By: Jacinto Rodríguez Munguía and Susana Zavala / Quinto Elemento Lab exclusively for AM Guanajuato
First of two parts
For decades, only his code name was known, although his traces are lost in millions of reports and documents from the Federal Security Directorate (DFS), the fearsome police force responsible for political espionage in Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s.
His hand is involved in the infiltration and destruction of guerrilla groups, or inside Espionage and surveillance of journalistsAcademics and intellectuals like Julio Cortázar, Julio Scherer or Gabriel García Márquezand in the timely monitoring of asylum seekers who arrived fleeing Latin American dictatorships.
Until now practically unknown, a study by Fifth Element Lab reveals that C-047 It was according to the official version the group best prepared to conduct intelligence and counterintelligence operations; For others, it is simply a team based on myths and legends. In any case, it was just a coincidence: it was their creator’s spoiled spy group, Miguel Nazar Haro.
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The sound of the typewriter’s heavy keys is lost in the noise of a gray office. It is August 29, 1980, around nine o’clock at night. A man writes, dropping the tattered letters one by one: “Mr. Julio Scherer García, director of the magazine Proceso, in collaboration with the publisher Nueva Imagen, has taken on the task of organizing a storytelling competition.” Story about militarism in Latin America. “
He didn’t particularly care about spelling at the time. This agent begins to write on a piece of paper: “Report.” Addressing his superiors, he informs them about his investigations of the last few days.
tell them that Gabriel García Márquez, Teotonio Dos Santos, Julio Cortázar, Jean Casimir, Rafael Pérez Gavilán, Carlos Quijano, Ariel Dorfman and Julio Scherer met for four days (August 25) at the Hacienda Hotel in Cocoyoc. The reason for the meeting? Define the guidelines for the militarism competition.
Without saying who told him or how he obtained the information, he knows that the assembled authors have analyzed the recent events in El Salvador, Bolivia and Guatemala “from their own ideological approach” and, moreover, appreciate the possibility of it Preparation of a public statement.
In his letter, which only lasts five paragraphs, the spy agent adds interesting details: he notes that Sergio Méndez Arceo, the bishop of Cuernavaca, also took part in the meetings. It doesn’t say how long he was there or what he said, but the information is important. Méndez Arceo, known as the “Red Bishop”, has always been a man critical of the powers that be and close to social and popular movements.
He also adds some general information about the characters: that García Márquez is a writer; Dos Santos, Brazilian journalist and professor; Quijano, Uruguayan journalist and writer; Cortázar, Argentine writer…
Follow the protocol and fill out the form to identify your report:
Federal Security Directorate.
Department: C-047.
Sector: Special
Location: DF
It ends around nine o’clock in the evening (8:45 p.m.) and, without pausing to discuss anything, it ends with the classic signature of the Mexican bureaucrat, that magic word that affirms submission to superiors and at the same time indicates satisfaction with the duty fulfilled: “Respectfully.”
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“All activities carried out by the Secret Operations Division are confidential and classified,” boasted the official propaganda./Quinto Elemento Lab
Minute 4:47. Chapter IV of That was the DFS. The narrator’s voiceover pauses to add dramatic emphasis:
All activities carried out by the Covert Operations Department are confidential and secret. Its very location in the same building is isolated from all departments and the name used is Code… This, if known, would not be kept secret.”
The narrator, not a professional but a DFS agent named Pedro García Bello, continues the description, so punctually and precisely that it is actually a rehearsed reading that has lost its meaning.
The nuances of the voice sound as forced as they are implausible: “The agents in this area were chosen for their courage and intelligence. The Director of the Federal Security Service has assumed responsibility for its training and development of its activities.”
The narrative would convince anyone if it weren’t for a few details: While the message of secrecy and mystery is conveyed, the camera initially rests on the organizational chart of the DFS and, when the “director” is mentioned, focuses on the name: Miguel Nazar Haro .
And when the announcer then says that the name of the secret department is coded, even though he doesn’t mention it, the lens moves towards a brown door with a sign that, despite the intentionally blurred image, reads with ease: Department C-047 .
According to the spokesman-agent, the activities carried out by the Secret Operations Division – he refers to C-047 – were “confidential and secret.”
headlights, “Intelligence” duties, responsible for a department specializing in the collection of political, economic, social and military information that could impact national interests.
