LETTER FROM TIJUANA. IN THE NAME OF THE LAW Tn drug wars that rack Mexico— the death toll over the past four years is approaching thirty thousand—Ti juana is an anomaly. It is a place where public security has actually improved. In 2007 and 2008, the city was 2 killing field, During the last three months of 2008, nearly five hundred people were ‘murdered here, many in gruesome pub- lic displays: decapitations, dismember ‘ments, corpses left hanging from bridges, piles of bodies with their tongues cut out. There were daylight shoot-outs be- tween gangs using automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers in downtown streets and shopping malls. Kidnapping for ransom got so bad that many wealthy and middle-class families fled to the United States. “The Mexican government had al- ready sent in the Army. This has been the basic approach of President Felipe Calder6n’s administration to Mexico's organized-crime problem since taking office, in December, 2006. In Tijuana, the military began by disarming the city’s police. The twenty-six hundred ‘members of Tijuana’s finest were widely believed to work for the nareo-traffickerss the Army wanted to test their weapons {for possible involvement in unsolved murders. Those test results, if they were ever produced, were not released, but the military took so long to return the guns that some cops began carrying slingshots on the job. Like most mu~ nicipal police in Mexico, the Tijuana police were poorly paid, undertrained, and underequipped—when they had target practice, they had to buy their own bullets. They were also widely despised. The Army’s arrival in Tijuana, in 2007, was welcomed by a terrorized public. But the military, with no local knowledge or experience in urban war~ fare, had no luck at first in stopping the rising narco violence. A colonel racks down on corruption. BY WILLIAM FINNEGAN “Then Army officers began replacing local police commanders. Lieutenant Colonel Julién Leyzaola Péree (Retired) became Tijuana’s chief of police. In De~ cember, 2008, he was named Tijuana’s Secretary of Public Security, increasing his authority. Unlike his predecessors, Leyzaola went straight at the narcos. He called them mugrosos (slimeballs) and cockroaches, and chased their ar- mored convoys through the streets. He replaced police commanders whom he considered passive with other retired Army officers. He told the press, “Ifthe cartels understand only the language of violence, then we are going to have to speak in their language and annihilate them.” He told his bodyguards to con= centrate on going after attackers rather than on protecting him. “I knowhow to shoot and I shoot well. Talways shoot 0 the head.” His fearlessness and ine left Hijuanenses in awe. Arriving at the scene of a shoot-out where one of his men had died, he punched the corpse of acar- tel gunman in the face. During Leyza- ola’s first year in Tijuana, thirty-two cops were killed in the line of duty— ‘more than had died in the previous five ‘years combined. ‘Normally, in Mexico, narco-taffckers don't tolerate aggressive law enforce- ment—least ofall from city police, who lack the formal power to investigate se- rious crimes (state police do that), let alone combat drug trafficking (that’s for the federal police). Local police chiefs who annoy them are simply killed, It happened to the Tijuana police chief in 2000, Ithappened to the chiefin Tecate, the next border town to the east, in 2007—he was murdered in bed, while lying next to his wife, with fifty shots to the face and chest. Ie happened to the deputy police chief in Tijuana in Janu- ary, 2008, when a large contingent of gunmen surrounded his house and killed him and his wife and two daughters. Leyzaola moved his family out of “Mexico, He slept on an Army base, He survived a series of assassination at- tempts, One involved a plot to blow up police headquarters with acarbomb, He moved his office to a high-rise with a well-defended ground floor. The nar- cos like to commandeer police radio frequencies and fill them with taunts, threats, misinformation about crimes in progress, and narcecorridos—ballads about their exploits. Death threats against Leyzaola became aleitmotif on Tijuana police radios. In an unusually elaborate effort, one gang leader, Teodoro Garcia Simental—an ultra-violent, obese psy chopath known as El Teo—commis- sioned several exact replicas of the vehi- cles used by the Army, with a plan to ambush Leyzaola, videotape the assassi- nation, and then post the video on the Internet with a narcocorrido soundtrack. “This scheme was foiled by a last-minute raid, conducted on a tip that originated from USS. law enforcement, on a ranch on the city’s outskires. In July, 2009, EI Teo left a nore on the body ofa slain po- lice officer: “Ifyou dont resign, Leyza~ ola, Pm going to kill Sa week.” El Teo's men had already, in a frenzy a few ‘months earlier, killed seven cops and wounded three in the space of forty-five ‘minutes. Leyzaola did not resign. He called El Teo a coward. Ina country where organized crime operates with fantastic impunity, this sort of ground-level defiance was un- usual, if not unique. President Cal- derén, on a visit to Tijuana in 2009, praised the local anti-drug offensive. Carlos Pascual, the U.S. Ambassador, said Tijuana had the best municipal po- lice force in Mexico. The mayor of San Diego praised Leyzaola, and the Los Angeles Times called his work a “model for the kind of law enforcement muscle “The day Htook office, there were five kidnappings,” Colonel Leyzaola said. The city was “totally controlled by organized crime.” eSthe Mexican government needs to bat- tle organized crime.” Drug-related violence declined in ‘Tijuana in 