GUALA,
Mexico (AP) -- The killer says he "disappeared" a man for the
first time at age 20. Nine years later, he says, he has eliminated 30
people - maybe three in error.
He sometimes
feels sorry about the work he does but has no regrets, he says, because
he is providing a kind of public service, defending his community from
outsiders. Things would be much worse if rivals took over.
"A
lot of times your neighborhood, your town, your city is being invaded
by people who you think are going to hurt your family, your society," he
says. "Well, then you have to act, because the government isn't going
to come help you."
He operates along the Costa
Grande of Guerrero, the southwestern state that is home to glitzy
Acapulco as well as to rich farmland used to cultivate heroin poppies
and marijuana. Large swaths of the state are controlled or contested by
violent drug cartels that traffic in opium paste for the U.S. market,
and more than 1,000 people have been reported missing in Guerrero since
2007- far fewer than the actual number believed to have disappeared in
the state.
The plight of the missing and their
families burst into public awareness last year when 43 rural college
students were detained by police and disappeared from the Guerrero city
of Iguala, setting off national protests. Then, suddenly, hundreds more
families from the area came forward to report their kidnap victims,
known now as "the other disappeared." They told stories of children and
spouses abducted from home at gunpoint, or who left the house one day
and simply vanished.
This is a story from the
other side, the tale of a man who kidnaps, tortures and kills for a drug
cartel. His story is the mirror image of those recounted by survivors
and victims' families, and seems to confirm their worst fears: Many, if
not most, of the disappeared likely are never coming home.
"Have you disappeared people?" he is asked.
"Yes," he replies.
In
Mexico and other places where kidnapping is common, the word
"disappeared" is an active verb and also an adjective to describe the
missing. Disappearing someone means kidnapping, torturing, killing and
disposing of the body in a place where no one will ever find it.
To date, none of the killer's victims have been found, he says.
For
months, the AP approached sources connected with cartel bosses, seeking
an interview with someone who kills people on their behalf.
Finally,
the bosses put forward this 29-year-old man, with conditions: He, his
organization and the town where he met with reporters would not be
identified. He would appear on camera wearing a ski mask, and his voice
would be distorted. And one of his bosses would be present throughout.
In
jeans and a camouflage T-shirt, the hit man looked younger than his 29
years. He wore a baseball cap with a badge bearing the face of Sinaloa
cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and "prisoner 3578" - Guzman's
inmate number before he escaped through a tunnel from Mexico's
maximum-security prison in July, cementing his image as a folk hero.
"Of all the bad lot," the killer said, Guzman "seems to be the least bad."
The
killer - who does not work for Guzman - does not see himself as bad.
Unlike others, he says, he has standards: He doesn't kill women or
children. He doesn't make his victims dig their own graves. He raises
cattle for a living and doesn't consider himself a drug trafficker or a
professional killer, although he is paid for disappearing people. While
he acknowledges that what he does is illegal, he says he is defending
his people against the violence of other cartels.
The
killer wears a bag with a strap over his chest in which he carries
several walkie-talkies and cell phones, one of which he used to take
calls and issue orders: "Muevanse," he said - move on. "Esperense ahÃ" -
wait there. Just before the interview begins, he puts the bag aside,
and slips on the ski mask. He sits in a plastic armchair.
There
are many reasons people are disappeared, the killer says. It may be
for belonging to a rival gang, or for giving information to one. If a
person is considered a security risk for any reason, he may be
disappeared. Some are kidnapped for ransom, though he says he does not
do this.
Each kidnapping starts with locating
the target. The best place is at a home, early in the morning, "when
everyone is asleep." But sometimes they are kidnapped from public areas.
If the target is unarmed, two men are enough to carry out a "pickup" or
"levanton," as the gang kidnappings are known. If he is armed, it
requires more manpower.
The victim is taken to
a safe house or far enough out into the woods that no one will hear him
during the next step: "getting information out of them by torture."
He
rests his forearms on the chair and moves his hands over his knees as
he speaks about torture. He describes three methods: beatings;
waterboarding, or simulated drownings in which a cloth is tied around
the mouth and nose, and water is poured over it; and electric shocks to
the testicles, tongue and the soles of the feet.
He
has no training in torture. He learned it all by practice, he says.
"With time, you come to learn how to hurt people, to get the information
you need."
It usually takes just one night.
