Cuernavaca, Morelos: Journalist Manuel Gonzalez Reyes Executed: 47 Reporters Have Been Killed In AMLO’s Government
United Cartels Narco-Summit Held, Supposedly Under Protection of the National Guard
Sinaloa Cartel Gente Nueva del Tigre Second-in-Command Arrested in Chihuahua
GRAPHIC: Cartel Turf War Reignites in Central Part of Mexican Border State (Graphic image Attached)
Migrants returned to Mexico describe horror of kidnappings, torture, rape
BELONGINGS FOUND IN A #CDN CREMATORIUM IN #NVO LAREDO (Translated Spanish to English)
Topic # 1: Cuernavaca, Morelos: Journalist Manuel Gonzalez Reyes Executed: 47 Reporters Have Been Killed In AMLO’s Government
Source:
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/09/cuernavaca-morelos-journalist-manuel.html The Story:
Manuel González Reyes, owner and reporter of the PM Morelos news agency, was shot dead, around 4:37 p.m. on Tuesday, September 28, while he had finished eating at a post installed in front of a minibus terminal, in the Miraval neighborhood, next to the Pullman de Morelos bus line, in the municipality of Cuernavaca. Witnesses to the crime, quoted by local media, indicated that the reporter had just eaten when he got up from his seat to allegedly answer a phone call, and at that moment a motorcycle arrived at the scene with two subjects on board, dressed in black, who shot him in the face, with 9 mm caliber weapons. González Reyes, 55 years old, lay next to a Volkswagen car, black, on De la Estación street that connects Plan de Ayala Avenue, one of the busiest in the capital of Morelen, with Leandro Valle Street, in the Miraval neighborhood. Elements of the State Public Security Commission (CES) and the Red Cross attended the place, who confirmed that there was a lifeless subject. Meanwhile, elements of the Coordinated Command made tours of the area. At the scene, at least two nine-millimeter caliber shells were found, which were collected as evidence of the crime by experts from the Attorney General's Office (FGE), who took charge of the case. "He had injuries caused by a firearm near the cephalic limb.
At the moment there is no information that refers to the number of people involved in the aggression, and at least one person would have used a firearm at a short distance against him to immediately flee apparently to Colonia Patios de la Estación," the FGE detailed. The last broadcast that González Reyes made live was this same, prior to his murder, from the Vista Hermosa neighborhood of Jiutepec, to denounce the absence of authorities in support of the families that were affected by the tearing down of a hill. "The support of deputies, local, federal, senators and the Governor and other municipal presidents who also live on our taxes is nowhere to be seen here," González Reyes concluded his connection via Facebook Live, on the PM Noticias page. This agency was created by González Reyes in January 2017. Before that, the reporter covered press conferences, demonstrations and citizen protests independently. Also, during the last electoral process, he participated as a candidate of the recently created Citizen Welfare Party (BC), for the Municipal Presidency of Emiliano Zapata, where the journalist lived.
OTHER CRIMES OF JOURNALISTS IN MORELOS
In July 2019, the lifeless body of journalist Rogelio Barragán Pérez, director of the Guerrero “Al Instante” news portal, was located in the municipality of Zacatepec, with traces of handcuffed torture and gunshot wounds. The reporter's body was inside his Volkswagen Jetta, with Guerrero state license plates. Two years earlier, in April 2017, journalist Filiberto Álvarez Landeros was shot dead in the municipality of Tlaquiltenango, south of the same entity. Research indicated that the communicator was walking to his private home, after concluding his radio program, where he read poems. In May 2012, veteran journalist René Orta Salgado, a red note reporter in Sol de Cuernavaca, of the Mexican Editorial Organization (OEM), was found dead inside his vehicle. His relatives had reported him missing four days earlier, after holding a meeting with several men in a bar in the Morelos capital.
"NO JOURNALIST IS PERSECUTED OR CENSORED": AMLO ON SPOT FOR 3RD REPORT; 47 ARE KILLED IN HIS GOVERNMENT
On August 31, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in a spot published on his Twitter account, that so far in his government no journalist has been persecuted or censored. However, so far in the Administration headed by the Tabasco politician, since December 2018 to date, a total of 46 communicators have been killed. The Ministry of the Interior (SEGOB) released, on July 13, data from the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which counted the homicides of 43 communicators. But to these are added four more after that date. Likewise, Article 19, a non-governmental organization that defends freedom of expression and the right to information, denounced that during the first half of this year, 362 attacks occurred against journalists and the media, with which 1,663 attacks have been registered so far in the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (609 in the first year and 692 in the second), which indicates that "violence against the press still shows no sign of reversing itself. According to the report 'First semester of 2021: violence against the press prevails, as does the inaction of the State', released on August 24, the NGO highlighted that "every 12 hours a person or a half is attacked in Mexico," and that the 362 attacks recorded reveal "a sustained growth in levels of violence." However, in a video released prior to his Third Government Report, the national president indicated that even now "the president is even insulted but there is no repression" against the press. "There are no more moches because now the budget is going to the people but there are freedoms. The right to disagree, deeds, not words is guaranteed," he said in the spot.
