The Ranch or Your Life

Ricardo Ravelo for Proceso 02/07/11

The proliferation of organized crime contradicts the triumphant attitude of the Calderon government that insists on publicizing ever “blow” it deals the narcos. The truth of the matter is, the narcos have opted to expand their operations and have found a gold mine via kidnappings and plundering. In states such as Veracruz, Durango, Coahuila, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas, they “legalize” highway robbery via public notaries. Many are the families that have been dispossessed of their assets, meanwhile the ineffective State authorities who have been overtaken by criminal groups do nothing to prevent it.

The fight against organized crime has not only unleashed killings and tension throughout the country, but has also set off kidnappings of small and medium level business people that, in order to pay the ransom, are obliged to turn over their entire estates in the face of death threats.
This new form of organized crime the drug cartels are employing to obtain great profits has been referred to as “diversification of activities.” To that end, even though narco-trafficking is a buoyant business, it is no longer the only source of profit.

The Zetas were the first to carry out kidnappings and to seize the assets of their victims. Other organizations such as La Familia Michoacana, La Cartel de Juarez and the most powerful Mexican cartel, the Sinaloan Cartel, have followed suit.

In order to carry out the dispossession of property and pass the transaction off as though it were a [legitimate] sale or transfer, the narcos bring along notaries who formalize the transactions. In this manner payment is secured with the hope that the criminals will respect the life of the kidnapped person.

This form of “highway robbery” is evidence of one thing: the Mexican State has been overtaken by organized crime and is incapable of protecting the life and property of its citizens.

An Anecdote

One of the recent cases of dispossession of property at the hands of organized crime involves Teodoro Apolinar Rodriguez, a construction magnate. Here is the story:

The afternoon of December 21, 2010 he drove his vehicle along the Alvarado-Tlacotalpan Federal Highway, on his way home from supervising some of his [construction] projects. A black truck flashed its lights at him. He saw that various subjects were aiming their high powered rifles at him. From the window a masked man yelled, “Pull over, son of a whore, or we will F*** you up!”

He pulled over to the shoulder and got out of the car. He was immediately seized by five men who tied his arms and feet and blindfolded him. “Don’t scream, f***er, because I’ll pierce your head with lead!” They shoved him into the truck.

During an interview with Proceso, the businessman commented that he had already had a similar experience, but in that instance he thought that they were going to kill him. “I felt like I didn’t matter, that my life had reached its end.”

After three hours, the truck stopped. “They took me out of the truck by force, and they took my cell phone away. I heard a door open and felt arms upon me and I was thrown to the ground.

“Here you’ll stay nice and quiet. If you yell, you die,” they warned me.

He remembers that in an adjoining room he heard various voices, including one that asked whether they were going to pay the ransom. It was in that moment, he says, that he became aware that he had been kidnapped. “The hours that had gone by seemed like an eternity. Since I was blindfolded with a hood over my head, I didn’t know if it was day or night.”

The next day, one of the kidnappers entered the room to bring him food. “I wasn’t hungry. But I was thirsty, really thirsty, and very nervous. I heard him load a cartridge into a gun and he put the barrel of the gun in my mouth. He told me that I was not going to get out alive if [my family] didn’t pay and that they had 24 hours to free me or to kill me. He said they were going to bury me alive.”

"How much did you ask for?"he asked [his kidnappers]

"25 million pesos."

"I told them that I didn’t have that much cash on hand, but I could make up the difference with machinery and a few cars. That is when they beat me on the back and in the ribs with the butt of a riffle. The kicked me and they threatened me by cocking their guns. I could hear the cocking of their guns followed by the click of the trigger. It was horrible.

“Not even an hour passed when they beat me again and they stuck the gun all the way to the roof of my mouth. They insisted they wanted 25 million pesos in cash. I made it clear that I didn’t have that sum; that I could pay them 5 million in cash, but they had to give me time so that I could call my wife so she could pay them.

"Time passed, I don’t know how much, and they told me that they would accept the five million. They asked me what else I had and I told them, four cars. They said they wanted the titles. They asked me for my wife’s name and phone number and they called to inform her that she had to pay the agreed upon sum and turn over the cars. She went along with it and agreed to pay them."

December 21, the captors received their payment and the cars with their titles. But it didn’t end there. Once the deal was all but closed, the kidnappers spoke with their victim; this time they demanded that he turn over his firearms that, according to them, he kept in his home.

With tears in his eyes and his voice trembling, Teodoro Apolinar continues his account:

"They entered the room where I was and they told me that they had received the cash and the cars, but now what they wanted was for me to turn over my weapons. I told them that I didn’t have weapons and that I didn’t even know how to shoot a gun.

"They yelled at me and told me not to play the fool, and that they knew that I had weapons. The truth is, I didn’t have any weapons, I only kept an old pistol at my ranch. I told them that that was the only gun I had and that if they wanted it, I would give it to them. They called my wife and she agreed to turn it over to them. My wife went out to the ranch, found the pistol, and handed it over to them and they all agreed that it was an old gun.”

Even though the agreed upon sum was paid and the gun was handed over, the nightmare did not end there. The criminals said they liked his ranch and they wanted it for themselves. They ordered the hired help to clear out, and they took up residence in the house.