2009, although spasms of as~ tounding bloodshed continued. Then, in January, 2010, El’Teo was captnred— not in Tijuana but in La Paz, in Baja California Sur, nine hundred miles away. Again, US. law enforcement pro- vided critical intelligence. But Leyzaola considered it personal triumph, and he told reporters that El Teo, once in cus- tody, had acted like a woman. Indeed, the mugroso had moved to La Paz only because he, Leyzaola, had driven him out of Tijuana, ‘After the arrest of E1 Teo and, in the following weeks, the capture of several of his top lieutenants, the great Tijuana drug war seemed to be over. The city’s ‘murder rate remains high, but, accord ing to David Shirk, of the University of San Diego's Trans-Border Institute, which studies public security in the re~ gion, “now its not large-casualty kills in the public plaza, Ie’s small-time, street- comer stuff, on the periphery. Ie’ get- ‘ing rid of remnants of El Teo's organi- zation, settling scores.” Leyzaola's satisfaction with the rela tive peace in downtown Tijuana today is palpable. “The day I took office, there ‘were five kidnappings,” he told me. We ‘were sitting in his eighth-floor office on a sunny morning in August. The lower floors of the building had a dreadful 64 THE NEW YORNER, OCTOBER 18, 2010 ee stench from a slaughteshouse next door, but the odor dissipated at this altitude. Leyzaola is forty-nine, trim and athletic, with a strong, slightly lupine face. The son and grandson of soldiers he entered the Herdico Colegio Militar, Mexico's West Point, at sisteen, Hewenton, “The city was totally degraded, totally con tolled by organized erime. Convoys of Escalades and Suburbans full of armed men were rolling around these central streets, killing with complete impunity” The narcos still do their dirty work, he said, but quietly now. “They are no lon ger big groups in S.U.V.s using AK-47s but just a couple of guys in old cars with pistols.” Leyzaola himself was, unmis- takably, the new stud duck in town, But his work is not finished. With the help of the Army, he has been con- ducting a large-scale depuracién, or “purification,” ofthe Tijuana police. He has arrested, often personally, more than a hundred and eighty officers sus- pected of corruption, and has forced the resignations of hundreds more. La de- _puracidn is the most important work he hhas done by far, he told me. He reck- ons he has smoked out six hundred bad cops, and has changed the climate for those who remain. “Its unprecedented inthis country,” he sid. “A police force, at any level, purifying itself like this. Tes never been done before.” Although organized crime requires corruption at all levels of government to function effectively, the cop on the beat is a crucial piece of the machinery. Po- lice officers can provide key informa~ tion and services. In Mexico, they often moonlight forthe cartels as drivers, body- guards, kidnappers, hit men, drug run= ners, lookouts, thieves, conpse-disposal experts, and extortionists. Their uni- forms come in handy on raids, robber ies, kidnappings. Cops can also be use~ ful simply by hearing and seeing no evil, or by directing the law-enforcement efforts of moze gung-ho colleagues to- ward the operations of rivals. (This is true forall levels of police, and now the federal police have also started firing large numbers of officers suspected of comuption.) Tasked Leyzaola if he had ever been offered a bribe “Ob, yes,” he said, “He sat right where you're sitting. He was a former Army colleague. | thought he had come for u job. T told him I was sorry but I had nothing for him, because he was too old for this kind of work—he was about fifty-seven, He said, ‘Tm not look- ing for a job. Tam here as an ambassa~ dor for Chapo Guzman.” Joaquin (El ‘Chapo) Guzman Loeras the most pow- erful drug lord in Mexico. He runs the Sinaloa cartel and has operated in Baja for years. * He wants to pay you eighty thousand dollars a week to go to confer- ences and meetings, to set up sister-city programs. He wanted to pay me, in other words, to stop doing my job” Leyzaola looked at me serenely, with just hint, I thought, of amusement, ot pezhaps it was outrage. There were five gold stars on the epaulets of his blue~ black police uniform, and an old samu- rai sword on a bookcase behind him, He made. slow, watchful move forthe pis- tol on his hip, and then pretended to quickly draw it, cock it, and hold it to my head, “I said, "You are a traitor to la patria. You ase going to repeat what you just said to me? And T made him stand ‘up, with my gun to his head, and made hhim walk down the hall, and go down the elevator, and getin my car, and drive to the airport, and fly to Mexico City, and then go straight to the attomey gen- eral’s office, where I took him in and told him to repeat what he had said to me.” Leyzaola, with a hand held cocked likea pistol between us, and now slight smile, made it clear that he had not re-‘moved the barrel ofhis weapon from his former comade's temple the whole trip. T could see why Zeta, a Tijuana weekly with an international reputation for investigating the drug cartels, had named Leyzaola (along with his Army counterpart, General Alfonso Duarte Magica) its Man of the Year for 2009, Zeta bas lost two editors to assassina- tions by onganized crime. A third was wounded by a botched attempe that Killed his driver. Each week, the paper runs a full-page memorial to Héctor (Gato) Félix Miranda, who was mur- dered in 1988 by a bodyguard ofa local oligarch named Jorge Hank Rhon. The memorial page carries a photograph of Félix Miranda pointing into the camera, and it asks Hank, in bold type, “Why did your bodyguard Antonio Vera Pal- estina kill me?" It accuses the sitting