The secret story of how the Zetas turned Coahuila into hell

      Massacres, incinerated bodies, collusion of authorities. Former members of the Zetas declare in US courts how crime controlled everything in Coahuila for 6 years. 

November 6 2017

Forced recruitment of teenagers to become hit men. Villages completely destroyed. Hundreds of people incinerated.

It is that way that, for at least six years, the Zetas drug cartel continued to control the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Coahuila, in northwestern Mexico.

In three trials conducted in Texas courts, former members of the organization revealed details of massacres, bribes to police, mayors and officials of two state governments.

The Zetas, the witnesses said, controlled several prisons in the state including one, in Piedras Negras, where 150 rivals were incinerated.

Between 2007 and 2013, there were atrocious murders in Coahuila. Hundreds of people were stripped of their property. An unknown number of teenagers were forced to become hit men and more than 1,600 people disappeared.

The result: one of the worst periods of violence in history. The consequences are still being felt .

“It was hell but we still suffer every day, night after night,” María Elena Salazar, of the United Forces for Our Disappeared in Coahuila (FUUNDEC), tells BBC Mundo.

Eight years ago his son Hugo Marcelino González disappeared in Torreón, the most prosperous city in Coahuila. Since then there has been no news of his whereabouts. He was one of the victims of the invasion that the Zetas undertook in the state. “My son disappeared just at that time, during that wave of violence,” he recalls.

Key information
That construction of hell in the Mexican state that the testimonies reveal in the Texas courts are gathered in the report “Control …. On All the State of Coahuila ” presented this Monday in Mexico City.

It was carried out by the Human Rights Clinic of the Law School of the University of Texas, in collaboration with the Fray Juan de Larios de Coahuila Diocesan Center for Human Rights.

The document analyzes the trials against former Los Zetas in the courts of Austin, San Antonio and Del Rio, Texas. The proceedings took place between 2013 and 2016. The detainees were charged with murder, conspiracy to import drugs and weapons, as well as money laundering.

All the accused received sentences. But the most valuable thing, says the report, is that the interrogations revealed the way the cartel, one of the most violent in Latin America, established almost total control in several regions of the state .

And a little known fact: in the trials came data on missing persons, including some from several years ago.

It is information that can help solve many cases, says Ariel Dulitzky, director of the Human Rights Clinic, to BBC Mundo.

“The government of the United States has information that should be shared with the Mexican government and independent civil society organizations,” he stresses. “They would allow to clarify violations of human rights”, especially cases of missing persons. 

Police accomplices
The greater Zetas control was carried out in municipalities near the border with the United States. To gather this, trial witnesses are referred to, who say they bought the support of the municipal police, of the state government, and some of the federal government.

An example of the territorial control they achieved was the shooting of a former collaborator identified as “El Tucán”, whom they accused of collaborating with the Secretariat of the Navy.

In mid-2012, witness Saúl Fernández points out in the San Antonio trial, that the cartel established roadblocks on each street in Piedras Negras, and checked all people entering or leaving the city.

And all in the presence of the local police. When Fernandez asked what the agents did, Fernandez replied: “Well, they acted like nothing was happening.”

They also established a private communications network, with hundreds of relay antennas in buildings, commercial premises or nearby hills.

The only ones who feared the cartel was the Navy, the testimony states. And to avoid them, the leaders of the group used official helicopters, says the witness Rodrigo Uribe Tapia at the San Antonio trial.

In addition to the police collaboration, the group recieved support from local politicians, and some even financed their electoral campaigns.

In exchange for this support the Zetas obtained police protection, but also contracts for public works, not only in municipalities or the state but with federal companies such as Pemex or the Federal Electricity Commission.

Some were assigned to the company ADT Petroservicios headed by Francisco Colorado Cesa,”Pancho”, who was sentenced in one of the Texas trials. But they also created dozens of businesses, and the testimonies even say that they controlled entire shopping centers in Piedras Negras.

These places were used as safe houses or places to exchange money, drugs and weapons. Another refuge for the members of the cartel were the prisons that in some cases, like the Piedras Negras prison, were used only as dormitories.

For example, the witness Uribe says that, during the day, members of the Zetas who were inmates could leave and enter the prison without problems.

Axes to kill
But in addition to the collaboration of authorities, the most effective way to control part of Coahuila was terror. The best-known case was the murder of 300 people in the town of Allende, between March and April 2011. Many of the victims were incinerated at the site.

It was a series of revenge attacks because some ex-cartel members began to collaborate with the United States government. Nothing was known about the massacre for several years, and even now it is not completely known what happened.

“Many deaths. (The Zetas) even began to kill relatives in Allende, and Piedras Negras, and Músquiz and Sabinas. They also wanted to kill me,” said witness Hector Moreno.

The way they murdered their victims was atrocious, witnesses point out. Several were dismembered alive with an ax, the first blow on one of the knees .

Many times the people killed were innocent. They were sentenced to death for the simple suspicion that they collaborated with rivals or authorities.

This happened with four children who sold newspapers in Piedras Negras. The person responsible for the massacre was Marciano Millán Vázquez, known as “Chano” and one of the main leaders of the cartel in the region.

The remains of the victims were usually incinerated or disposed of in acid. The Zetas call this method “cooking” .

“It’s very sad, very sad”
The Zetas no longer have full control of Coahuila as documented in the Texas trials. The cartel has mostly been affected by authorities combating them. Practically all of its founders, ex-elite soldiers, have died or are have been arrested.

The organization only has presence in part of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Veracruz and Tabasco. Before, they controlled drug trafficking, kidnapping of migrants and extortion of businessmen in ten of the 32 states of Mexico.

But the footprint that they left in their headquarters, the northern area of Coahuila, is not erased. Especially for families of missing persons.

“It’s very sad, very sad and painful for us,” Salazar says, “the answers we have are not valid, what we ask and demand is that they look for the living . They are not things, they are not objects. They are thousands of lives. ”