This information, it is explained, was obtained by monitoring the behavior of governments and populations of countries whose ideological tendencies “did not coincide with those of Mexico.” For reasons of location, Latin America was one of the areas of constant observation and surveillance.
According to the narrator, based on many years of intelligence information, the problems of Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Uruguay or Argentina were known, so the information received was used to warn the Mexican government about the impact on our country.
The other key part of C-047 was the counterintelligence section.which relied on intelligence data and was dedicated to identifying and prosecuting people of other nationalities who carried out espionage activities in Mexico in the service of their country, as well as foreigners who used Mexican soil in other countries to do so.
“In order to avoid detection, it is necessary for agents to change their appearance when they attend events involving the people under investigation or people who already have personal contact with them.”
In addition to coordinating the intelligence and counterintelligence departments, the head of this department had control over political asylum seekers and foreigners under his command. Therefore, his surveillance was crucial to prevent them from violating Mexican laws.
Therefore, the C-047 was tasked with tracking them down, and through the Special Brigade (an anti-guerrilla paramilitary group) they were taken to the Office of the Attorney General or the Directorate of Immigration Affairs of the Ministry of Interior.
The “Counterintelligence” section was dedicated to identifying foreign persons who conducted espionage in Mexico./Quinto Elemento Lab
The story of Special Group C-047 cannot be told without that of its creator: Miguel Nazar Haro; and that from both, without that of the Federal Security Directorate.
Firstly, the DFS. Its origins date back to 1947. A few years before the end of the Second World War. Then-Mexican President Miguel Alemán Valdés promoted the creation of a Mexican version of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the guidance of the U.S. government.
Although the DFS’s initial priority was to ensure the physical and personal safety of the President and his family, a video saved a few years ago of the Film Archive sets out a first official version of the function of the DFS: it would be a “modern police institution that, with the material and human elements with which it is endowed”, would be able to “be among the first organizations”. of its kind.” in the world”.
But the romantic vision expressed in the video produced in 1948 was intended to take a different direction; The Federal Security Directorate was given a more ambitious profile with which it wanted to lay the foundation for a system of surveillance and control of people and social groups in favor of the government in power.
As early as the 1960s, the DFS had integrated a political-police agenda with a view to controlling social movements into its mission. The massive student protests of 1968 became one of the field exercises in which C-047 consolidated its espionage duties.
One of the almost mythical reports was even made by Nazar Haro himself during one of his forays into the medical school of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
The report dated September 20, 1968, a few weeks before the Tlatelolco massacre, essentially stated that in the drawers where the bodies were normally kept was what they considered an “arsenal.” And he gives a description of the firearms supposedly found: five pistols, a .22 caliber rifle, four dozen usable cartridges…
This would be followed by thousands of reports detailing the espionage work of all DFS divisions and groups, including C-047, whose missions were guided by a “spirit of service to country” and loyalty to the country. enshrined in law government and its institutions, “since the fatigue and dangers to which it is exposed are not easily overcome,” says the documentary’s speech.
The DFS had 13 divisions, including the most secret of all, known as C-047./Fifth Element Lab
The history of DFS cannot be understood without the role of Miguel Nazar Haro, who, together with Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios, was the director who left the most distinctive mark on this company.
Years earlier, Gutiérrez Barrios was famous after arresting and then releasing Fidel Castro and Ernesto El Che Guevara, who later led the 1959 Cuban Revolution. He led the DFS between 1964 and 1970, when Luis Echeverría was head of the governorate’s secretariat.
Gutiérrez Barrios had already seen Nazar Haro as one of his most outstanding students, someone who needed to be polished and perfected in field exercises and in lessons at the academy.
One of Nazar Haro’s skills essential in contacting Gutiérrez Barrios is that he was able to identify one of the deficiencies of the DFS: the lack of systematic work, classification and analysis of the information provided by agents and informants.
Because of this, he was sent to institutions abroad to prepare for counterinsurgency and related subjects. Framed in his children’s office are the diplomas and awards he received from the United States military and police academies.
After returning from one of these “training trips,” Nazar Haro was able to form the Special Investigations Group, known as C-047, in November 1965 after a six-month counterinsurgency course in Washington.
According to Nazar Haro, the central tasks of the special group C-047 were espionage and counterintelligence: Gather information and create an “unconscious army” of political information through networks of informants.
“I started with how to obtain data and information to establish a research principle. I pointed out to them (the agents) that the basic foundation was public relations; Finding friends in different populations to get information,” he told journalist Jorge Torres, who quotes him in his book “Nazar, the Secret History.”
