Lilianas husband, Arturo, had also been unable to reach his wife or her parents. [13] Bracketed items identified in portions of the Herrera Estrada declaration published by Zcalo. Bone fragments found among the burned out ruins of the Garza Ranch, January 28, 2014 (Source: Document 41: Forensic Anthropology Technical Report, April 11, 2014). [I]n fact, he sometimes came and went inside the cells to beat those who were locked up. Jos Alfredo Jimnez was one of the first of the Zetas to arrive at Luis Garzas ranch that night. Several said the police director ordered that officers should not do anything or say anything about the carnage. It was around March 15, 2011, the then-director of the municipal police called all the elements to a meeting in the offices of the municipal police. In a country where murders and disappearances are troublingly common, the scale and the horrific details of the Allende massacre case still stand out. The town's mayor believes 30 to 40 Allende families were exterminated, and he has a list of 34 houses that were destroyed. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. 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 rampage that punctuateda larger wave of violencein which theLos Zetas criminal groupkidnapped, murdered, and later burned the bodies of as many as 300 victims, many of them from Allende but also from nearby towns like Villa Unin and Piedras Negras, a city 35 miles to the north that lies just across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas. I saw that they took two people out of the house, but I could not distinguish who they were. She learned that her husbands friend, Hector, had also been called away and picked up by the same white truck that came for Rodolfo. " We will try to look upon those individuals who caused the Allende Massacre. Photograph via . Among them were the director, Roberto Guadalupe Trevio, shift commander Mara Guadalupe valos, known as La Lupe, and officer Bertha Rosario Tllez Vega, known as La Chayo.[1]. Una nueva serie de Netflix intenta . Contemporaneous records from the Mexican military, obtained through a separate access-to-information request, confirm that the Army receivedmultiple reports about the ongoing violence in and around Allende. ALLENDE, Coahuila - Only abandoned and destroyed farms and the self-imposed silence of the inhabitants of Allende remain after the massacre perpetrated in this city in . For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. Because if you dont [keep quiet] theyre going to kidnap you too.. [T]hey brought them there to the Los ngeles Cemetery near the Piedras Negras city seminary, and also more people. Alone on a remote mountain road after witnessing the slaughter of nine close relatives, the wounded children who had survived a cartel ambush in . Most of them, he said, were killed and cremated inside the state prison in Piedras Negras. At the moment the cooking of the corpses was finished, the ashes were thrown in a well, and later covered with earth, and they flattened it so that no one could see anything.- Declaration of Zetas member, September 19, 2014, The focus on eliminating physical evidence and destroying crime scenes almost certainly played at least an ancillary role in impeding justice in the Allende case. I left the job because, the truth is, I did not like what was happening in the town of Allende, since things were getting ugly, in addition to which the entire directorate of the municipal police were mixed up with people from Los Zetas. Remembering the Allende Massacre. Washington, D.C., 20037, Phone: 202/994-7000 Since the acts occurred on the dates of March 18, 19 and 20 of 2011, they were committed under the same mechanics not just in the city of Allende, Coahuila, but also in other municipalities in the northern region of the state, among others Piedras Negras, Coahuila.- Memorandum on links between various cases, March 5, 2015. They found that the Zetas committed numerous human rights abuses in Coahuila with impunity and that public institutions and officials played a role, by actions or omissions in the abuses (p.24). In March 2011, gunmen from the Zetas Cartel slaughtered innocent men, women and children in the small Mexican town of Allende in retaliation for the betrayal. [T]hey gave [Trevio] a quota of 10,000 pesos [about $850 USD] every 20 days, and he did not get involved in what [deleted] was doing. Among other evidence is thestatementof a former Allende police official, Fernando Hernndez Reyes, who gave a vivid account of his involvement in the kidnappings. -Declaration of Allende volunteer firefighter, December 17, 2014. To me in particular they gave me 2,000 pesos [per month].-Declaration of former Allende police official, July 22, 2014. April 16, 2018, US: Mexico Mass Graves Raise "Alarming Questions" about Government "Complicity" in September 2014 Cartel Killings 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. After about a half an hour, my husband called my son on his cell phone but he did not answer his phone, which worried us since he always answered.