governor of Baja California, and his predecessors, of doing nothing to pur- sue those who ordered Félix Miranda's murder. Hank’s business empire, which includes a racetrack and Mexico's lan est chain of betting parlors, flourishes despite the bad publicity. He was elected mayor of Tijuana in 2004, and served until 2007. But Hank does not swagger around the city these days in high-speed armored convoys, as he traditionally did That, I was told, is because Leyzaola fosbids it the hotel next door to mine, the Real Inn, had a forbidding air. It had been taken over by the federal po- lice, and its driveway was blocked by sandbagged checkpoints from behind which helmeted guards kept heavy ‘weapons pointed toward the street. The building itself was bulky, ugly, painted white, with many dirty small blue win= dows. It looked more like a jail than a hotel. Itwas attacked last November by armed commandos, so the paranoid- looking guards behind the sandbags had reason to be on edge. Zeta reported that the attacks had been the work ofa local cartel, angry because the féderales using the hotel asa barracks had stolen a drug shipment that belonged to them from ‘Tijuane’s international aixport. ‘The federales deployed to Tijuana do not enjoy a good reputation. Roberto Quijano Sosa, a prominent local attor- ney who represents the private sector on security issues, told me that he gave the federal police an F for their perfor- mance in Tijuana, and that that grade was going down. The city police, pre- viously an F, were now a C-minus, Quijano said, with all credit for that im- provement going to Leyzaola. Leyzaola, meanwhile, is blunt, even by his stan- dards, about the uselessness of the fide ralesin Tijuana, He calls them mugrosos, He has been similarly blunt about cor rupt city police since the beginning of Ja depuracién. In his first month as Sec- retary of Public Security, at a breakfast honoring outstanding members of the force, he told the gathering that, when it came to comupt officers, nobody would cxy when these “beasts in uniform” were killed. Mass fisings had already begun. Leyzaola was right about the lack of public sympathy for slain cops. The Jarge public funerals and hero's farewells accorded to American police officers fallen in the line of duty are unimagina- ble in Tijuana. Even as the city police were being targeted by the cartels and kalled by the dozen, people seemed to as- sume that the cops being gunned down were probably not clean anyway. Rank- and-file cops were in an impossible posi~ tion, with Leyzaola at their backs with a bayonet, calling for the narcos to bring it ‘on, and the narcos obliging. And then there were the purges, the escalating cy~ cles of anonymous and not so anonymous denunciations leading to the sudden ar~ rests of cops. Leyzaola increasingly in ps Sou OG fe 28 ei cwtal AGNET volved the Army in these busts, Squad= rons of masked troops were artiving at the homes of suspects, breaking down doors, and seizing, with no legal niceties, what the newspapers were calling narco~ polisis. Many of these officers disap- peared into local Army bases or were flown to far-off federal prisons. For Ricardo Castellanos Hemandez, a six-year veteran, it happened differ ently. Like most of the force, he had been made to take a lie-detector test after Leyzaola came in, with questions about bribes and contact with the car tels, He passed eusily, he told me—he had never been crooked, although plenty of his fllow-cops were—and he was as- signed to a new downtown unit led by former soldiers. He worked there for six months. Then, on September 15, 2009, as Castellanos was standing at atten- tion at early-morning muster, his com- mander ordered him into a white vehi cle with blacked-out windows, Inside were three masked men, “They pushed my head down.” Castellanos had been denounced. Tt had taken me a week to arrange our interview, Castellanos was under- standably skittish. I was supposed to pick him up in my car outside a Domi= no's Pizza in the city’s financial district. He was wearing bluejeans and a tight gray T-shirt. As T approached, a police patrol car stopped beside him. I veered away and watched from a distance as a Oo [ir Ps | is |, HS _| reac q 7 H oF toy Teovere anes {|female officer got out and engaged Cas- tellanos in what looked like intense con- versation. She had a rifle in one hand, held casually, pointed away. After a minute, to my surprise, she gave him a Jong, hard hug, rife still in hand. Then she lef. He and I headed to a restaurant in my car. Castellanos, who is thirty- one, has a bodybuilder’s physique— enormous shoulders, arms, and chest— buta gentle, nervous manner. He drank cup after cup of black coffee, and his eyes never left mine. “They took me to the Second Army Zone, cuartel Morelas,” he said, in a mix- ture of Spanish and English. The Mo- relos barracks are near the city center. A gigantic Mexican flag—the biggest flag I have ever seen—fiies over them, “Eight or nine masked soldiers took me out, body-searched me, handcuffed me ‘They were treating me like a criminal, 1 ‘was totaly surprised. There are officers ‘who are affaid that this might happen to them, but I wasn’t. They took me in~ side, told me to kneel down, They put zed tape around my eyes and head. Twas in darkness. We went to some room. I know which room. Tesmels like cinnia~ mon. I remember one soldier behind a computer. “Only one person asks the questions. 