Coahuila: The Disappeared

The state of Coahuila borders southwest Texas, from Eagle Pass to the Big Bend. The ruler of this beautiful land, Humberto Moreira, is known by his opponents as “el Gobernador Zeta”

In the uninhabited arid plains of Coahuila, where often the only sign of man is a power line on the horizon, danger lurks, ready to swallow up strangers passing through.

Mexico’s Highway 57, descending from the border city of Piedras Negras, and the gravel roads that connect to it are notorious as the site where many people disappear without a trace.

But the families of the disappeared do not forget. They travel the same route looking for their missing, calling on the authorities to investigate and asking among those who could have see them one last time.

Almost always the response ranges from indifference to intimidation.

A common denominator in these disappearances is the impunity that characterizes them as the authorities refuse to initiate preliminary investigations, abuse the families of the missing, and threaten them when they make their own inquiry and cause too much attention.

Many of the missing are itinerant workers and salesmen, offering handcrafted goods and other products for sale or on their way to the border to try their luck in the maquilas. A few are professionals, journalists or public security officers that avoided collusion with the underworld.

Most are poor and possess scarce resources, and no ransom is asked for their return. Some families cling to the hope that they are still alive and are being used as forced labor.

Some are poor workers like Pablo Ponce, father of three children who left behind a farmer’s life to travel as a seller of handmade furniture through the streets of unfamiliar cities. José Luis Hernández Gómez, his companion that also fled the plow, had spent 10 years visiting northern cities, over a thousand miles from his ranch in Michoacán.

It is thought that both passed through Monclova on October 20, 2010 and since then their families have lost track of them. In all, seven men from the small town of Santiago Undameo, Michoacan disappeared that day in Monclova.

The Attorney General of the State of Coahuila (FGE- Fiscalia General del Estado) has made no progress in their investigations.

There are already many cases of collective, or group, disappearances. Of the 104 victims documented by Forces United for Our Missing and Disappeared in Coahuila (FUUNDEC), only 17 people went missing as individuals.

According to the Coahuila human rights activist Blanca Martinez, director of Saltillo’s Catholic Diocese Center for Human Rights “Fray Juan de Larios”, collective disappearances are characteristic of Coahuila.

From exchanges with other human rights agencies documenting cases of disappearances in other states, it is seen that Coahuila, by far, is the state with the most cases of group disappearances. Human rights activists say that the situation is more serious than the public knows.

The historical record indicates that such high levels of group disappearances occur only in countries ruled by dictatorships.

Zero progress

The information collected by FUUNDEC has established that the vast majority of disappearances are perpetrated by groups of armed civilians.

On board luxurious late model pick-up trucks, the heavily armed groups of civilians known as comandos establish perimeters and with coordinated precision easily hunt their frantic victims down then quickly disappear.

In several of these cases uniformed members of police forces or the military are directly suspected of participation in abductions.

The most recent case of a group disappearance is that of the seven men from Michoacan on October 20, 2010, somewhere in the vicinity of Monclova. Little information is known and the investigator for the state prosecutor’s office, Domingo González Favela, has only recently confirmed the disappearance and that no ransom has been demanded, facts that the families of the missing men have been pressing in the media for months.

Blanca Martinez discusses the lack of results or movement in the Fiscalia General de Coahuila’s investigation (disappearances of this type are investigated by state and federal authorities in Mexico).

"Their response has been very limited. The Fiscalia General has only now started moving due to pressure from FUUNDEC and the families of the missing. They are just now beginning to move the inquiry, to implement procedures that should have started from the first day of the complaint”

“This speaks loudly of the irresponsibility and inefficiency in Coahuila."

From the pressure of reports, marches and protests sponsored by FUUNDEC, Governor Humberto Moreira has promised to speed investigations, but the result is the same: nothing.

The cases are multiplying and according to data from FUUNDEC of the total of 104 missing, there are five women, one child and one teenager. The rest are men.

Ten cases of disappearances involve two people. Nine cases involve three to six individuals.

One case involves 12 individuals, all co-workers at pinturas Atlanta Duramex, from Ecatepec in the state of Mexico. All were last seen in Piedras Negras and Monclova on March 21, 2009.

Just like the missing victims, most of these cases also vanish from the public. And it is important that these are only the cases of disappearances that are reported to state and federal authorities.

How many remain hidden due to families too intimidated to act is, of course, unknown.