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Topic # 2: United Cartels Narco-Summit Held, Supposedly Under Protection of the National Guard
Source:
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/09/united-cartels-narco-summit-held.html At the meeting held last Sunday, September 12, it was concluded that the United Cartels already had all the necessary resources, both financial and human, to confront the organization of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias El Mencho. To fund this, cooperation quota taxes were raised on local residents
The Story:
The leaders of some of the main organizations that make up the Cárteles Unidos council in Michoacán recently held a narco-summit to reconfigure the war strategy against the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG). According to journalist Óscar Balderas, who reported on the meeting for the MVS Noticias program with Luis Cárdenas, the meeting held last Sunday, September 12, it was concluded that the United Cartels already had all the necessary resources, both financial and human, to face the organization of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias El Mencho. The meeting, planned two months in advance, had mainly 4 guests: Juan José Álvarez Farías "El Abuelo", leader of the Tepalcatepec Cartel; Alejandro Sepúlveda Álvarez, alias El Jando or la Fresa , leader of the Trojan Whites/Blancos de Troya; César Sepúlveda Arellano, "El Boto" leader of Los Viagras; and one of the Sierra Santa Ana brothers. That day they got together for breakfast at 11:00 a.m. at a ranch located on Luis Orozco Street, 20 minutes from the Cenobio Moreno market, in Apatzingán, strategically located on a rural road to flee with a 10-minute advantage in case of emergency. The capos arrived unarmed, but with escorts.
The pact resulted in two main agreements: the first was that they were going to raise the cooperation quota for the people of the towns of Apatzingán, Tepalcatepec, and Buenavista so that they would finance the war against the Jalisco. Presumably, the people of Tierra Caliente began to be charged from that day up to 3,000 pesos per house a fortnight to finance the war. In case they are unable or unwilling to pay, the United Cartels would persecute them as if they were allies of the CJNG: they beat them, kidnapped them, tortured them, and disappeared them. The second agreement consisted of a kind of single formation to attack together, in a decisive manner, with common weapons and common human resources, the hosts of Oseguera Cervantes. This second agreement already had its first reaction as reported by Borderland Beat; from Tuesday to Thursday of last week, 48 hours of shootings were recorded. Sources consulted by the journalist warned that the CJNG responded to the summit of its enemies by getting into various communities on the border between Jalisco and Michoacán. Officially it was reported that there were five deaths, although unofficially there was talk of a higher number.
According to Balderas, a version confirmed that the National Guard (GN) had knowledge of this summit, which was not only held with their permission but also under their protection. Supposedly, there were even GN trucks that were parked on the roads near the Cenobio Moreno market to allow the four Michoacan capos to enter. The official version of the GN assured that they found out about the summit within 24 hours, mainly due to the complaints of the residents about the increase in rates. The Tepalcatepec Cartel, which is presented to the media as a group of self-defense groups, forms the council of the United Cartels together with Los Viagras, Trojan Whites, remnants of the Knights Templar, as well as other cells that operate in the so-called Tierra Caliente region of Michoacan. Those local factions have prevailed for decades in the state, migrating from one criminal group to another and fragmenting into regional associations as their leaders were captured or killed. Some groups, such as those led by Abuelo Farías, collaborated with the CJNG in the past, but breakdowns and alleged internal betrayals unleashed a wave of violence in municipalities such as Aguililla, Coalcomán, Buenavista, and the current siege in Tepalcatepec.
