This Is The Evidence Against 12 Police Officers For The Camargo Massacre

“Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat

Animal Político accessed the recordings of the hearings held in Ciudad Victoria on February 2 and 8. The process will resume on October 8, after several months of investigations.

Two vehicles, a Chevrolet Silverado and another Toyota Sequoya, circulate at full speed through a dirt road located between Camargo and Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, on the small border of Tamaulipas, a few kilometers from the United States. Inside one of trucks, terrified, there are a handful of migrants, almost all Guatemalan. 

Behind, on their heels, a police convoy consisting of a pick-up from the Secretary of State Security, three armored vehicles of the GOPES (Special Operations Group) known as Mamba Negra and two other pick ups. The agents use their weapons and some of the persecuted manage to call their relatives: “they are shooting at us,” they say. It will be the last communication of his life. It’s January 22 and a few minutes after 10 in the morning. We are facing the beginning of the Camargo massacre, the largest massacre of migrants perpetrated in Mexico in recent years.

Shortly after the persecution, the bodies of 19 people are burned: 16 are Guatemalan migrants, another is Salvadoran and two others are Mexicans who work helping the undocumented cross the border. Among the first victims identified are Mexicans Jesús Martínez Guerrero and Daniel Pérez Quirós, who worked crossing migrants irregularly to the United States.

Also two Guatemalans, Elfego Roliberto Miranda Díaz, 24, and Marvin Alberto Tomás López, 22,. In the following days, the names of the rest of the deceased will be made public. The state in which the Chevrolet Silverado remained is an example of the violence unleashed, since it had 113 bullet impacts (8 on the right side, 74 on the back of the box, 8 on the left side, 6 on the front and 17 more in the cabin area). The two vehicles were completely burned.

The Tamaulipas State Attorney General’s Office, which investigates the facts, is sure that the state police chased, shot and burned them, and then tried to hide the evidence. To reach this conclusion, they rely on various indications: the accounts of 4 witnesses, 8 bullet shells found in the area, the geolocation of one of the police vehicles and the cell phones of each of the accused and evidence that the weapons assigned to the officers had been used.

This is the account of the facts that the investigators presented to the judge. Animal Político had access to the initial hearings held in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, on February 2 and 8, of which Vice News already advanced part of its content. In them, the agents were linked to trial and sent to prison until the sessions resume on October 8. 

The police have not admitted their participation and in those hearings they refused to talk about the day of the massacre. The research currently focuses on who, but does not address a fundamental question: why vulnerable men and women looking for a better life were killed when they were close to crossing the border.

Jorge Chavarria Bárcenas, Hector Javier Alfaro Acuña, Ismael Vázquez León, Carlos Rodríguez Rodríguez, Jorge Alfredo Castillo Miranda, Williams Figueroa Medellin, Jose Luis Lopez Morales, Cristian Eduardo Gonzalez Garcia, Horacio Quirós Sanchez, Mayra Elizabeth Vazquez Santillana, Horacio Rocha Nambo and Edgar Manuel Antonio are the agents linked to the process for the crimes of qualified homicide, abuse of authority, falsifying reports given to an authority and crimes in the performance of administrative functions. 

Of these, Vázquez Santillana, Quirós Sánchez and Castillo Miranda are attached to the operations management, while the rest are part of the GOPES (Special Operations Group), an elite body that had training from the United States and the Navy secretariat and that has been accused of various human rights violations. 

Another 9 officers of the same police force are being sought after for the same facts. In addition, two officials of the National Migration Institute (INM) and seven police officers from the municipality of Escobedo (Nuevo León), are linked to the process within another folder, which is investigated by the FGR, and which is focused on the human trafficking plot.

What the witnesses say

The burned bodies appeared on August 22 in a remote area of the municipality of Camargo. The investigations, however, are based on the complaints filed by relatives of Jesús Martínez Guerrero and Daniel Pérez Quirós, the Mexican victims. The second spoke to a cousin hours before the massacre and told him that he was near Camargo but that “there was a lot of lawmen.” Later, in the middle of the shooting, he went on to call his wife and told her “that the police were shooting.” 

The next day they saw the vehicle burned and knew he had died.

Testimonies are a key piece of the accusation armed by the FGE against the 12 police officers. Up to 4 people told the authorities to have seen the blue vehicle chasing the migrants or shooting at them, listening to the gunfire or subsequently seeing the burning fires caused by the vehicles. 

