Hell on Earth: Disappeared and alive

Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from adondevanlosdesaparecidos.org

                     

The cartel offered them a deceptive job,  enslaved them and forcibly retained them. Today they make up part of the armies of organized crime: they tend drug crops or train as hit men. They are alive, but they are missing. "Luis" is one of the survivors and recounts his days in hell.

By Alejandra Guillén and Diego Petersen

Report by Adóndevanlosdesaparecidos/Quinto Elemento Lab* 

- When I ran away I went far because I knew that if they found me they would kill me. I thought that if I went directly to the government they would hand me over to the cartel, and after some time it came to light in the news that someone was in the same situation as me and was encouraged to speak out and then I said that my goal in escaping up there was to try to give peace and tranquility to those people who lost track of their loved ones. Many of them are the people that I saw set on fire and that none of their relatives realized how they died and how they disappeared unless I speak, then I will risk talking my story and bring some peace to their families and not remain hopeful that they will find them. So I contacted the Jalisco Prosecutor's Office and told them that I was also deprived of my freedom in the Sierra de Navajas by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and that I could identify 17 disappeared people that I saw with my own eyes die in the hands of our captors.

 Luis (the names are false for security reasons) is a survivor of camps where the cartel forced young people to train as hit men. At the beginning of 2017, he worked in a rehabilitation center. They didn't give him a raise and he wanted to get away from the environment of addiction. He searched for a new job using social media. In April of that year he joined the Facebook page GDL Job Bank and Jobs Guadalajara. Through his inbox he was a connected with a new job offer: 4 thousand pesos a week as a security guard. He contacted the woman who sent him the message and she asked him to contact Mario, the company's current supervisor. A week later they added him to a WhatsApp group along with 15 other people interested in the job. They asked them to go to a training to the municipality of Tala and they would give them 4 thousand pesos in advance.

Luis was excited. He never thought that when they arrived for their first day of work that they would be put in safe houses and then taken to camps in the Sierra de Ahuisculco, not to kill them, but to train them and force them to work for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Antonio Blancas disappeared after coming to Tala on his first day of work as a security guard. He was a student at ITSZ. His family still does not know where he is.

                     

Some of their families reported them as missing, without knowing they were alive in the hands of organized crime. The Jalisco Prosecutor's Office carried out operations in July 2017 and found training camps. In one of them, 15 men were detained, of whom three were reported as disappeared and were able to prove that they were being held against their freedom. The three of them were released and their testimony was recorded in the research file 1611/2017, as was Luis's. Thanks to his story and anonymous testimonies we now know that the Ahuisculco mountain range took dozens of men from the valleys of the Tequila region, the Metropolitan Area of ​​Guadalajara, other states, and even Central American migrants, and that slavery and forced labor has been a modus operandi of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel to ensure the operation of their business. Among the recruits of those who were registered were day laborers, unemployed people, car washers, construction workers, Supply Market loaders, deportees, former police officers, ex-soldiers, and young people fresh out of addiction rehabilitation centers. Even one of the survivors recounts in his ministerial statement that he was walking at night in downtown Guadalajara, felt a blow to the head, lost consciousness and when he woke up he was in a safe house.

Through social media announcements, the CJNG deceitfully recruited men of different ages to incorporate them into the ranks of their armies. Many of their families reported them as missing, not knowing they were alive in forced labor.  Photo: Especial

When the Prosecutor's Office carried out the operation, Luis was no longer there. He had escaped, but later decided to speak out despite the risk that may involve doing so.

 

- When they contacted me for work I asked if everything was legal. "Look, if it was illegal, we wouldn't send you to training so you can carry a gun. Do not worry, everything will be legal." I said "Hey, but is everything going to be fine? I have a sick mom and I need communication with her." That's when Mario told me that everything's cool, that I would come recommended by him. I grabbed a taxi to the Periférico. After 10 minutes a car arrived. They asked me if my name was Luis. I told them yes. I got in and we went for another guy to a messed up place. A light-skinned guy with a beard came out, little curly hair, chubby, with green eyes, now I know his name is Ignacio. Two women came out to say goodbye, they did not leave the entrance until we left. I saw the driver was nervous, smoking one cigarette after another. I talked to him and he told me that he had barely worked for a week, but that he had not been paid for previous trips. It was the first of May. They left us on the road and a pick-up truck arrived there with three other guys who came from the State of Mexico. One had a false eye, another was thin with a false leg and the third was chubby with a lock of hair that came out of his forehead. The driver was a dirty fat guy who ordered us to get into the bed of the pick-up. On the way we learned that the five of us had been on WhatsApp the previous day and had been contacted through job boards to which we registered on Facebook for the work of body guard or security guard for 4 thousand a week. It was very attractive for my needs.

