A Decade of Impunity: Secret Archives from the Allende Massacre Are Released

"MX" for Borderland Beat

Note: The ten year anniversary of the Allende massacre was last month. Borderland Beat is sharing an extensive publication released in March 2021 by the US National Security Archive. It includes unseen and declassified archives, testimonies, and photos of the investigation.

Dozens of houses were burned and destroyed during the attack. Over 300 people -- men, women, children -- were murdered by Los Zetas with the help of the local police.

Ten years ago, the Mexican municipality of Allende was the site of one of the worst human rights atrocities ever seen in the country: a three-day rampage that punctuated a larger wave of violence in which Los Zetas criminal group kidnapped, murdered, and later burned the bodies of as many as 300 victims, incinerating the remains into piles of ashes, bits of teeth, and tiny bone fragments.

The National Security Archive marks this grim anniversary by publishing an extensive evidentiary history of the Allende massacre focusing on key documents and testimony from a 4,000-page dossier of investigative records that prosecutors in the state of Coahuila only began to compile almost three years after the fact.

The files depict a town almost completely beholden to Los Zetas—from the mayor’s office to top police commanders to ordinary cops on the street. Witnesses describe in graphic detail how Los Zetas undermined and criminalized the public security forces of Allende, and how the latter routinely participated in kidnappings, murders, and other crimes on behalf of the group.

To date, only a handful of Zetas and corrupt police officials have been convicted in a case that involves dozens of crime scenes, hundreds of victims, and the documented participation of numerous Zetas and public officials.

Among the evidence posted today are the first complaints filed by the loved ones of those who went missing, the sworn declarations of Zetas members, Allende police and other city officials, the statements of firefighters and others who witnessed the violence, along with hundreds of pages of forensic reports, crime scene photos and related material.

The Allende Massacre

On the night of March 20, 2011, four firefighters arrived at a ranch along a stretch of rural highway linking the northern Mexico towns of Allende and Villa Unión. Inside the gate, a small building was burning. Members of the criminal group Los Zetas could be seen unloading barrels next to a storage shed near the back of the property. The acrid odor of diesel fuel hung in the air.

Outside the ranch entrance, the firefighters spotted officers and vehicles from the Allende police department. Among them were the director, Roberto Guadalupe Treviño, shift commander María Guadalupe Ávalos, known as “La Lupe,” and officer Bertha Rosario Téllez Vega, known as “La Chayo.”

A fire department volunteer described the scene as they approached.

From the road you could see smoke coming from inside the ranch. We continued to advance until we reached the ranch, where I saw that there were a number of blue and white municipal police patrol cars and several police officers … And these police, it’s like they were guarding the place.

Declaration of Allende volunteer firefighter, December 17, 2014

Peering through the gates, the firefighters saw members of the Los Zetas criminal group berating and beating members of the Garza family, who owned the ranch, along with several of their employees. They watched as gang members led their victims into a larger shed near the back.

“And how the Zetas were shouting at them and hitting and mistreating them,” the then-chief of the department told investigators in his 2014 statement to state prosecutors. Three and a half years later, what stood out to these firefighters was the conspicuous police presence, the brutal treatment of the captives, and the threats directed at them by Zetas members.

When the Zetas realized that we were there, they said to us, “You’d better get the hell out of here, motherfuckers! Or do you want the same thing to happen to you or to your families?” Declaration of Allende fire chief, December 17, 2014

Ten years ago, the Mexican municipality of Allende was the site of one of the worst human rights atrocities ever seen in the country: a three-day rampage that punctuated a larger wave of violence in which the Los Zetas criminal group kidnapped, murdered, and later burned the bodies of as many as 300 victims, many of them from Allende but also from nearby towns like Villa Unión and Piedras Negras, a city 35 miles to the north that lies just across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.

