Netflix will release a series next month inspired by a story that revealed . Oneformer member of the Allende policeinterviewed in July 2014 told investigators that from the moment that I joined the ranks of the municipal police I realized that all of the people I mentioned previously, including the mayor, the police director, police commander, and the shift commanders, were linked to the Zetas criminal organization., One of the first witnesses to talk about the police departments links to Los Zetas was anAllende municipal official in charge of road maintenance, who in January 2014 told investigators that everyone knows about [the March 2011 Allende massacre] but is too afraid to say anything.. First published on Wed 6 Nov 2019 16.31 EST. 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! The missing from the Allende massacre are among the 13,000 the . 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. For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. [H]e was telling me that he wanted to look for the Zetas to see what they were asking for the return of his family. Jos Alfredo Jimnez was one of the first of the Zetas to arrive at Luis Garzas ranch that night. 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. 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. 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. In a country where more than 90% of crimes go unsolved, searching. [13] Bracketed items identified in portions of the Herrera Estrada declaration published by Zcalo. [14] In many cases, the names of the people identified by firefighters Lpez Tamez and De Len Ramos are legible behind clumsily applied redactions. And I remember what he said to me: Don't be an ass. Document 1 August 25, 2007 Shutdown Slows but Doesn't Stop Central Americans Headed North U.S. Embassy in Mexico, cable, sensitive, 3 pp. 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. Both in charge of Los Zetas, Allende's is a much less known story. Meanwhile, Mexico has announced the arrest of police officers allegedly involved in the killings. Zetas. He said he recognized many of the Zetas gathered there.[13]. The original Zetas are former members-turned-deserters of Mexicos elite Airmobile Special Forces Group (GAFE), trained in the U.S. at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, GA. [16] Exoneran a ex alcalde de Allende, Coahuila, ligado a masacres de 2011, El Financiero, Feb. 10, 2017. A. U.S. authorities inadvertently helped to cause the deaths of thousands of people in Allende, Mexico in 2011 after information they gathered was leaked to the Zetas cartel's leaders, according to journalist Ginger Thompson. Outside the ranch entrance, the firefighters spotted officers and vehicles from the Allende police department. Fax: 202/994-7005Contact by email. San Miguel de Allende might be voted the nicest town in Mexico by many travel magazines, but it is not safe at the moment and I advise you not to come here right now. . He did not take my opinion into consideration, and no one else said anything. Later we took these people to the Garza ranch where we put them in the same house where we had the others. Beyond criminal prosecutions, the Mexican government also has a specific legal obligation to divulge information related to cases, like Allende, that constitute clear violations of human rights and humanitarian law, raising the hope that additional information may come to light through the countrys access to information law. The files also include a statement from the caretaker of a Los Zetas safe house where the younger Sergio was held for several days after his abduction in August 2012 and before being killed and cremated by Los Zetas. That we would turn a blind eye. Lilianas husband, Arturo, had also been unable to reach his wife or her parents. Bone fragments found among the burned out ruins of the Garza Ranch, January 28, 2014 (Source: Document 41: Forensic Anthropology Technical Report, April 11, 2014). After three days of abuse, on the night of March 20, the Zetas took him to the Garza ranch and put him to work managing the incoming truckloads of corpses along with a few living hostages. Hit especially hard was the extended family of Jos Luis Garza Gaytn (also known as Junior and El Wichin). An important moment seems to have come in March 2015, when state investigatorssaw a familiar patternemerge in three seemingly unrelated cases. And they went to the Ranch but did not find anyone, and told us that they had scoured the place but had not found anyone.- Complaint of Elvira Espinoza, November 4, 2011. He told her about other people from the region who the Zetas had kidnapped and killed, including a pregnant teenager and the nephew of the former mayor of Piedras Negras. Elvira Espinoza told investigators about the day, about a week later, when she found two of her three missing grandchildren at an orphanage in Piedras Negras. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico," "Somos." tells the story of a 2011 mass killing in Allende, in the Mexican state of Coahuila . In exchange, Reyes passed DEA intelligence to the criminal groups, including, in at least one case, sensitive information about a pending DEA investigation. In 2020, a U.S. court also indicted Reyes Arzates boss, former public security minister Genaro Garca Luna, for taking tens of millions of dollars in bribes from Sinaloa Cartel chief Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn. And from previously I knew that all of the Allende municipal police were linked to or worked for the Zetas.-Revised declaration of Christian Alejandro Lpez Tamez, December 17, 2014, Firefighter Jess Gerado De Len Ramos, too, spotted various units of the municipal police at the entrance to the ranch, including police director, Roberto Guadalupe Trevio Martnez, and shift commanders Maria Guadalupe Avalos Orozco and Rogelio Javier Flores Cruz, who he and others described as key links between the police and the Zetas. 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. Netflix will release a series next month inspired by a story that revealed the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's role in setting off a massacre in northern Mexico in 2011, leaving dozens of people dead or missing. 