Borderland Beat |  |
- Censor or die: The death of Mexican news in the age of drug cartels
- Cemeí Verdía Interview: Confident In His Release
- Judge Sentances 3 to 520 Years For Kidnapping & Murder of "Tepito 13"
Censor or die: The death of Mexican news in the age of drug cartels Posted: 17 Dec 2015 09:29 PM PST Posted by DD, republished from Washington Post dd: a thanks to chimera for posting on the BB Forum.
There is a 4 minute video with the story in the Washington Post, but I could not embed it here. It is titled "One Journalist"s experience on Mexico's deadliest beat" Click the WP link above to watch it. By Dana Priest REYNOSA, Mexico — As deadline descended on El Mañana’s newsroom and reporters rushed to file their stories, someone in the employ of a local drug cartel called with a demand from his crime boss. The caller was a journalist for another newspaper, known here as an enlace, or “link” to the cartel. The compromised journalist barked out the order: Publish an article saying the mayor in Matamoros had not paid the cartel $2 million a month in protection fees, as an El Mañana front-page story had alleged the day before. “They want us to say he’s not guilty,” the editor who took the call told his colleagues during the episode in late October. Knowing glances passed between them as a visiting Washington Post reporter looked on. They all knew that defiance carried a high price. The enlaces are part of the deeply institutionalized system of cartel censorship imposed on media outlets in northeastern Mexico abutting the border of Texas. How it works is an open secret in newsrooms here but not among readers. They are unaware of the life-and-death decisions editors make every day not to anger different local cartel commanders, each of whom has his own media philosophy.  Submitting to cartel demands is the only way to survive, said Hildebrando “Brando” Deandar Ayala, 39, editor in chief of El Mañana, one of the oldest and largest newspapers in the region with a print circulation of 30,000. “You do it or you die, and nobody wants to die,” he said. “Autocensura — self-censorship — that’s our shield.” Readers get angry when they don’t get the news they need, he said. Resentment against El Mañanagrew so strong two years ago that reporters took the logos off their cars and stopped carrying their identification on assignments. “The readers hate us sometimes,” Deandar said. “But they don’t know the real risks we go through.” Mexico has long been a deadly place for reporters. Some 88 journalists have been slain in the last two decades, according to Article 19, a worldwide advocacy group that promotes press freedom. The risks have been especially high for El Mañana because its circulation area is bounded to the west by the birthplace of the Zetas criminal network in Nuevo Laredo and to the east by the Gulf crime syndicate’s home base in Matamoros. In February, the last time El Mañana defied a cartel’s censorship rules, an editor in its Matamoros bureau was dragged outside, stuffed in a van and beaten as his abductors drove around threatening him with death. “Next time, we’ll kill you!” one yelled before pushing him out of the vehicle. Four El Mañana journalists have been killed in the past 10 years. Others survived assassination attempts, kidnappings, and grenade and machine-gun attacks on their offices. Deandar has been shot, kidnapped and had his home set on fire, he said.
The worst assaults began in 2004, when an editor in Nuevo Laredo was stabbed to death. Two years later, gunmen broke into the bureau there, detonated a grenade and sprayed machine gunfire, leaving one employee paralyzed. Afterward, bulletproof glass and electronic security keys were installed at its three offices, where the blinds are always drawn. In March 2010, when the Gulf cartel defeated the Zetas for control of Reynosa, it took revenge on three El Mañana reporters whom the Zetas had forced to watch one of its mass executions. The cartel called the three Reynosa reporters and told them, “ ‘either you come in or we’ll pick you up,’ ” an editor there at the time recalled. They surrendered to the cartel and were never heard from again. Their presumed slayings were never reported by El Mañana, editors said, because that’s what the Gulf commander demanded. The enlace passed word that the killings were a one-time message to the Zetas, not a tactic the cartel intended to repeat against the newspaper. Twice in 2012, gunmen from the Zetas shot up the offices of the Nuevo Laredo bureau. Not long after, El Mañana announced it would no longer print cartel news in its Nuevo Laredo edition. Articles about Nuevo Laredo crime sometimes appear in other editions, but without a byline or names in the story.