In a country where murders and disappearances are troublingly common, the scale and the horrific details of the Allende massacre case still stand out. No one is sure exactly how many were killed, and the methods used by the Zetas to dispose of the bodies—incinerating them in barrels of gasoline and diesel fuel—make it unlikely that there will ever be a definitive count of victims.

Despite the unimaginable death toll and visible trail of destruction, for several years the case was largely ignored by federal, state, and local authorities. Ten years later, the case has wide-ranging implications after investigative reporting in the U.S. and Mexico have linked the massacre to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and top Mexican security institutions.

The National Security Archive marks this grim anniversary by publishing an evidentiary history of the Allende massacre focusing on key documents and testimony from a 4,000-page dossier of investigative records compiled by Mexican prosecutors in the state of Coahuila.

Mexican Federal Police collect ashes, bone fragments and other bits of evidence from the Garza Ranch on January 28, 2014 (Source: Document 40: Field Criminology Opinion Report, January 28, 2014).

Witnesses describe in graphic detail how Los Zetas undermined and criminalized the public security forces of Allende, and how the latter routinely participated in kidnappings, murders, and other crimes on behalf of the group. Several said the police director ordered that officers should “not do anything or say anything” about the carnage. Another told investigators that the local Los Zetas chief acted “like he was in his own house” during frequent visits to the Allende police station.

The Archive pried open the files using a special provision of Mexico’s access law requiring the release of information relating to human rights violations. The human rights exception applies even to records from an ongoing criminal investigation, the kinds of files normally only accessible through high-profile leaks, such as the Panama Papers, or in piecemeal fashion and after lengthy delays through access to information laws. Mexico’s National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) has since posted the declassified volumes on its website, but they are not easy to find without a direct link.

The tenth anniversary of the Allende killings comes as allegations of narcotics-related corruption among top Mexican officials have brought U.S.-Mexico security ties to their lowest point in many years. The 2020 U.S. arrest of Mexico’s former defense secretary, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, for alleged narcotics ties has led Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to fast-track a new law imposing strict new restrictions on U.S. personnel in Mexico and that threatens to significantly curtail the exchange of intelligence and law enforcement information. More recently, López Obrador signaled his intention to eliminate the autonomous state organ charged with guaranteeing access to human rights documents like these, the National Institute of Access to Public Information and Personal Data (INAI).

Meanwhile, criminal violence continues to soar in Mexico, with the Cartel of the Northeast (CDN), successor to Los Zetas, implicated in some of the worst cases. In January, the bodies of 19 Central American migrants were found in Tamaulipas, a neighboring Mexican border state and the site of hundreds of still largely unexplained migrant murders over the past eleven years. Witnesses said the recent killings came after CDN members entered the town days earlier in search of rival gang members. Prosecutors said at least a dozen specially trained police officials may also have been involved.

Villa Unión, just a 20-minute drive from Allende, has been the site of numerous acts of violence linked to the CDN in recent years. In November 2019, CDN gunmen riddled the city hall with gunfire and engaged in a gun battle with federal forces that left at least 21 dead.

The horrifying persistence of brazen cartel attacks like these is a reminder of how little has changed in Mexico, especially in the border states of Coahuila, Tamaulipas, and Nuevo León. Large swaths of northeastern Mexico have been under the de facto control of drug cartels for more than a decade despite the promises of successive governments to rein in the criminal groups and root out the corrupt officials who have made it all possible. The recent violence is also a reminder that Mexican authorities have largely failed to protect the country’s civilian population from historically high levels of violence or to alleviate the effects of an ever-deepening security crisis.

Bone fragments found among the burned out ruins of the Garza Ranch, January 28, 2014 (Source: Document 41: Forensic Anthropology Technical Report, April 11, 2014).