Foreigners at risk
Just to continue along Highway 57 can be reckless. There are no checkpoints, only municipal police patrols that in routine checks inquire about identities and destinations and waylay the unlucky traveler with a police extortion, or mordida.

In November 2010, a Canadian rider uploaded a video on Youtube showing scenes of an extortion committed by members of the Castaños Coahuila municipal police force.

The traveler paid $100 after he was threatened with jail. Certainly too much was paid but the situation could have been much worse, and lethal.

Armed civilian roadblocks manned by organized crime gangs, also known as narcobloqueos, are a danger from time to time. Even politicians in their journeys must obey orders and submit to these criminals or face the consequences.

Encounters with these gunmen can be deadly, as occurred with a group of Canadians and Americans on June 9, 2010, who entered Coahuila on board two SUV’s. They belonged to an international mountain biking organization, dedicated to raising funds for, and building, eco-tourist mountain bike projects.

The men were on their way to the Muzquiz, Coahuila, where they would try to buy a ranch to build a mountain bike park. It was later revealed by statements from friends and family of the group that they wanted to work together to combat violence in Mexico through environmental/sport ventures of this type.

About 50 kilometers from the border on Highway 57 they stopped at the regionally famous "Machacado Dona Herlinda" for lunch, entering as several men were leaving in those large, ostentatious pick-up trucks that are synonymous with narcos.

It was around 1:30 pm when the foreigners finished their lunch, and upon leaving noticed that the men they had previously seen were waiting in a convoy. A youth approached the window of Peter Charles Klowak, a 44 year old Canadian who attempted to drive away. The teenager, about 14 years old, skillfully fired over the hood of the vehicle, shooting Klowak in the head and killing him.

Klowak's vehicle overturned. The young executioner left with the convoy. A second person accompanying Klowak was mistaken for dead by the gangsters but was rescued by four other men claiming to be U.S. citizens who dropped him off at the Piedras Negras border crossing. Once in Eagle Pass, Texas, he reported the incident to authorities.

His version of the incident matches the information obtained by the Fiscalia General, whose investigation into the murder has gone nowhere.

Another infamous case of a missing U.S. citizen is that of Felix Batista, a Cuban-American anti-kidnapping expert and security consultant who was abducted December 10, 2008 outside of a restaurant in Saltillo, Coahuila’s capitol city.

Batista was participating in an anti-kidnapping seminar for businessmen in Saltillo and may have also been negotiating the release of a kidnapping victim.

Batista had been credited with the successful resolution of almost 100 kidnap-and-ransom cases in Latin America. His wife, Lourdes Batista, has said that the family was never contacted by the abductors and never received a ransom demand.

The federal Public Security Ministry (SSP) attributed the disappearance to German Torres Jiménez, alias Z-25 or “el Tatanka”, based on evidence found after he was arrested in April, 2009 in Poza Rica, Veracruz. At the time of Batista’s abduction Torres Jimenez was reported to be the head of the Zeta plaza in Saltillo.

In spite of the SSP’s statement, no one has yet been charged with Batista’s abduction and murder.

No Man's Land
On occasion a Federal Police patrol visits the area but they never see anything. Surveillance cameras at gas stations, businesses or toll road booths have never been used in the investigations of the missing. If any eyewitness ever mentions an important fact, it is done hidden in anonymity and never as official testimony in a state investigation.

On March 22, 2009, a group of 12 Atlanta Duramex employees from Ecatepec, estado de Mexico, traveling in 2 vehicles disappeared without a trace while selling vinyl automobile paints in Piedras Negras. The men in one of the vehicles called from a gasoline station in the Villa de Fuente colonia stating that the employees in the other vehicle were missing. None of the men were seen or heard from after that call.

"Nobody saw anything, nobody knows anything. How can that that be if something happened in a place where so many people pass through and is so secure?" said Reyna Estrada, wife of one of the missing men, "When we call the Fiscalia General in Coahuila to request information, they tell us the disappearances have been registered but they have not even opened preliminary investigations. All we ask is that they stop deceiving us."

Tired of the indifference of state authorities, the families went to the federal Attorney General’s Office and were referred to the Office of Special Investigations on Organized Crime (SIEDO). A PGR/SIEDO preliminary investigation was opened but no progress was made and the file was archived.

The families have sent letters to President Felipe Calderón, the Governor of Coahuila, Humberto Moreira, and the Governor of the state of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto (currently the frontrunner for the PRI presidential candidacy). No one has sent them a reply.

