To Die in Mexico: Dispatches From Inside the Drug War (12 page)

“Sure thing,” he said. “Let me call Chuy.”

Jesús Alfonso López Félix, or Chuy, was César’s friend from school and also a trained mechanic. Chuy would often do side repair jobs for his classmates and teachers. César and Chuy studied accounting together at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, or UAS, in Culiacán. César and his 16-year-old brother, Cristóbal, both worked in their mother’s small accounting office. Alma Trinidad also received her accounting degree from the UAS.

César called Chuy and told him that his mother had a problem with the emergency brake.

“Okay,” he said, “bring it over and I can fix it right now, real quick.”

“Mom, if you want I can take it over to Jesús,” César said to his mother. “The shop where he works is pretty close, and it’s an easy thing to fix. It should be fast.”

“Okay, sounds good,” Alma said.

“Hey, wait up,” said Cristóbal, who had been listening, “I’ll go with you.”

They left. It was approximately 10:50 a.m.

César had never been to the shop where Chuy worked; when Chuy had helped him with car problems before, he would get under the hood right there in the university parking lot. After driving in circles for a few minutes he called Chuy again on his mobile phone to ask for directions.

“Head to Río Meca Street,” Chuy told him, “and it’s about a block after the gas station. When you get close, call back and I’ll come outside.”

And so he did. A few minutes later César called back, saw Chuy waving from down the street, drove up and then pulled the car into the driveway and parked. The place was a simple rectangular, concrete warehouse converted into the Mega 2000 mechanic shop, specializing in bodywork and paint jobs. Nine cars and trucks, including five federal police trucks, were parked inside. Several more were in the driveway and parked in front. Jesús lifted the car up with a jack. And went under to take a look.

At that point two professors from the accounting and business school at the UAS, José Alfonso Ochoa Casillas, 61, and José Alfonso Ochoa Quintero, 37, father and son, pulled up. César and Cristóbal went up to say hello and talk for a bit. The manager of the shop joined the conversation. After a bit Cristóbal noticed the federal police trucks in the back of the workshop. The trucks were riddled with bullets from a shoot-out months earlier in which eight federal officers were killed. César and Cristóbal went back to check out the trucks when they heard what seemed like bottle rockets. César spun around, worried that perhaps his mother’s car had fallen on Chuy. Then he saw the men, about six of them, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles loaded with two drum magazines,
los huevos del toro
(bull’s balls), walking toward the shop, firing.

“Hide!” César said to his brother. “There’s a gunfight outside.” It seemed to César at first that the gun battle was out in the street. As he ran farther into the back of the shop, in between the cars, he did not feel afraid and was collected enough to think about the best place to hide from stray bullets; beneath one of the trucks, with his body aligned with the axle, his head behind one of the tire’s rims, most likely too thick for a bullet to penetrate. As he jumped over the hood of a car to get over to the truck, a bullet tore into his leg just beneath the knee.

He crawled under the truck and watched as pairs of military boots entered the body shop. Only one of the gunmen wore white tennis shoes. A loud voice shouted out, “Kill every last fucking one!”

With each burst of gunfire César thought, “I hope Cristóbal is hiding; I hope Cristóbal is hiding.” With each agonizing yell, he thought, “That’s not Cristóbal, please let that not be Cristóbal.”

A man came running back into the shop; shots rang out and the man fell. But he was not dead. He was looking straight into César’s eyes, César lying on the floor under the truck. Perhaps so as not to be tempted to speak or make a gesture, the man turned his head to face the other way. The gunman must have seen it for he immediately unleashed a burst of gunfire and killed him. The gunman then walked further back into the shop, standing only feet away from César. Shots were ringing out from every direction.

“I hope my mobile phone does not ring, please,” thought César. From where he was lying, he could see almost up to the mouth of one gunman across the shop. The ones he could see all looked thin, white-skinned, and young. Then the gunman took out a new clip to load into his assault rifle. But he dropped it. “If this asshole bends down to pick it up,” thought César, “I’m dead.”