Founded in 2002 as the enforcement arm of the notorious Gulf Cartel, the first members of Los Zetas were recruited from a Mexican special forces group known as GAFE (Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales), members of which were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia. A 2005 FBI evaluation found that the original Zetas had a military-style organizational structure that included “counterintelligence, intelligence and tactical enforcement units.” By 2010, Los Zetas had broken with the Gulf Cartel and independently controlled key narcotics smuggling corridors and strategically located cities in northeastern Mexico near the U.S. border. In towns like Allende, Los Zetas relied mainly on local recruits and corrupt officials to protect their narcotics operations, shake down local businesses, and keep watch for rival gangs and other threats.

In June 2019, more than eight years after the fact, President López Obrador apologized for the Mexican government’s ineffective response to the assault on Allende, pinning most of the blame on narcotraffickers but also recommitting his government to implementing the March 2018 CNDH recommendations, which included punishing government agents who facilitated or failed to react to the violence. But the initial three-year delay in starting the investigation has complicated the pursuit of justice for the massacre. To date, prosecutors have managed only a handful of convictions in a case that involves dozens of crime scenes, hundreds of victims, and the documented participation of numerous Zetas and public officials.

The newly released files on Allende, including evidence gathered in the weeks and months immediately following the massacre, show just how inadequate these investigations have been. The collection of testimonies found in the files of Coahuila state prosecutors depict a town almost completely beholden to the criminal group—from the mayor’s office to top police commanders to ordinary cops on the street. Among the evidence are the first complaints filed by the loved ones of those who went missing, the sworn declarations of Zetas members, Allende police and other city officials, the statements of firefighters and others who witnessed the violence, along with hundreds of pages of forensic reports, crime scene photos and related material.\

Only a handful the Allende massacre victims actually had ties to the Zetas—running drugs across the border or, according to some witness accounts, laundering drug money. Hit especially hard was the extended family of José Luis Garza Gaytán (also known as “Junior” and “El Wichin”). Garza Gaytán was a member of a Los Zetas cell led by Mario Alfonso “Poncho” Cuellar, a former Mexican federal police officer. The targets included the families of Junior’s father, José Luis Garza y Garza, and his uncles Víctor, Rodolfo, and Sergio. Much of the worst violence occurred at a pair of ranches owned by the Garza family and located outside of the city center along the highway.

Some of those interviewed during the investigation said the rampage started as an act of revenge by top Zetas leaders against Cuellar, Junior, and other deputies, who they accused of pocketing millions of dollars in stolen drug money.

But a 2017 investigation by Ginger Thompson of ProPublica found that Cuellar and Junior were targeted for another reason: Los Zetas leaders had discovered that members of Cuellar’s cell were cooperating with agents of the DEA and had provided them with secret PIN codes allowing the DEA to track the mobile phones of top Zetas leaders. Thompson later turned the original report into a multi-episode podcast.

According to Thompson’s reporting, “[t]he wave of killings was unleashed” after DEA agents shared the PIN codes with a specially vetted Mexican Federal Police (MFP) group known as the Sensitive Investigative Unit (SIU), which had a “record of leaking information to violent and powerful drug traffickers.”

That report was followed by the 2018 conviction in U.S. federal court of the longtime head of the SIU, Iván Reyes Arzate, who prosecutors say conspired with some of the very drug cartels he was to pursue as director of the specially trained, U.S.-funded intelligence unit. The U.S. filed additional charges against Reyes in January 2020. One U.S. law enforcement official said that “[Reyes] Arzate’s corruption as the highest-ranking officer in the MFP’s Sensitive Investigative Unit allowed violent cartels to continue the flow of drugs through the region without consequence.”

Thompson’s reporting and the U.S. investigations strongly suggest that the former SIU chief may have been part of a criminal conspiracy that sparked the Allende massacre. Prosecutors say that Reyes took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from the cartels during his 13-year career at the SIU, including large payments from the Sinaloa and Beltran-Leyva cartels, among others. In exchange, Reyes passed DEA intelligence to the criminal groups, including, in at least one case, “sensitive information about a pending DEA investigation.” In 2020, a U.S. court also indicted Reyes Arzate’s boss, former public security minister Genaro García Luna, for taking tens of millions of dollars in bribes from Sinaloa Cartel chief Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Prosecutors say they have “presumptively related” the Reyes and García cases.