 

They moved us to another car. We turned towards Tala, we were put into an opening and arrived at an abandoned farm, with barbed wire, wooden sticks, there was a man with a cuerno de chivo telling us to keep going inside. I noticed that there was no furniture, only people on the floor, 38 piled on the floor. It was then that I realized that I had got into a problem because that was not normal. Upon entering the room they ordered us to remain silent and sit down, telling us that we could not even go to the bathroom unless we asked permission. We were purely humble and poor people, there were people who had the face of troublemakers and others who had the face that they had nothing to lose in life. I realized that I had crossed the line of no return and that maybe something bad would happen, in fact there was a strange smell, you could see the look of sadness and misery in people.

A well connected mountain range

Tala, Ahuisculco, Las Navajas, Cuisillos, are villages that are less than an hour from Guadalajara, just behind the forest of La Primavera. It is reached by the free highway to Puerto Vallarta. Passing the forest you have to turn left to enter the valley of the Ameca River, where there are fertile lands full of reed beds and old haciendas. After Tala, the next delegation is Ahuisculco, an ancient indigenous community that still protects the forest and protects its watering holes. The village is in the foothills of the mountain range of the same name, a volcanic formation that is actually the continuation of the La Primavera forest. On the other side of the hills is the town of Las Navajas, where -as the Ahuisculco people say- "crime penetrated, people accepted things that ended up endangering them."
 

The town of Las Navajas is named for the large amount of obsidian that exists in its soils and that for centuries the indigenous communities of the region made into knives and sold. Crossing the town there is a gap that goes into the hill. On this road is one of the safe houses mentioned by the survivors and which was seized by the Jalisco Prosecutor's Office. Above is the place known as La Reserva, the ranch that the inhabitants of the sierra say belongs to a certain Don Pedro, someone who knew Rafael Caro Quintero. They say that Don Pedro arrived at the end of the seventies, planted marijuana, fattened cattle, controlled the region. Even after the operations of the Jalisco Prosecutor's Office, in July 2017, the road was still guarded by truck drivers and young motorcyclists: halcones. This is the gap that all the survivors mention in their testimonies as the route up the mountain.

This mountain range, with no names on maps, is strategic because of its connectivity. On the one side it has roads leading to the road to Colima and Manzanillo, and on the other to the Sierra Madre Occidental that leads to the Pacific Coast and Puerto Vallarta. Through the port of Manzanillo comes chemical precursors for synthetic drugs that move along the road to Colima and before arriving in Guadalajara takes the Circuito Sur or Macrolibramiento, which leaves them a few meters from Las Navajas, where they enter the mountains which serves as a hiding place for camps, pits, and narco-laboratories. Through Cuisillos they can go to the road that takes them to the north of the country or to Mascota and Puerto Vallarta.

On July 29, 2017, the Jalisco Prosecutor's Office informed that between June 6 and 13, they received six complaints regarding the disappearance of persons. All of them were told in their homes that they were moving to the municipality of Tala because they had obtained work as pollsters, guards, or municipal police.

Mothers' Testimony 

 

Laura denounced the disappearance of her son Ignacio on July 22, 2017. She was asked if she noticed anything strange about him the last few days she saw him.

 

"He was desperate because he didn't have a job," Laura said. He was 22 years old, weighed more than 100 kilos, light brown hair, green eyes, forearm tattoo, high school cut short. He told his mother that he had found a job as a private security guard where he would be paid 4,000 pesos a week. He would go to Tala for two weeks for training. On May 1, 2017, they came for him at his home in a working class neighborhood south of Zapopan.

