“At the end of the eight weeks there’s a dinner. Huge, smoking grills, the fire fed constantly, and alligator, iguana, and deer steaks thrown on it all night long. There’s also a tradition of grabbing the Guatemalan minister of defense and throwing him in a pond with crocodiles (they’re far away, but those government guys are real wimps!). After the dinner, you can finally wear the Kaibiles’ emblem: the dagger on a blue and black background. Blue for day: The Kaibil operates in the sea and sky. Black for silence in nighttime operations. Running diagonal is a rope, for terrestrial missions. And rising up from the dagger is a flame that burns eternally. Liberty.”
Ángel Miguel suddenly raises his hand and spreads out his fingers.
“Smell. Hearing. Touch. Sight. Taste.”
The five senses, which the perfect Kaibil must develop and always keep sharp.
“Unity and strength.”
I look at Ángel Miguel. He’s no longer a Kaibil, but he still has that hollow look in his eyes. When you meet a Kaibil you come face-to-face with absence. He’s barely five feet four inches, but Ángel Miguel looks me up and down. All that talk about training and brotherhood has fed his pride, and he lords it over me and his girlfriend somehow. I have a question, and this could be the time to ask it.
“What can you tell me about the Kaibiles and narco-trafficking?”
Amnesty International began noting this phenomenon in 2003, in a report denouncing dozens of cases of military and police participation in drug-trafficking networks, as well as illegal activities such as car theft, trafficking in children for illegal adoptions, and “social cleansing” operations. In the same year, Washington included Guatemala on the list of “decertified” countries, because between 2000 and2002 the Guatemalan government seized only a fifth of the cocaine seized three years earlier.
If Ángel Miguel is annoyed, he certainly doesn’t show it. So I look to see his girlfriend’s reaction, but she too remains immobile, except for shifting her weight slightly from one high heel to the other. I’m sure she had to pass some sort of training too, before she could be with him. Finally, Ángel Miguel opens his mouth. “Unity and strength,” he repeats, and falls silent.
“Is it true that some former combatants have had successful careers in Mexican cartels?”
For several years Mexican authorities have been reporting a growing number of former Kaibil and Guatemalan soldiers being recruited by local criminal organizations. Former soldiers are a real plus for these organizations, who save time and money by enlisting young men who are already trained and experienced. A former Kaibil, who knows how to handle a weapon and operate in mountains and woods, can be very useful to the cartels. A former Kaibil knows how to survive in extremely difficult conditions and can maneuver just as well in southern Mexico as in northern Guatemala, regions with similar climates. The situation is made even more worrisome by the demobilization of the Guatemalan army, which in recent years has dropped from thirty thousand to fifteen thousand soldiers. Many soldiers were discharged and found themselves out of work. Some joined private security agencies and were sent abroad as mercenaries, to Iraq, for instance. But others ended up expanding the ranks of criminal cells.
Ángel Miguel is rubbing his thumb and index finger together, as if rolling an invisible cigarette, and there are tiny wrinkles, which I hadn’t noticed before, at the corners of his eyes. His girlfriend looks around and curls her lips nervously.
On the phone, before he agreed to meet me, Ángel Miguel had given me a list of rules that at the time I had taken for pure propaganda, but which, in his sustained silence, I now realize I hadn’t respected. A Kaibil must “earn the trust of his subordinates, direct their efforts, clarify objectives, inspire safety, create team unity, be an example of moderation at all times, keep hope alive, sacrifice himself for victory.” With two simple questions about Kaibiles past and present I had broken the spell. Our conversation was over.
6.
Z
Ángel Miguel left me wanting more. He had painted a picture of his apprenticeship to violence, but he was merely playing a part: the retired combatant reminiscing about the glory days of his training. But it’s not enough. I have to see it in action, to go back to where the savagery took root and grew into an instrument of power. I have to go back to Mexico. To Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the boss of the Gulf cartel.