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Topic # 3: Sinaloa Cartel Gente Nueva del Tigre Second-in-Command Arrested in Chihuahua
Source:
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/09/sinaloa-cartel-gente-nueva-del-tigre.html The Story:
The second in command of the Sinaloa Cartel group known as Gente Nueva del Tigre, Jesús Omar Cortés Gutiérrez, alias "La Changa", was arrested after a violent shootout in Chihuahua with the State Investigations Agency (AEI) members, which left one of the AEI so badly injured that he was airlifted out for medical treatment. Now a judge has approved that La Changa will be held in jail until his trial, a positive step in the journey towards convicting and sending La Changa to prison. Back in May 14, 2021, the District Attorney for the Zona Occidente (western zone of the state) Jesús Manuel Carrasco Chacón named three key figures from the Sinaloa Cartel subgroup Gente Nueva del Tigre who they say were major priority criminal targets. The three named were Edgar Gamboa Sosa, alias “El 11”, “El Tigre Blanco”, or “El Virolo”, who is the overall leader of the del Tigre group. They also listed two of El 11’s top lieutenants: Víctor Hugo Vázquez, alias “El Chilango”, and Jesús Omar Cortés Gutiérrez, alias “La Changa”. La Changa was described as the right hand man of El 11 and he is considered to be the second in command of the del Tigre group.
He sometimes goes by the aliases "El Comandante" and "El Z-84". He is reportedly 31 years old. Diario de Juárez reports that after the death of “El 100”, La Changa was given control of the plaza in Cuauhtémoc and has been in control of the city ever since, reporting as a direct subordinate to El 11. He has two warrants out for his arrest for the crimes of kidnapping and forced disappearance of individuals in events that occurred between 2019 and 2020. The Attorney General's Office reports that La Changa has multiple other open investigation files for various crimes, mainly homicides and robberies with violence committed in the city of Cuauhtémoc. One of these open investigations relates to the September 7, 2021 massacre of 9 men who were in a house in the Periodista neighborhood of Cuauhtémoc. For more details on that event, please see this story.
Then, on August 27, 2021, an intense shooting took place in the municipality of Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua. Initial reports said that armed men from Gente Nueva del Tigre who were traveling in four or five vehicles attacked the District Attorney Jesús Manuel Carrasco Chacón, the same man who named the three leaders publicly as criminal targets. Chacón’s bodyguard reportedly repelled the attack of the cartel hitmen which occured on a stretch of the Gómez Morín freeway. Later, Attorney Carrasco Chacón stated that the shooting was not a direct attack against him, but rather as a response to an operation which almost captured a top Gente Nueva leader. He clarified that the shooting occured because he was personally leading the actions of an operation which sought to detain a criminal target in the Western zone. He stated that no officers were injured in the shootout with Gente Nueva, that the official government vehicles involved, including the armored car he was in, were damaged by the impacts, but no injuries were reported. The regional prosecutor stated that the operation he was personally overseeing at the time of the attack was a follow-up on a lead that developed from an investigation that had been going on for several days which aimed to locate and arrest specifically Jesús Omar Cortés Gutiérrez, alias “La Changa”.
Carrasco said that the target was finally located inside a vehicle on Mangos street, in the Delicias neighborhood in the city of Cuauhtémoc. Officers of the State Investigation Agency (Agencia Estatal de Investigación, AEI) began following La Changa’s vehicle from a distance in order to avoid detection and to avoid a confrontation breaking out in the urban area. Carrasco added it was especially important to law enforcement not to close in yet because there was a lot of traffic on the streets which could have led to civilian casualties. AEI officers continued to follow from a distance until La Changa’s vehicle reached the outskirts of the city with the target’s vehicle almost reaching the Manuel Gómez Morín highway. After seeing La Changa’s vehicle drive closer to the highway, which would enable his fast escape, the officers rapidly accelerated and closed in on his vehicle. They caught up with his vehicle a few minutes before 9:00 pm at night, at the height of the Ingenierías road. When the officers tried to stop La Changa’s vehicle, a major shootout took place, not only did the AEI call for reinforcements, reportedly the Gente Nueva hitmen also called for reinforcements. The confrontation was reportedly so long that both sides received support from new armed men arriving at the site. Carrasco said that around five vehicles with armed men were involved on behalf of Gente Nueva by the end of the battle.
At some point, the shootout evolved into a car chase which continued on the Manuel Gómez Morín highway up to the Juárez road. Vehicles from both sides were taking such heavy bullet damage that even the specially modified and armored white Ford Expedition SUV of the District Attorney general broke down and ceased to be able to drive due to the damage it received to one of its tires. The chase reportedly continued on despite the District Attorney’s vehicle breaking down near the Cuauhtémoc Olympic Stadium, as the support of elements of the State Security Commission arrived and Carrasco Chacón boarded their vehicle in order to continue the pursuit of La Changa’s vehicle as it drove into the municipality of Carichí, in the direction of Bacaburiachi. Eventually they lost sight of his vehicle and the chase ended, with La Changa getting away. Diario de Juarez writes that “the last five years have been a time of terror for the entire area from Cuauhtémoc to San Juanito, and from Guerrero to Madera. The entire Mennonite corridor, with tens of thousands of inhabitants, has been taken over” by Gente Nueva del Tigre. La Changa reportedly had so much influence over the police and military in the Cuauhtémoc area that according to Diario de Juárez, La Changa was able to return to the city of Cuauhtémoc following the huge shootout with the AEI.
