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. In written statements, both themayorand thepolice director said they had only limited contemporaneous understanding of the events of March 18-20, 2011, and claimed that they did not receive any reports about the violence as it was happening. THE DOCUMENTS. Texting with her husband throughout the night, Sarah learned bits and pieces of what he and Arturo were up to. He told me that inside the jail Los Zetas were burning all of these people that I mentioned as well as my spouse who they burned inside that place after killing him, and more people from other parts of the state. Arts & Culture. When they did not return or respond to phone calls, their wives became concerned. 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. Horrifying Allende massacre still haunts Mexico. [W]e all went in shooting and tied up all the people that were found inside the ranch. 'Somos' Review - The Hollywood Reporter The story of the Allende Massacre from the words of eye witnesses One of the cooks told investigators that his involvement in the Allende massacre began a few days earlier when he was awakened with dousing of cold water. Most of them, he said, were killed and cremated inside the state prison in Piedras Negras. The next day,investigators requested, andlater received, a list of Allende police officials active in 2011 and began to interview them systematically. Subscribe to our newsletter and join other 2,442 Justice in Mexico readers! Two days after the Zetas caravan of death had gotten underway it had arrived at the residence of Juniors uncle, Vctor Manuel Garza Garza, and his wife Alma Patricia Prez. Lilianas brother, Rodolfo Garza, Jr., last heard from her around six or seven oclock that evening. 0:04. Many of the victims were ordinary laborers at the Garza properties. -Declaration of Allende volunteer firefighter, December 17, 2014. Through the gate, she could see what appeared to be bodies piled up next to a burning building. September 27, 2019 1:06 PM EDT. Her brother-in-law, who also worked for the Garzas, arrived later and told her that her husband had been kidnapped. How the U.S. triggered a massacre in Mexico | War in Context 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. I recall that he was light-skinned, thin, of medium height, around 20 or 25 years of age, and they brought him in with his hands and feet tied up and with his face covered with tape.- Declaration of Zetas safe house guard, part 2, March 2, 2016, After a few days, he said, members of Los Zetas came and took him away in the bed of a pick-up truck, adding that he heard that they were going to turn him into roast beef, which is to say, that they were going to cook him.. A new detention order for Lozano was issued in March 2018, after the publication of the CNDH report, but little is known about how the case has progressed, and it is unclear whether prosecutors have ever filed charges against police director Trevio, who was seen outside the Garza Ranch and who witnesses say knew about the attacks ahead of time.[16]. Allende, Coahuila - Wikipedia follows the lives of an ensemble group of fictional characters, all inspired by real-life . Later on the following Sunday, with all of those people locked up at the ranch, around 8:30 or 9:00 at night, I accompanied Comandante 7 and [Comandante Pala], together with various estacas, among others that I recall were [El Canelo, El Cubano, El Chilero, El Panda, El Ruso, El Flacaman, El Cabe and El Meno,] together with a municipal police patrol [in which were riding police officers Guadalupe valos Orozco, La Lupe, and Jess Alejandro Bernal Guerrero,] to a house on [Cuauhtmoc] Street in the Center of Allende, which is where Vctor Garza lived. He said he recognized many of the Zetas gathered there.[13]. 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. 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. Somos. Another explained that he stopped cooperating with the Zetas after they kidnapped his father. The Allende Massacre in Mexico: A Decade of Impunity What actions had they taken to guarantee the security of the people of Allende? 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.] 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. The above account was confirmed by several others, including one of the shift commanders. Netflix drama series Somos. This same Allende city officer tried once more the following day, advising the mayor to tell someone about what was happening; that he talk to the governor. The next day, the wives of other ranch workers came by the Snchez Robles house, looking for their missing spouses. Report Criticizes Mexican Officials for Ignoring 2011 Massacre 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. Authorities investigating the massacre reported numerous hijackings of passenger buses on Mexican Federal Highway 101 in San Fernando, and the kidnapped victims were . It is not a series of drug traffickers, but of their victims: of those who try to survive . Few had the courage to defy Los Zetas. [11], [A]round nine oclock at night, I found myself at the circus that had set up in town, when suddenly a person by the name of [deleted] came up to me and told me that in the house of [my sister] they were hearing shots. 