It’s cold, and the heater in Pablo’s fronterizo is for shit, so he shivers as he drives out to Villa del Portal Street, one of the two ways into Salvárcar. He’s tired, and was hoping for this Saturday night off. There had been fourteen bodies yesterday, more than he could cover, and he’d driven back and forth across the city to report on as many as he could, even though bodies were no longer news.
It would be news if there weren’t bodies.
The scanner hadn’t indicated whether it was a man or a woman, or how many—just that there had been a murder. Pablo pulls up to 3010 Villa del Portal expecting the same old non-news.
The street is full of people—some screaming, some crying, others holding each other in consolation. There are a lot of other reporters and photographers—even television news trucks.
Something major has happened at 3010 Villa del Portal.
Ambulances pull up behind Pablo, along with a car full of federales, and the people start shouting obscenities at them. It’s been forty minutes! Where have you been?! Cowards! Pendejos!
Pablo gets out and slips on some blood on the sidewalk. He finds Giorgio shooting from outside the house.
“What happened?” Pablo asked.
“Some local teenagers were having a birthday party in the vacant house,” Giorgio answers. “Apparently, carloads of gunmen pulled up, went in, and started shooting. Some of the kids ran next door but the sicarios chased them down there. The people were calling for help, but no one came.”
Pablo remembers that there’s a hospital two minutes away.
“The shooters got back in their cars and drove off,” Giorgio says. “Then, of course, the federales came.”
“How many dead?” Pablo asks.
Giorgio shrugs.
It turns out to be fifteen.
Four adults and eleven kids.
Fifteen more wounded.
Over the next two days, Pablo gets more of the story. The kids were just having a party, with the knowledge of their parents and even the permission of the people who owned the vacant house.
The sicarios came in. Survivors heard orders to “kill them all.” Most died in the living room, their bodies piled in a clump. Others jumped out the window and ran next door, where the gunmen tracked them down.
It was over within fifteen minutes.
The question is, who did it?
And why?
—
Pablo tracks Ramón down in a Galeana bar.
The Los Azteca lieutenant is slumped in a booth, very drunk, and he stares up through red eyes as Pablo slides into the booth.
“What you want, ’mano?”
“Villas del Salvárcar.”
“Go to hell.”
“We’re all pretty much living in it, aren’t we?” Pablo asks. He sets his glass down on the table. “The fuck happened, Ramón? Who did it?”
Ramón shakes his head. “You want to die, Pablo? Because I don’t. I mean, I do, but I got kids, you know?”
“Gente Nueva? La Línea?”
Ramón looks around, leans in, and then says, “It was a mistake, ’mano. They had the wrong information.”
“Who did?”
Ramón taps his own chest. “Us. Los Aztecas.”
“Jesus, were you—”
“No, ’mano. I’m going to hell, but not for that.” His head slumps, then he recovers, looks up, and says, “Some others. They had orders. They were told it was an AA party.”
“Like the rehab?”
“Nooooo, like AA, like Aristos Asesinos,” Ramón says. “The gang that fights for Barrera. They thought those kids were AA.”
“They weren’t.”
“Know that now,” Ramón says.
“Who gave the order?”
Ramón shrugs. “Who the fuck knows? No one’s in charge anymore. No one knows…anything. Someone above you tells you to kill someone, you kill someone. You don’t know why, you don’t know for who. Then the guy above you is dead, and it’s someone else.”
“Was it Fuentes?”
“That pussy bitch?” Ramón asks. “He’s gone. He ran away. He don’t care no more. Fuck, I don’t care no more. Nobody cares about shit no more.”
Ramón starts to cry. Then he says, “You better get out of here, ’Blo. Isn’t safe. They’re killing us all, man. La Línea, Los Aztecas, they’re killing us all.”
“Who is?”
“The Gente Nueva,” Ramón says. “They’re the New People, right?”
Pablo tosses back his drink and slides out of the booth.
“Hey, come to the house sometime,” Ramón says. “We’ll have a beer, watch some fútbol.”
“We’ll do that.”
Pablo walks out of the bar.
—
The next day, Pablo is in the city room with Ana and Óscar when the president gives a press conference from Switzerland to comment on the Villas de Salvárcar massacre.
“The most probable hypothesis,” Calderón said, “is that the attacks were related to the rivalry between drug organizations, and that the youths had some sort of link to the cartels.”
“Did he really just say that?” Ana asks.
“He did,” Óscar answers. “We run it.”
Calderón’s statement infuriates Juárez and thousands of other Mexican citizens across the country. Calls for his resignation come from every quarter, not the least of which from the families of those killed.
Óscar Herrera writes a scathing editorial, demanding that the president step down.
The president and members of his cabinet come to visit the families, apologize, offer their condolences, and announce over $260 million in new social programs for the city.
It does little good.
It certainly does little to mollify the Juarenses.
The day after Calderón’s visit, a narcomanta is hung up over a major Juárez street. It reads THIS IS FOR CITIZENS SO THAT THEY KNOW THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PROTECTS ADÁN BARRERA, WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MASSACRE OF INNOCENT PEOPLE…ADÁN BARRERA IS PROTECTED BY PAN SINCE THEY SET HIM FREE. THE DEAL IS STILL IN PLACE TODAY. WHY DO THEY MASSACRE INNOCENT PEOPLE? WHY DO THEY NOT FIGHT WITH US FACE-TO-FACE? WHAT IS THEIR MENTALITY? WE INVITE THE GOVERNMENT TO FIGHT ALL THE CARTELS.
The next day, hundreds gather at the base of the Free Bridge to protest drug violence.
Villas de Salvárcar comes to symbolize opposition to the government’s war on drugs, a symbol of confusion and futility.
It’s a watershed moment in the war on drugs.
Another follows in short order.
La Tuna, Sinaloa
February 2010
The CDG and the Zetas have split.
The war is on.
The deck of cartel alliances is going to be shuffled again.
Adán knew that it couldn’t last—that eventually the Zeta servants would turn on their CDG masters—but he can’t believe it would happen this soon and in such a spectacular fashion.
He goes down to the kitchen to make some breakfast. It’s become one of his small pleasures—he likes the solitude of early morning and the simplicity of cooking an egg and making his own coffee.
It’s good, quiet time to think before a day of incessant demands.
Adán heats some canola oil and cracks a single egg into the pan. He’s picked up a few pounds and his last physical revealed that his cholesterol was a little high, so he’s cut his morning eggs in half. Watching the egg crackle, he thinks about Gordo Contreras, the putative head of the CDG.
Gordo made a serious mistake.
Some of his people in Reynosa kidnapped and then killed a high-ranked Zeta, a close friend of Forty’s.
Forty was outraged and gave Gordo a week to turn over the killers.
Gordo was in a tough spot. If he turned his own people over, he was done as boss of the CDG and became Forty’s bitch; if he didn’t, he was at war with the Zetas. Gordo has his own armed force, Los Escorpiones, but they’re not a match for the Zetas.
Adán takes a spatula and slides the egg onto his plate. He shakes some Tabasco sauce on it in place of the salt that Eva won’t let him have, then sits down to eat.