Nancy Lorena Rojas Morales, wife of Vicente Rojo, one of the missing men from Ecatepec says that after the disappearance of her husband she has to leave their children alone each time she gets get temporary work or when she looks for employment. The children have also suffered from the absence of his father, they are depressed, no longer show interest in school and have become aggressive.

"He was our livelihood, we do not have anyone to support us, " said the girl, who was last working a temporary job at a gas station.

On April 17, 2009, Jose Flores, Agustin Nunez and Sergio Cardenas, gold and silver jewelry salesmen from Guadalajara, Jalisco, left by automobile to visit clients in northern Coahuila. The last time they were seen was on April 22 at the roadside hotel Don Alberto in Nava, Coahuila, where they vanished.

Agustin Nunez Sr, the father of one of the missing men, spent two months in Coahuila searching for his son. He learned that an armed group had abducted the three men from the hotel. One witness heard the abductors say they were SIEDO agents and the three men were under arrest.

State police refused to open a preliminary investigation on the grounds that the men were never seen leaving the hotel.

The PGR opened a preliminary investigation but refused to act because, according Nunez Sr., a PGR official told him these investigations are too expensive, they needed a direct order from the Attorney General, which was never given, and there was a backlog of missing persons cases from Coahuila including one where 20 people were missing, “and my case was low priority with only three missing”

Joel Cardenas, a farmer and Sergio's father, explained, "The boys went to work and disappeared. Nobody saw anything, nobody knows anything. Their route was from Saltillo to Piedras Negras and I think that the police or a customer abducted them, because they still had three kilos of gold and 1 million pesos they had already sold.. The Army stopped them at a checkpoint in Nava and released them because they brought documents to prove ownership of the merchandise. After that they were swallowed up.”

On August 29, 2009, the head of security at the Cereso prison in Saltillo, Esteban Acosta Rodriguez disappeared, along with his 9 year old son Brandon and his two brothers Gerardo and Gualberto, both naturalized U.S. citizens. To this day nobody has learned of their whereabouts.

It was rumored that Esteban Acosta had been solicited to provide special privileges to a Zeta federal prisoner in his custody but he had refused.

According to Esteban’s wife, Lourdes Herrera, he was on his way to the airport in Apodaca, Nuevo Leon to drop of his brothers who were returning to their homes in Los Angeles after spending their vacation with the family in Saltillo. On their way they were surrounded by a group of armed civilians in three vehicles and were abducted.

She is still stunned by the disinterest of federal and state authorities in investigating the case. After every inquiry she is told that no advances have been made.

In May 2010, Elba Delia Tovar and Delia Padilla from Los Angeles spent three days in Mexico City visiting the Interior Ministry (Gobernacion) and the PGR looking for answers in the disappearance of their husbands Gerardo and Gualberto Acosta. They returned disillusioned by the same disinterest. At the PGR offices they were not even attended to. “Attorney General Arturo Chavez cannot see you, you need to leave” was the response they received.

There is also the case of Jesús Verastegui Escobedo y Antonio Verastegui González, father and son who disappeared while returning to Parras de la Fuente after returnung from a religous retreat. Jorge Alberto Verastegui Gonzales, a university student, has searched for his father and brother and investigated their disappearance, accumulating more evidence than the Fiscalia General’s preliminary investigation (the authorities refused to include any of his findings).

Jorge Alberto found that on January 29, 2009 his brother and father were abducted, along with five other men, by state and municipal police with connections to an organized criminal group.

“The prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Jorge Aguilar, advised us not to create any scandals, that my brother and father had been taken in error due to some confusion. They were a little battered but would be released soon”

Months passed and the men were never handed to their families. Jorge Alberto says that there is a theory that the missing men are being held to work in factories run by organized crime packaging drugs. Some of the missing are said to have been taken to other states to work for organized criminal gangs, some have even been forced to work as sicarios.

Another cases of missing persons is that of the veterinarians Isaias Hernandez and Juan Pablo Alvarado Oliveros, in Torreon,Coahuila. On the evening of June 5, 2009 they left the Colonia Ciudad Nazas for a stop at an Oxxo convenience store but ran into a military roadblock. Their truck was found with bullet holes and blood.

“More than a year has passed and the investigation the Army began has made no progress. They have not sent for any of the witnesses. State authorities and the National Human Rights Comission have told me they have no information.” said Claudio Soto, Isaiah's wife who was left alone with two children.

“The fact is that most of the victims are workers and common laborers such as masons whose average age is between 28 and 29. They are people of working age.” Says Blanca Martinez.

