Part Two: "The Miracle of Juárez", Sinaloa vs Juarez Cartel

Lucio R. Borderland Beat-Posted by Texan24 republished from Animal Politico
Part One link here

Washing the bloody aftermath of the Villa Salvárcar massacre

The tragedy of Salvárcar

On Friday January 30, 2010, El Diego answered his phone. Los Artistas Asesinos (The Assassin Artists), or AA, a street gang with members in El Paso and Juarez, were among his enemies, and an informant told him of a party that night in the working class neighborhood of Villas de Salvárcar, in southeast Ciudad Juarez .

The AA worked with Sinaloa  selling drugsin the street.

Barrio Azteca did the same for the Juarez cartel. In 2010, four gangs working for the two cartels worked as assassins or murderers, to eliminate the small drug dealers.

"None of the shootings and killings in that period occurred among senior members of the cartel. The gunmen  concentrated on killing retail drug dealers.

Preserving the territory for their cartel, " said a police source in Juarez.

El Diego gave orders to his group of assassins to go to the party and kill everyone. 

Luz Maria Davila, a small woman with a warm smile, was busy in her small house on  Villa del Portal Street, adjacent to a narrow alley. 

A few meters away, her teenage children Marcos and Jose Luis were partying at a friend's birthday with other young neighbors, soccer players in the American football league.

Davila's husband was surfing the Internet on his children’s computer, waiting for his night shift at the “maquila” (US company) located in Juarez, where he worked as a guard. A few minutes before 10 pm, a convoy of vehicles entered the alley, with  dozens of men, members of  La Linea and Barrio Azteca.

The gunmen, many of them natives of Juarez and all in their twenties, moved fast in a macabre dance of death. Two cars blocked the exits of Villa del Portal Street while others concentrated on house where techno music boomed and young couples danced and talked.

Some of the thugs covered their faces with bandanas. Many were exposed, without fear of being discovered. 

Diego was in charge via cell phone: “kill everyone" he ordered.

The murderers walked together toward the house, brandishing heavy weapons. In less than 30 minutes, 15 lay dead and several others wounded.

As were the children of Luz Maria, most of the children were of maquila workers and were high school students or university students. Some were the first in their family to fulfill the dream of going to college.

Blood everywhere

Luz Maria told her husband to stay  as she ran out of the house, she turned abruptly and ran a few meters from her home to the party house. Along the way, she ran into one of the gang members who had stayed behind, she heard the vehicles speed in their flight.

She entered the small house and found blood, broken glass and bodies everywhere, some had collapsed together. "I first found Marcos, but he was dead. I looked for José Luis. He was lying in the hallway. He said he was fine.

She recently recalled the tragedy at her home, where she has continued to live after the massacre. Calmly, she told her story, the one she has repeated countless times to reporters and government investigators during the past four years.

"We took Jose Luis to the clinic in our car. And he kept telling me he was okay. But he died in the evening after the surgery”.

Marcos was in the first year of college, studying to be a foreign official.  José Luis wanted to pursue international business. 

Since their deaths, Luz Maria and her husband have added a second floor where they have a room for the possessions of their sons.

Luz Maria receives visitors in a small living room with a big TV. Pictures of Marcos and José Luis preside over the room. Photos are selfies the young teens took  themselves a few days before their death. 

Advocates Luz and Javier Sicilia their work honors their murdered sons

Before the slaughter, Salvárcar was a place where residents felt safe because everyone knew each other. The house where the slaughter took place, a neighbor paid for so the neighborhood youth would  have a place to meet and be safe.

Young people were delighted with this "clubhouse". Salvárcar, like other working class districts neighboring Juarez lack parks and places for youth and children to play and socialize.

"Finally, now we have a park… now, after they are dead," said Luz Maria.

In the end, young people killed in Villa del Portal were not members of AA who Diego sought. AA in this case, were the initials that represented the American football team that organized the party.

Diego was incensed by the news that kids were killed, not AA gang members. He had the informant executed, who provided the information about the party.

The deaths shocked the city of Juárez and aroused national and international attention on the city. 

Presidential insensitivity

 

"Do something!"

A week and a half after the slaughter, President Felipe Calderon traveled to Ciudad Juarez with a large government delegation including his wife. 

The people of Juarez  were irate when after the murders, initially  Calderon  said the victims of the slaughter were gang members.  He called a public meeting with victims' families, activists and representatives of citizen groups to try to minimize the damage.

