September 26, 2019, FiftyYears After Tlatelolco, Censoring the Mexican Archives: Mexico's "Dirty War" Files Withdrawn from Public Access After what happened to my spouse in May 2010, approximately one year later, in June 2011, [his captor] started looking for me according to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. Despite the unimaginable death toll and visible trail of destruction, for several years the case was largely ignored by federal, state, and local authorities. 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). Senior officers, including the police director, commander, and shift commanders, were paid more handsomely than regular cops. And you could see that they were unloading large barrels, and the odor of diesel or gasoline was evident. 0:04. A center for car manufacturing northwest of Mexico City, Guanajuato averaged at least nine homicides a day in 2020, one of the highest murder rates in the country. "How the U.S. Los Zetas Cartel Used Network of Ovens to Hide Mass - Breitbart In Coahuila we were hearing the word being passed from municipality to municipality, about a large scale Zeta massacre in several towns of "The Five Springs", (Los Cinco Manantiales) including Allende. THE DOCUMENTS. The Allende Massacre: How A DEA Investigation Triggered The Destruction That is to say, the [Garza] ranch. The missing from the Allende massacre are among the 13,000 the . 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. That they did not want to see us going out to extinguish the houses. The soldiers found doors torn off, the building sacked, spent shell casings, dead animals, burned buildings, and a pick-up truck riddled with bullet holes, but no people. Myself, and two others of my staff were driving from Monterrey, via Saltillo, on our way to Acuna, travelling on the 57 . Go fuck your mother! The Allende Massacre in Mexico: A Decade of Impunity Prior to 1832 the settlement was known as San Juan de Mata.. Los Zetas Massacre. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. [15], Despite a raft of damning testimony about his role in the massacre, a Mexican court released former Allende Mayor Sergio Lozano from pre-trial detention in February 2017, finding the evidence insufficient to reach a conviction. San Miguel de Allende might be voted the nicest town in Mexico by many travel magazines, but it is not safe at the moment and I advise you not to come here right now. The targets included the families of Juniors father, Jos Luis Garza y Garza, and his unclesVctor, Rodolfo, and Sergio. 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. Mexico has again witnessed a brutal incident of gun violence, where a gunman opened fire and killed at least 18 people at San Miguel Totolapan City Hall on Wednesday. The Tamaulipas massacre: how the American Dream dies in Mexico U.S. Prosecutions Bring Mexico Corruption into Focus Thompsons reporting and the U.S. investigations strongly suggest that the former SIU chief may have been part of a criminal conspiracy that sparked the Allende massacre. He just asked us if we knew about what was happening. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico," "Somos." tells the story of a 2011 mass killing in Allende, in the Mexican state of Coahuila . What Do American Officials Know About the Allende Massacre? See Vanguardia, March 18, 2019.. What actions had they taken to guarantee the security of the people of Allende? World News Day: A town, a massacre, a decade of silence in Mexico's Allende The plan, he said, was to kidnap and kill everyone. When more Zetas and various patrols of the municipal police arrived later they knocked down the main gate of the Garza ranch by ramming it with a truck, according to Jimnez. In exchange, Reyes passed DEA intelligence to the criminal groups, including, in at least one case, sensitive information about a pending DEA investigation. In 2020, a U.S. court also indicted Reyes Arzates boss, former public security minister Genaro Garca Luna, for taking tens of millions of dollars in bribes from Sinaloa Cartel chief Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn. For reference to U.S. training and other background, see our previous Electronic Briefing Book, especially Document 1 and Document 2. But a few minutes later he called me saying that neither his father nor his sister were answering and that there were many trucks and armed men guarding the entrance to the ranch. Germn Zaragoza Snchez, better known as El Canelo, was a top Zetas boss in Allende and managed a group hawks who monitored and reported on the movements of state and federal security forces. A. U.S. authorities inadvertently helped to cause the deaths of thousands of people in Allende, Mexico in 2011 after information they gathered was leaked to the Zetas cartel's leaders, according to journalist Ginger Thompson. I want to point out that I did not know any of the dead And when we had them in the barrels [deleted] began to bathe the corpses in diesel so that they could then be set on fire, and I was then sent to keep a lookout a few meters from there to make sure that no one was coming. Ginger Thompson, ProPublica 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. She is the goddaughter of Salvador Allende , the first socialist president of Chile who was her father's . The town's mayor believes 30 to 40 Allende families were exterminated, and he has a list of 34 houses that were destroyed. 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 . 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. The next day, the wives of other ranch workers came by the Snchez Robles house, looking for their missing spouses. American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Trevios but never acknowledged the devastating cost. Source: ProPublica. The mini-series is created by James Schamus, who divides the real-life emotional fable into 6 . She told investigators what she learned from a series of telephone conversations with her husbands captor. 