FlashBack Friday: Comando Zeta Responsible For The Disappearance Of Women

 "Char" for Borderland Beat 

This article was translated and reposted from Vanguardia | MX 

30 AUGUST 2016

They were invited to a dance and from there they disappeared.

Piedras Negras. At the time of the disappearances, whoever was in charge here wiped out dozens of young girls between 17 and 22 years of age out of pure hatred, without anyone seeing anything, without anyone hearing anything. And worst of all: without anyone denouncing anything. It was during the second week of October 2012, when Comandante Enano, head of the criminal group Los Zetas, feeling betrayed by a group of girls who accompanied him to the most intimate parties, invited them to a meeting in the municipality of Allende, considered the "kitchen" of the Cinco Manantiales region, an area mourned by the disappearance of hundreds of people.

Nobody knew anything about it, because nothing happens in Coahuila. In this border, events took place that are difficult to explain, if violent death and kidnapping have any coherent explanation.

Lorena, a girl now 25 years old, remembers well the footsteps of David Alejandro Loreto Mejorado, Comandante Enano, or El Diablo. A handsome and wild little man; cool with his friends and a devil with his enemies.

He knew him since he was a teenager in the Mundo Nuevo neighborhood, better known as San Judas, because of the church of the Saint that fills the inhabitants with faith, accustomed to living with the narco in their streets, in their homes.

David Alejandro was thirteen years old when he studied at the Francisco I. Madero high school, by then he was already nicknamed El Enano (The Dwarf). He was respected among the youths because he washed the cars of Celso Martínez, El Celso, a neighborhood capo who later belonged to Los Zetas, becoming, together with Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Díaz, Alfa Metro, the leaders of the border strip of Coahuila.

This boy, who dressed well and combed his hair with a lot of elastic, rose high in the criminal structure left vacant by El Celso after his capture in 2012.

  

- He was very quiet, or discreet. I don't know how he rose so high. He got everyone in the San Judas gang to work with the gang: as hawks, collectors or hitmen.

El Enano was two years older. It was a long time before their paths crossed because Lorena moved to live in another city.

When she returned to Piedras, walked and walked the streets of her dusty San Judas, she found the boy who washed other people's cars driving a new car, not at all opulent. He had three escorts with him: He looked a lot more cocky, he confided. The Dwarf asked: "Don't you remember me anymore?

- He asked me to work with him, who was with La Gente. He gave me 5000 pesos in cash. He told me that he gained strength because Celso recommended him to El 42 (Omar Treviño Morales).

Lorena refused. On several occasions she was invited to parties that Comandante Enano organized in a house in Colonia Cumbres, the last one, of which several young girls disappeared, was apparently at a ranch in Allende.

- There was a lot of pot, soda, whiskey. That little group were the most popular in Piedras. There were three from Rosita.

She may have gone to one or two parties, although she doesn't say for sure. She has straight hair and brown skin; she is as skinny as a bird, flirtatious and seductive when she talks and smiles.

- They started dating at the same time with soldiers and GATE'S (elite State Police). Already drunk, they threatened each other. It was the power that blinded them. Once El Enano found messages on the cell phone of one of them where she was talking with soldiers, that's why they disappeared.

Monica, 20 years old

Nobody knows anything about Monica Larissa Pena Ramos, who lived downtown with a friend and had a wild beauty: cinnamon skin, black hair and bright eyes.

She and her friends were nicknamed Monica's Group, all in their twenties, beautiful and fragile as a piece of paper.

The last time they saw her, she asked her relatives to accompany her to buy a costume to celebrate Halloween.

And a nightmare became life all around.

It was October 2012.

The heat was not as cruel as it usually is for much of the year. The city was crumbling with bullets.

- We didn't see her anymore. We couldn't find her. They were taking a lot of people away then. We are afraid they will take revenge if we say anything.

 

Monica went to high school, 20 years old. She was popular at parties and discos, and when she arrived with her friends they were the center of attention. The daughter of a single mother, her father sent money from the United States. She never lacked for anything.

Where Los Zetas operate, it is necessary to be discreet, perhaps that is why no one would suspect two people talking while sitting on the stairs of a shopping mall, outside a pizzeria, drawing the cruelty of men and women who kill and disappear other men and women for revenge.

- The problem is that there are clandestine graves. One is hopeful, but it is a long time, people know a lot about what happened. There is fear, you don't know who you are talking to.