1 didn’t have any answers. He wanted the names of other officers and civilians involved in organized crime. They taped myhands behind my backand made me sit on the floor. They put more tape around my knees, around my feet. They puta blanket around me, Then I felt the weight of three people—one on my feet, one on my legs, and one who started kicking me in the chest. I couldn't de~ fend myself. At that moment, I feel the fear. Because I don't know what's going to happen. I kept asking, ‘Why? Why are you passing me this? Bue only one person spoke. He kept asking me ques tions. T kept saying, ‘I don’t know. He _got angry. They putsome plastic on my face. I couldn't breathe. It felt like years passed. Too long. I suffered well.” Castellanos gave a humorless laugh, “Sometimes, when they put the plas- tic, somebody punched me in the face. I saw, like, white lights, It was the most difficult experience of my life. And the ‘most difficult part was T'm not guilty. If Thad a litte bit guilty, maybe T deserve this. But | am not. I believe in God al- 66 THE NEW YORKER, OCTORER 18, 2010 EE —————————__§_§_ ways. But in this moment I don't see God anywhere” Castellanos was tortured for three days, primarily by a soldier whom he called “the person of the voice” He came to learn who had denounced him—a fellow-officer who had also been tortured for names. The other man had told his torturers that he saw Castellanos’ ear in the company of members ofthe Arellano Felix gang—a powerful onganized-crime group sometimes known simply as the ‘Tijuana cartel. He also mentioned that +e thought Castellanos had been looking athis wife. Castellanos sighed. “Tve never met or seen his wife. I don’t even know ‘her name.” ‘On the second day, with his torturers threatening to harm his wife and two young daughters (his wife, frantic about his disappearance, was meanwhile re- ceiving phone threats, wamings to stay silent), Castellanos came to the end of his power to resist. He was willing to say or sign anything, “I say, ‘O.K., [Ml do what you want’ Twas always screaming, ‘Please, please don't do that to me? But | think they don't care.” He was given a denunciation, a list of names, to sign, “The worst thing to me was that I signed that paper, which I hade't even read.” Hlis eyes searched mine, fierce and pleading, Itlooked to me asifsomething terrible had happened to him inside, A friend of his later told me that when Castellanos couldn't sleep he did push- ups and pullups, hour after hour, which explained his physique. He went on, “T just signed the paper. Whatever. This ‘was on a Wednesday. They destroyed my mind. They destroyed my spvit. AI- ways with tape and handcuffs. No op- portunity to defend myself. But the gov- emment, the military, believed what Tm confessing, They believed things T suid yes to from torture, because I don't want to die. They are very bad persons, but they are also stupid.” Castellanos was moved to the Real nn, which, besides being a barracks for feerales is just what it looks like: a jail. Tt is used for suspects under arraigo—a forty-day preventive detention that is 2 key part of new federal emergency secu sity law. Castellanos was injured physi- cally. “Bleeding from the rectum, Some- thing wrong in my chest, something broken.” But there was no more torture or interrogation at the hotel. His wife and brother were able to visit him there, His arvaigo was renewed for another forty days. And then, on December 8th, he was released, He was never charged. He never saw a judge. He no longer had job. Leyzaola had “lost confidence” in him, But the people whose names were on the list he signed were presumably picked up and pressed for more names. “That's how it works,” Ratil Ramirez Baena told me, Ramirez is a human- rights activist with long experience in Baja California. He drew a diagram, showing how each “suspect” provided a list of names, and how each of those “suspects” provided another lst, quickly producing a “network” “They call it an ‘investigation.’ Bue there is no investi- gating. Only arrests, interrogations, and torture.” Ramirez, when we spoke, had just come from a Tijuana radio station, where he had talked on the air about la depuracion. Many listeners had called in. “They were people with detained police officers in thei families. The police have such a bad reputation here—people were glad at first to see them being arrested. But now they are realizing its a trick. ‘We don’t say that the torture victims are guiltless. We don't know. There has never been any investigation.” His shire pocket, he showed me, was fll of scraps of paper. “These are from people who called in. They are the names of moth~ ers and wives of detenidos, Some are re- ceiving threats for speaking out.” B katte Castellanos who even ona good day, is a nervous wreck now, ‘was particularly agitated when we spoke, because of an article that had come out, that day in Zeta. A large new haul of officers—sixty-two, most of them Ti- juana city police—had been arrested on suspicion of corruption, displayed to the press at a military airfield, and flown to a federal prison on Mexico's Gulf coast. The Zeta article was about another group of officers who had so far escaped the dragnet. It mentioned Castellanos twice—once as an informer and once as an ex-policeman who had worked for the Arellano Félix gang. Castellanos was horrified. These allegations were pre- sented as fact. The one about him being an informer could get him killed. “Zeea isa good paper, I think,” he said. “But they're just taking information directly from the military and publishing it”“Yonly Ld thought to take my damn phone with me, Much of the article did read as if it had been produced by the Army, though there was a sidebar about how the fam: ilies of the sixty-two new derenides were tertified that their loved ones would be rortured in captivity ‘The families had reason to be afraid. Many other detainees say they were tor tured. Among a group of twenty-five olicemen picked up in March, 2009, ‘ken