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. Later we took these people to the Garza ranch where we put them in the same house where we had the others. However, families of the victims in Allende touted the overdue government efforts as a publicity stunt. That they will help us and will help the people. Another explained that he stopped cooperating with the Zetas after they kidnapped his father. Local media, fearing reprisals, did not report the violence until years later. Mexico Mormon massacre: US victims were shot at point-blank range 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. I want to point out that all of the police at that time were getting money from the Zetas, some by obligation and some by choice. I saw that they took two people out of the house, but I could not distinguish who they were. Witness statements and other records from the Allende case file published here today corroborate Osornos account of the enduring tragedy and illustrate the extent to which the group continued to rely on compliant police to execute some of its most sensitive operations. premiering June 30. And I remember what he said to me: Don't be an ass. According to Thompsons reporting, [t]he wave of killings was unleashed after DEA agents shared the PIN codes with a specially vetted Mexican Federal Police (MFP) group known as the Sensitive Investigative Unit (SIU), which had a record of leaking information to violent and powerful drug traffickers., That report was followed by the2018 convictionin U.S. federal court of the longtime head of the SIU, Ivn Reyes Arzate, who prosecutors say conspired with some of the very drug cartels he was to pursue as director of the specially trained, U.S.-funded intelligence unit. 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. That things were going to get ugly.-Declaration of former Allende police shift commander, September 18, 2016. I still love Mexico. Because if you dont [keep quiet] theyre going to kidnap you too.. Where did your husband leave my husband? one asked. Jos Alfredo Jimnez was one of the first of the Zetas to arrive at Luis Garzas ranch that night. As many as 40 houses and seven ranches were sacked and burned, according to aMarch 2018 CNDH report, the inhabitants beaten and dragged awaykidnapped in broad daylight. He said his hands were tied, so he stepped aside . The 2020 U.S. arrest of Mexicos former defense secretary, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, for alleged narcotics ties has led Mexicos president, Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, tofast-track a new lawimposing strict new restrictions on U.S. personnel in Mexico and that threatens to significantly curtail the exchange of intelligence and law enforcement information. Finally, the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice recently confirmed, in a FOIA denial letter to the National Security Archive, that its investigation of the DEAs links to cartel violence in Mexicofirst announced in 2018is ongoing, a probe that may have significant implications for the Allende case and for U.S.-Mexico security cooperation more broadly. The National Security Archive marks this grim anniversary by publishing an extensive evidentiary history of the Allende massacre focusing on key documents and testimony from a 4,000-page dossier of investigative records that prosecutors in the state of Coahuila only began to compile almost three years after the fact. 2018 is on track to be Mexico's deadliest year on record with over 20,000 homicides so far. Witnesses Described Defendant's Participation in the 2011 Allende Massacre, Where Over 100 Men, Women, and Children Were Slaughtered by the Zetas Cartel PLANO, Texas - A Mexican national and high-ranking member of the Los Zetas cartel received a life sentence for drug trafficking violations in the Eastern District of Texas, announced Acting . Herrera said he knew many of the victims as well. Zaragoza said up to 60 Zetas assassins may have participated in the Allende operation, sweeping up people in the surrounding towns and dropping them off at the Garza Ranch. 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.] In February, 2014, members of the Army, Navy, State, and . She said Andrea, the six-year-old, blames herself for what happened to him. No one would tell her anything about the person who left the kids at the orphanage.[10]. [17] The Zetas member is not identified in the text but from context appears to be El Canelo. Allende y la masacre de la que no se habla en Mxico - Cultura Colectiva Hours later, his daughter was one of the last people to see him alive. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. [5] The Mexican government signaled its intention to soften some of the more severe restrictions imposed by the new law. How the U.S. triggered a massacre in Mexico | War in Context Suite 701, Gelman Library That report, sponsored by a government-backed victims' rights commission and undertaken by scholars at the prestigious Colegio de Mexico, says that even now Mexican authorities show "less . People from the town stole the furniture, vehicles, and machinery [from the houses] and sold it for scrap metal.- Declaration of Germn Zaragoza Snchez (El Canelo), April 8, 2014, 10:00am. 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. [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. Perspective | How a U.S. drug enforcement operation got dozens of Una nueva serie de Netflix intenta . Gunmen open fire in a roadside eatery, leaving nine customers dead in pools of blood. 202-994-7000 ornsarchiv@gwu.edu, Special thanks to former National Security Archiveintern Emily Taylor for her assistance with this collection. I stopped working for Los Zetas because they disappeared my father who worked as a security guard at a construction site from where they also kidnapped another worker and a woman who I did not know, but she seemed to be a minor At the time of the disappearance of my father I was still with the municipal police and I asked the commander for help And he told me not to involve myself in these matters and that I should go home and go to sleep.-Declaration of former Allende police transit officer, July 31, 2014.

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