He reportedly returned to a safe house in the middle of the city, without being disturbed by local authorities despite all the heat the car chase should have brought down on him. However the brand new State Attorney General Roberto Javier Fierro Duarte made it a priority to take down La Changa. (Not to be confused with another famous Duarte from Chihuahua, César Horacio Duarte Jáquez, the former governor turned fugitive.) Arrest warrants were drawn up in relation to a suspected location where La Changa may have been staying. Diario de Juárez writes that corrupted state police officers and infiltrators into the planning from other law enforcement corporations almost jeopardized the outcome of the plan on multiple occasions, saying “there was no lack of subtle protest even in the location of the safe house and the way to raid it,” adding “Prosecutor Fierro and his commanders should spend less time considering the criminals they were targeting, and more time considering which police officers they were involving.” On September 23, at approximately 3:00pm, members of the AEI approached a home that was believed to be used as a safehouse, located on a street between the Los Frailes and Campo Real subdivisions in the heart of Cuauhtémoc city. An entry team AEI agent was injured when he broke down a door and received gunshots in his shield that bounced off his shield, ricocheting into his shoulder.
But the AEI team kept pushing forward and a shootout began between the bodyguards of La Changa, covering La Changa exit, while he made his way to an armored Mercedes vehicle. However, La Changa eventually surrendered, likely due to his vehicle being blocked in or due to the volume of fire. The injured entry team member was transferred via the helicopter Halcón 1, which landed right in front of Alsuper de la Juárez and Pacheco streets, where he was rushed into the helicopter in order to be flown to the state capital for immediate medical attention. In addition to the arrest of La Changa, the AEI successfully arrested three more people, including a woman and the chief of hitmen from "La Changa", who will also be prosecuted for attempted homicide against police officers. Then on September 25, 2021, the three male detainees were presented before the Control Judge Eduardo Alexis Ornelas Pérez in the criminal chambers of Aquiles Serdán's prison #1 (CERESO). The judge approved the preventative detention of Jesús Omar Cortés Gutiérrez, alias “La Changa”, Francisco “UB” and Adolfo “CO”, for the crimes of homicide in degree in attempt and possession of firearms for the exclusive use of the Armed Forces.
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Topic # 4: GRAPHIC: Cartel Turf War Reignites in Central Part of Mexican Border State
Source:
https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/09/29/graphic-cartel-turf-war-reignites-in-central-part-of-mexican-border-state/ Synopsis:
Rival cartels reignited a bloody turf war for control of the central part of the border state of Tamaulipas. The fighting is manifesting itself through gruesome executions and targeted killings. One murder took place on earlier this week when gunmen suspected of being part of the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas left an ice chest containing a severed human head outside the Tamaulipas State Police headquarters in Ciudad Victoria. The victim, Jared Antonio Zamora Mireles, was a mid-level leader of the Gulf Cartel in Ciudad Mante. Breitbart Texas has since obtained exclusive information revealing that Tamaulipas state police arrested Zamora on September 24 with his girlfriend and three other men. Authorities released him soon after. As Zamora walked out of the detention center, gunmen kidnapped him. His whereabouts were unknown until Monday when his head and a narco-banner were displayed. One day before, gunmen dumped the bodies of two men and a woman in northern Ciudad Victoria. The victims were bound and shot several times. Hours before, another man was shot in the southeastern side of the city. Nearby cities such as Xicoténcatl, Jaumave, Ocampo and Ciudad Mante have also seen a spike in murders, car jackings, and shootouts as the Gulf Cartel and the CDN-Los Zetas fight for control of drug territories.