Osiel is famous for never making mistakes and never forgiving those who do. But even he finally made one, and with the wrong people. In November 1999, Joe DuBois, a DEA agent, and Daniel Fuentes, an FBI agent, were in a Ford Bronco with diplomatic plates, a Gulf cartel informer sleeping in the backseat, his head pressed against the window. The informer was taking the two agents on a tour of Gulf cartel bosses’ houses and hangouts in Matamoros. He didn’t wake up even when the Ford Bronco slammed on the brakes and voices—all too familiar—were heard. “That guy’s ours, gringos!” Several vehicles surrounded the agents’ Bronco, and a dozen or so cartel members hopped out, AK-47s pointed. Osiel got out of his Jeep Cherokee, went over to the Bronco, and stuck a gun in one of the agents’ faces. So the Americans flashed their badges, revealing their identities. But Osiel didn’t give a damn who they were. It was the first time he had exposed himself like that; he knew it was risky, but he didn’t have a choice; he couldn’t let the informer talk. Time froze; the players faced off but without showing too much muscle—one wrong move and what seemed like a negotiation could quickly become a bloodbath. The FBI agent took a chance: “If you don’t let us go, the United States government will hunt you all the way to your grave.” Osiel caved. He shouted at the gringos: This is his territory, they can’t control it, and don’t ever show your faces around here again. Then he ordered his men to reverse. The FBI and DEA agents gave a sigh of relief.
It was the beginning of the end. The American authorities put a price of $2 million on Osiel’s head, and he began to get paranoid. He started seeing enemies everywhere; even his most trusted collaborators could be madrinas—godmothers, as informers are called. He needed to increase his firepower, and decided to buy himself an army. He didn’t want to be imprudent and so chose corrupt defectors from GAFE (Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales or Special Forces Airmobile Group), the Mexican army’s elite corps. Ironically, GAFE’s role was to flush out criminals like him. GAFE men are tough: They’re modeled on U.S. special forces and trained by Israeli and French specialists. Among these Mexican Rambos was Lieutenant Arturo Guzmán Decena. Guzmán and Osiel had some traits in common: Both were cynical, ambitious, ruthless. Arturo, along with thirty other deserters, was put on Osiel’s payroll. So troops that had been paid to fight drug trafficking now swore loyalty to the very man who was, until recently, the enemy to take out. But the Friend Killer paid more than the Mexican government. That is how Osiel’s private army was born, and why it was baptized Los Zetas: Z was the code letter the GAFE soldiers used to communicate with one another via radio. Lieutenant Arturo Guzmán Decena became Z1.
Violence is self-absorbing; it voluntarily degrades itself in order to renew itself. In the tortured territory of Mexico, Los Zetas are like a cell that annihilates itself in order to grow stronger, more powerful, more destructive. The escalation of atrocity increased national and international pressure to get Osiel Cárdenas. On March 14, 2003, after a shoot-out in Matamoros, the Mexican army arrested him. Osiel was locked up in the La Palma maximum security prison. But being behind bars didn’t undermine his leadership; in fact, the alliance between the Gulf and Tijuana cartels was born in that prison. But although Osiel might have been able to issue orders from his cell, he couldn’t control his men, particularly Los Zetas, who were showing increasingly clear signs of wanting to be independent. Los Zetas are attracted to the most ruthless aspects of organized crime: They have absorbed the worst from the paramilitary forces, the worst from the Mafia, the worst from the drug traffickers.
From a military point of view, it’s hard to compete with Los Zet
as: They have bulletproof vests and Kevlar helmets, and their arsenal includes: AR-15 assault rifles; thousands of cuernos de chivo (or goat’s horns, as they call AK-47s); MP5 submachine guns; grenade launchers; frag grenades like those used in Vietnam; surface-to-air missiles; gas masks; night-vision goggles; dynamite; and helicopters. A February 2008 army raid on the El Mezquito, one of Los Zetas’ farms near the city of Miguel Alemán, about sixty miles west of Reynosa, uncovered 89 assault rifles, 83,355 ammunition cartridges, and enough explosives to blow several buildings sky-high. Los Zetas members are highly professional; they use a modern phone-tapping system, encrypted radio signals, and Skype instead of regular telephones to elude surveillance.
