Extortions in Veracruz: Sell Drugs or Lose Your Life

By: Evelia, Animal Político Reader | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat

My name is Evelia, a native of Cuautla, Morelos, a journalist and a mother of a 7 year old.

The story that I have that is linked to violence and organized crime is death, or rather the assassination of my husband in the city of Xalapa, Veracruz.

My husband was from that city and in 2008, he had an internet business in Unidad Habitacional Pomona (Pomona Housing Unit).  There, he was visited by some guys who had proposed to him to lend him his place to distribute drugs and in exchange, he would receive around 30,000 pesos ($1,716 USD) a month.  I remember the presence and domination of Los Zetas then.

My husband refused.

The months passed by until on a December 22, 2008, he left the house and that was the last time I saw him alive.  His lifeless body was found in a spot along the Xalapa-Veracruz highway, in the village of Rancho Nuevo.  From the way they found his body, it was concluded that he was tortured and beaten.

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Four Months of Extortions in Mexico City: A Family Ravaged By Threats

Photo by: Cuartoscuro

By: Maribel F., Animal Político Reader | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat

This is a wound that will never heal.

My family was extorted for months (from July to October 2015).  It’s a horrible feeling because you can’t go on with your life as before.  My dad lived in fear for us, because armed people would come to charge us at our house and store.

One day, my dad had the courage to go and denounce.  Fortunately, we were treated well by the authorities and two days later, one of them was able to be detained.  However, it was only one extortionist that was sent that day.  The main ones remain free, they work in a pink and red taxi and intimidate more people.

Finally, our store went bankrupt and my family separated for the good of us all.  My parents fled far away, the house was left abandoned.  The heritage of a lifetime was over.

The hearings and statements of the arrested person have been the scariest book I’ve read in my life.  You think about everything that you’ve lost, how some people change your life in days.  The pain never heals, the trauma remains; fear of being alone persists.  Habits changed, telephone numbers as well, we contact each other only when necessary.  The farther we are, the better.

Fear remains.

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Solidary Barrios in Xochitepec: Neighbors Protecting Themselves From Crime

Photo by: Cuartoscuro

By Lourdes, Animal Político Reader | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat

This article is part of a digital project by Animal Político called “Aprender a Vivir con el Narco” (Learning to live with El Narco) released in late 2015.

I’ve been a witness to the “levantamientos” (kidnappings) and deaths of youths in my neighborhood, some of them with whom I grew up with.  Among curfews, abductions, kidnappings, murders, shootouts, and death, everyday life develops in my neighborhood.

One of the most violent nights left five dead, all of them youths.  Now, it’s a militarized place.  Now, you just don’t protect yourself from “the habits” but also of the Mexican Army and the police who extort and threaten.

We have learned to live in fear, we have reshaped violence and created strategies to survive the terror that causes us to live in a place without security and justice.

In the block, solidarity networks were strengthened.  Even in some places, directories were developed with the phone numbers of neighbors in case an emergency occurs.

I remember after the killing of four youths in one night at the hands of organized crime, cardboard signs appeared in busy public places, like in sport fields, announcing a curfew.  The message was more or less as follows: “To whoever comes out after 8:00, you’re fucking dead.”

Faced with this threat, every night, mothers and some fathers would be seen pilgrimaging throughout the empty streets, on their way to pick up their children at the bus stop.  They would say: “I’m going for him, I don’t want them to confuse him.”

I also remember hearing from people that they would have to be very careful when driving a car in the town since any behavior that was read as an insult to “the habit” could cost us our lives.  So then the drivers knew that if there was a car in front of them driving at a very slow speed, they knew that they should try to pass them, or much less honk the horn to pressure them to increase their speed.  The playing of loud music in cars even stopped, especially of narcocorridos.

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Mexico State’s Metropolitan Zone: Neighborhood Alarms, Closed Streets

Photo By: Cuartoscuro

By: Mar, Animal Político Reader | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat

This article is part of a digital project by Animal Político called “Aprender a Vivir con el Narco” (Learning to live with El Narco) released in late 2015.

It’s almost been two years since I’ve been here.  Little by little, Tecámac has grown and has populated fairly.  Everything was pretty quiet, unlike in municipalities like Ecatepec and Coacalco.

I lived in the latter for 16 years.  I knew, like anywhere else, that there was crime, but it began to increase much more soon after the departure of the PAN political party from the municipal presidency and the PRI’s entrance.

Where criminal presence increased the most was in part of Parque Residencial, close to where I lived.  I also heard references not very pleasant of communities such as La Joya, Villa de las Flores, which was a quiet area, and San Rafael.

The street where I lived, had to close with a white gate.  People would wake up to wheel-less cars, an increase in theft, express kidnappings, shootouts; things that I had never heard during the time that I lived there.  They aren’t as frequent, perhaps, as in Tamaulipas, but it is alarming that it increased.

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Taxco, Guerrero: “I Don’t Feel Normal Living With Paranoia”

Photo by: Cuartoscuro

By: KYHB, Animal Político Reader | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat

This article is part of a digital project by Animal Político called “Aprender a Vivir con el Narco” (Learning to live with El Narco) released in late 2015.

The first violent incident that I can remember was in December 2007.  They had killed a man in a hospital in Taxco and the news echoed in my city.  Taxco is a city with more than 50,000 inhabitants, but it’s a “village”, so the event was told to me by word of mouth until it got to me.

The next thing was something that I at first didn’t understand.  I took a bus on a daily basis to the high school, it hadn’t even dawned yet, but there was an open truck with its lights flashing on the road, the floor was wet, I remember because I thought it hadn’t even rained that morning and it was strange, I would later learn that that moisture was actually blood.

My boyfriend, who at that time worked at a small newspaper in the municipality, told me, as he had been called in the middle of the morning to accompany a boy to take pictures of the bodies that had been there.  He wasn’t even 17 years old.

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Introduction: Learning to Live With El Narco

 How do we learn to live with el narco?

By: Dulce Ramos | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat

“You learn to live with the pain.”  Resigned, with glassy eyes, Emma Veleta Rodríguez recounts how eight men in her family disappeared on the same day in Anáhuac, Chihuahua, four years ago.

The local press said something, but no one asked, later, how a family survives on a day to day basis when it is left without providers.

In Tamaulipas, a reporter is summoned to a meeting with an organized crime boss.  They inform him, or rather obligate, to receive a bribe.  It can’t be denied.  A journalist who breaks this rule appears dead.

How does the disappearance of an ordinary man’s son from Guerrero convert him into a “dog”, as they call the professional clandestine grave searchers?

We know that on the roads of Tamaulipas, they kidnap, extort, and disappear…but how do those who have no other choice pass through there?

Organized crime not only makes us fear for our lives.  Its impact is felt beyond.  For example, in the closure of shops that sell common supplies by narco harassment, forcing entire communities to travel kilometers in order to buy something as simple as milk.

Since the government of Felipe Calderón declared “war” against organized crime, the Mexican media has covered missing or dead, but has forgotten to narrate the day after.

The digital project “Aprender a Vivir con el Narco” (Learning to live with El Narco) has those stories.

We know that organized crime breathes at our neck, but what have we done to stand up to fear when the State- either missing, an accomplice, or exceeded at its ability to react, fails to guarantee minimum security?

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