North America’s ISIS The cartels’ tactics resemble those most Americans would associate with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. The display of multiple beheaded corpses and bodies hanging from bridges are a regular occurrence. Hundreds of young people have disappeared. Mass graves are commonplace. The comparison with terrorist groups 7,300 miles away frustrates journalists here. They watch the endless international coverage of Middle East violence yet know that the terrorism just across the U.S. border is largely ignored by the American media. Mexico’s 2014 murder rate of 13 per 100,000 is twice as high as Afghanistan’s. “We have a war here, and we’re doing war reporting,” said Ildefonso “Poncho” Ortiz, a deeply sourced reporter for Breitbart News Network’s Cartel Chronicles, one of the only American outlets to track cartel maneuvers. “Sometimes AP [the Associated Press wire service] will pick up a story, but other than that, it never leaves the valley.” The three largest U.S. newspapers nearby — the Brownsville Herald, the Monitor in McAllen, Tex., and the Laredo Morning Times — forbid their reporters from crossing to report because it’s too dangerous, according to the editors at the newspapers. Pervasive corruption abets the violence. The local police forces have been disbanded and replaced by the army and federal police in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which includes Matamoros, Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa. A car bomb killed the Nuevo Laredo mayor one week after he was sworn in. The new Matamoros mayor survived an ambush in March. Cartels install surveillance cameras throughout their cities and employ lookouts with cellphones to keep watch. U.S. Border Patrol officers are regularly indicted for cooperating with organized crime. “Tamaulipas is a black hole when it comes to information,” said Aaron Nelsen, a reporter based in McAllen for the San Antonio Express-News. “It’s so hard to get anyone to talk about it,” even elected U.S. officials.
A cartel media director El Mañana’s circulation area includes major U.S. border cities; its online editions are read as far north as San Antonio and Houston. It is a third-generation family enterprise, founded in 1924 as an anti-establishment voice. Over most of its 91 years, its formidable enemies were corrupt politicians and their hand-picked prosecutors. The newspaper now maintains a working relationship with the local governments, as evidenced by the government advertising it receives. Withholding state advertising dollars is a common and effective economic hammer used against media outlets whose investigations upset the status quo. “When it’s not the politicians against us, it’s the drug dealers,” said Heriberto Deandar, 78, who co-owns El Mañana with his brother, Brando’s father. “He who is not afraid has no courage.” Brando was raised in Reynosa but moved to McAllen in 2007 for safety reasons. He commutes to work. Asked why he doesn’t find a safer job, he said simply, “It’s in my blood. I cannot leave.” During a recent visit to the town, the eerie atmosphere was inescapable. Reynosa’s wide boulevards were nearly empty. Heavily armed soldiers patrolled in black masks to protect their identities from cartels resentful of the army’s two-year occupation. Military helicopters whooped periodically overhead, racing to shootouts or hunting suspects. At dusk, hundreds of cars streamed slowly across the international bridge to McAllen, where an increasing number of well-to-do Mexicans have moved their families to safety. The Metros faction of the Gulf cartel controls much of civic life and all contraband — drugs, sex slaves, immigrant smuggling, fuel, stolen vehicles — in or moving through Reynosa, said journalists and media experts here. Its commander, whose parents are from Reynosa, has a more liberal view of the media than his counterparts in the other two cities. He seems to care about his image, too, they said, as evidenced by the “narcobanners” that appeared on city bridges in November. “This is to make it clear that I am a narcotrafficker, not a terrorist like you’ve been saying in the media,” the cartel boss declared in one handwritten sheet-sized banner. “Investigate and check your facts. Crime has lessened since I took charge.” In Matamoros, though, the commander of the cartel’s Ciclones faction tolerates no coverage. In Nuevo Laredo, the Zetas have a commander of finance, assassinations, logistics, stolen vehicles and fuel, weapons, prostitution, immigrant smuggling — and media. The Zetas media director, a clean-cut, 30-something man described by one person who knows him as “a pretty friendly guy,” calls enlaces and beat reporters at El Mañana and other media outlets every day to tell them what stories the cartel wants published or censored. One day it’s a story critical of new government limits on imported cars; the next it’s a birthday party in the social pages featuring a cartel boss’s daughter. Sometimes the media director provides photos and video for an article. “It’s a common conversation every day,” one reporter said. Reporters have learned to consult him on nearly everything, one media expert said. Even a car crash isn’t a simple car crash. “You have to call somebody to make sure you can write about it,” one journalist said, because it might actually not be an accident but a purposeful vehicular homicide organized by the cartel. Critical coverage of local politicians is also forbidden. The three cartel commanders’ differing media philosophies force El Mañana to produce three distinctly different editions. “If you want to find out what’s happening in Nuevo Laredo or Matamoros, you read El Mañana de Reynosa,” Deandar said. For example, when Mexican troops captured the leader of the Matamoros faction in October, known as “Ciclón 7,” El Mañana did not print a word about it in its Matamoros edition. But in Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, it was banner news. With Ciclón 7 gone, Deandar said, “we are waiting to see who is the next chief, so we’ll know the rules.”
