“I was kidnapped by a cartel. Those six days were hell, the longest of my life. I felt death every moment. You count every second and thank God that you are still alive”, he says one February morning in Mexico City, where he has traveled to give the interview. Rodrigo —a false name to preserve his anonymity, since he continues to be threatened by drug traffickers— was kidnapped a few months ago. He was missing for six days, during which he was brutally tortured. He suspects that his captors were from a cell that, according to local rumors he heard, belonged to the Sinaloa Cartel, but he is not sure. The commando did not carry identification of any kind and remained blindfolded throughout the kidnapping. But they confused him with a member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which is fighting in that territory against Ismael’s men. The May Zambada. And she remembers a northern accent. The narco does not usually take hostages —it is easier to get rid of the witnesses—, but under police and media pressure, when they realized that he did not belong to any criminal group, he was released. They let him go on the condition that he not tell about his experience: “If you don’t comply, we’re going to go after you wherever you are.”
Rodrigo was driving with a friend along a highway in the middle of what, in the slang of the posters, is called a hot square. A disputed territory, a war zone. He was intercepted at dawn by a checkpoint of six heavily armed men, wearing military camouflage. They were taken to the side of the road and subjected to a first interrogation. He received blows to the head, stomach, ribs. They split his head open with the butt of a gun. They suffocated him with a plastic bag. “At the moment a lot of adrenaline enters. He felt the hot trickle of blood sliding down my head. Everything happens so fast that it is difficult to assimilate the degree of violence that they are exerting on you, ”he narrates.
While they beat him, the rest of the commando checked his vehicle in search of “evidence” that could link them to the CJNG: weapons and drugs. Another accessed his bank accounts and emptied them. “There is a person who knows how to do it very well and very quickly. While they hit you, he makes transfers.” A second group arrived and continued the beating. They found no evidence that they belonged to the rival cartel, but still decided to hold them. They were gagged hand and foot and a bandage was placed on their heads. Thus, they were transported to a ranch in the mountains.
At the ranch, they were handed over to another commando who began to torture them more methodically for three hours straight. “First they wet you. With a tube of about ten inches of plastic they hit you body and head. It stuns you a lot, there are times when the blows cloud reality, but it doesn’t bleed you, it doesn’t open your skin. They broke the ribs on my left side. I fainted. One kick was so strong that it knocked me out of breath, it worried me because it is so close to the heart. I thought it was the end, I only saw shadows.” When one got tired, another entered the room with renewed strength to continue the beating. And they were improvising new forms of terror: hammer blows in the palms of the hand; threats with a chainsaw; hear how they torture other people next to them, their screams, the dry blows. “They asked us for a confession, but we had nothing to confess, we told the truth, there was no other.”
three days without eating
The place where they were held was an open building, without walls, but with a roof. ”It is in the mountains and at night it is very cold, it is wet. You are on the floor all the time tied hand and foot and blindfolded”. The first three days they were not fed. The fourth, just some rice and coffee. The last two, eggs with beans. After the first three hours of torture, the moment he remembers as the worst, the abuse became intermittent.
If they tried to talk to each other, they received a recoil. When they fell asleep, they were beaten awake. And surrounding everything, the constant fear of what might happen. “It was enough that one in the delirium of war and his supremacy said: ‘fuck it’ and pulled [apretara] the trigger. They are kids with a lot of social resentment”, he recalls. “All the time they are drugged, they arrive drunk and they hit you.” Until the fifth day a government caravan passed through the area looking for the two disappeared. One of the search cards reached the heads of the commando, who decided to order his release.
“All this pressure [mediática] it accelerates the issue of liberation”, continues Rodrigo, who already imagined that he would never leave that ranch. The drug traffickers explained to them that the area was in a state of war, and that they had been detained because they met “three of the five criteria” that identify members of rival groups: they were men traveling alone, because of the type of vehicle and tinted windows. “You realize that they have controlled the entire territory.” And after the days of torture, hunger and cold, the gunmen told them that they would have to thank them: “Normally, if we are at war there is no time to investigate. You should be thankful we stopped to investigate a little bit.”
They were allowed to go, but threatened with death if they even opened their mouths. As collateral, they kept documents, identity cards and invoices to be able to control them. When they returned to their home, the Prosecutor’s Office appeared immediately. “They invite us to their facilities to testify. They actually wanted to take pictures of us so they could say they had us back. They told us that they were not going to be published, but ten minutes later they were already in The universal and on television.
“What you tell the Prosecutor’s Office we will find out in real time”
A medical examination indicated that Rodrigo had two broken ribs, one cracked, and bruises on his head and body. In the report, it was indicated that he had a “general appearance of good health”. “It made me laugh,” he comments, “what’s good for them?” He now doesn’t know if he also has an internal injury because he has been in intense pain ever since. In the statement to the Prosecutor’s Office, he told a vague story without details: “They had told me: what you tell the Prosecutor’s Office we will find out in real time.” The director called him separately, told him that he understood that he was threatened, but that he could confess the truth to him. “It gave me mistrust, I didn’t say anything. There they are [los carteles] in broad daylight, they don’t hide.”
Now, Rodrigo tries to reinsert himself into normal life. He does not trust the few witness protection processes that exist in Mexico, which is why he has not spoken to anyone until this interview. He applied for refuge in Canada for himself and his family, but the officials explained that it was a long and complex process, difficult to obtain, so he decided to abandon it. He attends weekly therapy sessions. “Even if you seem strong, post-traumatic stress is a reality,” he acknowledges. A friend of his who is part of the National Guard recommended that he not try anything: “Bury it and don’t even move it. Give thanks that they released you.”
And he spends the days in tension, very attentive to the young boys who quickly approach on a motorcycle, to the sideways glances. “They are not going to kidnap me again. If they come back, they’ll kill me.” He goes to the mountains, to yoga sessions, to temazcals, he tries to enjoy himself with his friends. Those things that used to give him pleasure. He came back to life after being for six days one more number of the almost 100,000 disappeared that Mexico accumulates.
subscribe here to newsletter of EL PAÍS Mexico and receive all the informative keys of the news of this country
#Xray #drug #kidnapping #hell #felt #death #moment