HOW THE U.S. TRIGGERED A MASSACRE IN MEXICO
HOW THE U.S. TRIGGERED A MASSACRE IN MEXICO
The inside story of a cartels deadly assault on a Mexican town near the Texas border and the U.S. drug operation that sparked it.
by Ginger Thompson, ProPublica
June 12, 2017
This story was co-published with National Geographic.
Leer en Español.
We have testimony from people who say they participated in the crime. They described some 50 trucks arriving in Allende, carrying people connected to the cartel. They broke into houses, they looted them and burned them. Afterward, they kidnapped the people who lived in those houses and took them to a ranch just outside of Allende.
First they killed them. They put them inside a storage shed filled with hay. They doused them with fuel and lit them on fire, feeding the flames for hours and hours.
José Juan Morales
Investigative director for the disappeared in the Coahuila State Prosecutors Office
THERES NO MISSING the signs that something unspeakable happened in Allende, a quiet ranching town of about 23,000, just a 40-minute drive from Eagle Pass, Texas. Entire blocks of some of the towns busiest streets lie in ruins. Once garish mansions are now crumbling shells, with gaping holes in the walls, charred ceilings, cracked marble countertops and toppled columns. Strewn among the rubble are tattered, mud-covered remnants of lives torn apart: shoes, wedding invitations, medications, television sets, toys.
In March 2011 gunmen from the Zetas cartel, one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in the world, swept through Allende and nearby towns like a flash flood, demolishing homes and businesses and kidnapping and killing dozens, possibly hundreds, of men, women and children.
More:
https://www.propublica.org/article/allende-zetas-cartel-massacre-and-the-us-dea
Also posted at Editorials and other articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016187195