2130 H Street, NW Elizondos wife,Etelvina Rodrguez, said she soon realized that many of the wives of those who worked at the Garza ranch were looking for their husbands.. [W]e all went in shooting and tied up all the people that were found inside the ranch. Large swaths of northeastern Mexico have been under the de facto control of drug cartels for more than a decade despite the promises of successive governments to rein in the criminal groups and root out the corrupt officials who have made it all possible. Some cooperated more than others. The attack . And he told me to get out of the house and to go to my moms house [W]hen I got to my moms house, my husband called again to tell me that things were getting really ugly; that they had broken into my house and stolen our truck.- Complaint of Sarah Angelita Lira, November 11, 2014. Criminals were shooting up the street and two police officers . There were other people in civilian clothes who carried long arms, and these people were Los Zetas, since I realized that there at the [Garza] ranch were [El Pala,] whose name is [Fernando Ros Bustos]; [El Canelo,] whose name is [Germn Zaragoza Snchez]; [El Cubano], whose name is [Juan Rafael Arredondo Oviedo]; [El Pjaro], whose name is [Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar]; [El Flacaman,] whose name is [Gabriel Zaragoza Snchez,] among other people, some of whom I did not know, but they seemed to be from the south since they wore sandals and carried machetes. He gets up into the truck and with his hand he says goodbye leaving his suitcase there at the house because he was supposedly going to come back. follows the lives of an ensemble group of fictional characters, all inspired by real-life . On the evening of March 20, 2011, Yuliana Lpez Ibarra heard the sounds of gunfire and the desperate cries of her mother-in-law coming through the tiny speaker on her husbands cell phone. In the latter group was Csar Alfonso Garca Ramrez, who had just returned home to Coahuila for a visit from his job in Texas. Senior officers, including the police director, commander, and shift commanders, were paid more handsomely than regular cops. November 6, 2013, National Security Archive The official, town council secretaryEvaristo Rodrguez Chapa, said he called police director Trevio to let him know what was happening, to which he replied: Dont even fart, you asshole. El 18 de marzo de 2011, sicarios de Los Zetas irrumpieron en el pequeo municipio fronterizo buscando venganza porque alguien les haba . In June 2019, more than eight years after the fact, President Lpez Obradorapologizedfor the Mexican governments ineffective response to the assault on Allende, pinning most of the blame on narcotraffickers but also recommitting his government to implementing the March 2018CNDH recommendations, which included punishing government agents who facilitated or failed to react to the violence. A disturbing report released today by researchers at the prestigious Colegio de Mexico provides new details about a 2011 massacre in Allende, a quiet Mexican ranching town less than an hour's drive from the United States, and suggests that many more people were killed in the incident than estimated by Mexican authorities. [At the meeting] were the mayor, the city council secretary , the person in charge of civil protection the police director and me. Much of the worst violence occurred at a pair of ranches owned by the Garza family and located outside of the city center along the highway. They are included here in brackets. 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. Declassified Documents on the San Fernando Massacre & Violence against Migrants in Northeastern Mexican States . The job netted Jimnez about eight thousand pesos ($700 USD) per month, plus expenses. Inside the gate, a small building was burning. Among the evidence posted today 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. The government should do more to find them. Somos. The collection of testimonies found in the files of Coahuila state prosecutors depict a town almost completely beholden to the criminal groupfrom the mayors office to top police commanders to ordinary cops on the street. The DEA claims credit for helping Mexico make the arrest, but would not discuss what steps were taken to investigate the 2011 intelligence leak that led to the massacre in Allende. . [5]More recently, Lpez Obradorsignaled his intentionto eliminate the autonomous state organ charged with guaranteeing access to human rights documents like these, the National Institute of Access to Public Information and Personal Data (INAI). In a country where murders and disappearances are troublingly common, the scale and the horrific details of the Allende massacre case still stand out. Hours later, his daughter was one of the last people to see him alive. For which reason I left the circus and I parked about two blocks from the house And outside the house I saw a red, four-door, Chevrolet pick-up truck with a bull bar [tumba burros] on the front. THE DOCUMENTS. 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. Just a few people. American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Trevios but never acknowledged the devastating cost. However, I'm mortified at the . Over three consecutive days in March 2011, a series . 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. Garza Gaytnwas a member of a Los Zetas cell led by Mario Alfonso Poncho Cuellar, a former Mexican federal police officer. Somos ("We are" or "We Exist" in English) is a Spanish Television Mini-Series based on the ProPublica article " How the U.S. triggered a massacre in Mexico. Soon, Coahuila state authorities discovered links to other violence in the regionin Piedras Negras, on the border, and across the Cinco Manantiales (Five Springs), a group of neighboring towns in northern Coahuila that includes Allende, Morelos, Nava, Zaragoza and Villa Unin, site of numerous cartel attacks in recent years. Amunicipal official present at the March 22 meetingsaid that the mayor was upset because various members of staff had left the offices on Monday [March 21, 2011], [and] that he had not given any indication that they should go out. About the violence, the mayor reportedly said, Well, thats between them, which is to say, alluding to members of organized crime, you have to stay calm. But the group did not take or agree to take any type of action with respect to what was happening or to notify someone else about what was happening in the city, according to the testimony.

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