President Consoles Family of Massacre Victims. He said that this was an injustice, since he was just a little boy. That he and the then-mayor of the city had a meeting with people from Los Zetas. Outside the ranch entrance, the firefighters spotted officers and vehicles from the Allende police department. Family members lost contact with Rodolfo and his daughter, Liliana Garza de la Torre, on the night of March 18. But a2017 investigation by Ginger Thompson of ProPublicafound that Cuellar and Junior weretargeted for another reason: Los Zetas leaders had discovered that members of Cuellars cell were cooperating with agents of the DEA and had provided them with secret PIN codes allowing the DEA to track the mobile phones of top Zetas leaders. May 29, 2021. I recall that he was light-skinned, thin, of medium height, around 20 or 25 years of age, and they brought him in with his hands and feet tied up and with his face covered with tape.- Declaration of Zetas safe house guard, part 2, March 2, 2016, After a few days, he said, members of Los Zetas came and took him away in the bed of a pick-up truck, adding that he heard that they were going to turn him into roast beef, which is to say, that they were going to cook him.. A longtime resident of Allende, Herrera knew or was familiar with many of the people he saw at the ranch, including the Zetas, their police accomplices, and many of the victims. One of the homes destroyed in Allende in 2011. shares. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. However, families of the victims in Allende touted the overdue government efforts as a publicity stunt. [9] Literally stake or post, an estaca is a term used by Los Zetas for its assassination teams. The acrid odor of diesel fuel hung in the air. in Allende, Coahuila state, Mexico, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019. The wife of another victim, a heavy machinery mechanic who worked for the Garza family, also went looking for her husband on the morning of the March 19. What we saw, he said, was something thats not easy to forget.. Washington, D.C., March 18, 2021 - Ten years ago, the Mexican municipality of Allende was the site of one of the worst human rights atrocities ever seen in the country: a three-day wave of violence in which the criminal group known as Los Zetas kidnapped, murdered, and later burned the bodies of an estimated 300 . 6/27/2017 (written by Lucy Clement La Rosa)- Over six years ago, a small ranching community near the Texas border of Mexico bore witness to the vengeful assault of Las Zetas, one of Mexico's historically violent drug trafficking organizations. Allende is a small town southwest of Piedras Negras, Mexico and is the site of a massacre by the drug cartel, Los Zetas. Where did your husband leave my husband? one asked. [W]e passed by the entrance of the ranch where I saw people practically in the street with hoods and black vests who had rifles [W]e passed by again on the way back to Allende, and through the opening I could seebecause from the road you could see all the way to the backthat there were about five or seven trucks, many people with rifles, and I also saw people piled up, like this was where the fire was coming from [I]t was something big like a bodega. The next day, the wives of other ranch workers came by the Snchez Robles house, looking for their missing spouses. The same year, the Zetas member known as El Cubano was arrested in the U.S. and later extradited to Mexico in connection to the case. I still love Mexico. 8 min de lectura. . Arts & Culture. Three and a half years later, what stood out to these firefighters was the conspicuous police presence, the brutal treatment of the captives, and the threats directed at them by Zetas members. The collection of testimonies found in the files of Coahuila state prosecutors depict a town almost completely beholden to the criminal groupfrom the mayors office to top police commanders to ordinary cops on the street. And I remember what he said to me: Don't be an ass. [W]hen the Zetas realized that we were there, they said to us, Youd better get the hell out of here, motherfuckers! At the same time, President Lpez Obradors desire to weaken or abolish the institution charged with guaranteeing those rights, INAI, represents a looming threat to human rights transparency in Mexico. The attack at Allende began on the night of March 18, 2011, when the Zetas and their collaborators launched a coordinated three-day sweep through the town, situated only about 25 miles from the U.S. border. We continued to advance until we arrived at the ranch, where I saw that there were several police patrols from this city, colored white and blue, and a number of police, among others I remember [deleted], [Mara Guadalupe Avalos,] [deleted,] the director And it seemed like the police were guarding the place. This story was originally published by ProPublica. I could see that the owners of the ranch were there, since I could identify [Jos Luis Garza,] Mrs. [Alma Patricia,] their son [Julio Csar Garza, Rodolfo Garza, and] his daughter, whose name was [Nora Liliana Garza de la Torre.] And you could see that they were unloading large barrels, and the odor of diesel or gasoline was evident. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. So I went to my friends house who lives only two blocks away to tell her this; but in the few minutes I was with my friend, my daughter [called] to tell me that her father was going on a trip [S]o I headed home, and when I was about 50 meters away, a white, double-cab, Tundra pick-up truck arrived, and I see my husband leave the house with his dirty clothes on. And from previously I knew that all of the Allende municipal police were linked to or worked for the Zetas.-Revised declaration of Christian Alejandro Lpez Tamez, December 17, 2014, Firefighter Jess Gerado De Len Ramos, too, spotted various units of the municipal police at the entrance to the ranch, including police director, Roberto Guadalupe Trevio Martnez, and shift commanders Maria Guadalupe Avalos Orozco and Rogelio Javier Flores Cruz, who he and others described as key links between the police and the Zetas. [4]Mexicos National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) has sinceposted the declassified volumeson its website, but they are not easy to find without a direct link. Elvira Espinoza told investigators about the day, about a week later, when she found two of her three missing grandchildren at an orphanage in Piedras Negras. Please do not fill in this field. Hit especially hard was the extended family of Jos Luis Garza Gaytn (also known as Junior and El Wichin). Few had the courage to defy Los Zetas. They are included here in brackets. April 16, 2018, US: Mexico Mass Graves Raise "Alarming Questions" about Government "Complicity" in September 2014 Cartel Killings U.S. Prosecutions Bring Mexico Corruption into Focus The National Security Archive marks this grim anniversary by publishing an evidentiary history of the Allende massacre focusing on key documents and testimony from a 4,000-page dossier of investigative records compiled by Mexican prosecutors in the state of Coahuila.