Mechanics of self-censorship After hearing the enlace’s demand to exonerate the allegedly corrupt mayor in Matamoros, the editor on duty rubbed his head trying to contain himself. “First they tell us what not to publish, now they are telling us what to publish!” he yelled before heading upstairs to his office. He dialed the editor in Matamoros who had passed the enlace’s message to Reynosa, put the phone on speaker mode and upped the volume so the whole room could hear. Enlaces pass instructions via phone calls, text messages, apps and in personal meetings. They often communicate cartel demands to crime reporters who show up at the scene of shootouts, blockades, car bombs and executions. Sometimes a cartel member will run into crime reporters at the scene. “They’ll say, ‘Get the hell out of here! We’ll kill you!’ And we have to go,” one reporter said. Three minutes into the conversation with the Matamoros editor, the senior editor began raising his voice about the enlace. “Give me his name and number!” he shouted. “And tell him you’re not going to take any more messages! No more! Tell him if you take any more messages, I’m going to fire you!” He hung up, waved around the piece of paper with the enlace’s name and phone number on it and then stood up. It was getting dark. Time to leave for a safer city. The front-page story that upset the cartel was a reprinted interview with the new mayor of Matamoros, Leticia Salazar, an anti-corruption crusader. The interview was conducted by the national Excelsior newspaper. In it, she accused her predecessor of paying the Gulf cartel more than $2 million a month in protection fees from public works funds and towing fees. El Mañana’s editors felt safe publishing the interview in all editions because it seemed like a political corruption story, not one about the cartel. The cartel demand that followed was to run an interview with the former mayor quoting him as saying he was innocent of the allegations. But the former mayor had not requested an interview. As he left the building, the duty editor said he planned to call the former mayor on the way home. Speeding through Reynosa’s back roads in the dark, he called the former mayor, who said he had not requested an interview and did not know the cartel had demanded one on his behalf. It was time for a decision. “If you want an interview, we can do it in our office or over the phone,” the editor said. If it’s in the office, “we will need a photo of the interview; if it’s over the phone, we’ll have to record it. Either way, we need to show it was real,” not something made up by the cartel. We won’t publish it right away, the editor added, so the cartel won’t think it can tell the newspaper what to print. The interview ran three days later, in all editions, including Matamoros, where it mattered most to the cartel. But there was no byline, not even in the Reynosa edition. Instead, it read simply, El Mañana/Staff.
Social media steps up Several years ago, shopkeepers, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, local government workers and students began to fill the void in local news with social-media coverage. It took the cartels a while to understand what was happening on anonymous Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. Once they did, retribution followed. On Sept. 26, 2011, the decapitated body of a female blogger was left at the Christopher Columbus monument in Nuevo Laredo. Next to her corpse were two keyboards and a handwritten warning, signed “ZZZZ.” But social-media crime reporting has only grown in the four years since. It includes real-time maps of shootout locations, slayings and kidnappings as well as endless cellphone videos of crimes in progress. During the Post reporter’s visit in October, alerts and bulletins about news that went unreported by El Mañana were rife on social media: Oct 17, 2:39 p.m. @MichaelNike8: Near the exit to San Fernando, tires burning to distract the authorities Oct 21, 1:50 p.m. @SSPTAM: Avoid the area between Reynosa and Monterrey. Authorities are responding (to a situation) Nov. 3: @Codigo Rojo [Code Red]: Yesterday, federal agents captured 3 men and a female commander of Toro [the local cartel commander in Reynosa] and seized 3 new trucks and around 20 guns, including 5 or 6 guns covered in gold and diamonds; This photo shows what was taken out of just one of the trucks. Also trending on Twitter the same week was the one-year anniversary of the killing of @Miut3. @Miut3 was a prolific citizen crime reporter. She tweeted the location of shootouts, explosions, carjackings and the identities of disappeared people. On Oct. 15, 2014, her anonymous account was hacked. Soon afterward, she became unreachable.
