El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin Page 9

  Many stolen vehicles are kept at the safe houses. If the garage will hold ten cars, then that’s how many will be kept there. These cars are used to transport executed people and to transport drugs. All of these cars are stolen. When we do a job, these cars will often get wrecked and have to be disposed of.

  All of the people working within these organizations have received training in the use of tactical security equipment in the academy—military boots and uniforms, military berets, masks, gloves. They have all been trained to use AK-47s, the guns known as cuerno de chivo, or goat’s horns, and also AR-15 rifles. The crews also use Gals [an Israeli weapon], Barretts [powerful weapons designed to penetrate armored vehicles], and other rifles that are only issued to the military.

  One brings all of this training from the academy. The narcos have already bought and paid for many other people just like me to get this training from the time we enter the police academy. The narcos are simply harvesting the crops that they have planted. And just like me, once the person is determined to no longer be useful to the organization, he will be killed.

  The time comes when these teams are so well trained . . . here, let me explain it a little better. A team or a cell is composed of fifty elements. Of these fifty elements, twenty of them are assigned to guard and transport the drugs. Twenty are dedicated to kidnapping and executing people. And ten are assigned to provide personal security for the person who is in command of the cell.

  How many cells are working in the city? In recent years, there have been around . . . well, let’s say, for instance, you are talking about the really big guys.... For example, “El Chapo”f might have five cells working in Ciudad Juárez in this manner. Don Vicente, g since he is the head of the plaza, he might have twenty cells working here. And other groups, not members of either of these big cartels, might have a few cells operating here also. Between all of these cells, there is—or there was—an operating agreement. The problem intensified when the personnel of the various cells began to fight among themselves.

  One of the most important things that I experienced as a part of this was ...He draws a diagram of the cell structure he was part of at that time.

  ... Let’s say there were four cells. I was participating in one of these cells, and the cell communicated very well with those here in number four, for example. So that the ten elements of this one and the other one worked hand in hand and could ask for help from each other. But these other ten guys in a different cell were behaving really badly: They were drinking too much, raping women, abusing people, opening up and selling drugs retail, and that was not permitted. So what happened?

  It is not as if we had any say-so in this, rather, the orders came from above. They called a meeting together of the cell that was causing trouble. When these people arrived at the meeting they were disarmed, captured, handcuffed, and they were all executed. But it is a really serious problem to transport ten dead men. They will not fit in just any ordinary vehicle. So they used a closed van, escorted by ministerial and municipal police, to take the ten bodies to the place where they would be buried.

  But the dead are not always buried.

  I remember a very well known and much talked about case. The order, the direct order, came from a guy who was known as “El Cora.” The order was to kill a doctor, Victor Manuel Oropeza. This doctor was also a columnist who wrote for a newspaper in Juárez. The question was: Who was going to do this job? It was going to be difficult to murder someone who was important and who was a renowned journalist in Juárez.

  For this reason, none of the cells that were operating at this time in the city wanted to get mixed up in this case. There was, however, a group of five people under the direction of El Cora who dedicated themselves exclusively to executing people in the street. This group took on the order. They made a plan, carried it out, and executed the doctor in his office.

  But as is well known, and it has been publicized many times, things did not turn out well. They should have made the murder look like it was the result of a robbery. But because they were not very well prepared, they forgot to take his wallet. They took some money, but then they dropped it and left it there at the scene.

  This case was very important. It was a turning point, a key moment, when El Cora came from Sinaloa to Chihuahua to execute people. After this incident that drew so much bad publicity, El Cora and his group began to be stripped of their power. And these were persons of confidence. The murder of the doctor ultimately opened the way for “El Señor de los Cielos,” “The Lord of the Skies” [Amado Carrillo, who became the head of the Juárez cartel], to take control of the Juárez plaza.

  A little more about El Cora—this was the nickname of a person, “El Cora de Sinaloa.” Before the time of El Señor de los Cielos, El Cora commanded a group, together with an army lieutenant, that executed people for the cartel. He moved around all over Sinaloa, Durango, Torreón [a city in the state of Coahuila], Chihuahua, and Sonora. As I understand it, he worked well in all of those states. He was not military, but he had ranking military officers working with him. It was a specialized and professional group that conducted executions. They would arrive at a plaza, carry out their orders to execute someone, and leave. This was their exclusive job—they were specialists. It was not their habit to leave bodies in the street or kill families or carry out gun battles in the streets. At that time [in the late 1980s and early 1990s], El Cora was a person of intelligence. He was aware of the situation. He did not touch women or children. If he was ordered to kill someone, he would do the job and the person would never be heard from again, he would be disappeared, buried.