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Topic # 5: Migrants returned to Mexico describe horror of kidnappings, torture, rape
Source:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/migrants-returned-mexico-describe-horror-kidnappings-torture-rape-rcna2300 Photo # 1: Dozens, sometimes hundreds, of expelled migrants travel across the international bridge of Hidalgo, between Reynosa and McAllen every day
Photo # 2: Migrants stranded in Reynosa Plaza clean their clothes in a half-built building in front of the camp
Photo # 3: Hundreds of tents are concentrated in Reynosa Plaza near the border bridge
Photo # 4: Berta was the victim of a kidnapping after she was expelled from the U.S. at a border zone in Arizona
Photo # 5: The city of Reynosa, Mexico
Photo # 6: Berta shows the bruises on her body
The Story:
REYNOSA, Mexico — After Gustavo and his family were sent back to Mexico after they crossed the U.S. border, his two sons said they were hungry. Gustavo, a Honduran man, sat them on the steps of the bridge and crossed the street to buy them something to eat. He remembers that a car approached him as he walked those steps. “They put me in the car. The children stayed there, waiting for me, but I didn’t come back.” He had been kidnapped. Days later, on the same bridge, Jorge Geovanni Díaz, also from Honduras, found himself holding hands with his son, who is 7, after the U.S. returned them to Mexico. Discouraged, he called their smuggler, or coyote. They were picked up in front of the international bridge and taken to a bodega, where almost 200 people were hoping to cross the river again. All of a sudden, armed men came in and violently took them all away. For this man and his child, 44 harsh days in captivity began. When migrants arrive in these Mexican cities near the border, they’re the targets of a vicious criminal business that kidnaps them and can torture them for weeks, extorting thousands of dollars of ransom from their relatives over the phone. Those who are kidnapped know that if they don’t pay, the outstanding balances can end in death. Kimberlin Figueroa, another Honduran migrant, was also returned to Mexico by U.S. authorities. “The cars would come up to me and say, ‘Get in here, get in here, get in the car with us.’ I was afraid and didn't get in the car.” She said she was terrified, because on the way to northern Mexico she had already been kidnapped and she needed thousands of dollars to get her freedom. Noticias Telemundo Investiga interviewed more than 30 migrants who were kidnapped from 2019 to 2021.
Some spoke on camera and gave their names because they are in safe places and believe they should publicly report the criminal practices. Others avoided giving their full names because they fear reprisals from organized crime. Some spoke on condition of anonymity. Several of them, including minors, have witnessed the murders of other migrants who tried to flee or whose families were not sending enough ransom. The criminals tortured some of the abducted migrants with blows all over their bodies to pressure the families who must pay the ransoms. Women were often repeatedly sexually abused by one or more kidnappers, said a woman who was raped, as well as several people who witnessed the crimes. The cartels and other Mexican criminal groups make $600 to $20,000 per capture, in addition to the thousands of dollars migrants have already paid for the trip north. U.S. telephone numbers are the data most sought. Families in America, desperate at the thought of losing their loved ones, are besieged by criminals. According to the pro-immigrant group Human Rights First, at least 6,356 migrants have been victims of kidnappings, abuses or attacks since January. For migrants, the map of Mexico, starting in the south, is like a checkerboard where they have to show they’ve paid to journey through — and they have to pay it to the correct group.
The dreaded password
There’s something migrants trying the dangerous border crossing need to know at all times: the password. On Mexican highways, buses sometimes stop suddenly. Armed men ask migrants to get off, and they’re asked for a password that shows that they have paid the smuggler networks as they travel to the U.S. border. “If you travel from Monterrey to cities on the border, you will see how, in a distance of two hours, at least three times, these people will get off the bus and they will have to give their password, and if they don’t have a password, they are going to have to pay a fee to be allowed to advance to the other point until they reach the border,” said Nilda García, who researches organized crime at Texas A&M International University in Laredo. The situation can be twisted even more. Kimberlin, 27, and her 12-year-old son traversed Mexico on their own, without hiring a coyote to reach the U.S. The bus stopped. “They asked us who we were coming with, if we had a password,” she recalled. “We said: ‘No, no, we came alone. We want to get to the border.’ Then again they asked us for the ‘happy’ password and who we came with.” She and her son were kidnapped and held captive for more than a week, and her U.S. relatives had to fork out $9,000 in ransom. In some cases, attackers tell migrants that their coyotes did not make the necessary payments to the criminal group in control of that particular area — or some groups simply steal the detained migrants from one another.
‘They were connected to the taxi driver’
That is what happened to Jorge Geovanni Díaz and his son hours after they were expelled from the U.S. to Tamaulipas — one of the Mexican states where Noticias Telemundo Investiga has discovered more victims. First, an armed group entered a warehouse where the coyotes kept them. “They attacked 182 people, they took us to the mountains, and there we were kidnapped for a month and 14 days,” Díaz said. Once his family spent $6,000 and Díaz managed to get out, he fell into the hands of the taxi driver who had to return him to the Reynosa bus station. “They were connected to the taxi driver. They traded me to another cartel in Matamoros,” he said. He suffered a double kidnapping and had to pay $6,000 more.
