El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin Read online

  Just after midnight on January 31, 2010, a commando of armed and hooded men drove several trucks into the Villas del Salvárcar neighborhood in Juárez, blocked off the street, and machinegunned several dozen people, most of them teenagers attending a dance party at a small house. Sixteen people died. Government officials, including President Calderón, immediately accused the victims of being gangsters killed by rival gangsters—allegations that were challenged by the mothers of the victims, who as it turned out were mostly athletes and honor students. A few days later, several men who were identified as working for La Linea—enforcers for the Juárez cartel—were arrested and confessed to participating in the massacre, though it seems that they attacked this party by mistake. As usual when the government claims it is solving a crime, those who confessed in front of the media looked to have been severely beaten shortly before they faced the cameras. Asked to comment on this event, the sicario says:Everything is all stirred up and like the saying, “from the turbulent river, the fishermen profit.” It doesn’t matter that they do not know where to find Number 10 [the man said to have ordered the operation], and the people, what do they have except this? Who knows how many more lies this arrested person is going to tell? The pressure is very strong right now because so many innocent people died. There is no longer any respect for anyone. No one is coordinating anything. It just gets worse and worse. But in the end, the police chiefs continue to collect money from whoever comes, not taking into account the damage that they are causing. These people who were arrested are not well-known people. They seem to lack any expertise, and they do not use professional techniques. They are just imitators. I hope that they get them all quickly before they cause more damage.

  The sicario is adamant that despite the explosion of violence and killing that has taken place since his flight across the border several years ago, the flow of drugs continues as before. He says that he knows the deputy of the Carrillo Fuentes organization, who is now in charge of getting drug shipments over the border into the United States. Searching aerial photos on Google Earth, he can identify the drug bodegas (warehouses) that are used on both sides of the line and see that the eighteen-wheeler traffic to and from these facilities continues unimpeded. And the thousands of people killed on the streets in the past three years just don’t matter to the drug-trafficking organizations because these are not the people who generate the money. He thinks that the atmosphere of unrestrained violence acts as a smokescreen for the real business and that the money flow is now better than ever.

  In October 2010, a series of videos appeared online featuring the brother of a former Chihuahua attorney general stating that both he and his sister worked in the upper echelons of the Juárez cartel and that his sister ordered and/or facilitated many of the high-profile killings of police, journalists, politicians, and political activists in Chihuahua in recent years. In the video, the man sits handcuffed, surrounded by men wearing black masks and camouflage and pointing automatic rifles at his head and body. His sister is indignant and claims that the kidnapping and video are the work of state police officers whom she fired for corruption, but she also says that the video appears to have been filmed in a room in the state police headquarters in Juárez; she knows this because she recognizes the painted walls as part of a renovation project she presided over. A few days later, her brother’s body turns up half buried on a ranch in a rural area of the state, and the family refuses to claim him until DNA tests prove his identity.28

  A friend in Juárez who works in a media outlet writes that “there are days when I simply can’t handle the anxiety that something new and very very bad will happen and then, I confess to you, I pray and ask God to take care of all of my family and all those I love. And then . . . that video.... Could there be a better demonstration of the total decomposition of the Mexican political system?”

  A month later, twenty more bodies, including three women and at least one man buried with U.S. identity documents, came out of the ground near the tiny border town of Palomas, Chihuahua. The bodies were taken to the morgue in Juárez, and the government issued an invitation to those with missing relatives to help identify the bodies. These dead could not be counted as the victims of a certain month or year, because no information was released about when they might have been buried. One family from New Mexico went to the morgue in Juárez to identify their missing loved one. When they left the facility, they said that the Mexican Army was involved in his disappearance because a GPS signal located his cell phone at the military headquarters near Palomas.29

  It is a rare person who can tell a clear and true life story. It is even rarer to encounter a person who has lived within the drug world who has such facility with words and the clarity of mind to tell his story. Most participants in this system do not talk about it. No one inside of the system could talk about it and live. The few who leave have a much better chance of survival if they maintain silence.

  Charles Bowden learned of the sicario through a confidential source who had provided him with a hiding place after his escape from the cartel. Another confidential source who had worked in the police and for the cartel knew the sicario’s past, and this person also vouched for his experience. The sicario is not telling his story to accrue accolades or glory—he insists that neither his face nor his voice nor his name can be made known. His words contain no exaggeration or bragging. He never admits to knowing more than he has actually experienced. When he speaks of things he has only heard of, or when he speculates, he takes care to qualify these statements as such. Having never been charged with a crime, he has no reason to bargain with any law enforcement agency. Thus, when we are asked why the sicario has chosen to tell this story, we believe his own explanation: that he speaks from the sense of duty that comes from his conversion to Christianity. He believes that God gave him new life and that he must use it to tell others in the drug world that salvation is possible. He wants to atone for some of his deeds by explaining how the Mexican system really works.