to an Army base in Tijuana, and chen transferred to a federal prison in che state of Nayarit, a majority man- -ged, eventually, to submit depositions bout their treatment in the cuartel Their stories were very much like that of Castellanos, They, too, were bound, “lindfolded, beaten, and almost suffo- ated with plastic bags by soldiers deter- ned to make them sign “confessions” ey had not written of read and were smetimes simply blank pieces of paper, y also suffered simulated drowning d were shocked with electrodes at- hed to their genitals. Some reported *Julién Leyzaola was present during sir torture, Leaks to the press sa ainees had been working fe Blanca Mesina Nevarez, the daugh- ter of one of the twenty-five policemen, after seeing the condition of her father, wrote e-mails to the local newspapers denouncing what had been done to him. Three papers published her letter, (Zeta did not.) Mesina, a twenty-seven- year-old exercise instructor, became a spokesperson for the families of the twenty-five, They all chipped in to pay her fare to Washington, D.C., where she testified, in October, 2009, before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, about the treatment of her father and his fellow-detainees, She and other witnesses at the hearing ac- cused Leyzaola by name, Back in Tijuana, Mesina and her family say that they were quickly pun- ished for her boldness. Phone threats were succeeded by physical threats. Me- sina was followed constantly by police patrol cars. In May, a black piclsup truck with darkened windows and no license plates began bumping her car from be- hind. After the second bump, she veered into a convenience-store parking lot. “I tried to run in, but he was quick,” she emecory Teould be getting some work done.” told me, “He caught me outside. He had a pistol and wore a mask. He was dressed in kind of a uniform, like a special-re- sponse unit ofthe Tijuana police. He put the pistol to my head and said, ‘Blan- quita, what's up? Why did you submit a denunciation?” He said he wanted to kill my family. Then he said, Tim not going to kill you at this moment, because the situation has reached an international level and we don’t want to create a scan- dal before the election’ Then he kissed ‘me on the check and left. After that, Mesina went into hiding, along with a human-rights lawyer, Sil via Vazquez Camacho, who was work- ing pro bono for Ricardo Castellanos and anumber of other torture: ‘victims in the Tijuana depuracién. Véequez had also received escalating threats and con- stant unwanted police attention. found the two women in acity in central Mex- ico, where they were hiding, together with their young children. They were both homesick, they said, and worried about their families in Tijuana. Bue it ‘was difficult to know when it would be safe to go home. Not as long as Leyza- THE NEW YORKER, OCTORER 18, 2010 67ola was in charge, Vazquez said, but he was hardly their only problem. The cops who had threatened and terrorized them were working for someone, who was in turn working for someone else. Leyzaola would be only one link in that chain, which led up into the political parties, various levels of officials, the military, and the cartels. “It’s more in- stitutional than personal,” Vazquez said, ‘An experienced defense lawyer, Vazquez has what one might call a ho- listic view of Mexican law enforcement, politics, onganized crime, and the justice system. If the denunciations of police harassment and threats that she and Mesina had submitted to the authori- ties, and the requests for protection, began to be addressed, perhaps bya new administrative faction whose interests and alliances were different from Ley- zaola’s, that would be a good sign. OF course, that might not happen soon, and there were never any guarantees. ‘Two weeks after I met Vazquez and Mesina, Mesina’s father and twelve of his fellow-prisoners were abruptly freed from prison by a judge, who said that there was no evidence against them. ‘Mesina’s father returned to Tijuana and publicly demanded his job back. He did not get it. As with Castellanos, the au- thorities had evidently “lost confidence” in him, Mesina and Véequee remained in hiding, unconvinced it was safe to go back, Some human-rights organizations ‘want nothing to do with police officers who become victims. I contacted a citi- zens’ group for families of the disap- peared. When I mentioned my interest in police officers to the group's leader, he balked. Too many of his members felt antipathy toward the police, who were often prime suspects in the disap~ pearance of their loved ones. Still, | found other police-officer tor ture victims in Tijuana, There were four ex-cops, just released from jal, who said they had been attacked by Leyzaola him- self. Their case was unusual. It started with a trafic stop and a’Tae Kwon Do competition, A Korean trainer in the competition had complained to his team- mates that the police stole six hundred dollars from him after he left a downtown, strip club, The governor of Baja Califor- nia was opening the Tae Kwon Do com petition the next morning, and the Kore- 68 THENEW YORKER, OCTOSER 18, 2010 ——— BLISS STREET From this balcony the sight lines are clear to the rooftop volleyball court of my son's elementary school (from its mesh cage the kids at P.E. class ise a right ruckus)— Look over, is he up there now? Nos his is a different period Tm squeezing some orange halves on a cheap plastic boat with a dome like a parliament and teeth at the spout to catch seeds and pulp Dragging a haul of juicing oranges all the way down: stitched with the word *C) I recall the oranges were mo ampus in my bag lyon the trees in Cyprus It was the potato we were about