At that moment, the same voice that issued the order to kill everyone shouted again, “All right, let’s go! Everyone out!”

The gunman turned and started walking out, loading his rifle with another clip pulled from his vest.

“I saw that everyone was dead,” César told me when we spoke two years after the massacre. “I didn’t see my brother, and I thought that he might have been able to hide. I waited a bit before getting out from under the truck, just in case one of them had stayed behind, or who knows. When I got up I called my mom. I told her what had happened, that there had been a shooting and I couldn’t see my brother. I went up to Jesús. He was still alive. He had a bullet wound in his head and his arm. His arm and stomach were completely destroyed. He was able to speak and he asked me about his little daughter, and then if I could fan his face or give him mouth-to-mouth respiration. And I couldn’t do it, because I was dying of nausea from all I saw. His arm was torn off, left just hanging. I told him, ‘I’m going to look for my brother.’ I went back to the back to see if he was still alive. And I saw that his eyes were open. And I couldn’t see any bullet wounds. I said to him, ‘Get up man! Let’s get out of here!’ But he didn’t react. I slapped his face and when I went to lift him his jaw came loose and blood began to run everywhere. When I knew he was dead I started screaming with rage. I went back to Jesús and with another person we tried to fan him with a piece of cardboard. I was talking with him when he also died.”

Jesús died asking César to help talk care of his daughter. Jesús was 24.

Everyone at the Mega 2000 body shop, except César, was dead: the two professors, father and son; the manager; four employees; Cristóbal and Jesús. And not just dead, but their bodies mutilated with gunfire. Blood everywhere. Spent bullet casings, some 300 rounds, everywhere. The smell of gunfire and ripped-open intestines.

After a bit the municipal police arrived, then the federal police, and then the army and Red Cross ambulances. The Red Cross would not let César, with a bullet wound in his leg bleeding profusely, into the ambulance. It was too dangerous, they said. The victim of drug war violence who survives becomes a threat to anyone near him or her by the very fact of survival.

Down the street, the gunmen had fired upon state and local police officers that happened by as they were leaving the scene of the massacre. One officer was dead and another barely holding on. The army and federal police had secured the area with scores of heavily armed troops standing guard on every corner.

“I felt protected,” César said even though the Red Cross wouldn’t take him to the hospital, “because the army was there, because all the police were there. I thought they were protecting me. Hah! As soon as the police officer died they all left.”

What makes Alma Trinidad different is that, in this realm of dizzying contradictions, she demands that public officials simply do what they say they are there to do—and indeed, as she is quick to remind everyone, what they get paid to do. What makes her strange is that she too steps into the terrain of contradiction usually reserved for those in positions of power within the state. The politicians and police seem to assume that the victims and the disempowered will somehow accustom themselves to accepting impunity
in fact
while still believing in the rule of law
in the abstract
. Alma Trinidad knows the officials will do nothing, and yet she constantly, publicly demands that they do.

Two years after the massacre, the police have not made a single arrest in the case. On the day of the killings, the police called the man whose name was registered as the owner of the Mega 2000 body shop in to the station to testify. The man’s testimony consists of his name, address, and how he learned of the massacre. The man has since disappeared. Mega 2000 never opened again; the building remains abandoned. The officials now say that they “do not know” who really owned Mega 2000. And yet that same day, as news of the shooting was posted on local newspaper websites, anonymous commentators wrote that the shop belonged to Gonzalo Inzunza Inzunza, alias El Macho Prieto, a notorious hired gun in the employ of El Chapo Guzmán and the Sinaloa Cartel.

“Everyone knows who owned the body shop,” Alma Trinidad said. “If you ask the ice cream man, ‘Hey, who owns that car shop where they killed those nine people?’ he’ll tell you. The attorney general seems to be the only one who doesn’t know. That’s Culiacán. The supposed owner was just a name on paper. The real owner is another, a real heavy other. They say that the killers went to heat up his territory.”

