Blog dedicated to reporting on Mexican drug cartels
on the border line between the US and Mexico
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Tuesday, April 22, 2014

R.I.P. (NEVER) ; SETTLING ACCOUNTS

by Javier Valdez Cárdenas (RÍODOCE)
Journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas is the founding editor of RíoDoce, an online news outlet based in Culiacán, Sinalo, This article was originally published there under the title “Celebration”. 

He’d pissed them off and he owed them. The thing is that when push came to shove in the end they charged everybody. And since then they hadn’t stopped charging. It all began with his end: his multiplied, extended, interminable death, all beginning with no epilogue: an annual party held among the graves.

They tricked him into coming. He arrived in jeans, Stetson, and gun bulging at his front, Chalino Sánchez style. He said a half hello to some guys along the way, steering himself towards the people he had come to see.

But before he arrived they peppered his body with bullets and left it, lying there, smoldering, reddened.
His corpse slumped on the steering wheel. A mix of blood and glass, bits of organic matter strewn around. His killers still got down from their vehicle, checking the corpse. Nothing inside the vehicle was intact. To make sure, they blasted him once with a forty-five to the head, then three more times.

The police showed up a day later, when agents confirmed nobody else was around. They did some investigating, took notes and ordered the corpse carried to the funeral parlor. Then in his relatives’ house, flanked by thick, burning candles, cries punctuated the prayers and people threw themselves to the ground: armed, hooden men got to the coffin, readied their chambers, and blasted him again.

Kids wailed. So did relatives and neighbors. They asked why shoot him again if he was already dead.

Hysteria and fear.

Those already at the funeral home didn’t return and those who were thinking of going thought better of it. Next day, they went to the cemetery. Few cars in a cavalcade led by a white hearse.

They were lowering the body. Pulleys, rope, the undertakers four forearms and the ritual lowering. The ropes and pulleys whined. From a distance the dust cloud warned of another approaching cortege but this time of black trucks at high-speed. They got to the graveyard and parked close. Again people scattered, shouting, loose muscles straining and skin trembling.

Two men got out of the back of one of the trucks. They aimed and fired at the half-lowered coffin. Bullets embedded in the casket and the graveside. The rite of squaring off accounts repeated each and every year: armed men went to the cemetery to shoot the grave up, upholding the grisly celebration of multiplying the murder, burnishing the flame of the first execution.

Curious visitors to the dead man’s tomb asked why they kept killing him on every anniversary of his death?:
"They just didn’t want the guy to rest in peace."
 
Translator Patrick Timmons is a human rights investigator and journalist. He edits the Mexican Journalism Translation Project (MxJTP).

31 comments:

  1. Why didn't they just show up with a wood chipper at the funeral , and then run the coffin through the chipper and spray the crowd ?

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    Replies
    1. Thats a great idea!!

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    2. I think they were busy using the wood chipper while mowing lawns in the USA

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  2. Sounds like a waste of bullets if you ask me!

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  3. The guy that got killed must of really pissed some people. They don't want to make sure that he is dead! No that's a given considering how many caps they put in his ass! They want to make sure he don't come back to life! As much led as they are putting into the corpse, he won't even come back as a Z! And I'am not talking about the a Zeta!

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  4. Thats gona happen to chapo

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    Replies
    1. Never DAT! He'll b a free man within the next 5 years!

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  5. one time there was a funeral outside a home where the family of the deceased was saying their last goodbyes, a home velorio (unsure how to translate this), armed people came, interrupted the veiling and riddle the body with bullets, then they fled. When the family finally go the corpse to the grave and lowered it down and cover it up, a day later the corpse was pulled out from the ground and they again riddle it with bullets and they then dosed the body with gasoline and lit it up. Everyone was shocked, until the newspaper reported that this corpse while alive had done very bad things to a little boy.@ Culiacan

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  6. I'm sorry, but I must have missed something somewhere. All I understood is someone showing up Calino Sanchez style and getting shot up several times over and over but who the hell was he. The article never mentioned anyone's name. For all I know it was Clyde from Bonnie & Clyde

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  7. Are they talking about someone in specific ?? Pretty cool story, I mean sad tho.... kind of what the old mexico was filled with u know. Like the corridos el gavilansillo, Saul Vieira and chalino sang about

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  8. Sick and weird people in Mexico.

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  9. Sounds like the storyline from el capo too mebjaja...these ppl r a joke

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  10. This is a terrible article, where did this happen? What cartel? When was this?

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    1. either Tamps. Sinaloa or Chihuahua crazy mfs out there

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    2. English zeta here this would never happen in my plaza.

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  11. This reminds me of the worker that came up to me one time saying he suspected there was "asbesticide" in his building. (Something that kills asbestos?) From then on I've always mentioned in training that asbestos is a mineral....and you can't kill something that's not alive !!

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  12. Capital Punishment isn't about giving satisfaction to the family of the victim.
    It's about necessary consequences. Revenge is an act of treason against the appropriate administration of necessary consequences. When nations become so corrupt that the apropriate administration of necessary consequences has been indefinitely suspended, they forfeit autonomy, and risk foreign occupation and rule. Unfortunately some nations are STILL incapable of governing themselves, and left to their own self-destructive devices abuse the defenseless.

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  13. Note to self......never owe and piss off a mafioso who would rather kill you then be disrepected...Got it

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  14. They got the people cowed so they can do what they want.
    The little lesson they want everyone to see and learn"look how crazy we are if you fuck with us"Everyone dies only once,anyway whatever its Mexico.

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  15. It happens, it's almost generic. All you can do is hope they don't kill your offspring. Kids never forget and grown men often do. It's best to leave no loose ends. And they're usually all at the funeral. Family isn't off limits, not when children and women are picking up arms and avenging their own.

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  16. It Happend in Sinaloa Rio doce is newspaper from Sinaloa and javier valdez only writes about stories that happend in Sinaloa

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  17. 8:15 what a great idea!
    junk yards used to compact cars whole, with the disappeared inside, now they have chippers, nothing is left of the cars, stocks will surerly rise...

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  18. 9:37 am, everyones laughing at you ..ok spider

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  19. Sinaloa cartel or Beltran leyvas? Probably Sinaloa Cartel since Javier Valdez wrote alot about them.

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  20. Chapo snitched on the dead guy

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  21. you again? pinchi maruchanero i thought you was in jail motherfucker!
    ok, can you show bank statements or prove that you have a lot of money?
    from being a zeta?

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  22. white american gringos, are the main weirdos that feed drugaddiction in the US and the prostitution of minors all over the world, promoting all their dirty little wars, and benefitting from helping and financing both sides in all of the world's dirty little wars, pinchis gringos...

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  23. the law, and the death penalty is applied in texas and florida states before people even do the crime like on tryvon martin and that other black guy whose name i don't remember right now (bird?) dragged from a chain from a truck until his head separated from the torso, governor bush and the texas system killed one guy after dragging their feet for a long time, commuted the other guy's sentence, because he was... white!
    we need to talk a bit longer about "law" in the US, my dear americans...

    ReplyDelete

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