  In a recent conversation, the sicario said to us:I thought long and hard before I talked to Chuck [Bowden], and now he has become my accomplice. I asked God, “Why should I trust him?” I needed to make someone else part of this so that I could be at peace. I asked God to give me a sign, and He did, and I decided that I would trust Chuck with the story of the things that I had done. In the beginning I did not trust him, but I knew where he lived, so that if anything happened to my family, I could find him. It was hard later on to realize I would have to trust another person, the translator, but in order to tell the story the right way, I needed Molly also. I talked to an adviser in my church, but other Christians already know that God can save a sicario. I want the people of the world and especially other sinners to know.

  During this conversation, the sicario also said that being able to talk about his life with us has given him a sense of relief. “These are not things that I can talk about with my wife.” He has thrown a little of the dirt our way. He has involved us, he has wrapped us up in these stories. Through talking to us, he has found a way to share a part of the burden, to not be so alone with his past.30 Regardless of his motivation, it is the sicario’s ability with words that opens the window into an unknown world.

  You may ask, “Why should I believe that God’s salvation is available to a man who has committed such crimes?” I answer that this is his belief, which he is able to explain clearly and completely. He believes that he has been saved by God’s grace and that he is alive because God’s purpose for him is to lead others away from such a life. He has much to atone for, and he is a mere baby in terms of learning to live a Christian life. He begins from nothing and possesses nothing at the end. He believes that the only source of forgiveness is the grace and power of God. And although the sicario knows that God has the power to forgive, he is never absolutely certain that he can be forgiven because of the terrible things that he has done.

  On one occasion, the sicario took Gianfranco Rosi and me to a youth service at a gi
ant church near the border. A converted warehouse on the outskirts of the city, the place was originally built to accommodate eighteen-wheelers loading and unloading the goods of free trade. Hundreds of evaporative coolers churn on the metal roof and blast the space with slightly chilled air. The huge windowless room is now outfitted with several thousand folding chairs, and on this summer afternoon the parking lot fills with cars from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Michigan, Tennessee, South Carolina, Chihuahua, Sonora, and other Mexican states.

  The church is hosting a youth festival, and the sicario is running the lights and sound for a Christian rock concert. Outside the sun bakes blinding white on acres of concrete and corrugated metal, but inside near total darkness precedes the opening chords of the rock band and then an explosion of color and sound. He raises his arms in praise, singing along to the words projected onto a giant screen over the stage. He wanted Gianfranco to film him at his job here and to see this work that he contributes to the church that he credits for his salvation.

  I believe in his conversion and in his commitment to Christianity for another important reason: it is a liability for him to be a Christian. His beliefs now forbid him to kill, yet the people looking for him will kill him on sight, and they will not hesitate to kidnap his family as a way to get to him. His beliefs compel him to tell his story in an effort to save others in the life, and thus he takes much greater risks than if he maintained silence. His beliefs compel him to try to atone for his sins, and he does this through work in his church. As I watched him that afternoon at the concert, I realized that he spends a lot of time here and that he has many friends. And yet every person he knows and every hour he spends in large gatherings and public places puts him at risk. Every word that he spoke to us in those rooms and all of the words recorded in these pages place him in greater danger.

  During the two years we have been working on this project, the sicario has had to curtail some of his public activities, including going to church. As the violence escalates in Juárez, increasing numbers of people have come to live on the U.S. side of the border, including some with ties to criminal organizations. It is only a matter of time before someone recognizes him, and every appearance he makes in public puts him and his family at greater risk. Because of his former jobs, he knows that he is only one mistake away from being the captive rather than the captor. He must hide from the criminals in the world he once inhabited—people just like himself—and his life on this side must remain invisible to any official entity of government, else he will be deported to a certain death.

  On this evening we drive to the sicario’s temporary home. My guide and our host indulge in a bit of gallows humor as we get out of the car, a little something to remind me of the other houses in the story of his life that we are writing: “Ay! Molly, now we are going to kidnap you.” And I moan and they laugh. This truly is a fraternity of holy fools. The sicario carries in his head a rich geography of safe houses and death houses in Mexico where he has kidnapped, tortured, killed, and buried people. He has also held people on the U.S. side of the border and then delivered them to their deaths in Juárez.

  We go inside and meet the sicario’s family. Someone brings me a glass of tap water, and I get to hold the baby for a few minutes. The baby was another character in the drama of the motel room where the sicario told the story: the arrangements were carefully planned to allow him to get to his wife’s side in a matter of minutes should he get a call.

  He once called distraught because the baby could be born at any time and the hospital required a special newborn infant seat for his car or he would not be allowed to drive the baby home and at the moment he did not have the money to buy it. I procured the infant seat from a big-box store and delivered it to him the next day. Later, I saw the baby’s picture, along with a photograph of a bleak highway, dark clouds and a faint rainbow arching over it. And he had written these words:Children are an inheritance from The Lord.