 

Ignacio came out with a black and grey canvas backpack with a strap holding three changes of clothes: boxers, socks, a wooden tooth brush, plastic sandals, white tennis shoes for sports. He did not have a cell phone and they were not allowed to bring one either. His mother and sister went out to say goodbye. He climbed into a light brown car with two other men in it: the driver and another guy who had just been picked up; it was Luis. They did not have contact with him again. Two months later, the sister saw on the news that they had found enslaved people in Tala. It was then that they reported the disappearance of Ignacio.

 

Ernesto was also reported missing. Robust, 1.78 tall, 96 kilos, round face, light brown eyes, no tattoos, scars from bites on the chest and left arm, wearing black denim trousers, light blue polo shirt. At 26 years old he was urged to find work. At the beginning of 2017 he had a son and did not have a fixed income. He was desperate when he found an offer on the internet. On April 30 they contacted him. The next day he left early, shortly before seven in the morning; they were going to pick him up at Periférico and Mariano Otero to go to a training at Tala. He told his mother and his wife that he would communicate with them in a few days. Karla, his wife, called him at ten in the morning to find out how everything was going. He told him that they had not yet arrived, but that as soon as he could he would send him the telephone number of the place where the training would be. He did not send it. They had promised that every week he could return to see his family. He never came back. Rosa, his mother, reported him on May 8, 2017.

 

'Templarse' is doing things with intelligence

The time that Luis was trapped in the first safe house, in May of 2017, he began to observe those who watched them; he discovered that some had been captured like him, but had already been able to go on vacation.

 

- I know because I saw who had command, that they had left and returned, that there were hierarchies. It did not matter that they trusted you, the trial by fire was to return to work with them.

 

From that house, they began to take us out in groups to fill trucks. From the road through Cuisillos, we were taken to Navajas, to another large farm, with an iron cattle type gate, one meter high, unfinished. There was a man with a hat like a peasant who shouted at us: "Let's see you son's of ... get in line ... Let's go, in the heat! Does anyone know why the fuck you're here?" I could not say anything, they could kill me. He grabbed the cuerno and shot at all of us: "I'm going to give everyone a fucking vacation, if you come back here there's going to be a job and if not, you can go fuck your mother! Who wants to go right now?" Nobody said anything.

 

One kept me in check, he shouted at me "¡ándale moreno, témplate!” Templarse means to be agile, to act, to do things with intelligence. We got to the top, we arrived at the camp that seemed to me to look like forests in the United States. It was a private property that a lady rented to the one in the sombrero.

 

This safe house is located across the village of Las Navajas

(Tala, Jalisco), on the side of a breach that leads to the top of

the mountain range, where the camps were located with young

people who were forced to train as hitmen

Photo: Raúl Torres

Stand out and survive

The abuse and threats began in the safe houses. In addition to Luis, there were three other survivors rescued by the Prosecutor's Office. In their ministerial statements they told how they went in search of work and the enganchadores took them to safe houses. In one of these houses there were about 50 men lying on the ground, beaten, threatened; that if they escaped they would be killed.

 

- All day we exercised and they said that those who obeyed went on vacation or rest. We were classified by new, semi-new and old. The new ones hit us all the time, there were always armed men watching. After a week they came back for me and four other companions in a van; other armed men left me in a safe house where I could bathe. We had already realized that it was another lie. I heard voices that said we would work for their cartel. That's when I got scared. Those in charge used drugs but I've never used: work, I have family, children. On the 23rd they returned me to the mountain, to a new camp, they took us to build it with sticks, nylon, branches, to carry water, food. They beat me all over my body, they told me "you're worth shit, come on fucking idiots, dogs." We could not sleep until 12 o'clock at night, whoever did was shot with paintballs or killed. Those in charge shot two people because they went to Oxxo without permission. The others were asked to lower their bodies into a ravine where a stream passes, they had me cut firewood, branches, burned them there ... I knew that everyone was taken in with deceit, 20 people just like me.

 

- They left us in a camp an hour from the village Cuisillos (...) where they made us sleep outdoors, as well as telling us that we had to ask for permission to urinate and if not, they would hit us (...) so I remember one day we were loading things, we went to a stream and El Momia told Checo, who had tattoos of the dates of birth of his daughter and on the neck the name of his children: "take this so you don't disobey my orders." He was shot and fell dead. Then he shot another guy (...) They took them down to the stream, took off their clothes and followed instructions. They put them in a bed of sticks with leaves and wood, set them on fire, we waited until they were completely burned.