‘All the people are watching you’
It’s not easy for migrant families to blend in when they're in Mexico. At bus stations, with their backpacks and their small children crying, they can be seen trying to find their way around and buying tickets to border cities. At inland airports, they show their Central American passports at immigration checks. At convenience stores, like Oxxo or 7-Eleven, they withdraw money that their families send them to survive. At the border bridges on the Mexico side, the missing laces from their shoes, removed by U.S. border authorities when they’re detained, attract attention. Many migrants hold their possessions in plastic bags with the U.S. government logo. It’s as if they carry bright labels, making them targets for organized crime, whose tentacles in the border cities seem infinite. “I arrived at the Nuevo Laredo bus station, a station where all the people are watching you, the most dangerous I have ever visited,” said Yorje Pérez, 23, who migrated from Venezuela. “They are waiting for you to speak, to hear your accent, know where you came from.” Pérez said his taxi driver heard him, figured out he was Venezuelan and told him he knew he would be seeking asylum in the U.S. He told Pérez he was going to notify the cartel in the area so it would kidnap him, and he held him in the taxi for hours until Pérez paid him $600. The hotel where the taxi driver dropped Pérez off triggered his fear even more. “I heard people arrive. They forced a door. ... I heard people yelling. I did not sleep. That was the worst night that I could have spent,” he said two months after the incident. He was eventually able to find lodging at a shelter in Mexico and later was able to cross into the U.S. on humanitarian grounds.
‘The cartels have gotten into the shelters’
For Pastor Lorenzo Ortiz, who has been helping migrant families in Nuevo Laredo for years, there is no safe place for them in border cities — not even in shelters like his. “The cartels always pass by the shelter, take photos, see who’s there. They have abducted people very close to the shelter, one block away,” Ortiz said. “And we’ve had cases where the cartels have gotten into shelters to see what’s going on inside.” In his offices, Ortiz avoids leaving any sensitive material about migrants in writing, including information like their full names, nationalities or telephone numbers in the U.S. Other border activists who are not being identified by name have also felt that they have been stalked over the information in their computers. Describing the fear generated by the organized crime threats around the Reynosa migrant camp, Pastor Mari Luz Madrigal said, “We used to have a lot of people coming to help us, but they stopped coming.”
As she speaks, she hands out food and inflatable mattresses to a long line of migrant families. Madrigal crosses several days a week from Mission, Texas, to one of the largest migrant camps on the entire border. During the day, migrants notify one another when they have to go on errands at a nearby store in Reynosa, sometimes in groups. At night, they organize rounds of men and women who stay up until dawn controlling the entrances to the camp. Any unusual movement, any suspicious truck, is reported in a community chat. Berta, one of the volunteers, said that’s the only option to stay safe. Months ago, during a sudden downpour, a Honduran man and his son disappeared. “A man said that when he came out of the bathroom, he saw a truck stop, a man get out, pull them in and take them away,” she said as a couple of tears formed in her eyes.
The kidnapping and the cellphone info
Berta herself was kidnapped after she was expelled from the U.S. at a border zone in Arizona. She was put in a truck and told to lower her head and hand over her cellphone. All of the kidnapping survivors who spoke to Noticias Telemundo Investiga described the criminals’ obsession with mobile devices. “Leave your cellphones and your money,” the kidnappers told several of the victims. Some have their phones seized and unlocked, and all calls and messages are checked for communication with family members to extort money from them. Others are asked for their passwords so they can be written down in notebooks, or they permanently remove their PINs from their phones. Some interviewees even remembered a threat: that the kidnappers were going to cut off fingers to unlock the phones whenever they wanted. The abductors either call the relatives or have the kidnapped migrants talk on speaker mode.
Some migrants tensed up remembering what it was like to talk to relatives while the criminals listened in. To the recurring question from relatives on the other end of the phone — “But are you OK?” — they could answer only “All good.” Except it wasn’t. Survivors agreed that the kidnappings are strategically thought out. Abductors take photos and videos several times a day to make sure no one escapes. In other places, they take pictures of migrants and edit them on WhatsApp with their names, nationalities and dates of birth. Some witnesses saw how one of the cartels wrote every migrant’s name in three notebooks. Most of the phone numbers begin with the U.S. country code, +1.