then: the famous Cypriot, grown in red dirt and baked n its jacket,” fluffy as a butt ed cloud, ‘We would pass the fields of red dirt and then a schoolyard and wonder what it would be like to be a child raised on an island like this Squat between sun and never an ice age, abounding with indigenous flowers evolving freely, without extinctions But, ob yeah—massacres Barbed wire slicing Ni ia ina crescent ghetto ‘My grandmother picked potatoes on a collective farm at the age of nine, after hher father died But the funny story she told was of having shut he lar while her mother was ill with pn potato ¢ elfinadvertently in the “The eldest child, she knew that ifher mother died as well it would all be on her shoulders—the infant, the other children— ‘And, already terrified to begin with, she began bawling But you know, someone let her out after a few hours Her mother survived the pneui She survived the potato farm Then when she was eighteen and working in a hospital kitchen her ans started yelling at him about the cops who had ripped off ther fiend. Tijuana does not see many international sporting events, so the governor was mortified. He called Leyzaola and said, Find those cops ‘The usual door-smashing, shackling, and rough treatment brought the four patrol- men who had stopped the Korean to Leyzaole’s “bunker,” as itis known—a fortified soundproof room in the old downtown police headquarters. Luis Galvin Hemnéndea, the cop who had ac- tually patted down the Korean, told m the story. “We were blindfolded,’ “They started punching me said. the stom: ach, hard, Leyzaola on my right side, Huerta on my left.” Gustavo Huerta Martinez is the city’s police director. “My hands were tied behind my back, my shirt pulled over my head. Leyzaola was hitting harder. I said I would admit anything just so they would stop. Leyza ola said I had stolen six hundred dollars from the Korean and he wanted me to confess to his video camera, I said no to the video. That's when he went nuts. ‘They started using rebar and an AR-15 rifle against my back, while still punch~ ing from the front. They started making mistakes, leaving marks, causing wounds. Twouldn’t make the video. They beat us all for hours.” “Then the four cops were thrown in jail for four months. Galvin, a sharply dressed thirty-seven-year-old, showed me the medical report from his admis- sion to jail. It listed eighteen separate injure la says that’s because I fought him,” he said. “What realy hap- pened was that I managed to get one hand outof the cuffs and tied to pull the plastic off my face. I couldn't breathe. That sent him over the edge. He is a very sick individual.” “The four cops say that they were fist charged with armed robbery and were told by Leyzaola that they were going to prison for twenty years. The charge has since been reduced to a misdemeanor,supervisos—Pst!—opened the pantry and gestured toward the potatoes, pocketing some in her overcoat She was terrified all over again If she did help herself, their ‘boss, a kind man, would find out Ifshe didn’t help herself, her supervisor would know she knew She didn't take the potatoes and she didn't get fired, and decades later she would return to the scene of demoralization, her version off ‘THE STALIN YBARS. The volleyball court has gone silent The P-E, teacher, whose name I don’t remember, rests his arms againse the ledge and overlooks the street, the campus, my building, in which I sit, stuck in a thought about potatoes He stands there a minute or two, in epose, then turns and walks away, leaving the scene unpopulated asin some sketch or exercise by a painter removed from the north to a Mediterranean Arcadia full of ruins and cypresses Oh, it would be an exaggeration to say its fll of ruins here! More like one of those mythological scenes with youths and gods in a crowded sky Bliss Street overflowing with students slowing traffic as they drift across the road, scooters clustered outside the gate inscribed with the motto “That life maybe lived more abundantly” Perfect motto for a university. Perfect, As the fig trees were perfect that grew all into one boxy wreath round the dry fountain the kids on rented bicycles circled madly ‘That survived the civil war by the looks of their thick trunks, ringed by apartment blocks and antennae raised into a looming cloud the color of putty. Putty, not putti and a lawyer, taking their ease pro bono, ‘managed to get them bail. Galvin, who studied law himself, said he expected an acquittal although he wished his Korean accuser were still in Mexico. The man’s story, he said, was fiction. If he had lost money, he had lost it in the strip chub, “We're filing a complaint for torture. Plus I want my job back. My job was my. life” His friends, he said, believed he had a death wish, talking publicly about his mistreatmentby Leyzaola, Galvin glow cred at his papers as he gathered them into a folder. He wanted his job back. He had done nothing wrong. In August, the Baja California state human-rights commission released a report meticulously detailing the de- tention and torture of five police officers in August, 2009. Leyzaola was alleged, in the report, to have almost asphyxi- ated one of the victims by putting 2 plastic bag over his head and repeatedly sunching him. The state human-rights commissioner recommended that Ley —Ange Mlinko zaola be suspended fiom duty while an investigation was conducted. The rec- commendation was rejected. Listes breezy about etre accusations when T brought them up. “Some have been hit, sure,” he said. “They don't go gently. But no torture, no.” He himself merely executed arrest orders and handed suspects over to the Army at the Morelos barracks. “It’s nota hotel,” he