Regarding the disappearance of Monica Larissa, Familias Unidas AC, has documented her case, of which a complaint was filed with the State Attorney General's Office, but no progress has been made, because nobody, they say, has seen anything.

Atzy Adamary, 22 years old

That afternoon in Villa Union, located 19 kilometers from Allende, no one knew how to explain anything about the recent model pickup trucks that apparently were guarding the first march in that municipality of Familias Unidas AC. The third since they were formed.

Perhaps because it was a Sunday at the beginning of September with the sun covering everything, but no local media showed up to document it.

Nor did they document the families disintegrated by the forced disappearance of their members.

Because it was the time of fear, when reporters, editors and media directors were kidnapped and tortured. Last year alone, the organization Article 19 documented 14 attacks on the media in Coahuila, out of the 39 registered in Mexico.

Fear. Death. Revenge. Suffering in nothingness.

And so, with that fear, about 30 people marched, humming Christian songs like Yo te extrañaré and Vuelve a casa.

Olga Lidia Saucedo García, representative of the municipality of Allende for Familias Unidas, told that she began to know about the violence from the disappearance of her daughter Atzy Adamary, in the early morning of December 18, 2012.

She has heard little about the mass disappearance of young girls in Piedras Negras.

- People tell me that the violence was there before, I began to realize it when my daughter disappeared. I noticed that there was evil here. Many people don't want to get close to you anymore because they think you are in danger.

  

Olga Lidia smiles at her grandchildren, at everyone. She tries to hide how humid the early morning was when Atzy Adamary Reina Saucedo went to a meeting at her father's house in the company of Alfredo Ruiz, her husband, and their children: a newborn and a two-year-old girl.

Atzy was 22 years old, he was 30, working for a dairy company. If it hadn't rained so much that night, and it hadn't been so cold, the little ones would have disappeared.

- At four o'clock in the morning my son-in-law received a call, telling him to go to his mother's house because she was sick, since it was raining and cold, they didn't want to take my granddaughters out. They took 10 people from his family, plus my daughter and him.

In the morning, Olga Lidia's ex-husband dialed saying that Atzy Adamary had been "lifted", to go pick up her grandchildren.

- It was an unusual word for me. I couldn't figure out what he meant. Things were already very strong, I didn't really know what it meant. Since then I don't know anything. On October 31, my daughter would be 25 years old.

Lluvia, 21 years old

Those who knew Lluvia Marisol Rodriguez Ruiz, then 21 years old, think that there will come a day when we will have to pay for everything we do, but she, a young mother, did not have to leave Piedras Negras just like that.

Her memory now dwells in nothingness, in a pile of papers in a state agency, where her relatives recently went to report her disappearance, which occurred in October 2012.

It was a Monday when Lluvia dialed home in Colonia Bravo asking for a bottle of whiskey, she sounded upset, as if someone was forcing her to talk.

On Wednesday a call came in on the cell phone of one of her relatives. They were worried about her, without any clue.

- I'm going to tell you the truth. Lluvia was given an apartment along with 20 other girls. They were invited to a party with trickery. So they wouldn't look for them.

That's all they knew. Which is equal to nothing.

Lluvia lived with her boyfriend and her six-year-old son, in fact she was a close friend of Monica Larissa Pena. The oldest of seven siblings, she had tattoos of stars on her ankle and Santa Muerte on her back.

It is complicated that in such a colony they talk about Lluvia. It is not easy to remember.

- Many times we don't want to talk, there are many people related to them. You become aware of what happens because of the people, that's how we became aware of all the women who disappeared during those years. They said that one of them was against the (Gulf Cartel), another one had contact with the Federales. In the meetings they took away their phones.

The heir of La Roca (Piedras)

The problem in this region is that nobody saw anything. And when there is nothing, nothing happens. One of these unnamed judicial sources said that practically the entire municipal police force was involved with the narco. Between 2012 and 2013, more than 400 state and municipal police officers were dismissed in Coahuila for failing to pass the control and confidence tests applied by the Public Security Secretariat.

- They were all cooks. Here comes all the filth that goes to the United States. All the policemen were cooks. Many people were burned alive.

With experience in the security area, he said that around 40 vehicles pass through the region every day on their way to the interior of the country, which enter through gaps to avoid customs.

This was the territory inherited by David Alejandro Loreto, Comandante Enano, a territory that first belonged to Los Texas, then to the Gulf Cartel and then to Los Zetas.

