Secreto a Voces

“It’s the funerals,” my guy says. “Always watch the funerals. Whoever shows up to the funerals, that’s how we’re going to know what happens next.” He’s cocky but knowledgeable, this Justice Department agent who’s watched this border since the first Bush Administration. His thick arms threatened to topple his coffee when he leaned forward to add something. “Chapo’s in a world of pain right now and he’s going to be looking for payback,” he says. “But we don’t know yet who’s playing for his team.” I trust his word; enough to use it to help me figure out what’s happened, what went so horribly wrong in Mexico over the past week. Everybody’s lost restraint; the military, the cops, and the narcos alike. The savagery has come home and this fight is very, very personal. They’re taking out family now, a strategy that is practiced only under the rarest of exception. Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s son was taken out with a rocket launcher in Culiacán. Then a nephew, Cesár Guzmán. Then the son of a money-launderer for Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. Before the party hit Culichi, it struck D.F., top cops Edgar Millán and Esteban Robles. I don’t know much about Robles, but quite a few law enforcement sources along the border grieved Millán, a fair, judicious man with a penchant for order. Millán’s killer waited in his home, shooting him eight times. Police said it was an inside job; few knew his staggered routines. The killer was arrested; the government showed him on television yesterday, crouched, cuffed, his red and black striped shirt soaked in sweat, a bandage over his right eye. The next morning, his whereabouts are unknown but his interrogators are not. Someone’s asking questions. Then a top gunman for Javier Torres, a high level leader who answers only to El Mayo. Then a police official in Juárez. The rumors started flying fast and furious. American officials were alarmed that the son of the governor of Sinaloa had been taken out. Then the son of the mayor of Culiacán. Then Chapo’s mother. Then Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, Arturo’s brother, now doing time after his arrest last January. None of the rumors were true. So far. The federal preventive police are estimating 102 murders in the past seven days, a pretty high number even for this country. Then the Sinaloans were blamed for Millán's murder. Then it went away. The fight is three-pronged. Or it’s not. It’s the warriors from Badiraguato against the killers from Navolato. Pura gente chingón de Sinaloa, indeed. The Sinaloan narco-syndicate against the Juárez Cartel. Amado’s brokered peace sustained so carefully for a decade, lying in ruins. Or the fight is between the government of Pres. Felipe Calderón and El Chapo Guzmán. The government has adopted the tactics of the mafia; it is targeting the families, weakening Chapo’s life-force by decimating his offspring. Edgar Guzmán was the child of the man’s favorite wife. Or not. Meanwhile, to the east of me, the Zetas, the trained killers of the Gulf Cartel, are working for Vicente Carrillo and Juárez. Free agents switching teams mid-season. Or the Gulf Cartel has it’s own problems and it’s leaders are biding their time, waiting for the people from Sinaloa to eliminate each other, then step in and take over. The game’s getting heavy, the old alliances are breaking, can the center hold? Just got a hold of a National Drug Intelligence Center price-list for narcotics entering the U.S. from Mexico. The Americans were lying and they knew it; there's been no price increase, quality’s improved. Dead sons of the drug lords or no, we’re getting better stuff at cheaper prices. No problem here. What is basically a trade economy hasn't been affected at all. In fact, the NDIC found, the big narcotics price increase boasted about last year was actually the narcos drying out the supply to stabilize prices. They're watching the Federal Reserve and acting accordingly. The next week will tell the story of who lies with whom. Which alliances lay which way. Working together with the State, the U.S.-bound media will distort the reality themselves. The American government will tell them the fight has happened because the smugglers are growing frustrated with the outstanding control of the U.S.’s border with Mexico. The correspondents of the American papers working in Mexico will know better but their shouts will go unheeded for the faster, easier story. Some truths are more comfortable than others. Those faithful to Chapo Guzmán will attend the funerals in the coming days. It’ll be interesting to see who shows up. So yeah, watch the funerals.

-- Michel Marizco