U.S. relatives equal money to abductors
Berta was immediately asked whether she had a phone when she was abducted and thrown inside the truck. “I said yes. It was a simple cellphone, just calls and messages, and they took it from me. They checked it. ‘Let’s see who you talk to,’ and the only messages they found were from my mom and my brother who lives with my mom,” she said. They were U.S. numbers, she said, so they saw dollar signs. Migrants like her know little about where they are held. Moreover, sharing the location of an abduction site is one of the actions that can most anger the captors. Those who were kidnapped describe the places as warehouses or abandoned homes, often apartments, with a few mattresses on the floor and windows lined with aluminum foil so one cannot see the outside. “We were very controlled. We had no notion of time there. We didn’t know what day it was. We did not know the time, if it was day, it was night,” said José Antonio, a Nicaraguan migrant kidnapped in the Reynosa area. He and 16 others were held for 11 days. The kidnappers identified themselves as members of the Gulf Cartel, one of the most powerful and deadly groups in Mexico. The group heard that a fellow Honduran had fled. According to José Antonio’s account, the armed guards called someone they said was a local police officer, who found the fugitive in about 20 minutes. When he was returned, “they beat him, they cut off his ear and told him: ‘If you speak, if you scream, something is going to happen to you.’” The man was writhing in pain and said it hurt. At that point, one of the guards “shoots him in the head, in the forehead,” José Antonio said. They killed the Honduran migrant right there.
‘They abused the women’
Terror and silence marked the long hours in captivity, José Antonio said. The silence is broken only by the victims’ continual prayers. They’re seated apart from one another, without being able to speak, console one another or vent about the situation. At most, they knew their neighbor’s nationality and face. Most were women; there were also four minors. They were not given chances to bathe or change or really sleep, and they had to ask permission to go to the bathroom. The kidnappers distributed two bottles of water to the whole group and gave them food once a day: tortillas with beans or beans with spaghetti or tortillas with spaghetti. Two guards, always armed and with a ready insult, watched them 24 hours a day. They took drugs and drank alcohol and prayed to Santa Muerte, whose image was tattooed on their bodies and who was venerated in altars decorated with candles, grapes, bananas, apples and cigar boxes. José Antonio was beaten shortly after he was kidnapped and told his captors he had no money. “There were four blows to my leg, hip and spine,” he said. He was fleeing political repression in his country, which included threats, an arrest and a beating. He found it difficult to talk about his experiences in Nicaragua, but what was even harder was remembering the scenes he saw repeated too many times — what they did to the women.
“They abused women. They beat them,” he said. “They were put in a room. Four of them entered and raped them. When they took them out, they said: ‘Shut up. If you keep talking, yelling, you’re going to get another beating,’” José Antonio said. A victim corroborated a similar experience. A Honduran woman, identified as Sofia, and her two daughters were kidnapped in Monterrey, in the state of Nuevo León. The criminals, who did not identify themselves as part of any organized group, put them in a house but realized that Sofia had no money or direct family to extort. “They left my daughters in a room and then took me,” Sofia said. She was told that if she didn’t go along, they would take her girls, instead. Sofia found herself in a room where she was locked up from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m and sexually abused. “Almost all night, one after another. I mean, they were sick. I think I fell asleep. I couldn’t take it anymore. Later, when I found out, I was already in the car again,” she said.
Forcing migrants to cross the border again
Most of those interviewed by Noticias Telemundo Investiga whose families paid ransoms for their freedom were not actually freed. Instead, they were taken to safe houses so criminals could take them to cross the U.S. border — even if the migrants didn’t want to cross. They sometimes would be asked for more ransom. “We were like 40 kidnapped people. All those who paid ransom were sent to the United States,” a survivor of a kidnapping, Excelso Espinosa of Honduras, testified in a criminal court in McAllen, Texas, after he was accused of illegal re-entry into the U.S. “I already wanted to return to Honduras,” Espinosa said. “They were the ones who, when my family paid the ransom, sent me here. ... They did not let us stay in Mexico nor leave for our country, either. They do business like that. It’s their business.”
A lucrative business in the shadow of the U.S.
The migrant’s testimony shows that the lucrative business of human trafficking continues even after kidnapped migrants are released. The income of human smugglers continues to grow with more crossings, more U.S. expulsions and more migrants stranded in Mexico. Customs and Border Protection returns to Mexico are approaching 900,000 this fiscal year, which has fueled the kidnapping business, according to several pro-immigrant groups. “By returning to one of the most dangerous areas of the country, such as this border, it exposes them and returns them to imminent danger,” said Ana Ortega, a researcher for Human Rights First. The returns sometimes take place in Mexican cities hundreds of miles from where migrants entered the U.S., in areas operated by rival criminal groups. The passwords migrants got from their coyotes are no longer useful. “The same cartels let them know, ‘Well, the password that you brought was so that you could pass that cartel’s territory, but now that you’re in our territory, now you have to pay, too," Pastor Lorenzo Ortiz said. More migrants have been returned to Mexico under the Trump administration's Title 42, which allows for the rapid expulsion of migrants to prevent the spread of Covid and which has continued during the Biden administration except for unaccompanied minors.
