Epidemic of Drug-Related Murders Plagues Tijuana

At first, Rafael Lopez Cruz appeared to be just another grotesquely tortured, nameless corpse, dumped in an isolated stretch of Playas de Tijuana by thugs who meticulously broke most of his bones.

Had Lopez Cruz not been a state judicial police agent who had complained of narcotics corruption in the ranks, his murder a few weeks ago might have escaped notice entirely, as simply one more name on a long list of underworld killings here.

Tijuana has made headlines as the site of gangland-style killings of top officials since the assassination of the Mexican presidential heir apparent, Luis Donaldo Colosio, here in March 1994.

Behind the high-profile crimes, however, is a bloody string of drug- and corruption-related murders that has prompted one U.S. prosecutor to compare Tijuana to Chicago in the 1930s.

The violent score-settling between drug lords--and between traffickers and police or anyone else who gets in their way--has left behind a trail of corpses, often with signs of torture, sometimes blindfolded or with their hands tied behind their backs, all bearing the signature coup de grace shots to the head.

Others have been gunned down publicly, in broad daylight, by bold thugs who don’t bother to hide their faces. Many victims are anonymous young strangers from impoverished rural Mexico. Others are from socially prominent local families.

“In Tijuana, these kinds of killings have become so frequent that it’s almost a normal occurrence,” said Teodoro Gonzalez Luna, the spokesman for the Baja California state attorney general’s office in Mexicali.

Just last week , a young woman whose family had received threats from reputed narcotics traffickers was mowed down in a public market, along with a police officer who was on the scene, police said.

State Atty. Gen. Jose Luis Anaya Bautista said drug-related violence accounts for 40% of the 35 homicides that occur each month, on average, in Baja California.

While deaths from drug violence have decreased statewide this year, they have surged in Tijuana, Gonzalez Luna said. “There are the score-settling executions at the high levels, and power struggles between neighborhood distributors.”

Tijuana coroner Gustavo Salazar said he believes that there is an increase partly because of a growth in local drug sales and consumption.

“There are well-known public officials who are assassinated for doing their jobs: fighting narcotics traffickers,” Salazar said. “Other men are killed because they want easy money and turn to drug trafficking. This is definitely on the rise in Tijuana.”

Human rights leaders who monitor drug violence say the trademark execution-style murders of one to three men appear in local newspapers each week. Others, they say, pass without notice.

The drug murders have become an extremely sensitive image issue in Tijuana, making even the homicide statistics themselves a virtual state secret. Buck-passing has become the modus operandi.

Bernardo Cisneros, the spokesman for the state judicial police in Tijuana, said homicide statistics were “top-secret, confidential figures.” Baldomero Juvera, the force’s homicide chief, said his murder figures were for internal use only. The federal attorney general’s delegate, Luis Antonio Ibanez Cornejo, said homicides were the responsibility of the state judicial police. Tijuana state judicial police Cmdr. Antonio Torres Miranda said it was difficult to separate drug violence from other crimes.

“Quantifying this in Tijuana is a headache,” Gonzalez Luna said. “We know that drugs are behind the majority of violent deaths in Tijuana. Of that there is no doubt.”

Said Jose Luis Perez Canchola, Tijuana-based vice president of the Mexican Human Rights Academy: “They are afraid of statistics. Statistics say things politicians do not want to hear.”

Most observers see no easy solutions. Still, without acknowledging that any rise in drug violence is occurring, Jesus Velasco, spokesman for the federal attorney general’s delegation in Tijuana, said 55 new Baja California federal police agents arrived in the city two weeks ago and more have been requested. “With more personnel and resources, we will combat narcotics traffic, illegal immigrant smuggling and other federal crimes,” he said.

The carnage has shaken residents in Playas de Tijuana, a picturesque beach community on the city’s outskirts. “This has struck like a lightning bolt,” said Marta Rocha de Diaz, the head of the Housewives of Playas de Tijuana.

Indeed, some of the recent scenes are reminiscent of “Scarface,” the film about drug violence in Miami.

In February, a gang of armed men dressed in federal judicial police uniforms kicked down the doors of a home and sprayed everyone there with automatic weapons fire, said Juan Meza, the subcommander of the local municipal police substation. Two brothers, 13 and 25, were killed, Meza said. A third person was left for dead, he said.

The killers stole nothing from the family, whose deceased father had been the director of a prestigious private school. One family member, however, had stepped on the toes of narcotics traffickers, according to police and those familiar with the case.

“They came to kill. They didn’t steal anything,” Rocha de Diaz said. “If the sister hadn’t just walked out the door with her baby, I think they would have killed them too. The world of narcotics is ferocious.”

A few weeks later, gunmen mowed down the 26-year-old son of a Tijuana radio announcer and a friend as they walked out of a local disco. “It was an execution,” Meza said.