"Of the people who have information you want, 99 percent will give you
that information," he says. Once he gets it, he kills them. "Usually
with a gun."
The problem is that people under
torture sometimes admit to things that are not true: "They do it in hope
that you will stop hurting them. They think it's a way to get out of
the situation."
That may have happened to him three times, he says, leading him to kill the wrong men.
The
dead are buried in clandestine grave sites, dumped into the ocean, or
burned. If the organization wants to send a message to another cartel, a
victim's tortured body is dumped in a public area. But the 30 people he
has "disappeared" all have been buried, he says.
By
the official count, 26,000 Mexicans have been reported missing
nationwide since 2007, just over 1,000 of those from Guerrero. But human
rights officials and the experience of families from the Iguala area
indicate that most people are too afraid to report kidnappings,
particularly in areas where police, municipal and state officials are
believed to be operating in tandem with the cartels. The official tally
has just 24 missing from the Costa Grande area, where the killer says he
has been involved in the killings of 30 people.
"The (disappeared) problem is much bigger than people think," the killer says.
The
killer has a grade-school education. He wanted to continue studying,
but when he was a child there was no middle school in his town. "I would
have liked to learn languages ... to travel to other places or other
countries. I would have liked that," he said.
Some
in his circumstances use drugs, but he says he doesn't. "When people
are on drugs, they're not really themselves," he says. "They lose
control, their judgment."
He says no one
forced him to join his organization. His parents and siblings don't know
what he does, but he thinks they can guess, since he is always armed:
He usually carries a .38-caliber pistol and an AK-47 assault rifle.
He
isn't married and has no children. Although he would like to have a
family, he knows his future is uncertain. "I don't really see anything,"
he said. "I don't think you can make plans for the future, because you
don't know what will happen tomorrow."
"It's not a pretty life," he says.
Life
in an area torn by drug disputes is rarely pretty. For years, Guzman's
Sinaloa cartel controlled drug production, coastal access and
trafficking routes in Guerrero. The Beltran Leyva brothers took over,
until the Mexican government killed Arturo Beltran Leyva in a shootout
in December 2009, and then the state's opium and marijuana business was
divided up among half a dozen smaller cartels, including Guerreros
Unidos, los Rojos, Los Granados and La Familia, from neighboring
Michoacan state.
Besides running drugs, some
Mexican cartels operate extortion rackets and control human trafficking
to the United States. Where needed, they buy off politicians and police
forces to make sure nothing gets in the way of business. When necessary,
they kill those who fail to cooperate.
The
violence spikes when cartels are fighting each other for control of
territory, or when the military launches operations to strike the
cartels. An anti-narcotics military operation prevented the killer's
arrival at a pre-arranged location on the first try, but the next day he
and his bosses made it to a house on a humid stretch of the Pacific
Ocean known as the Costa Grande, an area lush with groves of coconuts
and mangos - other exports for which cartels take a cut.
In
recent years, residents of a number of towns and cities have taken up
arms to protect themselves against drug cartels. In several cases,
authorities have claimed these vigilantes are allied with rival gangs,
and pass themselves off as self-defense groups to gain greater
legitimacy.
Federal authorities told the AP
that several drug gangs in Guerrero, including those that operate on the
Costa Grande, act as self-defense groups to generate support from local
residents.
"I can't say I'm a vigilante,"
says the killer, "but I am part of a group that protects people, an
autonomous group of people who protect their town, their people."
He
recognizes he would be punished if caught by the authorities. "For
them, these (killings) are not justifiable under the laws we have, but
my conscience - how can I put this - this is something that I can
justify, because I am defending my family." A rival gang, "would do
worse damage."
The killer fears dying, but he
fears being captured by a rival gang even more. He knows better than
most what will happen to him: "If I died in a shootout, for example,
the suffering wouldn't be as bad."
With the same lack of emotion with which he described torture, the killer addresses his many murders.
"Whatever
you want to say, you're hurting someone and in the end, you kill them,
and that leaves people hurting, the family hurting," he said. "It's the
kind of thing that causes stress and remorse, because it's not a good
thing."
But he tries not to think about it too
much, and while he can remember the number of people he has killed and
the places he buried them, he says he cannot recall his victims. "Over
time," he says, "you forget."
----
E. Eduardo Castillo on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/EECastilloAP
© 2 |
Tuesday 15 December 2015
30 lives extinguished, but no regrets: A killer's story
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