  But at the time of the botched-up murder of Dr. Oropeza, all of the power that El Cora had was being taken away. He could no longer control things here on the border. As different cells began to accumulate more power, each cell began to take on the job of passing drugs into the United States separately. After this, the different groups started looking for easier ways to get drugs into the United States, and this caused new problems. A lot of drug shipments began to be lost. And so a rivalry developed among these five different groups, and they began to fight over the control of the plaza.In another interview not recorded on tape, the sicario revealed more about this incident. It was important to him because it happened near the beginning of his career in the state police, and El Cora’s men had provided some of his training. Because of the prominence of the victim and the publicity at the time, the government mounted an investigation into the murder that led nowhere. In his last columns, Dr. Oropeza had traced the involvement of some police officials with the drug-trafficking organization in the city. The same police officials responsible for investigating the murder were the most likely suspects in the crime. This was covered in both the Mexican and international press at the time, but the sicario knows the details—because he had been called upon to help shelter a comrade in the state police who was one of those involved in the murder.

  That’s when the team—let’s call it the tactical team—that I belonged to began to act. Why do I call it a tactical team? Because it was a team that had knowledge of weapons. We had the skill and dexterity to move all over the city. We knew how to act like police, because we were the police. We knew the schedules of each and every one of the targets because we were constantly investigating them. We had safe houses with machines to gather and record cell-phone calls, including the text messages sent via cell phones—these were all captured and registered.

  Every cell had a predetermined number. This one began 229, another 221, 223, 224. . . . And we did not buy the cell phones that we used, they were given to us by the bosses. One was for communicating with family. One was for work. Another was for when the boss needed to talk to us. At my level, at this time, I would have up to eight cell phones. I needed to have direct communication with public security—municipal police, state judicial police, federal judicial police, ministerial police who came from other states, and the special police.

  When this problem started,h w
hen they sent the tactical group in to control what was getting out of control, they put together a team that included a sergeant from public security and about forty people. We added another fifty people. It was now a team of ninety men, trained by the military. They knew how to use weapons, defense techniques, how to drive vehicles in chases, how to capture phone calls. They knew systems of interrogation, and they had safe houses all over the city. It was a team of ninety trained men, with the objective of destroying five or six people.i They proved very difficult to get rid of.

  This team stayed together for some time, and it was responsible for taking out several high-level commanders of public security. We removed commanders of the state judicial police. At that time, this team was very very good. I remember once they sent a commander from the federal preventive police to Juárez. He drove an armored Jeep Cherokee. The problem was that this person did not want to come to an agreement with the narco-trafficking organizations. And so, to make him understand how strong this team was, to convince him that his armored Jeep would not function as his security bubble, this vehicle was stolen from outside of the official installations, taken to a park, and burned. Up until this time, this commander had not thought of himself as vulnerable. He thought he was untouchable. But now he understood that there was a really strong organization, that it was very well established, that it had effective strategies, and that its members were corrupt. Therefore, he would need to agree to what he was being asked to do.

  After all of this time, after we had managed to arrange things with these first elements of the federal preventive police who had arrived in the state of Chihuahua, what happened next? The narco-trafficking organizations began to control the plaza again, reestablishing some order from the disorder that had occurred. But because now these people—these ninety elements that had been put together—were controlling alcohol, drugs, and other products that were consumed, this group began to be cleaned up. First they formed a group of thirty, and then a group of only fifteen. Of the original ninety, we were reduced to thirty and then to fifteen. What happened to all of the others? I never knew.j

  It was very easy for me at this time to be working in Juárez, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, or Durango. All we had to do was arrive at an airport, get on a plane, and go. It was not a problem. Arms and cash were also transported by private planes. In the airport, everything was arranged such that the private flights—small Cessnas—were taken care of in all of the airports by elements of the army. The commercial flights were taken care of by the federal preventive police, and everything was arranged for us. What could not be brought onto the commercial flight due to metal detectors—weapons, or some small amount of drugs, or more than $10,000 or $100,000 cash—was put into a briefcase and delivered to us once we were on the plane.

  So, where is this going? This group of fifteen had to travel to Sinaloa, Sonora, Durango, and Chihuahua, where a pact was in force not to touch certain people. This was a pact that had been made with the governor. But we would travel to these states to find people who owed money, and our job was to execute them. When our group was sent, it was not to see if the job would or could be done. Once this group was sent to do a job, it would be completed or else. We knew what we had to do. One of the obligations of this group was that if one of its members was killed or injured, he could not be left behind. In this elite group, the fifteen of us who remained, if one of us fell while carrying out a job, he would have to be recovered and brought out. No one could be left behind.

  Unfortunately, I realized . . . it was probably due to the drugs I was taking, from the way I was living ... I had the feeling that I was untouchable. If anyone looked at me the wrong way, I would confront them: “Hey, what do you want?” And I would just take out my pistol and shoot.... But I never had total confidence that if one day I were injured, I never knew for sure that one of my team would take me out with them. I figured it was more likely that they would just take me away and kill me, so as not to leave any loose ends. Looking back now at what has happened to this team of fifteen, I think eight are still alive. Of these eight, I think there are five now working in a team. Of the other three, I don’t know. I do not know what happened to them.