  The fruits of the womb are our reward.

  Whenever our meetings end, whether in a motel room or driving around the city, there is a prayer. This night, it is past ten, and we gather in a circle in the bare room with the computer, a broken table, and an empty refrigerator. The mother holds the baby. I put one arm around her on my right, the other around the man on my left, and the man to his left spreads his large arms over the little group and leads the prayer. The baby squirms and cries a little, and I rub its fuzzy head.

  My guide on this night is a mentor to the sicario, one of the men who counseled him at the beginning of his Christian journey. He is a man whom I trust with my life. He drives me back to my car, very slowly across the entire length of the city. Tonight his usually jovial nature seems darker and sadder than I have known before. We talk about the two cities and the two countries, these lives and their struggles on the line. When I get to my car to continue my drive home, I think of calling and asking him to pray for us all. But I know he will have done that already.

  A NOTE ON THE ORGANIZATION OF THIS BOOK

  In the pages that follow, except for footnotes and some intermittent text in italics, the words were all spoken or written by the sicario. The story begins with a reenactment of the incident that brought the sicario to room 164 at some point in his past. The next long section is the story of his life as he told it for the camera, during one sitting of about four hours. He divided his life into the segments that we have used as chapter titles: “Child,” “Teenager,” “Man,” and “Child of God.” These are his labels.

  On the second day of filming, we began by asking him to explain a few points in more detail. Other than a few scribbled notes that he carried, he spoke without pause, breaking only when Gianfranco Rosi, the documentary director, needed to change cartridges or batteries or angles or some other technical aspect of the filming. For four hours or so, he talked as if he were giving a university lecture on how the Mexican system works. He also reflected on his own behavior and on how drugs and violence became his way of life. He analyzed how he manipulated these aspects of his way of life to engineer his escape from the system. Several other sessions were recorded on a digital voice recorder while we drove around the city with the sicario, listening as he answered questions and reflected on certain aspects of his life. These sections are arranged in the second part of the book as alternating segments of “The System” and “The Life.”

  NOTES

  1 Molly Molloy, “Massacre at CIAD #8 in Juárez,” Narco News Bulletin, August 18, 2008, http://www.narconews.com/Issue54/article3181.html. In 2009 there were more massacres at rehab centers that killed up to twenty people in single attacks. Also, in 2010, there were attacks on parties in private homes in Juárez that resulted in up to sixteen people being killed in multiple separate incidents.

  2 Charles Bowden, Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 183. According to Bowden, this estimate of drug money in El Paso banks came from conversations with local DEA officials in the mid-1990s. See also “U.S. Investigates Money Laundering in El Paso,” Frontera Norte Sur, October 1996, http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/old_1996/oct96/1096laun.html. Frontera Norte Sur cites articles from the El Paso Times and Diario de Juárez.

  3 Karin Brulliard, “In Tale of Millionaire Drug Suspect, Mexicans Judge Government Guilty,” Washington Post, July 29, 2007.

  4 For a snapshot of the Mexican drug trade and government corruption in the mid- to late 1990s, see U.S. House of Representatives Government Reform and Oversight Committee, National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice Subcommittee, statement by Thomas A. Constantine, Administrator, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Department of Justice, in DEA congressional testimony before the hearing regarding cooperation with Mexico, February 25, 1997, http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/cngrtest/ct970225.htm#Effect%20of%20Mexican%20Organized%20Crime%20on%20United%20States. See also Terrence E. Poppa, Druglord: The Life and Death of a Mexican Kingpin, 3rd ed. (El Paso, Texas: Cinco Puntos, 2010)
for a singular account of Pablo Acosta’s control of the plaza in the city of Ojinaga, Chihuahua, in the 1980s—the period preceding the rise of Amado Carrillo and the Juárez cartel.

  5 Robert Draper, “Carrillo’s Crossing,” Texas Monthly 23, no. 12, December 1995.

  6 Phil Gunson, “End of the Line: This Is the Face of Amado Carrillo Fuentes—and It May Have Cost Him His Life,” The Guardian (London), July 17, 1997, p. T2.

  7 Carlos Fazio, “Mexico: The Narco General Case,” Transnational Institute, December 1997, http://www.tni.org/article/mexico-narco-general-case. Another Wikileaks cable surfaced in the Mexican and international press in February 2011 with the title: “Mexican Army Major Arrested for Assisting Drug Trafficking Organizations.” The cable was written by U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza and is dated January 20, 2009. It mentions the arrest in December 2008 of Mexican Army Major Arturo Gonzalez Rodriguez, a member of President Calderon’s protective service, for his links to drug traffickers. The cable also indicates that narco-trafficking organizations obtained access to President Calderon’s medical records. See http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2011/02/21/en-manos-de-carteles-del-narco-datos-confidenciales-de-felipe-calderon and http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=387742&CategoryId=14091. The full text of the cable is available here: http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/01/09MEXICO133.html.