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. Justice in Mexico 5998 Alcal Park, San Diego, CA. According to testimony, the police would also arrest and detain people wanted by the Zetas, keeping them in the city jail until the Zetas arrived to take them away. The mini-series is created by James Schamus, who divides the real-life emotional fable into 6 . 15 Killed in Mexican Car Wash Massacre | Fox News Vasquez then ordered that the father be killed. 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. At that moment, I also realized that near a large bodega that was about 70 meters away from where I was there were various people from the town, who the Zetas were shouting at and mistreating, and who I knew because they were from the [deleted] family. Chilling New Report by FXB's Sergio Aguayo Cites Greater Death Toll in We continued to advance until we reached the ranch, where I saw that there were a number of blue and white municipal police patrol cars and several police officers And these police, its like they were guarding the place. Another explained how the money was divided up among members of the Allende police. The U.S.filed additional charges against Reyesin January 2020. MEXICO CITY The killers went to the town of Allende one weekend in March 2011 with orders to exact revenge. 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. 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. I n the dead of night on Jan. 28, 1918, a group of white Texas Rangers, U.S. military men and local ranchers burst into the homes of Mexican and Mexican American . 8 min de lectura. And when we met with him, he told us that things were going to get hot. 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. The Allende Massacre in Mexico: A Decade of Impunity | National Other convictions include Germn Zaragoza Snchez (the Zetas members known as El Canelo) and Fernando Hernndez Reyes, an Allende police officer. 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.] For the family members, nothing has changed. This was the brutal and forgotten Allende massacre in Mexico portrayed 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. LAS CRUCES - On Feb. 10, 1990, two men walked into a Las Cruces bowling alley and shot seven people execution style including four children robbed the bowling alley's safe and set . 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. May 29, 2021. The government should do more to find them. "Somos." de Netflix: as fue la brutal y olvidada masacre de Allende en 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 after five or six hours during which the corpses were cooked it was then around five or six oclock in the morning. Thompson later turned the original report into amulti-episode podcast. [12] While the names of Zetas, police officials, and witnesses are for the most part redacted in the volumes released through CNDH, a previously published portion of El Pjaros declaration reveals some of those redacted names. He told me that we were not up for parties, she said. Remembering the Allende Massacre. InMilenio, Diego Osorno writes aboutThe Sad Case of the Two Sergio Garzas,Juniors uncle and cousin, who were murdered, along with other family members, in March and August 2012part of a continuing effort by Los Zetas to eliminate loose ends from within the Garza family. There were not many of us. 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 . Zetas. El Pjaro said it was left to him and El Chucho to set fire to the house, the bodega, and everything inside, including the many dead bodies. 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. 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. 'Are.' from Netflix: learn the true story of the Allende massacre This was at about 7:30 or 8:00 AM on Saturday, March [19], 2011 Just past the entrance I could see some Allende municipal police trucks, and beneath these were armed people who I recognized as police.- Complaint of wife of victim Csar Alfonso Garca Ramrez, May 23, 2014. 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 . Among the evidence 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. 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. Las Cruces bowling alley massacre still unsolved after 30 years 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. The Seminar on Violence of the Colegio de Mxico had access to many of these files in preparing its groundbreaking reports on Allende and a second report on how the Zetas gained control of authority structures in Coahuila, including the state prison in Piedras Negras. On the night of March 20, 2011, four firefighters arrived at a ranch along a stretch of rural highway linking the northern Mexico towns of Allende and Villa Unin. [T]he director, who almost never left his office, knew all about this. 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. There was also a man by the name of [Everardo Elizondo,] who raised fighting cocks, and [Csar Alfonso Garca Ramrez] And how the people from the Zetas were shouting, hitting and mistreating these people!