All these testimonies were cited by prosecutor Artemisa De Jesús Castillo García, although none had to ratify his words at the hearing. Animal Político knows the identities of all of them but decided not to publish them for safety reasons.

The first story refers to hearing gunfire and observing two vehicles, one blue and one white, chased by the police convoy. “In one of these there were undocumented people who wanted to escape because they were scared. 

Afterwards, a blue vehicle went down and they said that the law came there. They left quickly, but the blue’ vehicles were already behind them shooting bullets. The vehicles in which the immigrants rode in were one white boxed truck and one blue, but they only shot the white one,” the witness said, according to the prosecutor.

A second witness claims to have seen the vehicles and armored vehicles of the state police and then hear gunfire for about half an hour. One of the policemen, hooded, even asked him if they were in Tamaulipas or Nuevo León.

The third of the witnesses reported that, after hearing gunshots, he hid in his house, where he locked himself. From there he observed a lot of smoke, until a policewoman arrived, covered with masks, who asked him if anyone had gone to hide in her house.

The last story indicates having seen the convoy of police heading to the place, without having witnessed the shooting or the chase.

For the prosecutor, the “evidential value” of these witnesses is that they “are coincidental with each other.” “They managed to acknowledge a chase between police and civilians, more precisely between blue armored vehicles, white and blue vans and vehicles with civilians on board, one of them a white van that had immigrants.

They also managed to see the gunshots fired by the uniformed policemen and later acknowledged the fire of these vehicles. Not only one individual refers to it. Two, three also refer to it,” he said.

What geolocation says

The geolocation of agents’ vehicles and phone records is another key test for the prosecutor. On the one hand, only one of the six units, the 1295, had an apparatus that allows its tracking. And the coordinate mapping places it between 10.19 and 10.39 in the municipality of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, adjacent to Camargo, just the place where the events took place. 

Subsequently, the vehicle remained static for 39 minutes, then moved to Reynosa, a municipality located 47 kilometers to the east.

 ”This search is a few meters from the place where the bodies were located,” the prosecutor said. Finally, the unit returned to Díaz Ordaz at 2:00 p.m., and remained there until 9 p.m. The vehicle was occupied by two officers: Mayra Elizabeth Vázquez Santillana and Jorge Alfredo Castillo Miranda.

In her approved police report, the official assured that the elements arrived at the scene around 2:00 p.m., alerted to a possible confrontation. It is suspicious for the Prosecutor’s Office that she omitted that, according to the geolocation of her own car, she had been there four hours earlier, just at the time the shooting broke out.

The cell phone records of the twelve policemen is also a key indication for the FGE. According to the audience, the phones of all the agents issued signals between 10 and 11 from Lucio Blanco’s repeater, located in the municipality of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz.

What the ballistics says

Ballistics is also another indication that the FGE wields against the police. According to the prosecutor at the hearing, in an inspection carried out on the 24th, two days after the massacre, they found nine bullet casings: one from a handgun and another eight from a long gun. This leads investigators to think that the police made the remains of the shooting disappear to make investigations difficult, since only one of the vehicles had 113 projectile impacts.

The tests carried out on the weapons attached to each of the accused elements indicated that all of them had been investigated recently.

Destruction of evidence

The FGE believes that the police persecuted, murdered and burned the migrants. Also, they tried to hide the evidence. To do this, it is based on the approved police report signed by Mayra Elizabeth Vázquez Santillana, who was in charge.

It ensures that the officers arrived in the area at 2:00 p.m. alerted by a confrontation. According to this version, a man in his 50s who did not want to identify himself was the one who gave the notice that a shooting had occurred. In addition, it is noted that two burned weapons were found in one of the victims’ vehicles.

“The now accused altered, modified, destroyed, lost clues, evidence, objects or instruments related in this case to the criminal act, to the deprivation of the life of the 19 people,” said prosecutor Artemisa De Jesús Castillo García.

The hearings were held on February 2 and 8 and investigations have progressed since then. The police are still in prison and will have to defend their innocence in the sessions to be held next October 8. So far, none have acknowledged their participation in the events and their defense lawyers insist that the evidence is not sustained or obtained by irregular means.

Animal Politico