Their internal hierarchy is rigid. Every plaza has its own capo and bookkeeper, who manages the finances for the criminal cell, which, in addition to drugs, exploits various niches of the criminal economy: theft, extortions, kidnappings. According to Mexican and American sources, there is a precise division of duties within Los Zetas, each with its own name:
—Las Ventanas, the Windows: kids who sound the alarm when they spot police officers sticking their noses into drug-dealing zones;
—Los Halcones, the Falcons: who take care of distribution;
—Los Leopardos, the Leopards: prostitutes trained to extort precious information from clients;
—Los Mañosos, the Clever Ones: in charge of weapons;
—La Dirección, the Command: the brains of the operation.
• • •
Ángel Miguel may not have known Osiel’s story, but he certainly would have known that relations between Los Zetas and the Kaibiles were very tight. The Guatemalans had trained GAFE soldiers who then became Los Zetas. Then, once they were independent, Los Zetas started recruiting Kaibiles, their former teachers.
If there is one thing the Guatemalans did not need to teach it was the uses of the video recorder. Type in “Los Zetas Execution Video” on YouTube and a list of videos uploaded directly by group members pops up (or better yet, don’t). Savagery works if it spreads like an infection, from mouth to mouth, person to person. Decapitations, suffocations, and flayings are their marketing strategy, videos of bestiality their press releases. Los Zetas are particularly fond of electric saws, and the heads they brandish are their calling card. They want their victims to scream, and they really know how to make them do it. Their cries have to be heard everywhere; they have to be the ambassadors for Los Zetas throughout Mexico and the world. One characteristic in particular distinguishes Los Zetas from other cartels: They don’t have a territory of their own, no physical place, no geographical roots. A postmodern army that has to produce an image that creates outposts. Terror must conquer the country. The mujahedin realized that decapitations could be a trademark of atrocity before they did, but Los Zetas didn’t take long to adopt the same technique.
The web is their preferred platform, but Los Zetas don’t disdain old methods either, such as the banners they hang in Mexican cities and towns. “The operating group Los Zetas wants you, soldier or former soldier. We offer good pay, food, and protection for your family. Stop suffering from abuse, stop suffering from hunger.” These so-called narco-banners promise benefits and money to soldiers who decide to enlist in Los Zetas; they deliver messages directly to the people; and they aim to intimidate enemies and governments. “They will not be able to stop us, even with the support of the United States government, because here Los Zetas rule. Calderón’s government must reach an agreement with us, because if he doesn’t, we will be forced to topple him and take power by force.”
Los Zetas’ enemy cartels started using them too. In February 2010 La Familia Michoacana hung a banner announcing the creation of a resistance front to fight Los Zetas and inviting the people to join in: “A polite invitation to all Mexicans to unite in a common front in order to put an end to Los Zetas. We are already taking action against Los Zetas. Let’s join forces against these evil beasts.”
• • •
Resortito and El Bigotito are two clowns. Jokes, water pranks, imitations, tricks. They know that the kids are expecting them on the buses that run the Cárdenas-Comalcalco-Villahermosa route.The kids laugh and snort and always get home a little later because these guys are really good. Resortito and El Bigotito collect a few coins every time, nothing much, but it’s better than begging. And besides, the kids’ clear laughter makes them feel good, appreciated.
A misunderstanding, a cruel joke that spun out of control, or a deliberate, studied attack. It’s a mystery, but the fact remains that a rumor started going around. A false rumor, maybe. “Army informers hide under the clowns’ wigs.” On January 2, 2011, the clowns’ lifeless bodies were found on the edge of a country road. They’d been tortured and then shot to death. Near their bodies, a piece of paper with a brief message claiming responsibility: “This happened to me because I was a spy and thought that SEDENA would protect me.” SEDENA is the Mexican Secretariat of National Defense. An acronym identified those responsible: FEZ, or Los Zetas special forces.
