One of the homes destroyed in Allende in 2011. shares. Tracing the missing | The Economist SALTILLO, Mexico In the waning days of January 2014 state and federal security forces along with military troops fanned out across the scrubland of Coahuila in northern Mexico, reportedly in search of human remains.. Over 20 days, some 250 masked agents combed the ranches and towns of Allende, Nava, Acua and Piedras Negras, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, for the victims of a . Outside the ranch entrance, the firefighters spotted officers and vehicles from the Allende police department. And together with the patrols there were many cars and trucks both inside and outside the ranch, and these people carried long arms from which I deduced that these people were from Los Zetas.- Declaration of Allende firefighter Jess Gerardo De Len Ramos, December 17, 2014, 14:50. 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: Four years later, and ten years since the Allende massacre, the families of those victimized by the Zetas and other criminal groups in Coahuilaare still waitingto learn whether the ICC will take up the case. Inside the gate, a small building was burning. With the passing of the days, the identity of 14 of the victims from Guatemala have been confirmed (the police estimate there are 15, and the rest are possibly Mexicans). Arts & Culture. Is Netflix's 'Somos.' a true story? Horrifying Allende massacre still They found that the Zetas committed numerous human rights abuses in Coahuila with impunity and that public institutions and officials played a role, by actions or omissions in the abuses (p.24). However, families of the victims in Allende touted the overdue government efforts as a publicity stunt. And also El [Chucho] killed a person, but I did not see who. [F]rom the road you could see smoke coming from inside the ranch. And he was waiting for his brother-in-law [Later,] he told me that they spent the entire night looking for his family; that he had entered the ranch from the back through an opening, and that he realized that he was alone in the ranch house, and that he was there with the expectation that they were holding his sister and his niece and nephews all with the last name Espinoza Garza, who on the day of the acts were seven months, three years, and six years of age.- Complaint of Sarah Angelita Lira, November 11, 2014. Contemporaneous records from the Mexican military, obtained through a separate access-to-information request, confirm that the Army receivedmultiple reports about the ongoing violence in and around Allende. The U.S.filed additional charges against Reyesin January 2020. And when we met with him, he told us that things were going to get hot. And after that I left.- Complaint of Hctor Reynaldo Prez Iruegas, May 25, 2011. Thats the last thing I know about my family., Almas brother, Hctor Reynaldo Prez Iruegas, also witnessed part of the attack and was one of the first to file a missing persons report in the case. Meanwhile, Mexico has announced the arrest of police officers allegedly involved in the killings. 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. 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. follows the lives of an ensemble group of fictional characters, all inspired by real-life . The Seminar on Violence of the Colegio de Mxico had access to many of these files in preparing its groundbreaking reports on Allende and a second report on how the Zetas gained control of authority structures in Coahuila, including the state prison in Piedras Negras. April 16, 2018, US: Mexico Mass Graves Raise "Alarming Questions" about Government "Complicity" in September 2014 Cartel Killings During Mexico's unknown massacre, Los Zetas carried out a systematic extermination by killing and incinerating more than 400 people in Allende and the surrounding towns. U.S. Prosecutions Bring Mexico Corruption into Focus ProPublica and National Geographic set out to piece together how the U.S. contributed to a massacre executed by a drug cartel in Allende, Mexico. The horrifying persistence of brazen cartel attacks like these is a reminder of how little has changed in Mexico, especially in the border states of Coahuila, Tamaulipas, and Nuevo Len. The National Security Archive marks this grim anniversary by publishing an extensive evidentiary history of the Allende massacre focusing on key documents and testimony from a 4,000-page dossier of investigative records that prosecutors in the state of Coahuila only began to compile almost three years after the fact. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. An important moment seems to have come in March 2015, when state investigatorssaw a familiar patternemerge in three seemingly unrelated cases. El Pjaro said that a group of victims that had been tied up inside the ranch house were later taken out back to the bodega where they were killed with a shot to the head. There was a fire coming from a small building inside the ranch alongside armed men who did not seem like they were police, according to the former volunteers statement. Mexico Mormon massacre: US victims were shot at point-blank range 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. Police acted as lookouts (halcones) for the group, collected extortion payments from local club owners on their behalf, and participated in the Zetas drug trafficking activities. 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. The cartel allegedly turned this storage shed, which held equipment and animal feed, into an incinerator for the . 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. Founded in 2002 as the enforcement arm of the notorious Gulf Cartel, the first members of Los Zetas were recruited from a Mexican special forces group known as GAFE (Grupo Aeromvil de Fuerzas Especiales), members of which were trainedat the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia. Fax: 202/994-7005Contact by email. And outside the house there were four people with long arms who were dressed in black and had on bulletproof vests. 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. "Nos rene la necesidad de enfrentar como pas y como Estado . When Garcas wife drove past the Garza ranch the next morning she spotted a group of hooded, armed men inside while Allende police stood watch outside the entrance. Bri Rooke. 'Are.' from Netflix: learn the true story of the Allende massacre In the latter group was Csar Alfonso Garca Ramrez, who had just returned home to Coahuila for a visit from his job in Texas. One U.S. law enforcement officialsaid that [Reyes] Arzates corruption as the highest-ranking officer in the MFPs Sensitive Investigative Unit allowed violent cartels to continue the flow of drugs through the region without consequence.. They began to see Allende not as an isolated spasm of violence but rather as one of the most explosive episodes of a wider problem of criminal violence and systematic subversion of legal authorities throughout the region. The police radio operator said that the director, Trevio, and the commander, Hernndez, were paid as much as five times what ordinary officers were given. Five years on, mystery still shrouds Allende massacre in northern Warning: violence in San Miguel de Allende : r/digitalnomad - reddit That they will help us and will help the people. El Pjaro said it was left to him and El Chucho to set fire to the house, the bodega, and everything inside, including the many dead bodies. 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. 8 min de lectura. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico," "Somos." tells the story of a 2011 mass killing in Allende, in the Mexican state of Coahuila . It is not a series of drug traffickers, but of their victims: of those who try to survive . This article was posted in Borderland Beat mainpage on March 26, 2011. The Allende massacre - in which, according to the families of the victims, there were more than 300 people dead or missing - remained hidden for almost two years. There were not many of us. Justice in Mexico 5998 Alcal Park, San Diego, CA. 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. Among the evidence 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. 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. in Allende, Coahuila state, Mexico, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019. The truth is I accepted them, one said of the payments, because I needed to take care of my family, and also because they told us that we had to enter the ring, because if we didnt, they were going to harm us, or kill us or someone from our family. He explained why, after16 years on the force, he finally quit the Allende police late in 2011. American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Trevios but never acknowledged the devastating cost. [17] The Zetas member is not identified in the text but from context appears to be El Canelo. Allende massacre. Mauricio, the infant son of Liliana lvarez and Arturo Espinoza, was never seen again. 'Somos.': One of Mexico's Worst Massacres Told Through its Victims