allende mexico massacre victims

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. Prior to 1832 the settlement was known as San Juan de Mata.. Los Zetas Massacre. The next day,investigators requested, andlater received, a list of Allende police officials active in 2011 and began to interview them systematically. 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 . FOR almost three years residents of Allende, close to the Mexican border with . 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 . The official, town council secretaryEvaristo Rodrguez Chapa, said he called police director Trevio to let him know what was happening, to which he replied: Dont even fart, you asshole. Beyond criminal prosecutions, the Mexican government also has a specific legal obligation to divulge information related to cases, like Allende, that constitute clear violations of human rights and humanitarian law, raising the hope that additional information may come to light through the countrys access to information law. (AP) MEXICO CITY -- Gunmen killed 15 people at a car wash . He got in the truck and returned to Allende, or at least thats what I think I dont know what happened to [Vctor] nor to his parents. She said she later learned he had been kidnapped from their house and turned over to a criminal group, probably Los Zetas. One former police official who attended the meeting said that Trevio told them that things were going to get hot that there had been a meeting with Los Zetas and the mayor, and that things were going to get ugly., As a result of the meeting with the mayor and Los Zetas, Trevio ordered police personnel not to leave the offices for anything, even if there were reports. The officer said they were told that if we went out it was under our own risk, and that they would fucking get us.. [6] CDN is reportedly led by Juan Gerardo Trevio Chvez (El Huevo), nephew of former Zetas leaders Miguel ngel Trevio Morales (Z-40) and Omar Trevio Morales (Z-42), according to this press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Many of the victims were ordinary laborers at the Garza properties. 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. Arriving at the ranch that night with three others from the department, Herrera said he could see that what was burning was a small room that was near the ranch. He saw that there were units of the municipal police out front. 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 . 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. 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. Others had nothing whatsoever to do with the Garza family and were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Forensic specialists from the Mexican Federal Police examine one of the primary crime scenes from the 2011 Allende massacre on January 28, 2014. Most importantly, he told her that many of the Allende massacre victims were first brought to a cemetery in Piedras Negras before being taken later to the Garza ranch. En 2011, cuando el cartel de Los Zetas dominaba el noreste de Mxico, ocurri una masacre en la localidad de Allende, Coahuila, de la que poco se conoci. Based on Ginger Thompson's 2017 oral history, "How the U.S. But he never came back. And you could see that they were unloading large barrels, and the odor of diesel or gasoline was evident. When they did not return or respond to phone calls, their wives became concerned. [T]hey brought them there to the Los ngeles Cemetery near the Piedras Negras city seminary, and also more people. 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. Una nueva serie de Netflix intenta . Jimnez told authorities that local Zetas leaders sent him to the ranch as part of an all-out assault on people and properties associated with the Garza family. Local media, fearing reprisals, did not report the violence until years later. There was a fire coming from a small building inside the ranch alongside armed men who did not seem like they were police, according to the former volunteers statement. The tenth anniversary of the Allende killings comes as allegations of narcotics-related corruption among top Mexican officials have brought U.S.-Mexico security ties to their lowest point in many years. Allende is a small town southwest of Piedras Negras, Mexico and is the site of a massacre by the drug cartel, Los Zetas. The majority of these cases happened in Allende, so that time referred to as the Allende Massacre. [13] Bracketed items identified in portions of the Herrera Estrada declaration published by Zcalo. Schamus presents the trailer and key art for his new drama series Somos. Police acted as lookouts (halcones) for the group, collected extortion payments from local club owners on their behalf, and participated in the Zetas drug trafficking activities. Elvira Espinoza and her husband were among the first to inform federal authorities about the violence, telling investigators that she and her husband reported the disappearance of Arturo, Liliana and the three children to the military garrison along Highway 57, just outside of Allende. 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. And when we met with him, he told us that things were going to get hot. The horrifying persistence of brazen cartel attacks like these is a reminder of how little has changed in Mexico, especially in the border states of Coahuila, Tamaulipas, and Nuevo Len. 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. 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 rampage that punctuateda larger wave of violencein which theLos Zetas criminal groupkidnapped, murdered, and later burned the bodies of as many as 300 victims, incinerating the remains into piles of ashes, bits of teeth, and tiny bone fragments. 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. Some of those interviewed during the investigation said the rampage started as an act of revenge by top Zetas leaders against Cuellar, Junior, and other deputies, who they accused of pocketing millions of dollars in stolen drug money. Another explained how the money was divided up among members of the Allende police. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. Many of the nine women and children killed on a remote stretch of highway in northern Mexico Monday were shot at point-blank range -- victims of a targeted assassination that Mexican authorities . He didnt have anything to do with crime, nor did his family, since they were kidnapped by mistake.. On March 20, 2011, my husband and I went to the Garrison of Kilometer 53 to talk with the military officials and we told them what had happened. To me in particular they gave me 2,000 pesos [per month].-Declaration of former Allende police official, July 22, 2014. The files depict a town almost completely beholden to LosZetasfrom the mayors office to top police commanders to ordinary cops on the street. 35+ YEARS OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACTION, FOIA Advisory Committee Oversight Reports, Document 40: Field Criminology Opinion Report, January 28, 2014, Document 41: Forensic Anthropology Technical Report, April 11, 2014, Declaration of Allende volunteer firefighter, December 17, 2014, -Declaration of Allende fire chief, December 17, 2014, 2017 investigation by Ginger Thompson of ProPublica, - Declaration of Zetas member Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014, - Declaration of Germn Zaragoza Snchez (El Canelo), April 8, 2014, 10:00am, - Complaint of Sarah Angelita Lira, November 11, 2014, - Complaint of wife of victim Csar Alfonso Garca Ramrez, May 23, 2014, - Declaration of wife of heavy machinery mechanic for Rodolfo Garza, July 23, 2014, - Complaint of wife of victim Rodolfo Snchez Robles, November 10, 2014, - Complaint of Claudia Snchez, October 18, 2013, - Complaint of Elvira Espinoza, November 4, 2011, -Complaint of Yuliana Lpez Ibarra, October 14, 2014, - Complaint of Hctor Reynaldo Prez Iruegas, May 25, 2011, - Statement of Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014, -Declaration of Allende volunteer firefighter Luis Gerardo Herrera Estrada, November 23, 2014, -Revised declaration of Christian Alejandro Lpez Tamez, December 17, 2014, - Declaration of Allende firefighter Jess Gerardo De Len Ramos, December 17, 2014, 14:50, - Declaration of former Allende volunteer firefighter, December 17, 2014, 11:37, - Declaration of Zetas member, September 19, 2014, - Declaration of Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014, - Declaration of Germn Zaragoza Snchez (El Canelo), April 8, 2014, 10:00, Allende municipal official in charge of road maintenance, - Declaration of former Allende police official, November 12, 2014, 17:30, - Declaration of former Allende police official, November 12, 2014, 15:20, -Declaration of former Allende police official, July 22, 2014, -Declaration of former Allende police transit officer, July 31, 2014, -Declaration of former Allende police shift commander, September 18, 2016, -Declaration of Juan Ariel Hernndez Ramos, Allende police commander, August 18, 2016, municipal official present at the March 22 meeting, - Declaration of Zetas safe house guard, part 2, March 2, 2016, - Complaint of wife of murdered Zeta, November 13, 2014, - Memorandum on links between various cases, March 5, 2015, Seminar on Violence of the Colegio de Mxico, gained control of authority structures in Coahuila, How the U.S. The two had gone to the ranch on March 18 to get medicine for a cockfight that evening. The study sought to determine the treatment and reparations of the State to the victims of the massacre of 72 migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, in August 2010, and the disappearance of an unknown number of people in Allende, Coahuila, in March 2011. Many thousands disappeared in Mexico's drug war. U.S. Prosecutions Bring Mexico Corruption into Focus An important moment seems to have come in March 2015, when state investigatorssaw a familiar patternemerge in three seemingly unrelated cases. 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. El 18 de marzo de 2011, sicarios de Los Zetas irrumpieron en el pequeo municipio fronterizo buscando venganza porque alguien les haba . 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 . They are included here in brackets. In return for the departments cooperation, most officers received 2,000 to 3,000 pesos per month (about $175-260 USD) from Los Zetas. I dont know who those people were, just that they were people that the police detained or his own people that he ordered be locked up when they handled themselves badly, or people with whom he had a disagreement [tuviera pedos]. 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. 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]. 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. September 27, 2019 1:06 PM EDT. Source: ProPublica. April 16, 2018, US: Mexico Mass Graves Raise "Alarming Questions" about Government "Complicity" in September 2014 Cartel Killings It's between them. Go fuck your mother! [1] Translations throughout the text by Michael Evans. Witnesses describe in graphic detail how Los Zetas undermined and criminalized the public security forces of Allende, and how the latter routinely participated in kidnappings, murders, and other crimes on behalf of the group. The cartel allegedly turned this storage shed, which held equipment and animal feed, into an incinerator for the . 8 min de lectura. ProPublica and National Geographic set out to piece together how the U.S. contributed to a massacre executed by a drug cartel in Allende, Mexico. Somos ("We are" or "We Exist" in English) is a Spanish Television Mini-Series based on the ProPublica article " How the U.S. triggered a massacre in Mexico. Another explained that he stopped cooperating with the Zetas after they kidnapped his father. But he did not say anything to me. [5]More recently, Lpez Obradorsignaled his intentionto eliminate the autonomous state organ charged with guaranteeing access to human rights documents like these, the National Institute of Access to Public Information and Personal Data (INAI). Hours later, his daughter was one of the last people to see him alive. Published September 10, 2021. Later, [El Comandante Pala (ordered) El Ruso, El Blue, Chaln, Cabe, Meo, Flacaman, Cubano and Canelo] to take them from the house and walk them to the inside of a bodega near the house, and later to kill all of them, shooting them in the head. About five estacas[9]participated, and with [deleted] and [deleted] ten more joined. . September 26, 2019, FiftyYears After Tlatelolco, Censoring the Mexican Archives: Mexico's "Dirty War" Files Withdrawn from Public Access The U.S.filed additional charges against Reyesin January 2020. Tracing the missing. Netflix drama series Somos. 