 

- We walked 30 minutes, we arrived at a camp built with sticks and black plastic bags, lined with tree branches and trash. I noticed that three people were outside with weapons. We got inside and there were more people lying down, some 20 people, so we went to the camp, so we could go to bed and fall asleep, but as early as dawn they woke us all up and formed us in a line and they began to tell us that we were going to train to work as sicarios for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and that if we resisted they would kill us. They made us train, forcing us to exercise and they had paintball guns for us to train with, they used paintball bullets to shoot us with.

 

On July 24, 2017, I remember it was Monday, they picked us up and they made us carry plastic and groceries (...) The attendant received a call to be ready because black and white trucks came to comb the hill. Three started firing, all I could do was run towards the bottom of the hill to cover myself  from the bullets. Police surrounded us, shouted "chest to the ground, hands up," and it was the moment that they arrested us all.

 

The three young people who speak include in their account the operation of the Jalisco Prosecutor's Office through which they were able to free themselves. Days later, on July 29, 2017, the former Jalisco prosecutor, Eduardo Almaguer, reported that they had rescued a young man and thanks to that they were able to locate the camps. The Prosecutor's Office estimated that between 50 and 60 people were guarding 40 recruits. Of the latter, their fate was not known.

 

It was not the only training and extermination camp found in Jalisco. In 2016 another cell of the same cartel operating in Tlaquepaque and in Puerto Vallarta was detected, which distributed flyers offering work for a non-existent security company, Segmex. The recruits were forced to sell drugs or become hit men.

 

In October of 2017, the Office of the Prosecutor rescued four other people involved in deception in the municipality of Puerto Vallarta. They were employed as sales managers or guards; the CJNG took them to train in the Sierra de Talpa (150 kilometers from Tala, towards the west) and disappeared them. At that time, then prosecutor Almaguer said it was the same criminal cell that operated in Tala, with members from Veracruz, Michoacán, the State of Mexico, and Jalisco.

 

They take those who have pants

The disappearance of young people in Tala began long before the Public Prosecutor's Office discovered these camps. There has been a registry for missing persons since 2012. One of them is Javier Cisneros Torres. His family had the courage to be the only one who made his search public. Javier lived with his mother, in the municipal capital of Tala. His sister, Alma, remembers the day of his capture:

 

- At that time my brother lived with my mom, my dad had already died. My brother was already lying down watching TV. He left because his neighbors came looking for him. He went to their house and they took him from there. We managed to see his sweater, his glasses, his keys, the blood that ran from the entrance. My brother liked to defend people, everyone in the neighborhood, he was not a bad person, we know from the kind of life he led, we are a humble family. He worked at Tala's sugar mill. It was a long time that he didn't have work,  jobs in Tala are temporary. He left to paint trees white. They said that Los Talibanes took him, a CJNG criminal group in Navajas.

 

Javier Cisneros has been looking for his family since 2013. He 

was taken from a neighbor's house in the municipal capital of Tala. 

 Photo taken from the site Laalameda.mx

 

We know of at least 60 families with missing persons in Tala. My sister and I have written them name by name. I have a friend from high school who contacted me one day, he said "my brother was taken away, we do not know what happened, my brother used marijuana". I said "ok, consume or not consume they don't have to take him, he is missing and we have to find him. If we do not look for them, nobody will find them." I asked him for a picture of his brother in case they find his body in a common grave, because otherwise you'll never know if he's alive or dead. Here there are many missing and nobody says anything.

    

They take the young people who have enough pants to do things, because they don't take just anyone (...) only those who would dare do terrible things, that if they say "we kill you or you work for us", I think they answer "work." I'll be honest, I don't think my brother says "kill me," I think everyone wants to live, but that's what I tell my mom, it would hurt to know that he's doing that kind of thing. I'm afraid he's working for them.