Her followers frantically refreshed their Twitter feeds trying to find her. The next morning, at 5:04 a.m., a tweet from her account appeared: “Friends and family, my real name is Maria Del Rosario Fuentes Rubio, I’m a doctor and today, my life has come to an end.” Minutes later, two photos appeared on her account. One showed Fuentes Rubio in distress. “Close your accounts, don’t risk your families the way I did,” her account read. “I ask you all for forgiveness.” The second photo showed what appeared to be her bloodied face and corpse on the ground. No one has been arrested. An opening In February, a few months after Fuentes Rubio was killed, the two factions of the Gulf cartel in northeastern Mexico went to war again. The chaos provided El Mañana with the kind of journalistic opening it hadn’t had in 15 years. With the cartel preoccupied, El Mañana became the newspaper it might otherwise be had circumstances been different. The entire newsroom deployed to cover the battles. Dramatic photos, detailed articles and screaming headlines won Mexico’s attention. Readers in Reynosa finally got the full story of what was happening around them: Day One: “Border in Shock,” “Shoot-Outs and Roadblocks . . . ” Day Two: “Border Under Siege: Marines Attacked, Three Armed Men Killed, Soldiers Wounded”
“We were all excited in the newsroom,” said a longtime senior editor who shepherded the coverage. “It was an adrenaline rush.” “No other newspaper in the state” provided such detailed coverage. “They were all afraid,” he said, nodding toward Deandar. “We have a courageous boss.” This was such big news, Deandar said he thought at the time, that he wanted to share it even with readers in Matamoros despite the standing cartel news blackout there. To be cautious, there would be no bylines and no names of cartel members. The cartels would not approve, cautioned Enrique Juarez, his Matamoros editor. Just after midnight, the red printing press in Reynosa rolled out Day Three’s edition. “Nine Dead in Fighting: Third Day Siege in Urban Areas and Roads.” Delivery trucks dashed to their distribution hubs. By 3 a.m., El Mañana employees discovered that the truck carrying the newspapers for Matamoros had vanished. Deandar rallied a posse; they found the vehicle at noon in an abandoned field, still full of newspapers. He ordered the papers be delivered to Matamoros, where they hit the streets an hour later. Juarez, up in his second-floor office, got threatening phone calls right away. At 4 p.m., as deadline loomed, someone called from the lobby asking him to come down. He found a knife and braced himself. Armed men burst in. One picked up a big jug of water and threw it at him, causing him to drop the knife. “We’re going to break you!” one yelled, as they dragged him away. They stuffed him into a van, beat him about the head and back, and shoved him onto the pavement an hour or so later. A story about Juarez’s abduction and a photo of him at his desk, with the assaulting water jug, ran on Day Four next to the headline, “30 Dead Already, Mayor Suffers Grenade Attack, US Consul Suspends Operations” It did not appear in the Matamoros edition. Juarez and his family left the city. He no longer works in Matamoros . “If I had the opportunity to leave . . . ” His voice trails off.
