THE BORDER REPORT

Here's a story I wrote for the Culiacán weekly, Rio Doce.

The levantón, when it happened, was perfect. No body, no witnesses and nearly three years later, silence, a secreto a voces that permeates throughout the entire state of Sonora, from the state government to the federal level, to the media and down to the citizenry. But old stories have a way of coming back, and nearly three years later, one of the key figures who was never fully investigated in the disappearance of a Sonoran organized crime reporter, Alfredo Jiménez Mota, now finds himself in the uncomfortable spotlight of American law enforcement. Jiménez, 24 at the time, disappeared on April 2, 2005, after he profiled some of the most successful narco-traffickers working in Sonora at the time, figures of the organized crime underworld who were subordinate to the Sinalon crime bosses, El Barbas, Arturo Beltrán Leyva and El Chapo, Joaquín Guzmán Loéra. The unofficial explanation for the reporter’s disappearance was that Los Güeritos, a band of narco-trafficking brothers based in Navojoa, Sonora, had kidnapped and murdered the young reporter because of his news articles linking the family, Enriquez Parra, to more than 70 murders throughout the region and to a corrupt Mexican police chief arrested in the United States for trying to bribe an American law enforcement official. According to an intelligence report from the Mexican Centro de Investigacíon y Seguridad Nacional (CISEN), Los Güeritos was the go-to gang for drug trafficking into Arizona. A narco-corrido from Los Alteños de la Sierra describes them better: AHI ESTABAN CUATRO GRANDES DE ESOS QUE SON CHACALOSOS PONCHO VENIA DE JALISCO LOS OTROS TRES DE SONORA EL 9, EL 7 Y EL DIEZ Y EL CHAPO MANDAN AHORA. On it’s face, the motive seemed logical – except for the fact that the first narco Jiménez pulled out of the shadows of the underworld and into the public view was a Chihuahua-based narco, Adán Salazár Zamorano. In a January 2005 story for El Imparcial, Jiménez linked Salazár to the murder of a Ministerio Publíco in Navojoa, Francisco Rafael Flores Cárdenas. The story, “Ordéno un Narco Matar a MP Federal,” alarmed the high level administrators of the PGR and AFI in Sonora. The source of the story was somebody within the PGR. A month later, two agents of the AFI came to the editorial offices of the newspaper demanding to know who had been the source of the front-page story. Flores Cardenas was murdered in November 2004 just meters away from the city police station in Navojoa. According to Jiménez’ story, the PGR was investigating Salazár for the murder because they had information that he paid $15,000 for the ministerio publico’s execution. Zamorano ordered Flores’ murder because he in turn ordered the murder of a former ministerio publico, Rafael Pavel Torres Flores. That man, murdered in Navojoa in March 2004, had ties back to Zamorano through his wife, Jiménez’s story said. It was the last time Salazar’s name appeared in a Sonoran newspaper and the man, who carried an on-going feud with Los Güeritos dating back to the 1990s, dropped from the public view again. According to public information from the U.S. Marshal’s Office, Zamorano was indicted in that country in May 2006 as a cocaine trafficker. The indictment remains sealed by a federal judge but charges Zamorano, 63, with conspiracy for cocaine trafficking in the United States. His son, Jesus Alfredo Salazar Ramirez, 33, has also been charged as a cocaine trafficker in the United States. The story of the Salazars dates back to the late 1980s, said a U.S. Justice Department official who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. The DEA has linked Salazar back to a 21-ton cocaine seizure in Southern California in September 1989 in what came to be known as the Sylmar Seizure. At that time, Colombian narco-traffickers were first beginning to move cocaine through Mexico for the ease of the Mexican shipping ports and the rise of the Guadalajara Cartel under Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Felix Gallardo. The Sylmar Seizure was one of the turning points in the methods employed by the Mexican narco-syndicates and led to the rise of many of the organized crime figures operating today. Twenty-one and a half tons of cocaine were stored in a warehouse in Sylmar, California, because of a dispute between Colombian and Mexican narco-traffickers. After the significant loss, the Colombian traffickers began paying the Mexican transporters in cocaine instead of cash. As a result, Mexican traffickers were now moving their own cocaine. In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing later, DEA officials estimates that the Sylmar warehouse had stored 55 tons of cocaine coming in from El Paso to Los Angeles. The Sylmar bust proved a dark reality to U.S. officials – despite the massive bust, there was little change in street prices. “One of the most disturbing aspects of this case is that ten years ago, we measured drug seizures in grams and pounds. Today, we routinely measure seizures in tons, even multi-tons,” the administrator of the DEA told the Senate committee at the time. Nearly twenty years later, it appears the United States is preparing its case against Zamorano. Meanwhile, in Mexico, law enforcement officials remain silent. “Perhaps there’s a fear there,” said the Justice Department official.

-- Michel Marizco