- Complaint of Claudia Snchez, October 18, 2013, Snchez soon learned that there had been a number of disappearances around the city that night, and that one of Gerardos friends had also gone missing. I didnt know which of them woke me up with cold water since Id been asleep. Mauricio, the infant son of Liliana lvarez and Arturo Espinoza, was never seen again. He did not take my opinion into consideration, and no one else said anything. One of the guys that went with Pala, who was nicknamed [El Cabezn,] forced me to kill one of the men, and [forced Chucho to do the same.] September 27, 2019 1:06 PM EDT. Another told investigators that the local Los Zetas chief acted like he was in his own house during frequent visits to the Allende police station. Most of the victims were later shot and killed, after which the Zetas crudely cremated the bodies, dousing them in gasoline and diesel fuel and burning them overnight until nothing remained but ashes and tiny bone fragments. Ten years later, the case has wide-ranging implications after investigative reporting in the U.S. and Mexico have linked the massacre to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and top Mexican security institutions. See reference here. When the Zetas arrived in Allende a decade ago, they infiltrated the very . Among others, I remember that there was Jos [deleted,] the owner of the ranch, [deleted,] his wife, [deleted,] [Vctor Manuel] [deleted,] an employee of the [Garzas] by the name of [deleted,] a man by the name of Hctor [deleted,] among other people from the family of the [deleted] and people from the town whose names I dont remember, but who I know on sight, other people that I had not seen before, and people of advanced age, who they were putting inside the large bodega.- Declaration of former Allende volunteer firefighter, December 17, 2014, 11:37. The cartel allegedly turned this storage shed, which held equipment and animal feed, into an incinerator for the . The new Netflix series, "Somos.," (We Are), offers a respectful but powerful look at the Allende massacre, one of the most brutal episodes of Mexico's war on organized crime, which sets it apart from other narco-series. In the worst cases, civilian authorities were little more than subcontractors of the Zetas criminal organization, involved in shakedowns, kidnappings, drug trafficking and numerous murders, not over a period of weeks or months, but for many years. And as there were three barrels we put one dead body in each barrel. It was the case that among them I recognized several, since I knew them, because we were from the same municipality of Allende, Coahuila, where I live.- Declaration of Zetas member Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014. But he did not say anything to me. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. El Gobierno de Mxico ofreci este jueves una disculpa pblica a los familiares de las vctimas de la masacre de Allende, una comunidad del norteo estado de Coahuila donde entre el 18 y el 20 de marzo del 2011 alrededor de 300 personas fueron masacradas por narcotraficantes. Nine people, including three mothers and six children, lost their lives Monday when they were shot execution-style while traveling to a wedding in Mexico. [18]Others have called on Mexico to prosecute top Coahuila state officials, including former governors, for allowing criminal violence to flourish. 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. One evening in March 2011, dozens of assassins tied to the infamous Zetas drug cartel began to arrive in Allende, a small town situated in the northern Mexico state of Coahuila, a lucrative . MEXICO CITY The killers went to the town of Allende one weekend in March 2011 with orders to exact revenge. Lpez said he knew all of the municipal police very well, owing to the fact that there was a lot of contact with them.[14], Upon seeing all of those police, I realized that they were keeping watch or guarding the place. [9] Literally stake or post, an estaca is a term used by Los Zetas for its assassination teams. In 2011, Drug Enforcement Agency officials informed Mexican . And I remember what he said to me: Don't be an ass. The hooded figures spotted by Hctor Prez that night included the Zeta known as El Pjaro, who told authorities that he and a group of Zetas led by Jos Manuel Daz (Comandante 7) and Fernando Ros Bustos (Comandante Pala) had kidnapped Vctor, Alma, and their son Julio, and murdered them at the ranch later that night. Source: ProPublica. [10] How the U.S. Many of the victims were ordinary laborers at the Garza properties. In 2019, the state had a homicide rate of about 61 . Authorities investigating the massacre reported numerous hijackings of passenger buses on Mexican Federal Highway 101 in San Fernando, and the kidnapped victims were . They watched as gang members led their victims into a larger shed near the back. Or do you want the same thing to happen to you or to your families?