Chapo was not above kidnapping and killing migrants

Borderland Beat

 by Óscar Martínez

It was February 2007 when  300 people had disappeared from a town called Altar.

All were Mexican and Central American migrants who were concentrated in this town of Sonora, bordering Arizona, waiting to find a opportunity, where they could enter the United States.

The narcos, omnipotent narcos, kidnap migrants from Altar heading to the crossing points. Altar is 100 kilometers from the border, but it is the town where the migrants gather supplies before heading towards the unforgiving desert, which can be so cold that it burns or so hot that it burns.

After gathering hoodies, coats, gloves, hats, those who attempt to battle the desert travel 100 kilometers of dirt road between Altar and El Sasabe to reach the border and choose a location where they will attempt to pass. Locations with names such as, el poste verde, el carro quemado, el cerrito ( green pole,  burning car,  little mountain).

It was in that stretch of land, controlled by “Halcones” (narco lookouts), that the migrants were taken from the trucks that were transporting them to El Sasabe.

Some 15 trucks had been detained and all - drivers, coyotes, and migrants - had been kidnapped and  taken to a nearby ranch. There, at the ranch, many were tortured. Some of the migrants had their ankles shattered as a punishment for those who were attempting to walk in the desert.

I was in Altar when the kidnappings occurred. When I asked taxi drivers and drivers of vans why there was so much cruelty, kidnappings with no ransom requests, his response was simple and unanimous: the narcos were dispatching "mules" and they did not want migrants wandering around because they bring "heat" to the area.

The "burreros" are men - teenagers mostly - working as drug mules. They carry 20 kilograms of marijuana on their backs and are released into the desert, with the guidance of a coyote and trusted operative of the local kingpin.

They walk two nights through the desert of Arizona, until they reach the U.S. base, the Indian reserves of the Tohono, an autonomous territory within the United States. From there, the drugs are transferred onto trucks that will travel by road to the cities of distribution.

When narcos are going to transport an important load of marijuana, they don't want migrants wandering the desert. Migrants attract the attention of the border patrol, and that generates losses for  narcos. And narcos hate losing. That is why they want the desert to themselves. For this reason, that terrible February, about 300 migrants were kidnapped.

“Narco” is a name used to label just about anyone: a cocaine street vendor, a truck driver who transports two kilograms of cocaine in his tires, a young man from Sinaloa that works in the fields cutting tomatoes, then goes to work in Altar as a “mule”.

But here the narco had both a name and surname. The company which gets overshadowed by those five letters- Narco-, in Altar is the Sinaloa Cartel, one of its “executives” is named Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera, they call him “El Chapo”, and he was just captured in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico.

Padre Prisciliano Peraza blesses migrants

In February 2007, his company kidnapped 300 migrants and only 180 are known to have been released.  Released, thanks to the village priest Prisciliano Peraza, whose anger compelled him to speak out and call for their release.

He was given the most badly beaten migrants.   (continues on next page)

In February 2007, Chapo’s company kept about 120 migrants and they were never heard from them again. In February 2007, most likely, his (JAGL) company massacred 120 people.

I interviewed one of the truck drivers that had been released from the ranch with the warning that no driver could transport migrants until further notice. He said to me:

"If I tell you something and they hear about it, tomorrow I will be killed, I would not survive a single day. And they would find out. Here, everyone is corrupt."

I interviewed a Salvadoran migrant that, for lack of money to pay for transport, had decided to first send his sister. She fell victim to the kidnappings. I interviewed him in Altar, the day of the kidnapping, when he was still shaking from the fear, maybe the anger. He said this to me:

"I already spoke with the coyotes who have returned, and some truck owners who have gone to see if there was anything left in the vans that were burned.

They confirmed that my sister was there.

I can't  file a complaint, I can't do anything, because they would kill me, everything here is pure mafia. I just want to go back home, but I have no money for the trip."

I spoke with a person that has access to information on the locals, someone who for safety reasons I will call "Mr. A".  He said this to me:

"Everyone knows what happens, they kidnap them, they rape the women, and beat the migrants, the smugglers, and drivers. But what are we going to do? Here we only have eight policemen, and traffickers have up to 50 well-armed men and many corrupt authorities."