At first she pronounced the name in public protests and interviews with the press until someone suggested she omit that one detail. Now she says, “You can’t say his name here. You can’t name him.”

And yet everyone knows. There is even a
narco-corrido
about Macho Prieto’s proclaimed pain and suffering upon learning of the massacre and his commitment to vengeance. The song,
La mente en blanco
(
My Mind is Blank
) by Voz de Mando (Voice of Command), can be heard on YouTube. Here are a few key verses from the lyrics:

My mind is blank

They have touched my blood

I can barely hold back the tears

The damage is irremediable.

[…]

How my blood boils

It hurts what they did to me

They will pay for their treason

They will have to deal with this

I am enraged

Why did they provoke me

I’m already in the ring

They killed innocent people

Who were not involved

And for this they will pay.

[…]

I am ready for combat

I have the highest-quality weapons

More than 300 people

Are under my command

With anti-tank guns, bazookas,

Bulletproof vests and AK-47s

To fuck them up

There will be no peace

I am not a traitor.

I am Mayo’s blood
[Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a leader of the Sinaloa Cartel]

With the boy
[El Mayo’s son, Vicente]
I remain firm

I hang in Culiacán

Where I was born

And where I’ll die

I’ve got all my boys

And we’re well armed

Do not forget this

I am Gonzalo

My code is The Eleven

I am Macho Prieto

The song makes clear that the attack was against Macho Prieto, though the gunmen also killed innocent people. But it is just a song. It is not an official government document in the case file of a homicide investigation. In said case file the name Gonzalo Inzunza Inzunza, El Macho Prieto, does not appear.

And yet Alma Trinidad wants to know why not. She wants to know why the homicide investigators cannot find the supposed owner of the Mega 2000, and why they aren’t looking for the real owner. She wants to know why five federal police vehicles were being repaired at a body shop owned by a high-level Sinaloa Cartel hit man. She wants to know who took those federal police vehicles there for repair and who authorized that repair.

The investigators do not want to know these things. They want the federal anti-organized crime investigative unit, the SIEDO, to take the case off their hands and make it go away.

“Look Ma’am, the truth,” the investigators told Alma Trinidad, “we’ll tell you, we’re scared to get involved on this one.”

“Is that so?” she responded. “Well, kid, if you’re scared, what are you doing here? Why don’t you go look for another profession that doesn’t scare you? Leave this to someone who has the courage to actually do the work. Because if you’re just sitting here acting stupid so they’ll pay you. . . .”

“No, Ma’am, you don’t understand.”

“Oh, yes I do, I do understand.”

“No, you don’t know. You haven’t gone out to where the body shop was and seen the cars that are parked outside there.”

“Well, if you know those cars are there, why don’t you do something about it?”

Alma Trinidad knows the answer. Yes, they are afraid, but that is not the full reason.

“The authorities are good for nothing,” she told me. “But I would also say they are involved, because how else can you explain that two years have gone by and they’ve done nothing? For them it’s ‘They already killed your son; now go home and cry.’ Why? Why do we have to do that? If that’s the case then they should leave too. If they are so useless, they should get out of here.”

And yet she finds the same response everywhere she goes. The judges in charge of the case told her early on, “Don’t get your hopes up.” But she continues.

She and César went to the state office for victims of violent crime. They had an appointment with the staff psychologist. The waiting room was empty. When the psychologist came out and ushered them into her office she said, “Let’s make this quick, because it’s not free. And no tears.” She then gave them a food basket with cooking oil and rice, valued at about ten dollars. Alma Trinidad looked the psychologist in the eyes and said, “You know, if you actually helped people the line would stretch out this building and down to Obregón Avenue. But people must know that you are useless and that’s why you’re alone here.” She and César left and sought help from a private psychologist.