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. Subscribe. Myself, and two others of my staff were driving from Monterrey, via Saltillo, on our way to Acuna, travelling on the 57 . And after five or six hours during which the corpses were cooked it was then around five or six oclock in the morning. 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. [A]nd how the Zetas were shouting at them and hitting and mistreating them, the then-chief of the department told investigators in his 2014 statement to state prosecutors. 92110 United States [email protected] +1 619-260-2299. We arrived and forced our way in firing shots, from there we took [Vctor Garza], his wife [Alma Patricia Prez], and their youngest son, I think that [his name was Julio Garza.] 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. 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. Following the title sequence is a short paragraph introducing the story of Allende, a Mexican border town unexpectedly overtaken by a powerful drug cartel that . In 2011, Drug Enforcement Agency officials informed Mexican . See Allende, el infierno: Los testigos de la masacre, Zcalo (Coahuila), July 10, 2017. Prosecutors disagreed, arguing that Lozano collaborated with Los Zetas, was aware of the attacks before they began, and had failed in his obligation to protect the people of 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. In June 2019, more than eight years after the fact, President Lpez Obradorapologizedfor the Mexican governments ineffective response to the assault on Allende, pinning most of the blame on narcotraffickers but also recommitting his government to implementing the March 2018CNDH recommendations, which included punishing government agents who facilitated or failed to react to the violence. So they formed them into rows of people and later took them to the ranch of the [deleted] where they killed and burned them together with people from Allende. Villa Unin, just a 20-minute drive from Allende, has been the site of numerous acts of violence linked to the CDN in recent years. Mexican President Consoles Family of Massacre Victims. Mexican Federal Police collect ashes, bone fragments and other bits of evidence from the Garza Ranch on January 28, 2014 (Source: Document 40: Field Criminology Opinion Report, January 28, 2014). He said that he and Rodolfo Jr., his brother-in-law, were going out to look for them. [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. Many others disappeared and were presumably killed in the weeks and months that followed in the wake of the massacre. On the afternoon of March 20, aman reported the March 18 disappearance of his wifes parents and five other family members. They massacred 26 people in two days, including women and children . She is the goddaughter of Salvador Allende , the first socialist president of Chile who was her father's . Leave them. What actions had they taken to guarantee the security of the people of Allende? El Pjaro said that a group of victims that had been tied up inside the ranch house were later taken out back to the bodega where they were killed with a shot to the head. 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. . 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. 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. A self-described foca (lookout) for the Zetas, he had been found sleeping on the job. In a country where more than 90% of crimes go unsolved, searching. The name "Allende" is in honor of Ignacio Allende, a hero of Mexico's War of Independence.The town's folk hero is Arnulfo Gonzlez who was gunned down in the mid-1920s, and has a "corrido" sung by artists such as Vicente Fernndez and many others. [A]t that time I lived in La Colonia Presidentes, and I knew all of these people because they were from the town. From the highway, smoke could be seen coming from the interior of the ranch. In July, Coahuila state investigators gave them a nearly identical set of questions; among them: Did they know about the disappearances as they were happening? 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.. Bri Rooke. 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. May 12, 2015, Documenting Mexicos Recurring Nightmare The original Zetas are former members-turned-deserters of Mexicos elite Airmobile Special Forces Group (GAFE), trained in the U.S. at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, GA. The mayor of Allende in the Cinco Manantiales region of Coahuila said at the time of the slaughter that he was helpless to prevent the massacre. 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. Please do not fill in this field. Soon, Coahuila state authorities discovered links to other violence in the regionin Piedras Negras, on the border, and across the Cinco Manantiales (Five Springs), a group of neighboring towns in northern Coahuila that includes Allende, Morelos, Nava, Zaragoza and Villa Unin, site of numerous cartel attacks in recent years. He gets up into the truck and with his hand he says goodbye leaving his suitcase there at the house because he was supposedly going to come back. October 2, 2018, Transcripts of intercepted cell phones open new lines of investigation in Ayotzinapa case Several said the police director ordered that officers should not do anything or say anything about the carnage. And the mayor commented on what was happening in the city, but never said if he was going to ask for help or if he had advised anyone of what was happening. An Army unit was sent to Rancho Garza to investigate. Many needed the money. [10] How the U.S. 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 . 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.

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