The attack takes place in the downtown of Monterrey, a prosperous and once-orderly industrial hub hit by over a year of fighting between the Zetas, known as the country's most violent drug gang, and the Gulf cartel.
 Forensic workers load a truck with bodies after gunmen stormed into a bar in downtown Monterrey, Mexico, late Friday and killed at least 20 people. (Hans Maximo Musielik, AP / July 10, 2011) |
Reporting from Mexico City—
Gunmen targeting a rival drug cartel opened fire in a crowded bar in the northern city of Monterrey, killing at least 20 people and wounding several, authorities said Saturday.The attack occurred late Friday in the Sabino Gordo bar in downtown Monterrey, a prosperous and once-orderly industrial hub that has been buffeted by more than a year of fighting between the Zetas, known as the country's most violent drug gang, and the Gulf cartel.
Authorities said most of the dead — four of them women — were bar employees. Mexican news reports said the toll rose to 21 after a wounded man died in a hospital.
The attack may have stemmed from a dispute over narcotics sales at the bar, officials said.
"The most probable line that we're following is that it was a direct attack against the establishment, rather than against the people who were enjoying themselves there," Jorge Domene, security spokesman for Nuevo Leon state, said in a television interview.
Monterrey, Mexico's richest city, was once known as a peaceful if uninspiring factory town. But the drug violence has turned it into something more like a Wild West outpost, with gun battles in the streets, brazen kidnappings and frequent slayings of police officers in outlying communities.
Some have expressed worry that if Monterrey is lost to violence, so is all of Mexico.
The government of President Felipe Calderon launched an aggressive, military-led campaign against drug traffickers in late 2006, a drive accompanied by furious fighting between drug gangs. About 40,000 people have died.
The latest carnage wasn't limited to Monterrey. In the northern state of Coahuila, next door to Nuevo Leon, the decapitated bodies of seven men and three women were found around the city of Torreon. The killings were attributed to clashes between the Zetas and traffickers based to the west, in the state of Sinaloa.
Also, 11 bodies turned up in the municipality of Valle de Chalco, in the central state of Mexico, outside Mexico City, in an attack believed linked to crime groups.
In the western state of Michoacan, federal police in recent days have battled hit men from a faction of the splintering La Familia gang. On Saturday, the government deployed 1,800 more federal officers to the crime-torn state.
The spate of bloodletting prompted Calderon's public safety spokesman, Alejandro Poire, to call a rare Saturday news conference to defend the government's strategy.
Poire said the violence was caused by "absurd" rivalries between criminal groups and not the crackdown, which faces rising public criticism as the toll climbs.
"The violence is not going to slow down by dropping the fight against criminals," he said.
Unraveling Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel
Unraveling Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel
As drug smugglers from the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico sent a never-ending stream of cocaine across the border and into a vast U.S. distribution web in Los Angeles, DEA agents were watching and listening.
 Drivers in Mexicali wait to enter the United States at the border crossing at Calexico, Calif. The entry point is a favorite of drug smugglers because the inspection station sits almost directly on the border, without the usual buffer zone of several hundred feet, making it harder for inspectors to examine cars in the approach lanes. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times / August 26, 2009) |
Reporter Richard Marosi explains how drug smugglers ply their trade. Click on a question below.
Reporting from Calexico, Calif. --
Never lose track of the load.
It was drilled into everybody who worked for Carlos “Charlie” Cuevas. His drivers, lookouts, stash house operators, dispatchers -- they all knew. When a shipment was on the move, a pair of eyes had to move with it.
Cuevas had just sent a crew of seven men to the border crossing at Calexico, Calif. The load they were tracking was cocaine, concealed in a custom-made compartment inside a blue 2003 Honda Accord.
The car was still on the Mexican side in a 10-lane crush of vehicles inching toward the U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection station. Amputee beggars worked the queue, along with men in broad-brimmed hats peddling trinkets, tamales and churros.
A lookout watching from a car in a nearby lane reported on the load's progress. Cuevas, juggling cellphones, demanded constant updates. If something went wrong, his boss in Sinaloa, Mexico, would want answers.
The Accord reached the line of inspection booths, and a lookout on the U.S. side picked up the surveillance. He was Roberto Daniel Lopez, an Iraq War veteran, standing near the “Welcome to Calexico” sign.
It was the usual plan: After clearing customs, the driver would head for Los Angeles, shadowed by a third lookout waiting in a car on South Imperial Avenue.
But on this hot summer evening, things were not going according to plan. Lopez called his supervisor to report a complication: The Accord was being directed to a secondary inspection area for a closer look. Drug-sniffing dogs were circling.