 

In the region what happens is an open secret. The CJNG controls Tala and the surrounding areas, so those who speak have to do so under anonymity. Like Eleazar, who prefers not to speak in public but at home, telling how they took many of the young people from his town:

 

--In 2013 we began to know about disappeared young people in the region. They were children of peasants, strong, gutsy people who know the countryside and therefore know how to use weapons. They were cocky showoffs who liked (the music of) El Komander, peleoneros, who went to parties or consumed drugs. We knew of many cases where they were going to a party and we did not hear about them again. Apparently some are alive, they call their families, but they can not look for them or say anything because they are forced to work for them.  

They were not guys who wanted to get into the narco stuff, no, although they liked all that music and all the narcoculture that has permeated a lot, because in Tala there is a lot of work for the sugar mills, that is why they had to be forced. I think they took them to marijuana and poppy fields in the same region or to other places in the country, because the cell is strong here, you wouldn't think that. From here they stock up on guys for other regions. I think that all the young people have a certain profile and that is why they are now putting job advertisements to deceive young people from other places.

 

On August 31, 2014 a mass for the disappeared was held in Tala. The families took photos and names of their loved ones; all were named. A lot of people arrived, on a single bulletin board there were 35 photos posted, mostly men. Following the mass, the priest received threats and had to leave Tala.

 

In 2014 a Mass was held in Tala for the disappeared of the region. The 

families took photos of their loved ones. After this, the priest who 

organized it received threats and had to leave Tala.
Photo: Special

Even though many families prefer not to report, in this municipality there are 56 disappearance reports according to the National Registry Data of Missing or Lost Persons. Between 2006 and 2012 there were two complaints. In 2013 there were 14 and in 2014, 17. For the inhabitants, something happened in those years: the Jalisco New Generation Cartel took force and controlled this region. They needed labor.

 

With the arrest of the Valencia brothers and Ignacio Coronel, the Millennio Cartel (which trafficked drugs in alliance with the Sinaloa Cartel) was divided into two cells. One of them later became the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which the US Treasury Department described in October 2018 as the most powerful drug trafficking organization in Mexico and one of the five most dangerous in the world. This group has presence in at least half of the national territory and traffics cocaine and methamphetamines in America, Asia and Europe.

 

The soul breaks

The disappearance of young people and then forcing them to work for the cartel is not improvised. An inhabitant of Tala who knows the dynamics in depth says that mistreating them, torturing them, and then forcing them to kill and incinerate their companions is a strategy to break their souls, their inner harmony, so that they can become one more of the cartel. That the person goes from victim to victimizer.  In his story, Luis describes that in order to survive, one must win the trust of the captors. In the end, the cartel decides to kill those who do not give in are not useful for their purposes.

The camps were camouflaged with leaves so they would not see them from the air. 

The Jalisco Prosecutor's Office identified hot spots in the Ahuisculco mountain 

range and that is how it managed to locate them. Photo: Especial

- I saw the opportunity to approach the guy in charge. I was determined not to be mistreated or die up there if something was going to happen. I was willing to survive. I began to talk to them and to stand out, to gain their trust. There were gunmen everywhere. Any person trying to survive will stand out so as not to be attacked. I started to be afraid and to doubt the way I started trying to survive in hell. I thought I had gotten more deeply into these people for not running the risk of being killed, but at the same time I threw a noose around my neck because they saw me with confidence and they would see me as a traitor if I did not come back.

 

