Mexico's San Fernando Massacres: A Declassified History
Mexico's San Fernando Massacres: A Declassified History
"Near total impunity" for Mexican Cartels "in the face of compromised local security forces," according to U.S.
DEA Linked Zetas to Guatemalan Special Forces in Weeks Prior to San Fernando Migrant Massacre
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 445
Washington, D.C., November 6, 2013 – Four months before the feared Zetas drug cartel kidnapped and murdered 72 migrants in northeastern Mexico, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said that narcotrafficking organizations in that region operated with "near total impunity in the face of compromised local security forces." As the date of the massacre drew nearer, another U.S. agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), reported new evidence linking the Zetas to soldiers from the Kaibiles, an elite Guatemalan special forces known for spectacular acts of cruelty and brutality during that country's civil war.
These records are among a set of U.S. documents declassified under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and published today by the National Security Archive, providing a glimpse of what U.S. diplomats and intelligence analysts were saying about the extreme violence that has engulfed Mexico's northern border state of Tamaulipas in recent years and the apparent complicity of Mexican officials. Just this week, a new round of violence in Tamaulipas took the lives of 13 more people, as drug-related violence flared yet again.
Some of these documents are featured in this week's edition of Proceso magazine, in an article by award-winning investigative journalist Marcela Turati. Her report highlights the unchecked power of the Zetas in the region and the inability or unwillingness of federal, state and local officials in Mexico to provide security for citizens and migrants traveling in the region.
The turf war between the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel and other criminal organizations for control of drug trafficking, human smuggling and other illicit enterprises in northern Mexico produced unimaginable scenes of carnage, including the August 2010 massacre of 72 migrants in San Fernando and the discovery, the following year, of graves containing the remains of hundreds more.
Another DEA cable from 2009 traces the "evolution and expansion" of the Zetas organization, many of whom were recruited from an elite Mexican Army unit known as the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE). The group was "no longer solely operating as the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel," according to the report, and had "established a methodology to move into new territory and assert control over that geography." The "strength" of the Zetas, according to the DEA, "is their ability to corrupt, kill and intimidate and these factors have given the Zetas the power to conduct activities throughout Mexico."
The Zetas had also stepped up attacks on public officials and other prominent figures, which the DEA said was a reaction to President Felipe Calderón's "counter-cartel initiatives." Intelligence gathered by the U.S. State Department also led to the assessment that Calderón's anti-crime strategy had "unintended consequences" and had contributed to a "spike in drug-related murders."
More:
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB445/
