Guerreros Unidos and Los Rojos conflict-Scientists reject account of students incineration at dump

written by Lucio for Borderland Beat

As the government is pushed for new evidence, they want  the public to know, there has been an apprehension of another bad guy in connection with the normalistas case. 

In this post is a breakdown of details and back story of both police attacks on normalistas, just hours apart on September 26th 2014.  The fact that there were two deadly attacks by police, on September 26th, not one, is news to most people, see details of each attack. (Lucio)

Officials said Friday that they had detained a ”leader of the Guerreros Unidos”  criminal group that prosecutors believe killed 43 college students, then burned their bodies in a case that began about four months ago.

The arrest of Felipe Rodríguez Salgado, who is being detained and “questioned”, last Friday.

Government officials are hoping the suspect may add details to the theory that the authorities have outlined.

Prosecutors say that the municipal police of Iguala, in the state of Guerrero, had detained  the students and then passed their custody  to the Guerreros Unidos.  Allegedly, this action,  was  ordered by the city’s mayor, José Luis Abarca.  Former Mayor Abarca and his wife, María de los Angeles Pineda Villa, are believed to be closely linked to Guerreros Unidos.

Protesters in support of the students are still very active, marching in Mexico City last  Friday carrying images of the 43 college students from Iguala who are missing and presumed dead.

                            The majority of those in the image above are the family of Maria, the mayor's wife

The government is being pressed to provide additional information, or freshly discovered details.     

Simply put, the parents of the missing normalistas trust nothing emergent from the government, and have directly informed President Peña, they reject the theory of the government.  They have resolved to not rest, until they are given straight answers with credible, supporting, evidence.

They are unrelenting. 

And this time, it is unlike the years before 2014.

The people of Guerrero, whose pleas to federal administrations of today and yesteryear for protection against organized crime, for years have been ignored,  but this time, they now have the attention of the world.

Arturo Beltran Leyva, Los Rojos,  and Guerreros Unidos 

The disappearance of 43 students from the normal Ayotzinapa college,  exposed the violent dispute between two criminal groups in Guerrero,  "Los Rojos" and "Guerreros Unidos” (G.U.)

Both groups were a part of and under the direction of  Arturo Beltran Leyva "El Barbas".  After Arturo’s fall  in 2009, the groups previously under his control is fragmented and began the struggle for control of drug trafficking routes other criminal activities. 

"Los Rojos" The criminal organization was created in 2011 and operates in the State of Mexico, Morelos and Guerrero. "Los Rojos" criminal actions include, extortion, kidnapping and drug production in the mountains of Guerrero.

 warning***graphic image on next page

GU made Iguala their base of operation in 2011.  The group is settled mainly in the area of mid to upstate Guerrero. This group was quickly earned the reputation  as  "very violent" due to the inclusion of the "Los Pelones" in the group.  Pelones is  the former armed wing of Beltran Leyva, before joining forces with GU. 

In addition to drug trafficking, "Guerreros Unidos" the groups illicit activities includes;  kidnapping, extortion, piso collection and other  crimes.

Los Rojos and Guerreros Unidos are bitter enemies in continuing conflict, primarily for control of Iguala.  Iguala is the primary drug staging city in northern Guerrero.  From that point all trafficking is shipped north, or northeast.

The Attorney General of Guerrero reported that municipal police Iguala involved in the violent events of last September 26 confessed to being part of the structure of the "Guerreros Unidos."

Essential facts of the night of September 26th -27th

Most people do not realize that there was not “an attack” but two deadly attacks by municipal police against normalistas and citizens on September 26th. .

futbol team bus

The Iguala case stems from municipal police attacks on  buses carrying  normalistas (students studying to become teachers) and one other with a futbol team.  

The futbol team had no relationship to the normalistas, they were in route out of Iguala. In the balance of the two attacks were;  at the minimum, 51 young persons killed or presumed killed, including the  now famous missing 43 students.  28 people were reported injured.

Of the remains found, only one student has  been identified through DNA,   he is counted as one of the 43 missing students,  He is Alexander Mora Venancio.

To those that followed the case, especially those who have long followed the criminal activity in Guerrero and Iguala, you are not surprised at the mistrust of the government, from the victims’ families and citizens. They have rejected the ‘official’ version, offered in testimonies of suspects (link here)  previously arrested for involvement in the attacks.  

The mayor, his wife, the municipal police, and Guerreros Unidos, are reported to be at the core of the crime.  While details lack clarity, there is little doubt that the aforementioned parties were involved.  Within 8 hours after the last attack, on social media, residents begin throwing suspicion and accusations straight at the mayor’s office. This stems from a history of abuse, disappearances and corruption accusations.  