"One of the hypotheses of these families is that they may be using them as forced labor, to do some work. It is a hypothesis that gives them hope. In all these cases there is no ransom request. Since there is no request for money or other equity they are not considered kidnappings, and there is no evidence that these abductions are due to the settling of scores or the like” adds Martinez.

"The disappearances are the deployment of terror that serve as a mechanism of social control”

The human rights acivist says that besides the known kidnappings, dozens of Central American migrants have reported multiple disappearances to the Fray Juan de Larios center. "If the cases of missing Mexican nationals prove the difficulty of obtaining justice, with immigrants this is practically impossible."

Besides the lack of results in the investigations, the families of the disappeared have faced intimidation. The missing are treated as criminals and not victims by authorities.

As a father of one of the missing men from Ecatepec complains “We all have the same pain. We have requested support from the PGR, the SIEDO, the Governments of Mexico and Coahuila, Televisa and TV Azteca, and all they do is send us in circles. If we were somebody important they would be searching, "

He explained that complaints have been lodged with law enforcement authorities at the federal and state levels and the national commission for human rights, but everywhere they say the same thing: “is is not our jurisdiction", " re-submit your statements ", and " bring us more information."

Blanca Martinez concludes that the problem is not a lack of legislation but a refusal by authorities to investigate these cases, "That is the common denominator: that families do not get answers, and authorities recommend that they leave everything alone and not look for trouble. They are an obstacle to people who demand their rights to justice, and the cases prove official inaction as a policy of the state government.”

Update on Saul Vara’s murder

The latest victim abducted and murdered on the roads of Coahuila was Saul Vara Rivera, the well regarded mayor of Zaragoza, a municipality of 15,000 residents reported to be the least infiltrated by the Zetas in the northern part of the state. Saul Vara was reported missing on Wednesday, January 5, after leaving a political event in the state capitol of Saltillo.

His body was discovered on Friday, January 7, outside the city of Galeana in the neighboring state of Nuevo Leon.

Authorities, in the method often used to initiate a coverup, at first announced that the murder may have been a result of disagreements with someone close to the victim and not related to organized crime.

However, the Fiscalia General has announced that on Tuesday, January 11, an unnamed Coahuila state police agent was in custody and charged with the abduction and murder of Saul Vara.

On Wednesday, January 12, a second state law enforcement official, Enrique Zavala Mendoza, identified as an investigator with the Fiscalia General, was arrested and charged with the kidnapping of a businessman from a bar in Saltillo on the evening of November 19, 2010. The businessman, who has not been found, is now another disappeared person.

State police posts are highly valued by members of organized crime because of the protection, access to intelligence and impunity that these positions carry. Both of the officers will be held for 45 days during which an investigation will determine if enough evidence exists for their prosecution for the crimes they have been charged with.

On the morning of Friday, January 14, an unidentified young male driving Saul Vara’s Lincoln 2008 pickup was shot and killed by state police officers during a pursuit on the Saltillo-Torreon highway. According to Jose Angel Herrera, head of the homicide division for the Coahuila state police, the driver of the pickup was shot after he fired on the state police with an AK-47.

(This post was mainly written using 2 articles authored by Arturo Rodriguez Garcia for the Proceso news weekly on the state of the missing in Coahuila. The articles were published one year apart. Additional information was included from other media sources.

The disappearances began in 2007, 2 years after Humberto Moreira was elected Governor. Coahuila had previously been one of the least violent states in Mexico)

Sources

Desapariciones masivas…y silenciociosas

http://www.proceso.com.mx/rv/modHome/detalleExclusiva/87076

Los desaparecidos que a nadie importan

http://www.proceso.com.mx/rv/modHome/detalleExclusiva/75526

Desprecia PGR a familiares de desaparecidos en Coahuila

http://desaparecidosencoahuila.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/desprecia-pgr-a-familiares-de-desaparecidos-en-coahuila/

Victim’s wife: Kidnappers silence very cruel http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/26/batista.kidnapping.wife/index.html?iref=allsearch

Cae el Tatanka

http://elblogdelnarco.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/cae-el-tatanka-uno-de-los-fundadores-de-los-zetas/

Los desaparecidos no celebres

http://foros.elsiglodetorreon.com.mx/foro.php?foro=4&post=349764

Implican a policia en crimen de edil

http://www.vanguardia.com.mx/implicanapoliciaencrimendeedilencoahuila-632122.html