  How did I get to the point where I no longer felt any scruples for the people that I killed? I had come to a point in my career and in my life when I was getting paid so much money. This moment comes when they tell you, “We are going to give you $5,000 per month as a salary.” But there are some people who are very heavy, very important, and they have a lot of security around them. So then the boss comes back and says, “Let’s make a deal. Get rid of this person and we will pay you $45,000. Get your team together and take care of it.”

  Good.

  At some point, when you have all the training, the skills, and the experience, you can do these jobs with no more than four people. But when you are working with a team of only four, none of them can have any fear. If even one of the team is afraid, then the job will fail. When someone is afraid, nerves fail, and the job cannot be carried out. On more than two occasions, we had to cancel a job because of one person who lost his nerve and could not be counted on.

  What did we do to be sure, to prepare for the job? First of all, we hardly slept and we took a lot of drugs. We would go for several whole days drinking and taking drugs. Suddenly we get a call. “The person that you are looking for is eating in a certain restaurant.” Okay.

  So we go, the four of us in two cars, with a third car following in case something goes wrong. One person gets out, another guards the door, and the others look out for the police and for the getaway. What do we want to do with the guy now? This determines what our options are. The first option: confront him and execute him.He bangs five times on the table, as if to make the sound of gunshots.

  That is one option. Another possibility is that we will have to interrogate him, in which case we need to take him alive. And if we were ordered to take him alive, we would have to take him alive. And there was yet another option: grab him, beat him up, torture him, but not kill him.

  The most difficult thing to understand—and one of the most difficult orders to carry out—is that sometimes, when you are in a safe house with a person who is really beaten up and the grave is already dug, then you get the call not to kill him. “Don’t let him die.”

  I remember that on some occasions it happened that they sent us to kidnap someone. Not to execute him, but just to pick him up and to kill him later. So what did we do? We picked the guy up, brought him to a secure location, and then began the work of executing him. When all of a sudden the phone rings. “Wait, wait, it’s the boss. . . .”

  “Yes, sir. What are your orders, sir? Yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir. ... Yes, yes, yes, sir.”

  “Stop! Stop!”

  The order on this occasion was to revive the person when he was already at the point of death, right on the edge, just seconds away from asphyxiation. We had to revive him, shake him.

  “Revive him.”

  “It’s not possible. Sir, we need a doctor, we cannot get him up, the work was very advanced, sir. Yes, sir.”

  For the narcos, there are no limits.

  In just a few minutes a doctor arrived—not an ambulance, of course, but a qualified doctor. The doctor revived the person and left him there with us in stable condition. And we took charge again.

  Five, ten, fifteen, even thirty days can go by, and it is no problem, because our job was just to keep the person alive. That is what we were there for—to watch over and guard him, to keep him alive until we received another call.

  When this happens, it is a liberation, for us as well as for him.

  “Yes, sir, what are your orders? We are here, sir, waiting. No, no, he is fine. He’s eating. What is he eating? Ha! No, no, he is okay . . . gaining strength. Ah, ah. Okay, sir, as you wish.”

  This time, our friend was not so lucky. It could be that his family had already paid. It could be that to keep him alive was just to be safe, for insurance, or perhap
s he was needed alive for a time, to talk to the family.... But the work and the order that followed after the call was: Do away with him. Finish him off.

  Now, after he had already been saved once at the point of being strangled to death, this time there was no turning back. This time there was no second call. This time we had to pull the string, and pull it hard.

  The sicario begins to describe the ways of torturing people to get information, and he draws in the notebook as he speaks.

  Now, there are various ways of killing these people. And none of them are very agreeable. The easiest is just to shoot them. But almost none of the bosses wants them to die quickly or easily. So what do you do? Suffocate them, make them suffer, take out their fingernails one by one, put needles under their fingernails. There are techniques to make them talk.

  Here is the body, for example. You soak the clothes with water and then connect ten-caliber cables from the body to the electrical outlet so that it will withstand the voltage from the electricity . . . these cables are attached to their big toes. And you connect this to the electrical power. After two applications of this for ten seconds each, the person will tell you whatever you want, whatever you want. There were some who were very strong who could withstand this. So, for them, there is another technique.

  The person is lying down completely naked. We cover the body with a sheet, sprinkle gasoline or alcohol onto the sheet, and when it is soaked, light it with a match. As the fuel burns, it removes up to three layers of skin from their bodies. Their backs would be left completely raw. We might use a liter of alcohol on them. The suffering is enormous.

  And there are other forms of interrogation, things that you cannot imagine.