Cuevas rarely talked directly to his lookouts or drivers. But after being briefed by the supervisor, he made an exception. He called Lopez.
“What's happening?” he asked.
“The dogs are going crazy,” Lopez replied.
Dots on a map
Cuevas worked for the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's most powerful organized crime group. He was in the transportation side of the business. Drugs were brought from Sinaloa state to Mexicali, Mexico, in bus tires. Cuevas' job was to move the goods across the border and deliver them to distributors in the Los Angeles area, about 200 miles away.
The flow was unceasing, and he employed about 40 drivers, lookouts and coordinators to keep pace.
The canines circling the load car that evening in August 2006 were the least of his problems.
The canines circling the load car that evening in August 2006 were the least of his problems. Eight agents from a Drug Enforcement Administration task force had converged on the border. Not even U.S. customs inspectors knew they were there. The agents had been following Cuevas and tapping his phones for months.
Because he was a key link between U.S. and Mexican drug distributors, his phone chatter was an intelligence gusher. Each call exposed another contact, whose phone was then tapped as well. The new contacts called other associates, leading to more taps. Soon the agents had sketched a vast, connect-the-dots map of the distribution network.
Suspicion in Mexico's Sinaloa cartel
Suspicion in Mexico's Sinaloa cartel
Why were drug smugglers' cocaine shipments being seized all over the U.S.? The boss in Mexico was demanding answers. He had no idea he was being targeted by the DEA's Operation Imperial Emperor.
 Victor Emilio Cazares, reputed to be a top lieutenant in the Sinaloa drug cartel, lived in this estate near Culiacan, Mexico. The bell towers of the family church overlook the surrounding property. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times / |
Reporter Richard Marosi explains how drug smugglers ply their trade. Click on a question below.
Reporting from Calexico, Calif., and Badiraguato, MexicoThe towering iron gates opened onto a palm-lined driveway that led past the family church, a twisting water slide and two man-made lakes, one stocked with fish, the other with jet skis.
With its soaring twin bell towers, each topped by a cross, the estate in the emerald hills outside Culiacan, Mexico, had an almost surreal grandeur. It reminded Carlos "Charlie" Cuevas of Disneyland, without the smiles.
Cuevas, a drug trafficker from Calexico, Calif., had been summoned there by Victor Emilio Cazares, allegedly a top lieutenant in the Sinaloa cartel. Cazares was said to be upset by a rash of recent drug seizures by U.S. authorities.
In one of them, police had raided a stash house in Paramount, southeast of Los Angeles, and confiscated nearly 455 pounds of cocaine, worth about $3.3 million.
Cuevas had come under suspicion, and not only because he handled the shipment. Raised in California, he was an outsider. He couldn't claim Sinaloan roots. The boss and his heavily armed cronies would make fun of his American-accented Spanish and call him a derogatory term for Mexican Americans.
Cuevas' drivers and lookouts were also suspect. He had been ordered to bring them to Mexico for questioning. He hadn't.
Cuevas feared his boss — he'd guzzle Pepto-Bismol for his frequent gut eruptions — but this time he stood firm.
"I'm so sure it's not one of my guys that you can kill me if it's one of them," Cuevas said.
In the shadows
The confrontation reflected the frustrations of a cartel in confusion. Cocaine shipments were being seized all over the U.S.: by New Jersey and New York police, California Highway Patrol officers, Oklahoma state troopers and others. The array of agencies was a cover for the main force behind most of the busts: the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Cazares didn't know it, but he was a top target in one of the largest DEA investigations ever of a Mexican organized crime group. Operation Imperial Emperor was peeling back layers of a drug distribution ring with hundreds of truckers, packers, money couriers and stash house operators across the U.S.
Local police made arrests while DEA agents stayed in the shadows, piecing together evidence and listening to cellphone chatter.
Keeping the DEA's involvement quiet was key.
A major trafficking suspect like Cazares didn't sweat local busts, but a federal investigation would put him on alert. Wiretaps would go silent, evidence would disappear, suspects would flee.
The DEA was allowing the drug pipeline to continue running so agents could expand their target list. There would be busts and seizures of drugs and money, but no knockout punch.
The cocaine economy gushed millions of dollars a week in revenue for a reputed kingpin like Cazares.
The government was trying to bleed the organization to death.
It wouldn't be easy. The cocaine economy gushed millions of dollars a week in revenue for a reputed kingpin like Cazares, whose contacts reached from Colombia to the South Bronx. Cocaine purchased from South American producers for about $3,600 a pound was sold for $7,200 in Los Angeles and $9,000 in New York.
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