Rosario Carmona, a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow at the University of Maryland’s Phillip Merrill School of Journalism, where Priest holds the Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism; Alexander Quiñones, a graduate student there; and Post researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cemeí Verdía Interview: Confident In His Release Posted: 17 Dec 2015 08:51 PM PST  By: Laura Castellanos | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat Charo, Michoacán- Cemeí Verdía, the first commander of the Community Police of Santa María Ostula and general coordinator of the autodefensas of the municipalities of Aquila, Coahuayana and Chinicuila, is confident in his release. On Monday, Verdía came out of his appeal against the criminal proceeding 82/2015 for the crime of homicide, of which he has already been tried for and released, in the Fifth Criminal Court of the Supreme Court of Michoacán, assigned to Judge Marco Antonio Flores Negrete. From inside CERESO (Social Rehabilitation Center) David Franco Rodríguez, also known as Mil Cumbres, the 35 year old indigenous leader seen as the commander of the civil guards following the arrest of José Manuel Mireles, is calm and with enthusiasm. “I’m confident that I’m leaving,” he said smiling. “I’m innocent, they can accuse me of thousands of things but none of them will check out because I know what I do,” said the man who led the taking of Ostula, municipality of Aquila, on February 2014, after four years of being under the heel of the Caballeros Templarios, which left six missing and 34 community members executed over a period of five years. The former coordinator of autodefensas and community members of Michoacán is accused of the first degree murder of Argel Mejía Valdovinos on May 25, 2015, after the ambush that he and five other individuals staged against Verdía along the coastal road of Aquila, which left one of Verdía’s bodyguards dead. This caused the Nahua and other civil guards to chase the attackers in the mountains, which ended in a clash that left four attackers dead, among them Mejía, and four wounded. “Fortunantely, since I arrived, there have been no deaths, they only deaths were those from the attack against me,” he said of the ambush. And while he says, the expulsion of the Templarios was achieved “they are the most interested in returning to Michoacán because they know their wealth. They have already tasted it.” The indigenous leader is currently the most combative defender of the Nahua territory composed of a headquarters and 22 laborers' quarters, and has faced the cartel that illegally exploited its mineral-rich territory, against small landowners of La Placita who seek to deprive them of 1,200 hectares of coastal terrain, as well as wood looters who exploit the sangualica tree, which is in danger of extinction. Regarding his fight against the mining companies, the leader who went to school until the sixth grade states: “I woke up the communities and told them that they were the owners; if they (mining companies) wanted to exploit the land they had to talk to them (the community members), not just arrive and say ‘it’s mine’.” In regards to the wood looting he accuses the government of “being in on it, we realized this, there are Mexican Navy and federal checkpoints and we see how they embark. Government interests were the worst, having touched the interests of the government.” His legal representative Ignacio Mendoza argues that the detention of Verdía is “political in nature” because in the criminal proceeding 82/2015 “a crime was fabricated and his guarantees for human rights were violated.” Likewise, he was accused of carrying a weapon for the exclusive use of the Mexican Army, of the theft of six coils of wire from the city of Aquila, and of electoral crimes in the form of poll burning, but Verdía has been released from all of these accusations. The Arrest of the Nahua Leader The small papaya farmer was caught red-handed for the possession of two weapons for the exclusive use of the army on the morning of July 19, 2015, in La Placita, municipality of Aquila. Those weapons were given to him by the government for being integrated as part of the Fuerza Rural, which made the weapons registered with the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA). “I had them in my defense, they were given to me by the Secretariat of Public Security…they weren’t ours, they were weapons belonging to the Secretariat,” Verdía recalls. He recounts the day of his arrest: “I was having lunch at a small diner, which was very tasty by the way, when soldiers, ministerial policemen, and marines arrived. From what I managed to see, there were about 100.” He recounts that he saw an unexpected mobilization and that they arrested him by choke holding him, and then they boarded him on a military helicopter that first went to a military barracks and then to facilities that he believes were from the Attorney