Diego Osorno, a reporter from the newspaper Milenio, has examined various new sources of evidence related to the Allende case in a series of recent articles. One installment revealed that officials from the Mexican Army and the top civilian intelligence agency (CISEN) within days knew key details about the massacre, including that Poncho Cuellar had fled to the U.S. with a stash of cartel money and was talking to the DEA.

Leaving aside the role of the DEA and the wider implications of the case, today’s posting focuses on the most revealing documents among the facts-on-the-ground evidence gathered by the state of Coahuila. The collection is at once a narrow and graphic examination of the events of March 18-20 and a broader look at the combination of bribery, intimidation, and ruthless violence used by Los Zetas (and now, CDN) to turn local security forces into instruments of their criminal operations.

Mexican Federal Police document bits of teeth recovered at the Garza Ranch, January 28, 2014 (Source: Document 41: Forensic Anthropology Technical Report, April 11, 2014).

*****

The attack at Allende began on the night of March 18, 2011, when the Zetas and their collaborators launched a coordinated three-day sweep through the town, situated only about 25 miles from the U.S. border. As many as 40 houses and seven ranches were sacked and burned, according to a March 2018 CNDH report, the inhabitants beaten and dragged away—kidnapped in broad daylight. Others were simply picked up off the street.

José Alfredo Jiménez was one of the first of the Zetas to arrive at Luis Garza’s ranch that night. Known as “El Pájaro” (“The Bird”), Jiménez was hired by the Zetas in the summer of 2010 as a “halcón” (“hawk”) to monitor the movements of rival gangs, state and federal security forces, and anything else that might threaten Los Zetas. The job netted Jiménez about eight thousand pesos ($700 USD) per month, plus expenses.

Jiménez told authorities that local Zetas leaders sent him to the ranch as part of an all-out assault on people and properties associated with the Garza family. The plan, he said, was “to kidnap and kill everyone.” When more Zetas and “various patrols of the municipal police” arrived later they “knocked down the main gate” of the Garza ranch by ramming it with a truck, according to Jiménez.

[W]e all went in shooting and tied up all the people that were found inside the ranch. And there were approximately from seven to ten people that we tied up with rats’ tails. It was the case that among them I recognized several, since I knew them, because we were from the same municipality of Allende, Coahuila, where I live.

Declaration of Zetas member José Alfredo Jiménez Aguilar (El Pájaro), June 13, 2014

Germán Zaragoza Sánchez, better known as “El Canelo,” was a top Zetas boss in Allende and managed a group hawks who monitored and reported on the movements of state and federal security forces. Zaragoza said up to 60 Zetas assassins may have participated in the Allende operation, sweeping up people in the surrounding towns and dropping them off at the Garza Ranch.

About five estacas participated, and with [deleted] and [deleted] ten more joined. And each estaca is made up of four assassins, but there were trucks that brought more people in the trailers. People from the town stole the furniture, vehicles, and machinery [from the houses] and sold it for scrap metal.

Declaration of Germán Zaragoza Sánchez (“El Canelo”), April 8, 2014, 10:00am

Most of the victims were later shot and killed, after which the Zetas crudely cremated the bodies, dousing them in gasoline and diesel fuel and burning them overnight until nothing remained but ashes and tiny bone fragments.

Among the first to be rounded up were people connected to El Wichin’s uncle, Rodolfo Garza, who owned a ranch directly adjacent to that of his brother Luis. Family members lost contact with Rodolfo and his daughter, Liliana Garza de la Torre, on the night of March 18. Liliana’s brother, Rodolfo Garza, Jr., last heard from her around six or seven o’clock that evening. His wife, Sarah Angelita Lira, said that Liliana had called “to tell him that their uncle’s ranch was on fire, and that she was leaving the ranch, and that they were closing the gate.”