Both the mayor and his wife threatened Arturo Hernandez, a social activist, the day before he and 7 others were kidnapped off the highway.  Witnesses who managed to escape, gave sworn testimony they witnessed the mayor personally raise his AK47, shoot and kill Hernandez.  Just before shooting him in the head he said to Hernandez,  "You fucked with me, now I will take pleasure in killing you".

In the testimony of suspects in the case, they contend Mayor Abarca was advised by the G.U. plaza chief, that  bus passengers were infiltrated by members of the Los Rojos.  This is said to be the basis of the initial order by the mayor to take the passengers into custody and interrogate them.  The information was erroneous, there were no cartel members in the group of students.  If the GU plaza chief guessed that the students were Los Rojos or otherwise has not been determine.  But that is how the massacre began.

When the students were questioned, they were drilled  if or if not, they were members of Los Rojas, and what their intentions were in Iguala.  Each of them stated they were students.

-But did they belong to some group?  (Interrogator asked el Cherje)

-That’s what they asked them, “Do you belong to a group?”

And they said “No”.

Former mayor Abarca and his wife Maria, have long been linked to Guerreros Unidos. 

Maria’s family, mother, father, and siblings] are a part of G.U.   With a long history in organized crime, seeded in the Mexican state of Morelos.  [Morelos borders Guerrero.] They worked under the direction of Arturo Beltran.

To revisit a post of a translated interview of Maria’s kidnapped mother-named Maria Leonor. Link to that post here.

Maria Leonor was interrogated by her captors; she shares information of her family, her sons, who were executed for betraying Arturo Beltran, and other facts.

 

"El Molon" brother of the mayor's wife

The mother, along with each family member, has been arrested, charged and incarcerated, for crimes linked to organized crime, and for being a part of an organized crime group.  Until the Iguala normalistas attacks, Maria was the only exception;  after her formal arrest and charges linked to organized crime she now shares that history with her family.

Mother and father of Maria

Recently, the question has been raised, if the events in Iguala had involvement by federal forces. 

To assess what if any involvement there may have been, and to what extent, all  events must be taken into account, of that night of terror.   It is unfortunate that the press is not giving a detailed account of the evening of September 26th into the 27th, most people are confused, or creating conclusions without essential information.

Iguala’s night from hell, two separate attacks hours apart

Around 7pm, the first gunfire barrage the buses began.  A half dozen police vehicles arrived

filled with Iguala police wearing hooded masks.  The police surrounded the buses and began the first attack, shooting at  3 buses filled with normalistas and a bus with a futbol team. 

There were people wounded and killed in this attack, including a 15 year old futbol player. [right image]

The media has largely ignored the deaths of those killed at the scene of the first and second attack. David Josué Evangelista, is the Chilpancingo futbol player killed, shot in the head in the first attack, the team bus driver was also seriously injured. 

Hours later a second attack commenced,  targeting the normalistas who had exited the buses and assumed  the attack had ended–in this attack there were additional deaths, including a bus driver, and a woman in a taxi.  There were 1500 shells left in the wake of the attacks.

Iguala witnesses say in these two attacks there were a total of 8 killed, 2 dozen injured and dozens missing.

Details of the two attacks

7:30-8:00 p.m. a cell phone ran at the normalistas college.   After the first attack, one of the surviving normalistas, contacted fellow student, Omar Garcia, who had not gone to Iguala, he stayed behind at the school in Ayotzinapa.  The student who called, Uriel Solís,  was frantic,  saying;   “The police are shooting at us here in Iguala!”. [Uriel is pictured below left]

Omar organized a group that quickly took off to Iguala.  He explained he was hoping to diffuse the situation, he had no idea of the horror he was about to face.    When they arrived at the location of the first attack he said;

“there were massive amounts of blood, the buses sustained heavy damage  from gunshots, we saw our friend who was shot in the head, we thought he was dead, but he wasn’t, he is the one still in a coma.”

The normalistas felt safe at this point, because the local media had arrived.  

As Chivis reported on her post of  September 27th, the survivors of the first attack were in the street talking to the local reporters, giving their eye witness account of the initial attack.  It was then that the second round of gunfire erupted.  Chaos erupted, sending more than 50 normalistas fleeing  on foot, others huddled together out of sight.  

Omar and his friends fled several blocks, it was there they encountered the army. 

Until that moment only municipal police and hooded armed subjects were seen, those were the shooters in the attacks.

While Omar does not say the army shot at them, the normalistas were abused.

 “Shut up, shut up, you guys asked for it. You wanted to take on some real men, well, bring it on, and take it.”

Taunting and mocking them, the soldiers took  photos, “for reports and the medical personnel when the ambulance arrives”, Omar said he knew they were lying.

Omar: “We were afraid and enraged at the same time, because we could not talk, we could not    get phone calls.  If anyone called us, a military person would stand right there to listen. They would tell us what to say, that is, basically, to cover up for them, because they would say;

 "You can receive phone calls so they won't find out we're holding you but don't tell them you're being held by the military, just tell them you're OK", they told the students who were getting phone calls”.