-Declaration of Allende fire chief, December 17, 2014. He said that Los Zetas commanders then forced him and another Zeta, who he identified as Chucho, to kill two of the hostages, including Everardo Elizondo, the ranch hand who had stopped by the ranch to prepare for the cockfight. All threereceived lengthy sentences, but with no bodies to build a murder case, they were convicted only of aggravated kidnapping, a charge that seems woefully inadequate given the nature of the crimes. Zetas. Outside the ranch entrance, the firefighters spotted officers and vehicles from the Allende police department. Meanwhile, criminal violence continues to soar in Mexico, with the Cartel of the Northeast (CDN), successor to Los Zetas, implicated in some of the worst cases. Other witnesses said that the citys top official ignored urgent pleas that he request assistance from state or federal law enforcement to help quell the violence. Please do not fill in this field. [H]e was telling me that he wanted to look for the Zetas to see what they were asking for the return of his family. [11] A portion of the Prez Iruegas complaint was previously published by Zcalo, revealing some of the parts that were redacted in the version released by CNDH (shown here in brackets). 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 . Many victims were brought to a ranch outside Allende, owned by the Garza family. jschwartz@statesman.com. Founded in 2002 as the enforcement arm of the notorious Gulf Cartel, the first members of Los Zetas were recruited from a Mexican special forces group known as GAFE (Grupo Aeromvil de Fuerzas Especiales), members of which were trainedat the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia. She told me that around 5:30 in the afternoon she came across the pick-up truck that came for my husband, and that had been circulating up and down Calle Independencia, and that her father was on board the truck together with about five other people, and that he was in the cabin in the back, in the middle, and that the truck was followed by two black late-model cars, Malibu or Impala, and the three vehicles headed for the mountain; this being the last time they saw my husband.- Complaint of wife of victim Rodolfo Snchez Robles, November 10, 2014. Despite the brutality of the case, major U.S. TV and print outlets have largely ignored the kidnapping and murder of hundreds of people from Allende, Coahuila. There were other people in civilian clothes who carried long arms, and these people were Los Zetas, since I realized that there at the [Garza] ranch were [El Pala,] whose name is [Fernando Ros Bustos]; [El Canelo,] whose name is [Germn Zaragoza Snchez]; [El Cubano], whose name is [Juan Rafael Arredondo Oviedo]; [El Pjaro], whose name is [Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar]; [El Flacaman,] whose name is [Gabriel Zaragoza Snchez,] among other people, some of whom I did not know, but they seemed to be from the south since they wore sandals and carried machetes. Early in the morning on March 19, Arturo called his own mother, Elvira Espinoza, and told her that neither Liliana, who worked for her fathers ranch business, nor her parents were answering their phones. 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. And this began to occur more or less in the years 2010 and 2011, which was about when Los Zetas got started in the region.- Declaration of former Allende police official, November 12, 2014, 15:20. December 9, 2020, Six Years On, Ayotzinapa Investigations Advance 92110 United States [email protected] +1 619-260-2299. That was just one week in late January when the government said Guanajuato, which has around 5% of Mexico's population, suffered 20% of its homicides. She toldProPublicathat, after separating the children from their parents, the kidnappers held them for several days before leaving the two older kids at a park. The targets included the families of Juniors father, Jos Luis Garza y Garza, and his unclesVctor, Rodolfo, and Sergio. Where did your husband leave my husband? one asked. And he was waiting for his brother-in-law [Later,] he told me that they spent the entire night looking for his family; that he had entered the ranch from the back through an opening, and that he realized that he was alone in the ranch house, and that he was there with the expectation that they were holding his sister and his niece and nephews all with the last name Espinoza Garza, who on the day of the acts were seven months, three years, and six years of age.