"I didn’t have any alternative but to sign the ranch over to them,” says Apolinar Rodríguez, who realizes he made a mistake by telling his kidnappers that he had a gun, “I mean, they were going to let me go, but everything went down the tubes because of the gun.”

“Is your ranch that fantastic that it attracted the attention of your kidnappers?”

“We are talking about a property made up of a couple of acres, with a few head of cattle, and a house where I used to relax during the weekends with my family. That’s it. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was worth a bit of money.”

“And what happened after?”

“They let me go the 24th of December and I went home to have a drink. I didn’t want to even think about that nightmare. I couldn’t find peace. I would wake up frightened in the middle of the night. I thought I was still captive and that they were going to kill me.

"Those guys went to live at the ranch, and from there they operated. I didn’t do a thing about it out of fear that they would kill me or kill my family. The worst part about it is that another criminal group showed up and they got into it at my ranch. Ten people died and my property was seized by the PGR.”

A few months since this has happened, Apolinar Rodríguez still hasn’t been able to get his ranch back. He explains why:

"The authorities think I am part of the criminal group and now the whole world is asking me for money. The district attorney and the soldiers are asking me for money saying they will help me, but I think that getting my ranch back is going to cost me as much as if I were to buy it all over again.”

He kept his ranch, but he lost his life

Stories like this are common particularly in Veracruz, Durango, Coahuila, Chihuahua y Tamaulipas, places where abandoned properties abound since their owners had to flee the country or change their place of residence after being set free after a kidnapping.

Sometimes the ranchers have decided to get into a shootout with the narcos and kidnappers in

order to defend their property since the authorities don’t want to respond to these cases.

November 21, 2010, Alejandro Garza Tamez, a businessman from Tamaulipas, received a phone call, presumably from Los Zetas, demanding he turn over his property, el Rancho San José, located 15 km from Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas.

"We want your ranch. Get the papers in order,” they told him. Supposedly Zeta people had already arranged for a public notary to facilitate the fraudulent deal.

77 year old Don Alejo, as he was known by his friends, got everything ready: he gave his hired help the day off. He prepared his weapons and barricaded himself in one of the rooms in the house, waiting for the criminals.

When the armed men arrived at the ranch, Alejo Garza received them with gunfire. In the firefight four presumed narcos died, two were injured, and Don Alejo perished after receiving various gunshot wounds.

When elements of the Marina arrived, the scene was impressive: the exterior of the main house was destroyed by the bullet rounds and grenade explosions. At the back part of the property, there were four bodies. The soliders explored the area and discovered two wounded and unconscious subjects.

In the interior of the house there was just one body: that of Don Alejo, owner of the finca and a lumber magnate, with his two weapons at his side, pierced by two bullets. At each of the doorways and windows there were weapons and ammunition.

After reconstructing the events, the “marinos” concluded that Don Alejo had a strategy to protect his property. That is why he positioned weapons at strategic places within the house. He saved his property, but he lost his life. Because of his [brave] attitude, he has been immortalized in a corrido:

Hombre bragado y valiente /No le importó su dolor /Nació norteño hasta el tope /Como tal defendió su honor… /Salvó primero a sus hombres /Por los matones guardó /Llegaron a amedrentarlo /A balazos les contestó /Desde su noble trinchera / cuatro adelante se echó / Era su vida y su rancho /Era cuestión de su honor /Por eso murió a balazos /Por eso nunca se hincó /En la gloria está don Alejo /Él solito a su rancho salvó /Y los guachos (soldados) están sorprendidos / Pues a ninguno necesitó.

Powerless Government (Estado impotente)

In Durango—territory of the Sinaloan Cartel—gangs of kidnappers have gone to the extreme by receiving ransom in installments [think layway!!!]

According to Ramiro Ortiz Aguirre, state attorney general, they choose this method because their victims are chosen at random. He gives an example: "One gang asked one of their victims what he had at his disposal and he responded: ‘Well, I have just one cow,” and this same cow was exchanged for the freedom of this person.”

In other cases, according to Ortiz Aguirre, the kidnappers extend the victims a line of credit. They set them free so that they can get the agreed upon sum together which, in some of these shorts of cases, is 5,000 pesos.

He explains: "On one occasion, the kidnappers abducted a person from whom they demanded an unattainable sum. In this instance, the kidnappers let the person go so that he could get the money. There was an agreement between the kidnappers and the victim. He got the money and paid. In these cases there are never police complaints because the victims fear being murdered.
That is not the full extent of it. There are other gangs who force the victims to put a down payment on their freedom, then pay the rest of the ransom in payments which they receive according to a payment plan.

In many cases the extortion is carried out with a notary public who, under threat of force, gives an air of legitimacy to property transfer transactions. Because of this, last year the Mexican Senate considered an initiative as part of the Anti-Kidnapping Law that would cover narco-extortions validated by notaries.

The idea was that all of the transactions involving the use of threatened public notaries by criminal entities would be nullified. Even still, the practice of this type of extortion abounds in the country in the face of authorities who do nothing to prevent it.