Wanted since 2012, a suspect arrested in the Allende Massacre of hundreds

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat

One could see the smoke from afar, yet the news was void of reports, I along with everyone else in the area could see with our eyes, yet nothing was reported.  Residents were left to the word on the street--- in this narco news blackout state. ..Chivis

Many victims were taken to a ranch just outside Allende and owned by the Garza Gaytan Family which had storage sheds.  Zetas used the sheds as a incinerator to dispose of the bodies. Ashes, belt buckles and a rosary were all that was found.on the concrete floor.  300-500 persons were murdered, men, women, children. 

La Rancherita

Criminal Investigation Agents completed an arrest warrant against a person who is reported to have participated in the massacre that occurred in the municipality of Allende and other crimes in the region, in the years of 2010 to 2012.

The detainee was identified as Juan Manuel "N". He had an arrest warrant from the year 2012, accused of having participated in several kidnappings and homicides. In collaboration with other individuals, several people disappeared in the northern region of Coahuila.

The State Prosecutor's Office in coordination with Chiapas authorities, thanks to the coordination they have, managed to capture the person who was transferred to Piedras Negras to answer for the crimes in which he is involved.

Víctor Gerardo Rodríguez Lozano, delegate of the Prosecutor's Office in the North One area, announced that he had completed the arrest warrant and that in the next few hours he would be presented before a judge in charge of the accusatory criminal system to carry out the initial hearing of the process.

At the time the accused was mentioned for participating in kidnappings and murders under the command of the Zetas criminal group. Criminal Investigation Agents completed an arrest warrant against a person who is reported to have participated in the massacre that occurred in the municipality of Allende and other crimes in the region, in the years of 2010 to 2012.

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Allende Massacre [Chivis]

The fires and violence continued for days.  300 to 500 people were abducted, killed and incinerated. It was on a Friday when hell came to Allende.  Witnesses reported seeing dozens upon dozens upon dozens of vehicles in the Zetas convoys.

One could see the smoke from afar, yet the news was void of reports, I along with everyone else in the area could see with our eyes, yet nothing reported.  Residents were left to word on the street in this narco news blackout state.

On March 18, 2011 we were driving from, Monterrey Nuevo Leon on Hwy 57, when we saw the smoke ahead.  We saw a narco convoy and first responders but as in many other incidents of violence, the fire department were warned not to intervene.[see what the fire chief had to say below]  Residents flooded the emergency center with pleas for help, but help never arrived.

We decided to turn around and go through Tamaulipas and up through Texas and across to Del Rio and into Mexico that way.

We began hearing word passed from person to person with respect to what was happening in Allende.  The never ending smoke was never addressed specifically, we heard Zetas were torching and destroying homes and killing people.  Later we learned the horrific truth.  The smoke was from the incineration of hundreds of people.  It is unknown to all but the executioners if they were burned alive.

I was scared far more than I ever had been while in Mexico, yet strangely residents didn’t share the same level of fear as I.  For example on the second day we had a function at a school in Piedras Negras, yet traveling there was dangerous.  I didn’t want us to go.  My staff said in the day time it would be ok.  They went--- I didn’t.  They teased me for my fear; I scolded them for their lack of fear.

La Nena was butchered for her blog reports-her head was posed atop her laptop. 5 narco bloggers were murdered.

Blackout Narco News State

Nena was a blogger and an
editor of a mainstream newspaper

In 2010 Tamaulipas became a black out narco news state.  Coahuila was a black out state even prior to 2010. In 2010 the SDR tuitero movement began with #ReynosaFollow leading the way. This movement filled the vacuum created by the conventional blackout media.  By using social media, these warriors were able to send out warnings and reports of situations at risk in Tamaulipas, and joining states such as Coahuila, of narco roadblocks, shoot-outs, and other dangerous situations.  This is a very perilous endeavor that cost the lives of Tamaulipas bloggers, some decapitated, hanged, and one, a doctor, abducted, made to “confess” on her twitter account and killed.

These brave citizen reporters have saved countless lives. One of our reporters at BB joined the group in Tamaulipas who created a manifesto that was published to the world. The word and warnings on the street became reports on social media.

And this was how we were able to receive any reports of what was happening in Allende.

The reason for the attack was a massive betrayal by Zeta members

Millions of dollars were stolen from the cartel by Mario Alfonso "Poncho" Cuéllar, Héctor Moreno Villanueva and José Luis Garza Gaytán, alleged members of the Zetas, who betrayed the Zetas and fled from Coahuila to the United States. In their hands between 5 and 10 million dollars of profits for the transfer of drugs and the ledger. They left Coahuila for good, but left many relatives behind---in Allende. 

