Zacatecas is sleeping. It’s late at night and seven teenagers are resting in two rooms at El Potrerito Ranch. It’s not an unusual scene. Evenings like this usually take place at the farm, a gray concrete building on the outskirts of Malpaso. The owners are the parents of Héctor Alejandro Saucedo and he and his friends have always spent their idle hours there: watching movies, looking at the ceiling, talking about life, celebrating lunadas – parties, evening gatherings. The things you do when you’re 18 and the most important thing in the world is spending time with your friends. Furthermore, they are not very restless boys. They never make a fuss, they never bother each other too much.
The clock strikes in the early hours of Sunday, September 24th. Around four in the morning, the sounds of engines can be heard behind the ranch, along the river path, a bed of dust and rocks that has long since lost its sense of what water is. “There were about three cars,” recalls a farm worker who, like almost everyone interviewed for this chronicle, did not want to give his name out of fear. The noise acts as an alarm, a warning that something bad is about to happen. A group of armed men get out of the vehicles. The killers shoot into the sky. The nightmare begins.
The seven teenagers were kidnapped in Zacatecas, in images shared on social networks.
The men break into the ranch. They open the large metal gate that protects the residential part of the farm, a rectangular structure with an inner courtyard through which one can access the two rooms where the young people are housed. You are forced out of bed. They don’t let her put on shoes; Some don’t even wear a T-shirt. Sleepy and confused teenagers probably still don’t understand what’s going on.
Minutes later, the seven young people discover themselves on board the cars, which drive off quickly but suddenly turn a few meters from the ranch. Maybe they take a wrong turn, maybe they change their mind. The skid marks can still be seen a week later on the ground of the farm’s cactus garden, near the pig pens, chicken coop and horse stable. The kidnappers get lost between the trees and the darkness.
eternal war
The rooms are still the same as the boys left them. One of them has a bunk bed and another mattress. Green and red walls somewhat dilapidated. The other has a double bed with clothes piled on it, a few cupboards, a picture of Jesus Christ ruling over the room, an empty beer bottle, stacked ring binders, used deodorant and a straw hat. Two of the young people’s motorcycles are still parked in the courtyard. The worldly features that prove there was once life there.
Everyone in the community clearly heard the shock of the kidnapping; the dry shots into the night air. Everyone except those who need to hear them. Less than 200 meters from the ranch is a police checkpoint on the highway connecting Zacatecas to Guadalajara. Nobody comes to stop the attack. In a press conference a week later, authorities will defend that they received a warning shortly after 5 a.m. and it took 15 minutes for them to dispatch four patrol cars. The teenagers’ mothers and fathers have a completely different opinion: it wasn’t until a few hours later that an agent showed up in El Potrerito. There was only one and he was unarmed. “They sent a police officer after eight in the morning, the pure officer left with no weapon, no protector, nothing. “All the residents around the houses heard the shots, it can’t be that they didn’t hear them,” protests a father.
The recordings in Malpaso are not too surprising. The city has long been ruled by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which is waging an eternal war against the Sinaloa Cartel. There is a curfew and when night falls there is not a soul to be seen on the streets. “He’s six years old and they’re fighting each other with bullets from corner to corner,” says the ranch hand.
The coffin of Diego Rodriguez Vidales, a 17-year-old teenager, is carried to his funeral by his relatives.Nayeli Cruz
Soldiers’ children
On Sunday morning, the news begins to spread throughout the community. Relatives report the kidnapping to the public prosecutor. Authorities assure that they are beginning to search, although relatives claim that it took days for officers to block the road in protest to really mobilize.
On Monday, security forces will begin searching Malpaso and surrounding communities. They find two vehicles that appear to be related to the case. Inside is a long gun, 282 rounds of ammunition, 13 magazines, three marijuana cigarettes and seven glass cans. No sign of the teenagers. That same day, in the municipality of Jerez, 25 minutes from Potrerito, police intercepted another car carrying two teenagers, ages 15 and 16, originally from Durango. They carry an entire arsenal with them: five long guns, 2,427 cartridges, 57 magazines and four homemade bombs. The agents stop them. During interrogation, they realize that they are members of the armed group that kidnapped the young people. Soldiers’ children. They remain at the disposal of the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic.