Like others in communities where traffickers are entrenched, Rocha de Diaz suspects that the traffickers have police protectors. What other explanation is there for the apparent inviolability of the walled compounds where strange armed men come and go at night in vehicles with blackened windows, she said. “If you took all the corrupt police and threw them in jail, you wouldn’t be able to shut the gate,” she said.

Sightings--whether real or imagined--of the Arellano Felix brothers are a staple of local gossip, though the reputed leaders of the so-called Tijuana drug cartel have so lowered their profiles that one ballad portrays them as invisible but potent “phantoms.”

For years they have managed to escape capture, in spite of a $1-million reward for information leading to their capture for alleged narcotics trafficking and suspected connections to the May 1993 slaying of the cardinal of Guadalajara, said Rene Aboytes, a spokesman for Mexico City’s attorney general.

Once flamboyant swashbucklers, the Arellanos--Benjamin, Javier and Ramon--are suspected of working behind the scenes of a powerful crime empire that is now fending off competitors seeking a share of its business.

The stakes are extremely lucrative. Tijuana is one of the prime nerve centers for smuggling operations that funnel the about 70% of all cocaine that reaches the United States through Mexico, experts say, as well as a hefty portion of the heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana that supplies U.S. consumers.

Most citizens of Tijuana are afraid to discuss the violent byproduct the industry generates. They describe the criminal organizations as uncontrollable and destructive forces of nature. To do anything besides get out of their way, they say, could invite the wrath of the unseen forces pulling strings behind the scenes.

One young hotel manager--English-speaking, college-educated, computer-literate, in starched khakis and a crisp white shirt--told of the dilemma that he has faced since the day a few months ago when a Colombian man checked into the hotel with a nervous demeanor and a piece of hand luggage that he insisted on carrying himself.

Soon the Colombian confessed to a hotel custodian: He had a modest load of cocaine he needed to get across the border and would be “deeply appreciative” of any help--such as information on when he would be least likely to be stopped and searched by U.S. Customs authorities.

Eventually, the entire hotel was clued in. They exchanged knowing glances as the Colombian lined up a Mexican woman to pose as his girlfriend. When zero hour arrived, they watched the “couple” drive away, the Colombian sweating under the bags of cocaine strapped to his torso under a baggy linen suit, like a character from a “Miami Vice” rerun, the manager said.

The Colombian made it across, he said. Since then, he has noticed the presence of other “pequenos narcos”--small-time smugglers pushing for a share of local cross-border traffic, he said.

The young manager said he has never once seriously considered calling the police. What if the police he contacted turned out to be allies of narcotics traffickers? Even if they weren’t, he doubts their ability to protect hotel staff from the so-called sicarios--professional assassins--of the drug traffickers. Better, he said, to simply stay out of it--and hope members of the so-called Tijuana cartel never arrive to “protect” their territory, leaving one of the ubiquitous corpses.

“Confidence in security forces is very low,” said Antonio Garcia Sanchez, the Baja state’s human rights ombudsman. “It is commonly known that there are criminals within the police forces. There is little faith that police can provide security. And they have solved almost none of the crimes committed here.”

In the past two years, there has been a string of assassinations of officials who took on narcotics corruption, including a former municipal police chief, a prison warden and several senior prosecutors.

The latest cautionary tale is the story of ill-starred Rafael Lopez Cruz.

Earlier this year, he had given prosecutors, journalists and a human rights leader details on what he said were ties between judicial police, including several ranking officers, and the Arellanos, human rights and judicial sources said.

Several of Lopez Cruz’s police colleagues say the men who tailed and threatened him for the last few weeks of his life--and who, they believe, eventually killed him--were state judicial police agents with close ties to narcotics traffickers.

Just the sight of Lopez Cruz’s body was a shock.

“They massacred him,” said Juan Meza, of the municipal police. “They broke all of his bones.” Mexican authorities say the assassination of veteran Tijuana prosecutor Jesus Romero Magana on Aug. 17 might also have been retribution for the firing of 29 Baja California federal agents as part of a nationwide sweep of more than 700 federal police suspected of corruption.

Critics say that theory sidesteps concerns that Romero and up to a dozen others involved with the Colosio investigation have been murdered in the past couple of years. But many of the Tijuana victims they cite--like reform-minded Tijuana Municipal Police Chief Jose Federico Benitez, whose April 1994 killing was officially attributed to drug traffickers--had fallen afoul of myriad corrupt forces.

“Tijuana, unfortunately, has become a dangerous city,” Victor Clark, the respected head of the independent Binational Human Rights Center, said. “There are so many killings now people have become jaded. The violence over control of the cartels--of drug traffic, immigrant smugglers, kidnapping rings--has reached unprecedented levels.”