said, shrugging. ‘The interro- gations at the cuartel were not, in any case, his responsibility. After Blanca ‘Mesina and others testified in Washing- ton, D.C, las fill, Leyzaola said, “Te may be the criminal groups aze using human~ rights organizations for their own benefit.” As for the policemen charged with robbing the Korean visitor, he said, “Teall them traitors to Ja patria.” La depuracién wasn't finished, he said, and never would be. There was too much temptation. Hiring honest peo- ple would always be a challenge. For a while, eighty per cent of applicants were being rejected for failing polygraphs. ‘The cartels were obviously intent on re- building their network of collaborators on the force. Stil, some of the recent evelations of local police corruption have been embar- rassing to Leyzaola, In December, two ofhis personal bodyguards were arrested bystate police in the company ofa group of El Teo's men in Ensenada, a port city seventy miles south of Tijuana. Then, in February, a top zone commander and his deputy—military men recently ap- pointed by Leyzaola and publicly praised by him—awere caught, along with three other Tijuana police officers, in a raid by the federal police on a house where El Teo's gang was holding two tival nar- os captive, Because Mexican soldiers are normally posted far from their home towns, and live on military bases, some people believe that they are less suscep tible to narco corruption than the police are. But military collusion with the car- tels runs deep and wide. Ta July, in a revelation less embarrass- ing to Leyzaola than to American and ‘Mexican law enforcement in the region, the Justice Department announced, in San Diego, the indictment of forty-three alleged narco-traffickers, working both sides of the border. Those arrested in- cluded Jestis Quifténez Marquez, the Baja California state attorney generals top liaison to U.S. law enforcement. Quiticnez, according to the indictment, had been working reliably with the Americans against El Teo’s gang—while working for the Arellano Félix group. Three weeks earlier, Steven Kashkett, the US. consul-general in Tijuana, had throwna Fourth of July party around the swimming pool at his official residence. His guests had included Quine and, of course, Leyzaola, whom Kashkett praised in his prepared remarks, Leyzaola’s job security is actually THE NEW YORKER, OCTORER 18, 201069now in question. The Tijuana mayor who hired him, Jorge Ramos Hernén- ez, will leave his post in December casualty of term limits, and his succes sor, a wealthy U.S.-born businessman named Carlos Bustamante Anchondo, thas not said whether he will keep L la, although he doe: ‘most important staffing decision make. Leyzaola has made it clear that he ‘wants to stay, and many #ijuanenses be- lieve that, with the strong backing he enjoys from the military, the US. gov- ‘emment, the Mexican federal govern- ment, and Tijuana’s leading business men, he will certainly be retained. But, as Silvia Vazquez, the lawyer, suggested, there are many more invisible interests than visible ones working in Mexicar power circles. Leyzaola, meanwhile, is enjoying ‘being Tijuana’s top badass, He hasbanned one of Mexico’s most popular bands, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, from perform- ing in their home town, because they play nnarcocorridos. Hie sleeps at the Morelos cuartel he told me, and the first thing he does each morning is salute the enormous flag that hangs above the base. His job, he complained, involves too much paper- work. He gestured impatiently at desks, his computer, his interviewer.“ mainly administrative,” he said, “But at night I do what I enjoy.” He patted his ‘weapon and gave a wollish grin, “Me vay ala cacerfa. “Lgo bunting”) thought people in Tijuana would love Leyzaola. He had saved them from El Teo. Everyone I asked agreed that the streets downtown were safer now, that you could go out to eat without having to worry that the whole restau rant would be taken hostage. (Itused to happen.) Still, I found no passionate s. One bar owner said, “What's his Tean’t even pronounce it.” Leyzaola is a hero to Tijuana's big businessmen, some of whom now feel safe enough from kidnapping to move their families back from the U.S. To or dinary tijuanenses, however, the police are still the police—arbitrary, ineffective, dangerous. The Army and the cops de- serve some credit, people might con- cede, for ending the Tijuana drug war, but mostly it was the cartels themselves, sorting out their differences. A name agai “Now he expects to come in whenever there's a cold snap.” EE Certainly, it's unlikely that Leyza- oli’s public triumph over the gangsters in Tijuana has affected the volume of narco-trafficking in the region. The drug business is operating as smoothly and profitably as ever. The gang war that Leyzaola helped stop was actually bad for business. It started because the Arellano Felix crime group, which has controlled the Tijuana “plaza” for generations, began to splinter a few years ago, weak- ened by the deaths and arrests ofits lead ers, Tijuana, with its easy access by land, sea, and small plane to the vast drug mar- kets in California, is an exceptionally valuable plaza. The main antagonists in the recent war were the Arellano Félix gang—led today by Luis Fernando (the Engineer) Sanchez Arellano—and a breakaway group led by El Teo, who was originally a bodyguard and had risen within the organization, El Teo's specialty was never the drug business as such, which tends to rewasd discretion. His fortes were kidnapping and extortion. He reportedly had a net work of cages, scattered across Baja Cal- ifornia, containing his kidnap victims. In early 2009, one of his henchmen, known