I left Altar on the recommendation of my contacts, and returned in April, month and a half after the mass kidnapping. I interviewed Father Peraza. He said this to me:

"They had them at a ranch close to El Sasabe, but they only wanted to give me 180 victims, the badly beaten ones, the ones with broken ankles or those with heads split opened from beatings with bats. The rest of the 300 I don't know what happened to them, I don't know if they released them."

Those who were released vanished. They returned to their country, they returned with the coyote that had been contracted to try for another area, they surrendered to immigration. Each did what they decided, except for reporting the kidnapping.

Viewing the preceding statements, it would be absurd to ask why nothing was reported. The remainder, 120 that stayed at the ranch of the Sinaloa Cartel, it is not hard to imagine them as earthy bones which, in the best of circumstances, one day will appear.

Over the next three years I never stopped going to the Altar. I went back five times, and I learned more details. The Sinaloa Cartel, which in the area led by a man known as El Falcon or “sparrow hawk”, charged to the migrant 700 pesos (about 50 dollars) to let them board the van carrying them to El Sasabe. About 30 trucks worked in Altar, and each had two daily trips to the border. In every truck they carried 20 migrants.

That means that for each trip, the company of Chapo Guzmán earned a 1,000 dollars. Also means that each truck, and the two trips, earned him about 2,000 dollars a day. That means that migrants who were using Altar as path - that will surely continue to use Altar - represented, in one day, about 60,000 dollars for the enterprise of El Chapo Guzman.

Or, for skeptics calculating only a daily trip by truck, the company took at least 30,000 dollars a day just in one border town of some 8,000 residents.

The fees were charged by masked men in broad daylight and they inspected each truck that was heading out. In front of the church, on the central square of the village, the masked men counted and made sure that only 20 migrants were on board, received payments, and gave a piece of paper with a password to the driver of the truck, in case he was stopped in a checkpoint by one of the cartel guards.

Yes, thanks to the system of government corruption that the Sinaloa Cartel was able to buy, they can traffic drugs with relative ease in their border areas of control, when the offense comes to smuggling migrants it is committed in public without any worry, strategy, or modesty.

Anyone could say that those thousands of dollars collected in Altar are relatively small for a company headed by a man with an estimated fortune of more than 1 billion dollars. However, that sum of dollars from migrants not only occurred in Altar.

It was...is....a criminal business of the Sinaloa Cartel. The same in Mexicali, in Algodones, in Nogales, in Sonoita, Naco, in Agua Prieta... I am not saying that only in those places, El Cartel de Sinaloa charges fees, I say that in those places I know that they charge them, because I visited them.

When one talks about Central Americans Migrants traveling through Mexico, when one speaks of kidnappings, murders, clandestine graves, of  72 migrants massacred in Tamaulipas, of trafficking in women for sexual exploitations in the smelly brothels of Reynosa, the name of the cartel that is mentioned is that of Los Zetas.

The caveman cartel that slain and abducted en masse under the midday sun and into the heart of people's towns overshadows other gangs in the area by turning the lives of migrants crossing Mexico a living hell.

However, if something is said in the midst of so much news and revelation, in the midst of so much tweet and post, amid so many doubts and photography, the mobster recently caught in Mexico led a mafia that day by day fucks with the lives of thousands of undocumented migrants.

A mafia who is responsible for the disappearance of  about 120 Mexican and Central American migrants, in February 2007.

A mafia that charges $50 per trip.

A mafia that, able to do that to travelers, must first corrupt municipal and state authorities so they may turn a blind eye.

That man, “EL Chapo Guzmán”,  who has been captured surely could say something about  the matter… although for the moment it seems that nobody is willing to ask.

‘The author Óscar Martínez  is coordinator of  ‘el camino project’,

Martínez has authored the book ‘Los migrantes que no importan' (‘Migrants are not important’) and "En El Camino" "The Beast"
 

More information link here and here
 

Sources: MiMunicipio,com.mx and narcconoticias