- Complaint of Sarah Angelita Lira, November 11, 2014. Oct. 27: A police officer is seen outside a car wash after gunmen burst into the shop and killed at least 15 people in Tepic, Mexico. [14] In many cases, the names of the people identified by firefighters Lpez Tamez and De Len Ramos are legible behind clumsily applied redactions. That they did not want to see us going out to extinguish the houses. What is clear is that the failure to do so sealed the fates of an untold number of victims who were murdered at the ranch later that night. Local media, fearing reprisals, did not report the violence until years later. Thats the last thing I know about my family., Almas brother, Hctor Reynaldo Prez Iruegas, also witnessed part of the attack and was one of the first to file a missing persons report in the case. The majority of these cases happened in Allende, so that time referred to as the Allende Massacre. Bri Rooke. The acrid odor of diesel fuel hung in the air. According to multiple local media reports, the massacre happened on Wednesday afternoon when an armed group opened fire at the city hall of San Miguel Totolapan, resulting in the . Triggered a Massacre in Mexico," "Somos." tells the story of a 2011 mass killing in Allende, in the Mexican state of Coahuila . [1] Translations throughout the text by Michael Evans. He just asked us if we knew about what was happening. 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. Whereas, according to a 2016 interview of Coahuila attorney general Homero Ramos Gloria, the Mexican government has identified only 28 human remains and 54 . 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. After what happened to my spouse in May 2010, approximately one year later, in June 2011, [his captor] started looking for me according to him because my ex-spouse put him in charge of telling [me] what had happened to him He told me many things related with acts of violence in the region and I knew from his own words that he was an assassin for the Zetas cartel, and as we built some trust, I asked him various things.- Complaint of wife of murdered Zeta, November 13, 2014, He told her how the Zetas had killed someones grandson, probably a reference to Mauricio Espinoza, whose grandmother, Elvira Espinoza, was one of the first to report disappearances in Allende. Peering through the gates, the firefighters saw members of the Los Zetas criminal group berating and beating members of the Garza family, who owned the ranch, along with several of their employees. Warning: violence in San Miguel de Allende. 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. That if any citizens asked us for help that we would not pay attention to avoid getting into trouble. As CrimeOnline previously reported, the victims were part of a faith group who lived in Sonora, an established faith-based city in Mexico, around 70 miles from Douglas, Arizona. When he arrived, he told me and the other workers of the ranch to leave; that there had been a ruckus there; that armed, masked people told him to get inside; and that we should not get involved and should leave the ranch. In March 2011 witnesses say the notorious Zetas cartel abducted at least 300 people in northern Mexico, but a local investigation still has a long way to go to identity all the perpetrators - and . Among the evidence posted today are the first complaints filed by the loved ones of those who went missing, the sworn declarations of Zetas members, Allende police and other city officials, the statements of firefighters and others who witnessed the violence, along with hundreds of pages of forensic reports, crime scene photos and related material. The six-part miniseries examines the lives of the victims of a cartel massacre at the Mexican border town of Allende. (AP) MEXICO CITY -- Gunmen killed 15 people at a car wash . In 2017, a group led by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)submitted a communicationto the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) detailing crimes committed against the civilian population in Coahuila, including murder, illegal imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture and sexual violence, not just from March 2011 but from a seven-year period from 2009-2016. [6]In January, the bodies of 19 Central American migrants werefound in Tamaulipas, a neighboring Mexican border state and the site of hundreds of still largely unexplained migrant murders over the past eleven years. 0:04. A declassified DEA report from 2015said that the Zetas in late 2015 made a conscious effort to rebrand as the Cartel del Noreste (Cartel of the Northeast). More information on CDN is available here. That he and the then-mayor of the city had a meeting with people from Los Zetas. Subscribe to our newsletter and join other 2,442 Justice in Mexico readers! . Triggered a Massacre in Mexico,, Allende, el infierno: Los testigos de la masacre,, Exoneran a ex alcalde de Allende, Coahuila, ligado a masacres de 2011, this report from the University of San Diegos Justice in Mexico program, Mexicos bloody drug war is killing more people than ever,, Masacre de Allende: el silencio del general, U.S. Prosecutions Bring Mexico Corruption into Focus, Advirti EU riesgo ante mandos mexicanos corruptos, Six Years On, Ayotzinapa Investigations Advance, FiftyYears After Tlatelolco, Censoring the Mexican Archives: Mexico's "Dirty War" Files Withdrawn from Public Access, Transcripts of intercepted cell phones open new lines of investigation in Ayotzinapa case, US: Mexico Mass Graves Raise "Alarming Questions" about Government "Complicity" in September 2014 Cartel Killings, Mexico's San Fernando Massacres: A Declassified History.