There’s no end to Los Zetas’ brutality: Cadavers swing from city bridges in broad daylight, for children to see; bodies are decapitated and hacked to pieces, then abandoned along the side of the road, their pants often pulled down for one final humiliation; mass graves are discovered in the countryside, dozens of bodies are heaped on top of one another. Cities have become war zones.
Violence. It always comes back to violence. A word that smacks of instinct, primitivism, yet which Los Zetas—like the Kaibiles—knew how to write into education. Rosalío Reta was one of their pupils. Born in Texas with the dream of becoming Superman, at age thirteen Rosalío ended up in a Los Zetas military training camp, on a ranch in the state of Tamaulipas. At first it seemed like a game.
“Here’s your super weapon, a laser.”
“But Superman doesn’t use lasers.”
“That’s okay. Just point it, press, and everybody in front of you will disappear.”
That’s how Rosalío got his first pistol, and after six months of training he was ready for a loyalty test: In one of the cartel’s safe houses a man waited, tied to a chair. Rosalío didn’t know anything about him, didn’t know why he was condemned. Rosalío didn’t ask questions. He was handed a pistol, .38 caliber, just like the one he had fired at cardboard targets for six months. All he had to do was pull the trigger. The adrenaline rush was electrifying. Rosalío felt invincible, like Superman. He can fly, he can stop speeding bullets, “leap tall buildings at a single bound.” He can kill. “I thought I was Superman,” he later confessed to the court judges in Laredo, Texas, after he was arrested: “I liked doing it, killing that man. Then they tried to take my pistol away, but it was like trying to take candy from a child.”
A couple of years after his initiation, Rosalío—along with Gabriel and Jessie, two kids his age—arrived in Los Zetas’ Never-Never Land: a nice house that the cartel rented for them in Laredo; every type of pill imaginable; a console hooked up to a plasma TV. In the beginning the aim was simply to kill liquid crystal men. Days and days with the game pad, pretending to drive a car that zooms through imaginary American cities. In that virtual reality you can do whatever you want. Kill whomever you want, no consequences, no remorse. The worst that can happen is, your eyes get bloodshot. For Rosalío and his friends the reality of the game superimposed itself on real life: Everything became possible, and fear disappeared. Los Niños Zetas were ready. The deal was clear: Five hundred dollars a week for stakeouts and odd jobs, but the real money was in special jobs. Some men had to be eliminated, but it wasn’t enough just to kill them; you had to slit their throats. That’s where the money got good, a fifty-thousand-dollar bonus for every hit. When Rosalío was arrested four years and twenty murders later, the police officers who interrogated him never noticed any fear or remorse in him. The only time a shadow even crossed his face was when he talked about a mission to San Nicolás de los Garza. He missed hi
s target and caused a massacre, four people dead and twenty-five wounded, none of them with any ties to organized crime. “I made a mistake,” Rosalío said, “and now they’re going to make me pay.” “They” were his old teachers, Los Zetas.
• • •
In 2002, a year before Osiel’s imprisonment, Arturo Guzmán Decena, El Z1, was killed in a restaurant in Matamoros. A crown of flowers was placed on his tomb with the message: “You will always be in our hearts. From your family: Los Zetas.” After his death Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano took over. Lazcano, alias El Lazca, born on Christmas Day 1974, was also from the army special forces and was wanted by the federal authorities in the United States and Mexico for drug trafficking and multiple homicides. Mexico offered a reward of 30 million pesos for anyone who could provide information leading to his arrest. The U.S. Department of State offered $5 million.
El Lazca was famous for his favorite method of killing: He’d lock his victim in a cell and then watch him starve to death. Death is patient, and so was El Lazca. Following in Guzmán Decena’s footsteps, he reinforced and expanded the group, setting up training camps for fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds and for former local, state, and federal police, and he recruited former Kaibiles.