There is a personal testimony from precisely those years when the first agents of this group were recruited:
“At first there were six of us agents and Miguel. We were not operationally dependent on Agent Control. We had a direct relationship with the director. We were small and went unnoticed because our job was to investigate and gather information. “We had infiltrators in many subversive groups”commented a former agent to the academic Sergio Aguayo, who quotes it in the book La Charola, perhaps the work with the greatest scope and depth on the DFS.
The last sentence of the statement would be crucial for years to come.
Two months before the formation of C-047, on September 23 of the same year 1965, a guerrilla group attempted to attack the military barracks of Ciudad Madera in Chihuahua. The insurgents’ action ended in resounding failure, but it laid the foundation for an armed struggle.
About a decade later, in March 1973, a group of guerrilla organizations founded the September 23rd Communist League, whose members were later sent on a large-scale hunt: hundreds of them were tortured, murdered or disappeared.
In this context of incipient guerrilla action, Nazar Haro woven and launched his network of spies and agents into the sea of existing social movements. C-047 would be the first phase.
The second phase would unfold some time later with the emergence of the White Brigade, whose design and founding in June 1976 is credited to Nazar Haro.
The White Brigade, whose official name was “Special Brigade”, was a group consisting of DFS agents, military personnel and parts of various police corporations, which was said to be responsible for thousands of illegal detentions, torture, extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances of farmers, trade unionists, students , opponents and militants of guerrilla organizations.
The creation of this group comes in response to the formation of the Red Brigade, the body responsible for national leadership and political and military coordination of the September 23 Communist League.
The DFS itself recorded this in its files. A June 1976 document states that the White Brigade or “Special Brigade” is “designed to investigate and locate by all means possible the members of the so-called Communist League of September 23, with the aim of restricting their activities and to stop them.”
But after all this, why the name C-047? “The name is a tribute to the founding date of the DFS,” answers José Luis Nassar, son of Miguel Nazar Haro, the team that carried out this investigation.
C-047’s first “successful” action was to destroy Spanish journalist Víctor Rico Galán’s attempts to organize an armed group, which they had been uncovering since late 1965. His agents easily earned a star on their chest.
Although they conducted an initial investigation and infiltration exercise, a careful review of the files reveals that Rico Galán’s organization had not yet reached the level of a guerrilla structure. His intention to confront the government with weapons is too public; Your claims are too explicit and open.
In one of the thousands of boxes of administrative documents, official documents and police reports stored in the Nation’s General Archives and used for this investigation, you will find the full report on the Víctor Rico Galán case and the plan to stop the group.
The level of infiltration was so great The C-047 agents knew the keys to access the safe houses. In one of them, the one on Golfo de Tehuantepec Street in Tacuba, the access code was encoded in Morse: long, long, short, long, long.
They also knew that there was a room on the roof where one of the members lived and that there used to be 30 people in the house; that a certain Rolf Mainer Hufner, tall, blonde, was the guerrilla teacher who carried a .45 caliber pistol in his briefcase and was “extremely dangerous.”
The destination marked number 3 was Rico Galán’s house. The information C-047 had provided was that it operated as a sort of indoctrination school; that “the target, the mother and the sister” and three children lived there. “It is not assumed that there is resistance.” They added a passing note: “There are albums of revolutionary songs by Judith Reyes.”
The document contains a list of names associated with the organization of the Revolutionary Movement, with their respective details: address, telephone numbers and general details.
With this information about the people, the sketches of the areas and the houses (rooms, bedrooms, stays), a decision was made: “The attacks on the targets, the arrests of the people inside and the arrests will be carried out at 1 p.m. hours of August 12, 1966.”
To the pride of its creator, who put his theories to the test, C-047’s first action was a “success.”
C-047’s first “successful” action was to destroy journalist Víctor Rico Galán’s attempt to organize an armed group./Quinto Elemento Lab
* Quinto Elemento Lab is an independent, nonprofit journalistic organization that promotes and conducts investigative reporting in Mexico.
COORDINATION AND EDITORIAL: Ignacio Rodríguez Reyna
ILLUSTRATIONS: José Quintero
DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Isaac Ávila Ramón Arceo and Emmanuelle Hernández
ANIMATIONS: Francisco López
VIDEO POST PRODUCTION: Iván Cerón
JRL