General’s Office. He says that he was never shown an arrest warrant nor told what he was being accused for; he was only shown a sheet of paper. “I told them to give me the sheet to read. I don’t know but I’m not a blockhead, and arriving to Morelia, I asked them what was my problem.” They didn’t answer, he says, which he believes that his arrest was staged. “And when I realized they said: ‘nobody wants to receive it’, that is, no one wanted to throw the shot,” he says. Legal Impunity Since he was arrested for the possession of weapons for the exclusive use of the Mexican Army, a federal offense, he was transferred to the Federal Social Readaptation Center (CEFERESO) #4 in Nayarit. However, his lawyer reports that since June 11, 2015, there was already an arrest warrant against Verdía for the first degree murder of Mejía, a state crime with greater weight than the possession of weapons, so they had to move him to a state prison and not a federal one. “The strategy was to do the same thing to Manuel Mireles,” he said of the autodefensa leader who is held in CEFERESO #11 in Sonora for the same offense of the possession of a weapon for the exclusive use of the Mexican Army, “They wanted to leave him rotting in a federal prison for two years,” he states. The lawyer says that although they achieved the release of Verdía for that crime, the CEFERESO of Nayarit “delayed his release for more than eight hours, illegally depriving him of his freedom, waiting for the police of Michoacán to take him to Morelia,” during the time in which “they filled out arrest warrants on charges of robbery and murder.” The fourth court judge based in Morelia, Amalia Herrera Arroyo, issued a release order on August 4, dismissing evidence that were integrated after his appropriation, among others, statements of the accused, as it was argued in the “release order due to the lack of evidence to prosecute,” in possession of the reporter. However, the file was returned to the public ministry and the public ministry requested the second court to issue a new arrest warrant against Verdía. Once the order was completed, the First Criminal Judge in Morelia, Arnulfo Torres Delgado, in support of the second court, accepted the evidence and in the “order resolving the legal status of Cemeí Verdía Zepeda” he met his “detention order” on September 9, 2015. In the cited court documents, Judge Torres ambiguously determined the guilt of Verdía: “The accused, Cemeí Verdía Zepeda, was the one who likely intervened in the loss of Argel Mejía Valdovinos, it is presumed he had sufficient grounds for using a firearm to perform an act of retaliation against those who had just tried to take his life.” His defense appealed the decision and on Monday, presented their arguments to Judge Flores Negrete to review the actions of Judge Torres and to resolve his release. The Wait Verdía believes that his release is “imminent” and once he achieves his release, he says he plans to continue harvesting papayas and to remain at the forefront of his responsibilities as commander of the Rural Guard of Aquila. He acknowledges that it would be “worrying” if he isn’t freed: “We don’t want problems with the government but we don’t know if the government wants problems with us. Right now, there is a bomb ready to explode. It’s not just the case of Cemeí, there is the case of the teachers, of the normalistas; there is a state ready to explode again,” he warns. Support for Cemeí Héctor Zepeda Navarrete “Comandante Tetos”, commander of the Fuerza Rural of Coahuayana, who participated in the shootout that left Mejía dead, said in an interview that on Monday, they would close the federal highway 200, at the point of Xayakalan, in order to demand the release of Verdía. “He hasn’t committed a crime, it was a shootout which killed one of our comrades and left four wounded,” he said. The same highway was blocked at three different points along kilometer 15 by Ostula community members and of coastal villages of Aquila on July 19, following the arrest of the Nahua leader, in order to demand his release. The military crushed the checkpoints and in the town of Ixtapilla, they caused the death of 12 year old Edilberto Reyes García, and wounded six others, acts which have so far gone unpunished. Meanwhile Mendoza said that Judge Flores Negrete will have 10 working days to decide the appeal, even though after December 18, “He’ll be on vacation and no one will be able to sign.” He’ll be waiting for the resolution, in case it lengthens.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Judge Sentances 3 to 520 Years For Kidnapping & Murder of "Tepito 13" Posted: 17 Dec 2015 07:10 AM PST Three people were given sentences of 520 years in prison each for their roles in the kidnapping and murder of 13 young people in May of 2013 from the Heaven Bar in the Zona Rosa in Mexico City that became known as the Tipito 13. The sentence was handed down by the 25th Criminal Court in the capitol city.