“There were no doctors, but soon two trucks of soldiers arrived from the 27th infantry battalion, which has a base close by. They started accusing us of criminality and violence, as if we were combatants, not students.” 

Omar and a teacher from the college stayed with the normalista suffering from a gunshot to the head and in unconsciousness. Later when it was safe they carried his body to a local hospital.  He has never regain consciousness.

The normalista without a face

The next morning the body of normalista, Julio Mondragon, was found left on a street.  There were no attempts to hide or cover the body. It was left on display; passerby’s could not avoid seeing the monstrous handiwork.

His face was flayed.  He is not a part of the 43 group taken, but he was killed in close proximity to the attacks and dumped sometime during the wee hours of the 27th. 

His friends said they saw him run into the night; they called after him, to no avail.

Was the army directly involved?  There is no evidence and the accounts of the first and second attacks, never mentioned army presence, or direct involvement in the shootings.  Parents have recently made known they suspect the  possibility of military involvement.
 

Julio in life, with his wife and baby daughter

Army involvement remains in question

Omar’s account of the second attack, places the army soldiers, about 15 in total,  in a “on guard” position blocks away, which in any reasonable conclusion says, even if they did not know what was planned before the fact, they became involved peripherally, and made a mockery of the human and civil rights of the students.

In the killings of Apatzingán, and Tlatlaya, those killings were a direct plan of action by the military in death squad mode.  The military gunned down mostly unarmed persons, who may or may not have been criminals, at least in part.  Soldiers became judge and executioner.  Death squads and social cleanings have been a part of Mexico’s dark side through multiple administrations.  They have been largely sanctioned and accepted by the government.

What happened in Iguala is different.  Organized crime, political power abuse, control of indigenous people for economic gain, territorial dispute and corruption, are those who took a driver’s seat in this night of hell.

Soldiers constantly patrol the dangerous outskirts of Iguala and the highways leading into Iguala.

In is  accepted as truth, that  corruption runs thick in the Mexican Army, and Federal Police. Organized crime groups have no problem finding those willing to sell their soul, shirk and defy their duty, for placement on the narco payroll. 

The information revealed lends itself that  soldiers were called in after the first attack to block traffic coming in while the second attack launched.  Another possibility is that members of the army help dispose of the bodies.  

Scientists weigh in, saying the government’s explanation is “Not possible”

Then there is the claim by Jorge Montemayor.  Montemayor is a physicist who along with scientist, Pablo Ugalde, set out to determine the amount of fuel needed to incinerate 43 bodies.

Montemayor and Ugalde waited more than a month before challenging Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam’s account that the students’ bodies had been burned in a giant pyre at a garbage dump near Cocula, a town near Iguala. 

The attorney general said two cartel members had confessed to taking part in the incineration, which they said took more than 15 hours. 

“They assigned guards in shifts to make sure the fire lasted for hours, throwing diesel, gasoline, tires, wood and plastic” on the flames, Murillo Karam said. 

He said temperatures had reached up to 2,900 degrees Fahrenheit. 

In interviews last Friday, Montemayor and Ugalde said the students’ bodies couldn’t have been turned to ash and bone fragments at the Cocula dump.

scientists present calculations;

It would require 33 tons of wood or 995 tons of tires, to incinerate the bodies to ash. 

Mexican government claims the remains of the normalistas was incinerated to ash. From a concise, scientific approach,  the government placed in an uncomfortable position of not being able to manipulate hard scientific results.  There are no witnesses to coerce, evidence to falsify, and facts to hide.  

Murillo reported the incineration required 15 hours.  The scientists establish that would have been enough time for maybe 10 bodies, but not 43, even if they had the 33 tons of wood required.

Which is a tipoff into the reason why on Tuesday the public was advised by the chief of  criminal investigation of the PGR agency, Tomás Zerón de Lucio; 

“All lines of investigation have been exhausted”, indicating there was nothing more to investigate."

Then on Friday the government announced  another "significant capture of a G.U. leader".  The new capture says the government, “will provide additional information into the case”.

Relatives of the students think they may have the answer to where the bodies were disposed of.  They feel the army assisted  in the incineration.  They have requested an inspection of  the army battalion, to determine if it houses  houses a crematorium. 

Interior Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong said Thursday that the parents would be allowed onto the base “soon”.  Unfortunate this tentative response, instead of immediate action, creates  suspicion and greater mistrust from the families.  By the delay, even if their inspection comes up empty, they will assume the army moved any equipment that potentially was used to incinerate the 43 bodies of their loved ones.

Interest in the case is beginning to lose its vigor.The march of this week was comprised of people related to normalistas and indigenous communities.  This is what the government has long waited for, allowing them to return to business as usual; ignoring the needs of indigenous communities. The image below reflects the massive turnouts during the height of interest in the case.