So my husband left. But a few minutes later he called me saying that neither his father nor his sister were answering … and that there were many trucks and armed men guarding the entrance to the ranch. And he told me to get out of the house and to go to my mom’s house … [W]hen I got to my mom’s house, my husband called again to tell me that things were getting really ugly; that they had broken into my house and stolen our truck.

Complaint of Sarah Angelita Lira, November 11, 2014

Liliana’s husband, Arturo, had also been unable to reach his wife or her parents. Early in the morning on March 19, Arturo called his own mother, Elvira Espinoza, and told her that neither Liliana, who worked for her father’s ranch business, nor her parents were answering their phones. He said that he and Rodolfo Jr., his brother-in-law, were going out to look for them.

Texting with her husband throughout the night, Sarah learned bits and pieces of what he and Arturo were up to.

[H]e was telling me that he wanted to look for the Zetas to see what they were asking for the return of his family. And he was waiting for his brother-in-law … [Later,] he told me that they spent the entire night looking for his family; that he had entered the ranch from the back through an opening, and that he realized that he was alone in the ranch house, and that he was there with the expectation that they were holding his sister and his niece and nephews … all with the last name Espinoza Garza, who on the day of the acts were seven months, three years, and six years of age.

Complaint of Sarah Angelita Lira, November 11, 2014

Many of the victims were ordinary laborers at the Garza properties. Others had nothing whatsoever to do with the Garza family and were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In the latter group was César Alfonso García Ramírez, who had just returned home to Coahuila for a visit from his job in Texas. García’s friend, Everardo Elizondo, worked part-time at Luis Garza’s ranch and also raised fighting cocks. The two had gone to the ranch on March 18 to get medicine for a cockfight that evening.

When they did not return or respond to phone calls, their wives became concerned. Elizondo’s wife, Etelvina Rodríguez, said she soon realized that many of the wives of those who worked at the Garza ranch “were looking for their husbands.”

When García’s wife drove past the Garza ranch the next morning she spotted a group of hooded, armed men inside while Allende police stood watch outside the entrance. Through the gate, she could see what appeared to be bodies piled up next to a burning building.

[W]e passed by the entrance of the ranch where I saw people practically in the street with hoods and black vests who had rifles … [W]e passed by again on the way back to Allende, and through the opening I could see—because from the road you could see all the way to the back—that there were about five or seven trucks, many people with rifles, and I also saw people piled up, like this was where the fire was coming from … [I]t was something big like a bodega. This was at about 7:30 or 8:00 AM on Saturday, March [19], 2011 … Just past the entrance … I could see some Allende municipal police trucks, and beneath these were armed people who I recognized as police.

Complaint of wife of victim César Alfonso García Ramírez, May 23, 2014

The wife of another victim, a heavy machinery mechanic who worked for the Garza family, also went looking for her husband on the morning of the March 19. Passing by the Garza property, she noticed a group of workers gathered there, waiting to be paid. Her brother-in-law, who also worked for the Garzas, arrived later and told her that her husband had been kidnapped.

When he arrived, he told me and the other workers of the ranch to leave; that there had been a ruckus there; that armed, masked people told him to get inside; and that we should not get involved and should leave the ranch. So I left the ranch in my truck and went home, and since that date I don’t know anything about what happened to my husband.

Declaration of wife of heavy machinery mechanic for Rodolfo Garza, July 23, 2014

Rodolfo Sánchez Robles, who worked as a chauffeur and mechanic for the Garza family, seemed to know something was wrong on the day he disappeared. His wife recalled the ominous last moments she spent with her husband on March 18, 2011, the night that he and his friend, Hector Lara, disappeared.

[Rodolfo] came home all covered in grease, ate, and later, as we sat outside smoking a cigarette, he told me, ‘Things are getting to be a real pain in the ass,’ but he didn’t tell me anything else, and we were there for about ten minutes.

