Upon arrival, the soldiers, who were carrying out the 2007-2012 Comprehensive Combat Against Drug Trafficking program in coordination with the Federal Preventive Police, found two of the escaping vehicles stuck in the sand, and another vehicle was in the parking lot of some rented cabins, so they proceeded to search it. Meza López was sitting in the driver's seat in one of the pickup trucks, while the co-pilot abandoned the vehicle when he saw the soldiers arriving, but was captured after a chase. According to the arresting officers' report, the Pozolero was wearing a bulletproof vest and a green belt around his waist, with two fragmentation grenades inside.
In the vehicle linked to Santiago, the soldiers seized an HK91 rifle with a magazine loaded with 20 7.62 x 51 mm caliber rounds on the right side of the seat. and three more magazines, two of them with 20 rounds each and the other with 16 rounds of the same caliber. The other detainee was wearing a black bulletproof vest with two Kevlar plates attached. A 50mm Barrett rifle was found in the back seat, with one magazine loaded with ten live rounds and another magazine with eight rounds, all of the same caliber, on the floorboards. Meza was therefore charged with two counts of carrying a firearm for the exclusive use of the Army and possession of ammunition.
In another vehicle with border-border license plates, an individual wearing a bulletproof vest was in the driver's seat, holding a DSA ZM4 carbine loaded with a disc-type magazine with 91 5.56-millimeter rounds. In the passenger seat was a 16-year-old female minor. She stated that she was a sex worker and had been hired to provide services at the party. In the back seat, behind the passenger seat, an MP5 submachine gun with two magazines was found. One of them was attached to the weapon and loaded with 30 nine-millimeter cartridges, and the other with 26 twenty-six cartridges. These individuals were also arrested.
When questioned by the arrestees about his activities, Santiago Meza López stated that "he was an executioner or 'pozolero,'" and when asked what he meant, he stated that he placed the bodies of the executed people in a drum with water and caustic soda, leaving them there for approximately 24 hours or more, until they completely disintegrated. He also stated that he worked for Teodoro García Simental, known as "Teo," that he was paid $600 a week for these jobs, that he had been working with the organization for approximately nine years, and that he had executed approximately 300 people.
THE CONFESSION
Although he could not be charged with any of the murders perpetrated by the Arellano Félix brothers' criminal organization, Santiago Meza López's simple membership in the criminal group, under the tutelage of Teodoro García Simental as its hierarchical leader, mastermind, and perpetrator of the crimes, as well as his assigned role of disposing of the bodies delivered to him, could have been classified as organized crime. El Pozolero abandoned some victims on the streets and disintegrated others through a liquefaction process using a corrosive liquid based on caustic soda.
The way the cell led by Teo and of which Meza López himself was a member resembled a production line, in which the division of criminal labor was prominent. Some of the members deprived various people of their liberty, others provided security with the weapons they carried; Others monitored the scene and escape routes; still others guarded safe houses containing kidnapped people or drugs; others took the lives of those who didn't pay the ransom or belonged to rival groups, and there were others who disposed of the bodies by liquefying them.
At the time, the Pozolero stated that the people who carried the bodies of the dead "always had patrol-type escorts, which had panel-type trucks, where they placed the human bodies; that the declarant was with two people, and two more people were waiting at the place where they had a pot with the ingredients to make 'pozole' in the place known as 'La Gallera'. He also said that he didn't know the origin of the victims and that "the human bodies were always carried dead; They couldn't see their faces, since they all wore masks made of gray plastic adhesive tape, and when they put them in the pot or in the drums with caustic soda in water, they only cut the tape at the nape of their necks, without removing it completely."
In the grim account of the man who was paid $600 a week for the dismembered bodies, of which he invested $400 in supplies for that purpose, there is a passage in In this article, he claims that when he went on errands, in addition to work materials, he would buy four or five heads of garlic and a liter of cooking oil. Before beginning to dissolve the bodies in the chemical mixture, Meza would fry the garlic: "When the oil was hot, it began to smoke, and the smell of garlic was stronger than that of the caustic soda that emerged when the human bodies were being 'cooked' or 'pozoleando'."
Santiago joined the CAF in January 2000, as he recalls, primarily to guard a warehouse where marijuana was stored, although his later role for the criminal conglomerate was to dismantle the bodies. His immediate boss, at first, was Marco Antonio García Simental, known as "El Cris," who used the false name of Mario Alberto López Rivera, the older brother of Teodoro, José Manuel, and Eleazar García Simental. According to protected witnesses offered in the trial, the convicted man liked to say goodbye by saying he had "a pozole" pending to prepare.
