A fire department volunteer said he also saw many familiar faces among the victims, the Zetas, and the police officials gathered there. Based on Ginger Thompson's 2017 oral history, "How the U.S. There were not many of us. It was around March 15, 2011, the then-director of the municipal police called all the elements to a meeting in the offices of the municipal police. 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. This article was posted in Borderland Beat mainpage on March 26, 2011. The next day, the wives of other ranch workers came by the Snchez Robles house, looking for their missing spouses. Thompsons reporting and the U.S. investigations strongly suggest that the former SIU chief may have been part of a criminal conspiracy that sparked the Allende massacre. Relatives of victims wait in anguish for news after a shooting July 1 at a drug rehabilitation center . 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. "Nos rene la necesidad de enfrentar como pas y como Estado . Villa Unin, just a 20-minute drive from Allende, has been the site of numerous acts of violence linked to the CDN in recent years. That they did not want to see us going out to extinguish the houses. Sergio Aguayo is a prominent Mexican human rights investigator at the Colegio de Mexico, which last year launched an independent probe into the Allende massacre. What is clear is that the failure to do so sealed the fates of an untold number of victims who were murdered at the ranch later that night. In the worst cases, civilian authorities were little more than subcontractors of the Zetas criminal organization, involved in shakedowns, kidnappings, drug trafficking and numerous murders, not over a period of weeks or months, but for many years. He went on to say that now that Mexico has reformed its National Security Law, authorities from the U.S. could find themselves connected to another massacre similar to the incident 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). I n the dead of night on Jan. 28, 1918, a group of white Texas Rangers, U.S. military men and local ranchers burst into the homes of Mexican and Mexican American . An Allende police radio operator who worked closely with the shift commanders said in his declaration that a ranking Zetas member[17]would sometimes come by the police station and take people from city jail cells with the full knowledge of the police director and commander, both of whom, he said, were paid by the Zetas. . Mexican Federal Police collect ashes, bone fragments and other bits of evidence from the Garza Ranch on January 28, 2014 (Source: Document 40: Field Criminology Opinion Report, January 28, 2014). [W]e passed by the entrance of the ranch where I saw people practically in the street with hoods and black vests who had rifles [W]e passed by again on the way back to Allende, and through the opening I could seebecause from the road you could see all the way to the backthat there were about five or seven trucks, many people with rifles, and I also saw people piled up, like this was where the fire was coming from [I]t was something big like a bodega. 1:07. Zcalo, a regional paper in Saltillo, Coahuila, also published portions of the testimony. May 12, 2015, Documenting Mexicos Recurring Nightmare 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. Washington, D.C., March 18, 2021 - Ten years ago, the Mexican municipality of Allende was the site of one of the worst human rights atrocities ever seen in the country: a three-day wave of violence in which the criminal group known as Los Zetas kidnapped, murdered, and later burned the bodies of an estimated 300 . Some cooperated more than others. Published September 10, 2021. The targets included the families of Juniors father, Jos Luis Garza y Garza, and his unclesVctor, Rodolfo, and Sergio. 2130 H Street, NW A study from the Human Rights Clinic of the University of Texas Law School examined the trial transcripts of Zetas members prosecuted for drug trafficking, money laundering, and homicide in U.S. federal courts. Declassified Investigative Dossier Examines Officials' Roles in Cartel Killings, 10th Anniversary of Worst Human Rights Episode in Mexico's Recent History, By Michael Evans, Senior Analyst, National Security Archive, For more information, contact: She spoke by phone to Fernando Purn, the mayor of Piedras Negras who told her that her son was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He told her the most likely outcome was that Gerardo would be released because it was a mistake. Speaking again later that night, around 3:30 AM on March 19, she said the mayor told her that it hurt him very much, what we were going through, and he hung up. In a sworn statement, El Pjaro said the Zetas coordinated the kidnappings with high-ranking officials of the Allende municipal police department, who were present during the abductions and who carried the victims from the house to the ranch in a police patrol vehicle. Many victims were brought to a ranch outside Allende, owned by the Garza family. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico,, Allende, el infierno: Los testigos de la masacre,, Exoneran a ex alcalde de Allende, Coahuila, ligado a masacres de 2011, this report from the University of San Diegos Justice in Mexico program, Mexicos bloody drug war is killing more people than ever,, Masacre de Allende: el silencio del general, U.S. Prosecutions Bring Mexico Corruption into Focus, Advirti EU riesgo ante mandos mexicanos corruptos, Six Years On, Ayotzinapa Investigations Advance, FiftyYears After Tlatelolco, Censoring the Mexican Archives: Mexico's "Dirty War" Files Withdrawn from Public Access, Transcripts of intercepted cell phones open new lines of investigation in Ayotzinapa case, US: Mexico Mass Graves Raise "Alarming Questions" about Government "Complicity" in September 2014 Cartel Killings, Mexico's San Fernando Massacres: A Declassified History. And when we met with him, he told us that things were going to get hot. [W]e all went in shooting and tied up all the people that were found inside the ranch. The name "Allende" is in honor of Ignacio Allende, a hero of Mexico's War of Independence.The town's folk hero is Arnulfo Gonzlez who was gunned down in the mid-1920s, and has a "corrido" sung by artists such as Vicente Fernndez and many others. [7] GAFE stands for Grupo Aeromvil de Fuerzas Especiales (Airmobile Special Forces Group). Senior officers, including the police director, commander, and shift commanders, were paid more handsomely than regular cops. The 2011 massacre carried out by the Zetas drug cartel in Allende, Mexico was a shocking reminder of the brutality of the black market, which thrives under governmental drug . Meanwhile, criminal violence continues to soar in Mexico, with the Cartel of the Northeast (CDN), successor to Los Zetas, implicated in some of the worst cases. Several said the police director ordered that officers should not do anything or say anything about the carnage. A declassified DEA report from 2015said that the Zetas in late 2015 made a conscious effort to rebrand as the Cartel del Noreste (Cartel of the Northeast). More information on CDN is available here. But he did not say anything to me. He told me that we were not up for parties, she said. The recent violence is also a reminder that Mexican authorities have largely failed to protect the countrys civilian population from historically high levels of violence or to alleviate the effects of an ever-deepening security crisis. [9] Literally stake or post, an estaca is a term used by Los Zetas for its assassination teams. Despite the brutality of the case, major U.S. TV and print outlets have largely ignored the kidnapping and murder of hundreds of people from Allende, Coahuila. Remembering the Allende Massacre. The National Security Archive marks this grim anniversary by publishing an evidentiary history of the Allende massacre focusing on key documents and testimony from a 4,000-page dossier of investigative records compiled by Mexican prosecutors in the state of Coahuila.[3]. He said his hands were tied, so he stepped aside . Lpez said he knew all of the municipal police very well, owing to the fact that there was a lot of contact with them.[14], Upon seeing all of those police, I realized that they were keeping watch or guarding the place. It is not clear why members of the the military unit thatexamined the ranch did not secure the property or, evidently, take any additional steps to comprehend what was happening in Allende. I would ask you the same thing, she replied. October 2, 2018, Transcripts of intercepted cell phones open new lines of investigation in Ayotzinapa case In March 2011, gunmen from the Zetas Cartel slaughtered innocent men, women and children in the small Mexican town of Allende in retaliation for the betrayal. Since the acts occurred on the dates of March 18, 19 and 20 of 2011, they were committed under the same mechanics not just in the city of Allende, Coahuila, but also in other municipalities in the northern region of the state, among others Piedras Negras, Coahuila.- Memorandum on links between various cases, March 5, 2015. The files depict a town almost completely beholden to LosZetasfrom the mayors office to top police commanders to ordinary cops on the street. 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.. Gunmen open fire in a roadside eatery, leaving nine customers dead in pools of blood. Edited by Michael Evans. [T]here was a red truck with wooden enclosures that was parked near the bodega or large barn that was inside the ranch. But there was not any kind of response from the police or any other authority.. Beginning as a group of deserters from an elite unit of the armed forces at the service of the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas would go on to become one of the most powerful and feared cartels in Mexico before infighting and the loss of leaders started the organization's decline. [15], Despite a raft of damning testimony about his role in the massacre, a Mexican court released former Allende Mayor Sergio Lozano from pre-trial detention in February 2017, finding the evidence insufficient to reach a conviction. An important moment seems to have come in March 2015, when state investigatorssaw a familiar patternemerge in three seemingly unrelated cases. One former Allende police official interviewed during the investigation described how the payments were made. Prosecutors disagreed, arguing that Lozano collaborated with Los Zetas, was aware of the attacks before they began, and had failed in his obligation to protect the people of Allende. But he never came back. We continued to advance until we arrived at the ranch, where I saw that there were several police patrols from this city, colored white and blue, and a number of police, among others I remember [deleted], [Mara Guadalupe Avalos,] [deleted,] the director And it seemed like the police were guarding the place. In a country where murders and disappearances are troublingly common, the scale and the horrific details of the Allende massacre case still stand out. Isabel Allende was born on August 2, 1942, in Lima, Peru, to Toms and Francisca Allende. By Theodore Bunker | Friday, 06 August 2021 02:11 PM EDT. They had brought people from Sabinas, among others an ex-federal highways official and other people from the municipalities of Zaragoza and Morelosthis was weeks after what happened in Allende.- Complaint of wife of murdered Zeta, November 13, 2014. Many of the victims were ordinary laborers at the Garza properties. The job netted Jimnez about eight thousand pesos ($700 USD) per month, plus expenses. In fact, sometimes [deleted] would come to the municipal jail and take people away. [4] The thinking behind the special exception measure is simple: Human rights crimes affect both the immediate victims and society as a whole, and in such cases there is a society-wide interest in full transparency to ensure that such grave abuses do not reoccur. 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. His mother had called around 9:00 PM to tell her son, Vctor Manuel Garza Prez, that her house was under assault. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico," "Somos." tells the story of a 2011 mass killing in Allende, in the Mexican state of Coahuila . Document 1 August 25, 2007 Shutdown Slows but Doesn't Stop Central Americans Headed North U.S. Embassy in Mexico, cable, sensitive, 3 pp. [1] Translations throughout the text by Michael Evans.