-Declaration of Allende volunteer firefighter Luis Gerardo Herrera Estrada, November 23, 2014, The chief of the fire department, Christian Alejandro Lpez Tamez, told investigators in a revised statement that, just like his colleagues, he was able to identify many of the faces he saw there, including the director and other top officials from the Allende police department. When the Zetas became aware of our presence, and that we were there to put out the fire, they said to us: You guys get the fuck out of here! And as I am originally from here in Allende, and this is a small town, for this reason I know these people. From the highway, smoke could be seen coming from the interior of the ranch. Declassified Documents on the San Fernando Massacre & Violence against Migrants in Northeastern Mexican States . Descendants of 1918 Porvenir Massacre Fight For Recognition - Time 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. Outside the ranch entrance, the firefighters spotted officers and vehicles from the Allende police department. Allende, el infierno: Los testigos de la masacre, Zcalo (Coahuila), July 10, 2017. I didnt know which of them woke me up with cold water since Id been asleep. American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Trevios but never acknowledged the devastating cost. 92110 United States [email protected] +1 619-260-2299. Armando Castilla, the publisher of the newspaper Vanguardia de Coahuila, says his publication was the first to report the case, in December 2013. 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. . Meanwhile, Mexico has announced the arrest of police officers allegedly involved in the killings. Mexican Federal Police document bits of teeth recovered at the Garza Ranch, January 28, 2014(Source:Document 41: Forensic Anthropology Technical Report, April 11, 2014). That they did not want to see us going out to extinguish the houses. US Intelligence Helped Cause 2011 Massacre in Mexico 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. 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. December 9, 2020, Six Years On, Ayotzinapa Investigations Advance He said his hands were tied, so he stepped aside . 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. What Do American Officials Know About the Allende Massacre? Mexico Mormon massacre: US victims were shot at point-blank range World News Day: A town, a massacre, a decade of silence in Mexico's Allende 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. Gunmen Storm Wake in Mexico, Killing at Least Nine 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. 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. In November 2019, CDN gunmenriddled the city hall with gunfireand engaged in a gun battle with federal forces that leftat least 21 dead. See Allende, el infierno: Los testigos de la masacre, Zcalo (Coahuila), July 10, 2017. 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. Four years later, and ten years since the Allende massacre, the families of those victimized by the Zetas and other criminal groups in Coahuilaare still waitingto learn whether the ICC will take up the case. To me in particular they gave me 2,000 pesos [per month].-Declaration of former Allende police official, July 22, 2014. Remembering the Allende Massacre - BlogTest [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). [12]- Statement of Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014. Others had nothing whatsoever to do with the Garza family and were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. In an act of revenge cartel members in 2011 razed and burned houses and disappeared people just by bearing the last name of the alleged traitor. The six-part miniseries examines the lives of the victims of a cartel massacre at the Mexican border town of Allende. Mexican President Consoles Family of Massacre Victims. 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. December 9, 2020, Advirti EU riesgo ante mandos mexicanos corruptos He went on to say that now that Mexico has reformed its National Security Law, authorities from the U.S. could find themselves connected to another massacre similar to the incident in Allende. In fact, the meeting only lasted around ten minutes.-Declaration of Juan Ariel Hernndez Ramos, Allende police commander, August 18, 2016. Myself, and two others of my staff were driving from Monterrey, via Saltillo, on our way to Acuna, travelling on the 57 . 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. Report says Mexico state officials ignored massacre | AP News Hours later, his daughter was one of the last people to see him alive. For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. [10] How the U.S. [I]n fact, he sometimes came and went inside the cells to beat those who were locked up. 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. When Garcas wife drove past the Garza ranch the next morning she spotted a group of hooded, armed men inside while Allende police stood watch outside the entrance. Reading Pulitzer Prize-winner Ginger Thompson's oral history of a little-known 2011 massacre in the Mexican border town of Allende, and of the role, the U.S. government played in triggering it, is an experience at once intimate and vast.Hearing the voices of survivors, whether they were perpetrators . In a country where more than 90% of crimes go unsolved, searching. It is not clear why members of the the military unit thatexamined the ranch did not secure the property or, evidently, take any additional steps to comprehend what was happening in Allende. Rodolfo Snchez Robles, who worked as a chauffeur and mechanic for the Garza family, seemed to know something was wrong on the day he disappeared. In 2019, the state had a homicide rate of about 61 .