As reported in Inserbia, Ernesto Espinosa Lobo and José de Jesús Carmona Aiza, both part-owners of Heaven, and a presumed hitman in the case, Victor Manuel Torres García, were charged and convicted for their roles in the illegal deprivation of liberty with the intent of causing damage to the deprived, and the charge was upgraded to “aggrevated” because the crimes were committed against groups of people and with violence, along with minor-related charges as several of the victims were under 18 years of age. At the time Espinosa Lobo and Carmona Aiza were arrested and charged an "order to locate and appear" was issued for a third part owner of the Heaven Bar, Dax Rodriguez Ledezma, as a person likely responsible for the kidnapping, but authorities were unable to find him. On June 22, about a month after the kidnappings, the burned bodies of a man and woman were found in a community in Morelos, which is south of Mx. City. The body of the man was identified as Dax Rodriguez Ledezma and the woman identified as his girlfriend.  At least 25 people have been detained in the investigation of the murder and kidnapping, including 4 police officers (2 have since been released). As reported in inserbia the Attorney General made it clear in their press release, however, that the criminal case “remains open as there are many others involved in the case at different parts of their judicial processes” and several other suspects are still wanted fugitives. The families of the victims have not been happy with the government's handling of the case since the kidnapping took place. For several days after the kidnapping police and the Attorney Generals office did nothing and just classified the victims as "missing". Only after the parents and families took to the streets demonstrating and blocking a major street protesting about the lack of justice and lack of investigation did the authorities start an investigation.  The families claimed the governments lack of interest in their cases was because all the victims were from Tepito, an infamous barrio known for its drug corners, bootleg property, and Santa Muerte devotees. It has one of the largest open air markets in the city and they say you can buy "anything" there. The barrio is one of the oldest in Latin America. The neighborhood seems to be almost forgotten by the local government. Tepito consists of 72 blocks, holding an estimated 120,000 people. Many residents live in apartments and makeshifts home for free. Residents often pay no rent to building owners, who gave up on collecting rent decades ago. A good description of the barrio is contained in the first story that BB published about the kidnapping that was written for Borderland Beat by K Mennem from the blog Hell on Earth..  Even though the court handed down the first convictions and 520 year sentences, the families of the victims are still not happy. They say they have not been given a motive for the crimes and they fear the person responsible for the kidnapping and murders, the person who gave the orders will never be captured and punished. THE KIDNAPPING AND FINDING THE BODIES. On the early morning of Sunday, May 26 of 2013, 13 young people were in the Heaven bar, a favorite after-hours gathering place for young people in the Zona Rosa. A video camera in the area captured images of the 13 young people entering the bar alone or in small groups and from witness accounts they all gathered together to continue their partying. THE MISSING ( from AP among other sources) 1. Eulogio Fonseca Arreola, 26, a street vendor who sells cell-phone accessories with his sister and family. "They went out to have fun. They are not criminals," sister Isabel Fonseca said. 2. Jennifer Robles Gonzalez, 23, a single mother of a 6-year-old boy. Her family said she posted a message on Facebook after 8:30 a.m. Sunday saying she was dancing at the bar less than two hours before the kidnapping allegedly took place. 3. Josue Piedra Moreno, 29, street food vendor who told his mother, Leticia Moreno, he was going out to a club with his brother, Aaron Piedra Moreno 4. Aaron Piedra Moreno, 20, street food vendor 5. Guadalupe Karen Morales Vargas, 24 6. Alan Omar Athiencia Barranco, 26 7. Said Sanchez Garcia, 19, who helped his mom sell purses and cleaning items in a street market. He was last seen late Saturday when he came home for a sweater before going out to another nightclub and then the bar. The youth's father, Alejandro Sanchez, has been in prison for more than 10 years on drug-related charges. 8. Jerzy Esli Ortiz Ponce, 16, went to the party with his friend, Said Sanchez. Father is convict Jorge Ortiz Reyes, alias ""Tanque", who was a drug boss in Tepito. He is currently serving prison time. 9. Gabriela Tellez Zamudio, 34 10. Rafael Rojas, no age 11. No information 12. The twelfth victim was later confirmed. No information available. A little while before sunup the surveillance cameras captured a caravan of cars coming down the street in front of the bar. Then 17 unarmed and unmasked men entered the bar and exited leading the 13 young people and putting them in the cars. In a story posted by Chivis for BB, a patron in the bar who hid when he saw what was happening gives a audio recording of the events which Chivis transcribed. (I am only going to give the gist or excerpts from the stories previously published on BB with a link to the story) The media initially referred to the case as the Tepito 12 until the end of August 2013 when 13 bodies found buried together in a mud pit covered by concrete, lime, and asbestos behind a ranch near Tlalmanalco, a far-flung suburb approximately 55 kilometers (35 miles) southeast of Mexico City. The bodies were located after one of the detainees told investigators where to look. The 13th body turned out to be another young person who had joined the group in the bar but whose family had not reporting him missing. After the bodies were found the case was known as the Tepito 13.  