He told her to cancel the birthday party they were planning for her the next week. “He told me that we were not up for parties,” she said.

So I went to my friend’s house … who lives only two blocks away to tell her this; but in the few minutes I was with my friend, my daughter [called] to tell me that her father was going on a trip … [S]o I headed home, and when I was about 50 meters away, a white, double-cab, “Tundra” pick-up truck arrived, and I see my husband leave the house with his dirty clothes on. He gets up into the truck and with his hand he says goodbye … leaving his suitcase there at the house because he was supposedly going to come back. But he never came back.

Hours later, his daughter was one of the last people to see him alive.

She told me that around 5:30 in the afternoon … she came across the pick-up truck that came for my husband, and that had been circulating up and down Calle Independencia, and that her father was on board the truck together with about five other people, and that he was in the cabin in the back, in the middle, and that the truck was followed by two black late-model cars, Malibu or Impala, and the three vehicles headed for the mountain; this being the last time they saw my husband.

Complaint of wife of victim Rodolfo Sánchez Robles, November 10, 2014

The next day, the wives of other ranch workers came by the Sánchez Robles house, looking for their missing spouses. “Where did your husband leave my husband?” one asked. “I would ask you the same thing,” she replied. She learned that her husband’s friend, Hector, had also been called away and picked up by the same white truck that came for Rodolfo.

Claudia Sánchez last saw her son, Gerardo Heath, around 9:30 PM on March 18 when he left their home in Piedras Negras to visit a friend who lived down the street.

After about a half an hour, my husband called my son on his cell phone … but he did not answer his phone, which worried us since he always answered.

Complaint of Claudia Sánchez, October 18, 2013

Sánchez soon learned that there had been a number of disappearances around the city that night, and that one of Gerardo’s friends had also gone missing. She spoke by phone to Fernando Purón, the mayor of Piedras Negras who told her that her son was probably just “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He told her the most likely outcome was that Gerardo would be released “because it was a mistake.” Speaking again later that night, around 3:30 AM on March 19, she said the mayor told her that “it hurt him very much, what we were going through, and he hung up. But there was not any kind of response from the police or any other authority.”

Elvira Espinoza and her husband were among the first to inform federal authorities about the violence, telling investigators that she and her husband reported the disappearance of Arturo, Liliana and the three children to the military garrison along Highway 57, just outside of Allende.

On March 20, 2011, my husband … and I went to the Garrison of Kilometer 53 to talk with the military officials and we told them what had happened. And they went to the Ranch but did not find anyone, and told us that they had scoured the place but had not found anyone.

Complaint of Elvira Espinoza, November 4, 2011

Contemporaneous records from the Mexican military, obtained through a separate access-to-information request, confirm that the Army received multiple reports about the ongoing violence in and around Allende. On the afternoon of March 20, a man reported the March 18 disappearance of his wife’s parents and five other family members. An Army unit was sent to “Rancho Garza” to investigate. The soldiers found doors torn off, the building sacked, spent shell casings, dead animals, burned buildings, and a pick-up truck riddled with bullet holes, but no people.

It is not clear why members of the the military unit that examined the ranch did not secure the property or, evidently, take any additional steps to comprehend what was happening in Allende. What is clear is that the failure to do so sealed the fates of an untold number of victims who were murdered at the ranch later that night.

Elvira Espinoza told investigators about the day, about a week later, when she found two of her three missing grandchildren at an orphanage in Piedras Negras. She told ProPublica that, after separating the children from their parents, the kidnappers held them for several days before leaving the two older kids at a park. Mauricio, the infant son of Liliana Álvarez and Arturo Espinoza, was never seen again. The Zetas told the other children he “was too little and cried too much to leave him there with them,” according to Espinoza. She said Andrea, the six-year-old, “blames herself for what happened to him.” No one would tell her anything about the person who left the kids at the orphanage.

Continue reading more testimonies at the National Security Archive.