‘We have been very afraid’
Berta Hernández got a severe beating from the kidnappers when her mother was not able to send the ransom money, but she managed to leave the city where it happened. Still bruised on her back, arms and legs, she now lives with other migrants while waiting for humanitarian permission to enter the U.S. Kimberlin Figueroa was able to enter the U.S. on humanitarian grounds; she and her son are recovering from the kidnapping while living with their relatives. “We have been very scared. My son, if there is a knock on the door, his heart will race a lot. He thinks that they are coming to take us out and that it will happen to us again,” she said, her voice trembling. Jorge Geovanni Díaz’s son has never been the same. Díaz believes he became ill from seeing torture and murder when he was only 7 years old. After the kidnapping, the boy cried for days, and his nose bled for more. “He told me that he wanted to leave Mexico because they were going to kidnap us again,” Díaz said. Gustavo, who left his children on the steps of the international bridge to look for food, has not seen them again. The minors, helped financially by their family, crossed the border into the U.S. Gustavo still finds himself in danger, in a city where it’s hard to hide the fact he’s a migrant at the border.
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Topic # 6: BELONGINGS FOUND IN A #CDN CREMATORIUM IN #NVO LAREDO
Source:
https://www.valorportamaulipas.info/2021/09/encuentran-pertenencias-en-un.html Synopsis:
Nuevo Laredo, Tamps.- The Tamaulipas Search Commission found a new death center for people, now in Nuevo Laredo. The discovery came after a series of operations that had an advance on a strip of abandoned ranches and houses near kilometers 26 of the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway. Search elements detected constructions with indications of illegal crematoria of bodies, shovels, axes and other objects that will be reviewed to try to determine what was happening in that area. The searches are related to the disappearance of at least a hundred women and men on the border with Nuevo León. The first discovery in that territory occurred at the end of June, when Tamaulipas authorities found reader credentials, cell phones, complete garments, metal tape, among other objects. The operations to enter said area are heavily guarded by elements of the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), the National Guard and the Tamaulipas police. In addition, they have the collaboration of the Nuevo León security forces. Personnel from the Tamaulipas Attorney General's Office (FGJ), the National Search Commission (CNB) and the Attorney General's Office also participate in searches related to the disappearances reported in that federal channel. Yesterday morning, the head of the National Search Commission, Karla Quintana, confirmed "we have found an extermination zone," adding that they are trying to establish whether it is an active zone or with very recent use.
Extermination sites
This is the first extermination site found in Nuevo Laredo, which is added to the 57 places found and documented by groups of relatives of disappeared persons in Tamaulipas. These sites are distinguished by the criminal groups murdering people, cremating their bodies, destroying and hiding the bone fragments. In addition to that they dug clandestine graves to bury the corpses. In the southwest of Tamaulipas, the groups have identified 53 sites in the municipalities of Mante, Xicoténcatl, Llera de Canales, Gómez Farías and Ocampo; in the center of the state, one large in the town of Abasolo and two in Victoria, and on the border with the United States, one in Matamoros. Federal and state authorities have partially intervened with searches or removal of remains in 56 of those places. Findings of clandestine graves have not been common in Nuevo Laredo either.
According to the citizen graves platform, in that town the Tamaulipas Prosecutor's Office found 22 graves with 11 bodies and the FGR exhumed 14 bodies from 4 places. The northeast of Mexico has been the region of the country with the most extermination sites for people, said Karla Quintana Osuna. The federal official mentioned that the Commission has a registry in El Mante, Tamaulipas; Moctezuma, San Luis Potosí; Sponsorship, Coahuila; Claudio Station, in the Lagunera Region; and La Mano y Las Abejas, in Nuevo León. In a statement released on Monday, July 26, members of the United Forces for Our Disappeared in Nuevo León assured that 5 extermination sites have been identified in the entity: "Grutas de García", "Las Abejas", "Carboneras", "Los Arcos ”,“ Vallecillo ”and“ La Mano ”. In addition, they asked the National Search Commission and the State Attorney General's Office to define a detailed intervention plan for these places.
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