as El Pozolero—the Stew Maker—was arrested. El Pozolero calmly admitted to dissolving the remains of three hun Gred of El ‘Teo’s victims in vats of lye. ‘The Engineer tried to persuade El Teo that his high-volume brutality was at- acting too much attention. The reply he got was ferocious gunfight between their followers, which left thirteen corpses on a main road in east Tijuana. EI Teo turned, for backup, to Chapo Guzmin. At some point, El Chapo must have realized that El Teo was an unstable ally. Few mourned, certainly, when he and his henchmen were taken down. Today, the Engineer and El Chapo share the Tijuana plaza more or less amicably. ‘The conspiracy-minded tend to see Leyzaola as working for El Chapo— “clearing the plaza’ for him by attacking his narco rivals. That’s what he means, they say, when he talks about going out “hunting’—a few nighttime drive-bys on petty drug dealers not working for El Chapo. Leyzaola doesn’t mind giving the impression that he's armed and danger- ous, But the truth is that his six-gun ap- proach to fighting organized crime andpolice corruption has made space for real security improvements. A street cop will now think twice about putting the arm on a motorist or a tourist, He does riot want to risk having Leyzaola jump down his throat. And the mere men- tion, bya suspect under arrest, ofa pow- erful narco-trafficker “friend” is appar- ently less likely to produce a quick release than it traditionally was in Ti- juana. It seems perfectly likely that Leyzaola, his strong ties to the Army aside, is working for no one but himself. He enjoys his job. His particular style of doing it requires a lot of hammy acting and physical courage, and he does it well. He also benefits from a great deal of impunity, a condition that everyone deplores in principle but that nearly ev- exyone tends to prefer in practice. Nobody disputes that a depuraciém is needed—in government generally and in the police especially. But are the dirty cops actually the ones being purged? The people I asked were skeptical, at best. Purges proceed by their own blin= kered logic, particularly when they are conducted by torture, and are them- selves subject to comuption, A social an- thropologist with excellent contact the local jails told me, “A lot of pay- ments are being made to determine who gets arrested.” Numerous people said it ‘was all 2 espectdculo—a show, The in- tended audience was the public and “Obama.” The latter is shorthand for the many U.S. agencies funnelling more than a billion dollars into the Mexican governments anti-drug efforts through the Mérida Initiative, which places a much-needed emphasis on fighting public corruption, particularly in law enforcement, Torture by the authorities is so com= ‘mon in Mexico that it seemingly fails to shock anyone to whom itis not hap- pening, Victor Clark Alfaro, a longtime human-rights activist in Tijuana, told me that his office had handled five hundred torture cases over twenty-five years, Precisely one had resulted in charges. Still, I was shocked when Adela Navarro Bello, the editor of Zeta, cold me that a group of policemen ar rested in Ja depuracién who claimed to have been tortured did not look to her, tn their post-interrogation mug shots, as chough they had been tortured. You can asually tell, she said. (Of course, elec- ae ‘Tn fascinated by your résumé, particularly the advertising supplement.” trodes to the genitals don’t leave marks on the face.) The apparent indifference of US. authorities to the many accusa~ tions of torture made against Leyzaola is somehow less puzzling. Afterall, it is essential thatthe police start kicking ass in Mexico. Mexico's predicament, amounting {in some places to state capture by the cartels, obviously concerns the United States. Tijuana is a city of two million people. Tes San Ysidro station is the bus- fest land-border crossing in the world. ‘Three hundred thousand people cross the border each day, many of them daily commuters. Rolling back the power of organized crime there barely qualifies as a foreign-policy problem. As one senior American diplomat put it, “Heavily armed groups are perpetrating these ex- treme levels of violence within shouting distance of major U.S. cities.” The Bor- der Patrol, the F.B.L, and the Califor- nia attorney general’ office have gone out of their way recently to heap praise on Leyzaola and his work. “We have a Jot of trust in him and his team,” an F.BLL special agent told reporters in Ti- juana in mid-September. And, it could be inferred, a man in Leyzaola’s position neds more leeway to act against the en- emies of peace and public order than the average American police chief does. Hillary Clinton, in early September, used the word “insurgency” to describe the situation in Mexico. President ‘Obama pointedly rejected her descrip- tion the next day. Mexico, he said, is a “vast and progressive democracy, with a growing economy.” In truth, there is no significant political insurgency in ‘Mexico. And yet the wealth and power of organized crime has become the country’s defining feature. In the face of that frightening reality, ifs natural to look for exceptions to the rule of law- Iessness, and Julién Leyzaola is happy to provide one. He talks about how the recently con- cluded war between El Teo and the Arellano Félix group “benefitted us— wwe could see them better, like fisher- men.” Now, he told me, even the capo of the Arellano Félix gang, the Engi- neer, was on the run. “He was in Ha- wali, Now he's in Mazatlin,” As Ley cola mimed the gun battles with which his forces had won the streets, his hand motions were fluid and eloquent, al- most joyful. ¢ NEWYORKER.COM/60/OUTLOUD William Finnegan talks about Tijuana