That time the worst thing happened to me in all my life: at about two o'clock, the voice of El Sapo (the head of the plaza) came. "Come on, you fucking sons of bitches, who wants to leave? I'll give you and your house three thousand and you can go fuck off." At that (some) began to raise their hands, asking if they were sure. There were three from the state of Mexico, the chubby one who arrived with me and now I know his name is Ignacio, the two gauchos from Durango, a 17-year-old from Guadalajara, a former policeman from Zapopan, another who I don't know his name and El Catracho who had already returned from vacation. In fact El Mojo asked him if he was sure he wanted to raise his hand and he said yes, he wanted to go see his son in Honduras. El Sapo said "that's it, you're going to get there faster". I recognized everyone, there were 14 in total, they were placed in a hut in front of the dormitories and told not to move. The others were seated in another hut. A gray Cheyenne arrived with plates from the United States and two subjects with squad-type pistols. One was El Greñas (20 or 21, child's face, right hand man of El Sapo) who shouted at those who wanted to go: "Look you bastards, we're going to fight everyone against everyone," and they began to do it, the one who fell was going to die. The first to fall was named La Jaina (short, 1.70, big nose, big face, light skinned, hair everywhere, poor from Guadalajara) fell knocked out on his knees. He was shot. Then El Guachito, tall, big nose; when he saw that they were going to shoot him, he shouted "nooo!" raising his hands in self defense. They shot him twice. After Nopal , Toño , Chucho and El 18 opened fire against everyone, including a former police officer. The last one was a 17 year old boy with his hands tucked between his legs, head down, swaying. They went to look at him because he was alive. El Pitayo told him : "These fucking guys told you to say you wanted to go." With a wave, he answered "aha", and the boy asked crying "it's that I want to see my little sister and my mom." They shot him. Among the dead were Ignacio, who arrived with me the first day, and Ernesto. The taco maker was also shot in the back, and then 15 dead. They made those who said they didn't want to leave, out of fear, carry the bodies. It took an hour and a half because there were some very heavy bodies, we had to drag them and throw them into "los elotes".

To throw them to "los elotes" is to incinerate them: in a wooded area they took advantage of the ditches in the ground that make water currents that go down between the pines and oaks during the rainy season. There, on the reddish earth, they threw wood, then the bodies, stacked and split, to set them on fire with gasoline, until there were only burned bones and metal objects like buckles and pant buttons. Witnesses who say they have seen other pits like these, but have not been able to report their location, report that they have smelled chemicals that could be used to accelerate the combustion of bodies.

In one of the camps a point was located where there was firewood and burned bone remains. One knows from the testimonies of the survivors, that the CJNG burned those who disobeyed or did not serve for the work of the cartel. 

                                  

Fleeing

According to the story that Luis gave to the Jalisco Prosecutor's Office, El Sapo called by radio a few days later and said: "Now yes, you fucking sons of bitches, who is going to go on vacation?" Luis thought "the moment I was waiting for finally arrived, it took me an eternity to degrade myself and be with these people. I'm going to be free." El Cholo ordered that they make two rows and gave them two thousand pesos each. Night fell and they were taken down the hill in groups of 15.

 

- They were going to leave us in Tala but it was very hot, there was a lot of police. We walked to a gas station where the Army was. Many told me they didn't want to take off. The Army neither stopped us nor asked anything. There's a hotel out there. I entered and I registered. I got to bathe was able to trust a taxi driver and escape. When I arrived at the hotel all the rooms were filled, we paid with the money they gave us, I bathed, I cleaned my clothes with a wet rag, they all knocked on the door having a beer in the bar. I had planned to leave when they fell asleep, but they began to take crystal meth that the manager sold them (...) While they were partying, I grabbed my suitcase, I left, I took a taxi, I contacted a relative who lives in another country and I told him everything that happened, that I could not return, that if they saw me they were going to kill me, they had to help me to escape.

 

-After it came out in the news that someone who was like me was encouraged to speak and (I) said, my goal of getting out of there was to try to bring peace and tranquility to those people who have not found their loved ones, they are the ones that I saw burn and none of their relatives realized how they died and how they disappeared. Then I will risk telling my story.

Those who returned from that hell received protection measures for denouncing members of the most powerful cartel in Mexico. Even so, they had to flee. They changed their identity and no more was heard about them. The Jalisco government never reported who the incinerated people whose remains were located in the camps had been. They didn't carry out further operations to search for more clandestine graves in the area nor tried to free more young people in these forced recruitment camps.

Today the cartels are still using forced recruitment and controlling the territory. Both in the south of Jalisco and on the border with Michoacán there are families of missing persons who have anonymously reported signs of having their relatives taken to forced labor in drug laboratories or poppy fields. The inhabitants of the area of ​​Tala know that the hell to which relatives and acquaintances have been condemned is not below, but up there, at the top of the hills; they know it in silence.

From 2006 to date the Mexican government has received complaints about the disappearance of more than 40 thousand people. 

* This report is part of the project Adóndevanlosdesaparecidos / Quintoelab. An initial version of this report was published as a podcast in Así como suena with the title "Los desaparecidos de Jalisco." You can listen to it at: http://asicomosuena.mx/?#/shows/1/play/361