Cuellar, Moreno and Garza fled to the United States where they began rethinking their actions.  Realizing they were between a rock and a hard spot, Cuellar and Moreno approached the DEA and offered their serves as cooperative witnesses in exchange for entry into  the protected witness program. 

Cuellar claims before he left Coahuila, Cuellar warned those who worked for him and relatives to escape.

Most of the family members lived in the region of [5]  Cinco Mamtiales [Five Springs] area near Piedras Negras and Allende had the most of the family as residents.  Allende straddles Federal Highway 57.

Some U.S. reports fixated on the cooperation with DEA as the reason for the revenge, but in reality, that was insult to injury and they were already tagged because of the money.

Family and whomever happened to be in the homes at the time, paid the price for the betrayal.

[read this BB article from the time of the massacre-much of the info was from resident witnesses sent to Borderland Beat, use this link]

Below are  personal accounts from a National Geographic report.

Guadalupe García, retired government worker: We were eating at Los Compadres, and two guys came in. We could tell they weren’t from here. They looked different. They were kids—18 to 20 years old. They ordered 50 hamburgers to go. That’s when we figured something was going on, and we decided we’d better get home.

Martín Márquez, hot dog vendor: Things began happening in the evening. Armed men began arriving. They were going house to house, looking for the people who had done them wrong. At 11 at night there was no traffic on the streets. There was no movement of any kind.

Etelvina Rodríguez, middle school teacher and wife of victim Everardo Elizondo: My husband, Everardo, usually came home between 7 and 7:30 at night. I was waiting for him. Time passed—7, 7:30, 8, 9. I began calling him. The phone was not in service. I thought maybe he was at his mother’s house and his battery had died. I called his mother. She told me that she hadn’t seen him and that maybe he was out with friends. But that didn’t make sense to me. He would have called. So I went out looking for him.

The atmosphere felt tense. It was nine at night, which was not very late, not on a Friday. The town was completely deserted.

A few miles outside of town, the gunmen descended on several neighboring ranches along a dimly lit two-lane highway. The properties belonged to one of Allende’s oldest clans, the Garzas. The family mostly raised livestock and did odd contracting jobs, including coal mining. But according to family members, some of them also worked for the cartel.;Now those connections were proving deadly. Among those the Zetas suspected of being a snitch—wrongly it turns out—was José Luis Garza, Jr., a relatively low-level cartel operative, whose father, Luis, owned one of the ranches. It was payday, and several workers had gone to the ranch to pick up their money. When the gunmen showed up, they rounded up everyone up they could find and took them hostage. After nightfall, flames began rising from one of the ranch’s large cinder-block storage sheds. The Zetas had begun burning the bodies of some of those they’d killed.

click to enlarge

Sarah Angelita Lira, pharmacist and wife of victim Rodolfo Garza, Jr.: My husband, Rodolfo, arrived. He told me, “My head is killing me. I’m going to take a shower.” He was completely covered in soot because he was opening a new coal mine. After a while his phone started ringing. I thought he had gone to lie down, but he came out of the bedroom, fully dressed, and he looked me in the eye in a way I had never seen before. “Don’t leave the house,” he told me. “There’s something going on. I don’t know what it is. But don’t leave the house. I’ll be back.”

After a while, Rodolfo called me. “Get out of the house,” he said. “And don’t go in our truck.” He told me to ask my cousin to take our daughter, Sofía, and me to my mother’s house.

His uncle Luis’s ranch was on fire. And there were a lot of armed men standing outside the gate. His sister wasn’t answering her phone. His father wasn’t answering either. He sent one of his workers, Pilo, to the gate to see what was going on. Pilo had been in the military. The gunmen opened the gate. Pilo went in. But he never came out.

Rodolfo was inconsolable. He couldn’t find his parents. He couldn’t find his sister. And now his best worker was gone. He told me he was going to try to sneak onto the ranch through the back.

A few minutes later, he called again. He was speaking so softly I could barely hear him. He told me to get out of Allende. “Tell your cousin to take you to Eagle Pass. Don’t pack. Just go.”

Evaristo Treviño (no relation to Zetas leaders), former fire chief: Officers under my command responded to reports of a fire at one of the Garza ranches. We’re talking about less than three kilometers away from Allende. It appeared that the Garza family was having some kind of gathering. Among the first responders was a group of firefighters with a backup engine. They noticed there were certain people connected to criminal organizations, who told them, in vulgar terms and at gunpoint, to withdraw. They said there were going to be numerous incidents. We were going to get numerous emergency calls about gunshots, fires, and things like that. They told us we were not authorized to respond.

In my capacity as fire chief, what I did was to advise my boss, who in this case was the mayor. I told him that we were facing an impossible situation and that the only thing we could do was to stand down, out of fear of the threats we faced. There were too many armed men. We were afraid for our lives. We couldn’t fight bullets with water.