All of the bodies had been tortured and decapitated. In a story posted by Chivis, one of the kidnappers, Pedro Francisco Paz Lopez, “El Mariguano”(stoner/pothead), one of the last narcomenudistas from Zona Rosa arrested by the Attorney General's Office (PGR) for his alleged involvement in the death of 13 Tepiteños has given information to the PGJDF as to how the bodies were disposed of. In his ministerial statement, the alleged offender belonging to the criminal organization of La Union, said that the Tepito youth were killed immediately after they were kidnapped from the Bar Heaven. According to Stoner and Pancho Pulgas (Fleas), he was responsible for the beheading with a hacksaw, one of the victims after being ordered by Joel Rodriguez Javier Fuentes, “El Javi”, his supervisor
Javi, the plaza chief of La Union Plaza Zona Rosa, and who remains at large, ordered Stoner to stay in the first chained access which is about 500 meters from the main entrance. He was ordered to monitor whether any police arrived. He stayed there until he received an order over his radio ; “Stop playing and come help dude." When Stoner entered the ranch, he ran into a row of 12 bodies of young people who he had helped kidnap hours before. Only one was alive, "a chubby one, he was crying" his hands were tied. He did not know the name of the young man; he just noted he was "chubby." Stoner says he then followed, El Javi and another subject who he identifies as Antuán, who ordered his murder. They handed him a hacksaw and asked him to behead the Chubby one who was still alive and crying and he did, he confessed in his statement. Motive As I said earlier the families don't buy into any of the several theories that have been offered by the authorities. La Unión y Los Tepis are two gangs that have operated in Tepito for several decades now and occasionally wage street battles against each other, and it was discovered that members of one of the gangs were involved in the kidnapping According to inserbia the judicial authorities say none of the victims were involved in any gangs or criminal groups themselves but that three of the victims were related to criminal figures who operated in the area and were incarcerated at the time of the killings. But that statement leads to another theory based on unproven rumor about the youngest of the 13, Jerzy Esli Ortiz Ponce, who at 16 was the youngest kidnapping victim. Many regarded him as a young street smart criminal, who has attempted to push his way into the narcotic trade of central Mexico City.  Some think that Jerzy may have murdered a drug dealer who was making his rounds servicing his regular customers at a bar, The Black, just down the street from Heavens Bar 2 days before the Tepito 13 kidnapping. The theory postulates that the kidnapping was in retaliation for the drug dealers murder and Jerzy was the target in the kidnapping. The other 12 victims were just in the wrong place at the wrong time But the families don't buy into that theory saying "why would a gang kidnap 13 people in a settling of scores with Jerzy. They would have just killed him. Another theory that has been raised by investigators (and Mexico City Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera) is that the 13 were kidnapped and killed due to a conflict between rival street-level drug dealers. The families reject that theory saying a typical, street-level drug dealer would not have the operational capacity to carry out a multi-vehicle kidnapping in an urban area with a police station and security cameras in the immediate vicinity, nor would that simple drug dealer torture, dismember and bury the victims in a mass grave in a rural area. As reported in inserbia, given all these strange circumstances (i.e, the unarmed and unmasked abductors, the young people the young people putting up no resistance as they were led to the waiting cars, the torture and decapitations, and the burial in hidden mass grave 55 kilometers from the city) some of the victims’ family members have even alleged that the government could be complicit in the killings, although no proof of those accusations has surfaced, unlike in the highly publicized Ayotzinapa case where the victims and their teachers’ college were heavily involved in political activism and regularly protested against local (Guerrero State) and national authorities. Other relatives of the victims, on the other hand, have expressed concern that regardless of who was behind their loved ones’ killings will not be captured. The reason for this, they say, is that security forces in the capital have not put all of their efforts into the case because the victims all came from one of Mexico City’s most impoverished neighborhoods. One victim’s mother said that Rodolfo Ríos Garza, the Attorney General of the Federal District, had not met with the families since August of 2013 when the mass grave was discovered. Another mother guaranteed to Mexican daily La Jornada that “if these children were the children of the Attorney General, I would be damned if he did not move heaven and earth to find them but since we are from Tepito, they treat us like common criminals and thieves.” |
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