  

On youtube there are gangsta rap songs dedicated to Comandante Enano, two of them tell part of his life, and act: "When he goes out on the street he always goes out entrusted to San Judas Tadeo and surrounded by hitmen... The rock is his place, the government has not been able to, he knows how to give the order, he carries goat horn. He carries a knife to slit the heads of the GATE'S, the ugly ones and the Navy... He carries a knife to slit heads.

Following the reorganization of the cartel and the expansion of its strategy, Comandante Enano took over the city of Zacatecas and was shot by soldiers in the early hours of May 3, 2013, as he was driving down Paseo del Mineral Avenue in his Cheyenne pickup truck with Tamaulipas license plates.

Titina and Claudia, 23 and 26 years old.

A month after Comandante Enano's death, sisters María Cristina and Claudia Bustos Vázquez, 23 and 26 years old, disappeared in Nueva Rosita (an hour from Piedras Negras) at about 5:00 a.m. in the morning. And nobody, for a change, saw anything.

They had left a discotheque after celebrating Father's Day with their mother María Alejandra Vázquez Maltos, Candy, a 42-year-old woman who knew the night working as a bartender, was father and mother at the same time.

Candy knew about the dangers of the dark, that's why she had warned Maria Cristina, Titina, not to trust the night: much less Los Zetas.

- We met one of the old Comandantes when I worked in the cantinas. I told him: I'm going to take you from here to somewhere else. The problem was that he talked a lot with the soldiers, he liked them. She said that just because she liked the soldiers, she wasn't going to point a finger (point them out to the authorities) at those güeyes (Zetas).

Titina responded:

- I see them all the time, they don't do anything to me.

And in her desperation as a mother, Candy explained.

- No daughter, it's just that they are just looking for you to hunt you down. They are going to hunt you. They disappear at the least expected moment.

It was the night of June 15, Father's Day, when Candy and her children María Cristina, Claudia and Omar decided to go to celebrate at the Obsesión cantina, on Reforma Street in the center of the city. It was 3:00 a.m. and they returned home.

But Claudia called a friend to continue the party at the Mangus discotheque, the friend explained that he would only take her in the car, but would not stay: it was a place where old men went, he said.

Omar was the one who interceded so that the girls would be allowed to go: "Let them go, mother. I will take care of them, he promised.

In the wee hours of the morning, Candy texted Claudia's cell phone. Maria Cristina had forgotten hers at home.

- Tell Titina to come over because the baby (newborn) wants to breastfeed. One of them answered that just a little while longer. It was 04:00 in the morning. It was the last message from that cell phone whose trace disappeared.

Four hours later Claudia's cell phone rang. A missed call, an alarm, a message. She doesn't remember, only that it was a sound.

- I jumped in fear. I said: My daughters have not arrived, where are my sons? The first thing that came to my mind was: They already killed my children.

Candy phoned Omar, Claudia, she searched in the company of a family friend for traces in hospitals, in the police; she walked through the bush, through the plain. And nothing.

Omar answered very late; he was recovering from a hangover. He said that his sisters had gone out to take a cab, then returned to the disco to call because there were no cars coming to pick them up. He had stayed at the club with a girl.

From then on, everything was nothing.

- No one knows who picked them up, no one saw anything. Nobody talks, they are afraid. I'm not looking for culprits right now. I want to know where they left them.

Sleepless, anguished. That Sunday Candy went to the judicial authorities, then to the Municipal Police, then she reported the events to the State Attorney General's Office. She put up posters; she went to the radio stations. Once, walking down the street, a woman approached him. She told him in a supportive voice: "I also have a missing daughter.

And she disappeared. He never heard from the woman again.

The partner he had at the time, with whom he had been with for four years, decided to leave for good because of a phone call he received.

- The old people threatened me, they called him and told him: You know what, tell your fucking old lady to shut the fuck up, because wherever we see her we're going to pick her up with you.

Titina left a four year old child who lives with Candy; Claudia left two children, eight and four years old, who are with their father.

  

They both worked as workers in a maquiladora, they studied up to high school. Candy only thinks about taking care of little Eliud Noé, although, she says, she will not give up the fight, despite the risks.

- I am not afraid. What more harm can they do to me if they have already taken two pieces of my life from me? The day they catch me, one of them won't go free, because first I'll take out his eyes! 

 

SOURCE: VANGUARDIA|MX