Luz Maria was invited to attend, she decided to attend at the last minute. She sat with other "special guests" like her Salvárcar neighbors, loved ones of the victims, the type of people  who are not usually invited to meetings with the President.

When the microphone went to the relatives, she got up took the mic and a maquiladora mother confronted the nations President.  

She vented with a monologue that became part of history.

"Excuse me, Mr. President, I cannot welcome you.  Murders have been committed, I want justice, I want my children returned to me. I cannot shake hands with you because you are not welcome.

I want a retraction of what you said, accusing my children of being gang members, they good  boys, they were students, and they worked…I want you to apologize.

I assure you that if someone had killed your child, you would have already captured the murderers! You would have turned over every rock and used everything possible; I do not have those advantages. 

Here the governor and the mayor always say the same, they promise justice but we do to receive justice. I want justice. Put yourself in my place, to see what I feel. I love my children." The president was solemn, nodding slowly. Sitting next to the president was Mrs. Calderon, she looked both sick and stunned.

Then, turning her back to the President, she looked at the audience.
"You gentlemen say nothing,  you just applaud the President.....Do something!"

Dávila is still shocked by her reaction  of five years ago, but her audacity embarrassed the federal government who then  created a social project of five billion pesos called "We are all Juárez".

The program supported social projects and the creation of a round table for  justice and, with representatives from business, civil society, Juarez government who began to meet weekly and work with the police to clean up the city.

Technology improves the way to kill

But violence continued to increase and El Diego seemed unstoppable. Homicides increased to 300 per month. National and international attention to the struggling city increased. But La Linea and their  criminal cronies gang Barrio Azteca, continued undisturbed.

And then the cartel sought high-technology.

Two Mexican engineers were hired to develop an advanced encryption system of a network of receivers, transmitters with upright antennas in the highest peak in Juarez, La Bola. The network had been set up and began operation in March 2010.

To enlarge click on image

La Linea and Barrio Azteca used it to its next big mission, an attack against an American officer of the Consulate of the U.S., Leslie Ann Enríquez, her husband, Arthur Redelfs, and the husband of another consular official, after  they left a children's birthday party, on  March 13,  2010.

El Diego and  Arturo Gallegos Castrellón, alias “El Benny”, leader of Barrio Azteca, were intensifying their operations. They were going after the United States.

There are several theories about the reasons for the attack. One is that Redelfs, an official of the Regional Detention Center in El Paso, mistreated members of the Juarez cartel imprisoned there.

Another is that Barrio Azteca believed Leslie Ann Enriquez working for the Sinaloa cartel.   After his arrest in 2011, El Diego said that Barrio Azteca simply made a mistake.

The US government responded quickly, ordering the families of members of the Consulate leave Juarez to El Paso. The U.S. also set their sights on La Linea.

Insanity escalates

In mid 2010, El Diego became even crazier and ordered his people to load a vehicle with 10 kilos of Tovex, an explosive used for mining and construction.

On July 15, they parked the car on the September 16^th Street, in the city center, attracting police and ambulance to the car by leaving the body of a man dressed as a policeman.

Dr. Jose Guillermo Ortiz, (at left) a doctor in town caring for   low-income patients  had his office nearby, and was passing by with his son when he saw the victim.   

He sent his son for his medical bag as he continued towards the vehicle. The blast was sudden. Dr. Ortiz was hit by the blast, and died later in a hospital. 

A federal police also died and six federal agents and a television cameraman were wounded. The bomb was activated by a cell phone.

The bomb did more than scare a city that was tired of violence.

It also sent a message to the U.S.: black spray paint graffiti on the wall of an elementary school warned there would be more car bombs.

"What happened on September Avenue will continue to happen to all authorities who  support 'El Chapo'.

We have more car bombs

Sincerely,

The Juarez cartel"

The bomb attack petrified one of the engineers who put the encrypted communications receivers and Linea network.  He heard Benny Gallegos, the Barrio Azteca, congratulating his people: "Good job, boys, well done. They did very well, and we gave a lesson to those pigs .... "

These people are completely crazy, surmised the engineer, and decided he had to alert the authorities. The engineer, who has never been identified, became the key to the downfall  of La Linea.

In the following weeks, the engineer knocked on the door of the Mexican Attorney General and the Armed Forces in Mexico. No luck. 

He stayed away from the Juarez police since learning through radio conversations that many of them were on the take.

Then he went to the US Consulate and lied saying he had information about another attack against U.S.,  the doors opened and he became a DEA protected witness. Between July and December 2012 he recorded thousands of hours of radio communications for the US authorities.