[3]. The destruction of the 2011 Allende massacre is still evident to this day. [18]On homicide rate, see this report from the University of San Diegos Justice in Mexico program; On impunity, see, Mexicos bloody drug war is killing more people than ever, Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2017. The mini-series is created by James Schamus, who divides the real-life emotional fable into 6 . During Mexico's unknown massacre, Los Zetas carried out a systematic extermination by killing and incinerating more than 400 people in Allende and the surrounding towns. They began to see Allende not as an isolated spasm of violence but rather as one of the most explosive episodes of a wider problem of criminal violence and systematic subversion of legal authorities throughout the region. One of the cooks told investigators that his involvement in the Allende massacre began a few days earlier when he was awakened with dousing of cold water. The government should do more to find them. Some portions of these files have been excerpted elsewhere, including in reports from the CNDH and the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), which cites many of these same records.But this is the first time that images of records from the case file have been published in their original form (although . De Len said that he already knew that all of the municipal police of Allende were associated with or worked for the Zetas., When I saw all those police I realized that they were keeping watch or guarding the place, that is to say the [Garza] ranch In addition to the police I already mentioned, I noticed that there were more people wearing civilian clothes, some hooded, some not. So the moment that we were leaving the place out of fear from the threats made by these people, and because the police were attending to them, the people of Los Zetas put the entire [deleted] family into the bodega or large barn I mentioned, along with various other people who I saw clearly but who I did not know. But this is the first time that images of records from the case file have been published in their original form (although many of the pages have been redacted by CNDH for public release). And when I finished tying him up, I put him in the back of the truck, and there were already bodies in the trunk.- Declaration of Zetas member, September 19, 2014. However, I'm mortified at the . Volunteer Luis Herrera Estrada was one of the four Allende firefighters who responded to reports of a blaze at the Garza ranch, and his statement of November 23, 2014, three and a half years later, is the first detailed account in the file of what the firefighters saw at the ranch that night. The 2011 massacre carried out by the Zetas drug cartel in Allende, Mexico was a shocking reminder of the brutality of the black market, which thrives under governmental drug . premiering June 30. While many of the corpses were probably destroyed in these larger fires, the Los Zetas cook interviewed on September 19, 2014,gave an especially detailed description of how he and El Chango together burned the bodies of at least three victims in individual barrels filled with diesel fuel. Armando Castilla, the publisher of the newspaper Vanguardia de Coahuila, says his publication was the first to report the case, in December 2013. An Army unit was sent to Rancho Garza to investigate. See Allende, el infierno: Los testigos de la masacre, Zcalo (Coahuila), July 10, 2017. An important moment seems to have come in March 2015, when state investigatorssaw a familiar patternemerge in three seemingly unrelated cases. He always knew what was happening here.- Declaration of former Allende police official, November 12, 2014, 17:30. [1] Translations throughout the text by Michael Evans. [4] The thinking behind the special exception measure is simple: Human rights crimes affect both the immediate victims and society as a whole, and in such cases there is a society-wide interest in full transparency to ensure that such grave abuses do not reoccur. See Vanguardia, March 18, 2019.. Zcalo, a regional paper in Saltillo, Coahuila, also published portions of the testimony. And also El [Chucho] killed a person, but I did not see who. First published on Wed 6 Nov 2019 16.31 EST. That they will help us and will help the people. Netflix will release a series next month inspired by a story that revealed the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's role in setting off a massacre in northern Mexico in 2011, leaving dozens of people dead or missing. The U.S.filed additional charges against Reyesin January 2020. Investigators firstquestioned LozanoandTrevioabout the massacre in 2012. He said the process reduced the corpses to pure butter., [I]n those days they kidnapped many people [Where] they killed them and burned them was a ranch There, they made me burn one body since I saw what was happening Others were burned at the [deleted] ranch, but nothing was left, because they told me that only pure butter remained after cooking them.- Declaration of Germn Zaragoza Snchez (El Canelo), April 8, 2014, 10:00. A disturbing report released today by researchers at the prestigious Colegio de Mexico provides new details about a 2011 massacre in Allende, a quiet Mexican ranching town less than an hour's drive from the United States, and suggests that many more people were killed in the incident than estimated by Mexican authorities. A new detention order for Lozano was issued in March 2018, after the publication of the CNDH report, but little is known about how the case has progressed, and it is unclear whether prosecutors have ever filed charges against police director Trevio, who was seen outside the Garza Ranch and who witnesses say knew about the attacks ahead of time.[16]. About five estacas[9]participated, and with [deleted] and [deleted] ten more joined. In March 2011, gunmen from one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in the world, the Zetas cartel, swept through Allende, a quiet ranching town not far from the Texas border. That if any citizens asked us for help that we would not pay attention to avoid getting into trouble. But as the investigation picked up steam in 2014, dozens of people, including local firefighters, law enforcement officers, civilian eyewitnesses, and municipal officials, came forward to describe a city government almost completely immersed in the criminal structure of Los Zetas, including the mayor and top police officials.