Tuesday begins without much hope. Tired of the lack of progress, the boys’ relatives blocked the Zacatecas-Guadalajara highway for nine hours at the same checkpoint outside the El Potrerito ranch in a desperate attempt. Meanwhile, 75 kilometers away, in Genaro Codina, a truck with two people tied up tries to escape. Its residents – the kidnappers, of course, not the abductees – open fire on the police, but the officers manage to stop them. They don’t know it yet, but they are about to find the final clue that will lead to the whereabouts of the seven teenagers.
View of the El Portrerito ranch in the municipality of Malpaso, Zacatecas, where the seven teenagers were kidnapped.Nayeli Cruz
“They were children full of life”
The authorities are questioning the two teenagers, who were handcuffed. They say they were just with seven other boys who were also kidnapped; that both she and the Malpaso teenagers were selling drugs for the CJNG, information that has not been confirmed. However, his statement is important: she is the one who reveals the whereabouts of the kidnapped boys.
That day, in another operation in Villanueva, the military arrested three men and a woman armed to the teeth who were also involved in the kidnapping. A total of six people have already been arrested. In another confrontation, two more contract killers are arrested who apparently have no direct connection to the Malpaso crime. Meanwhile, the relatives of the seven abductees receive videos in which they see their children running barefoot through the mountains and being tortured. Despair and anger penetrate the bones.
On Wednesday, a helicopter from the Zacatecas Public Security Secretariat flies over the mountains where the two handcuffed young men last saw the seven teenagers. It is a wild and steep area that is difficult to access. The good news reaches the human barricade that the mothers and fathers have once again formed on the street: they have found one of the boys alive. Shortly afterwards, reality wins and destroys hope: Sergio Yobani Acevedo Rodríguez, 18, is the only survivor. The bodies of the remaining boys appear within a 70 meter radius. They were only about three miles from the El Potrerito ranch.
The families spend the night in the prosecutor’s office and face a father’s worst fate: identifying his son’s body. The wakes begin on Thursday morning. In Malpaso, the funeral of Óscar Ernesto Rojas Alvarado (15 years old) and Diego Rodríguez Vidales (17 years old) is the most crowded; The others prefer to observe their dead in private. The town’s residents gather in the Ejidal Hall and mourn the children. They remember them as “quiet, normal,” educated boys. Motorcycle fans dance to Banda music. “They were children full of life, like any teenager. Healthy, very happy. They were good students at school. Neither very wise nor very bad, regularly,” shouts María Azucena Casillas, her former teacher.
Elements of the National Guard conduct a security operation outside the Malpaso Pantheon in the municipality of Villanueva, Zacatecas.Nayeli Cruz
The procession marches towards the church with a brass band accompanying the funeral march. In the cemetery one breathes anger and fear: there are hawks among the people, looking for the murderers, present so that no one forgets who is in charge, with impunity, unwilling to allow a day of peace even at the funeral of two children grant. Almost no one speaks to the press; fear of retaliation permeates the atmosphere. Those who do it pray that it remains anonymous.
The autopsy was released hours later and showed that the young people died from a “traumatic brain injury”: blows to the head. Contrary to the rumors spread among the city’s evil tongues, the report emphatically states that there were no traces of drugs in the teenagers’ bodies. Sergio Yobani remains in hospital, guarded by police.
“It has consequences, he wakes up and says, ‘Don’t hit me anymore, I didn’t do anything wrong.’ There are no words to explain the conditions in which they found him,” said a relative. There is an idea that almost everyone in Malpaso shares: Sergio Yobani was only saved because he was “the messenger”: the one responsible for spreading the cartel’s message of terror. The prosecution acknowledges that the dispute over space between the CJNG and the Sinaloa Cartel is the reason for the murders.
After the funeral, the families are broken up. Also the residents of Malpaso. They know that if the press leaves, they will once again be in the dark about the drug trade, despite the government’s unfulfilled security promises. “After this comes hell,” one of the relatives predicts. Everyone knows it’s not the end; that despite the bloody nature of the case, he is just one of them in a black hole of violence, invisible to the rest of the world.
The six teenagers
Jorge Alberto René Ocón Acevedo, 14 years old
Óscar Ernesto Rojas Alvarado, 15 years old
Diego Rodríguez Vidales, 17 years old
Héctor Alejandro Saucedo Acevedo, 17 years old
Gumaro Santacruz Carrillo, 18 years old
Jesús Manuel Rodríguez Robles, 18 years old
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