EL PAÍS previews a fragment of The Ladies of Narco: Loving in Hell (Editorial Grijalbo), the latest novel by Anabel Hernández. In the new book, the Mexican writer tells the story of Celeste, who was Arturo Beltrán Leyva’s romantic partner for a decade. She becomes the guide on a journey through the hell in which she lived and met the most feared drug lords of recent times. The work will be available in Mexico on September 18th.
First: the escape
On that January 16, 2021, dawn had not yet broken over the dry landscape covered by miles of asphalt when hundreds of people had already gathered like ants on the invisible line that marks the border between Tijuana and San Diego . They were waiting to walk or drive through the San Ysidro checkpoint, the busiest border crossing in the world.
These were the times of Covid-19, and even though the United States government had imposed restrictions on non-essential travel as a measure to curb the spread of the deadly pandemic, thousands waited up to three hours for their turn.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents’ task was more vexing than usual as the pandemic forced them to conduct a more thorough review of the documents and reasons justifying the move to California. Despite the dangerous disease, 24 million people crossed this border point in 2020, the worst time of the pandemic.
In the queue, pedestrians and drivers were in good proportion, ghostly faces without smiles, covered by colorful masks. Others, more unconscious, left without her; They didn’t care that Mexico had become the third country in the world with the highest death rate due to the pandemic that month.
American citizens, legal residents, housewives with shopping carts clinging to not changing their habits, students, people going to doctor’s appointments and workers anxiously watching the clock or glued their eyes to their cell phones. Desperate truckers agreed to the Border Patrol’s routine and burdensome inspections—used to Mexican cartels constantly inventing new techniques to smuggle illegal drugs into the United States and to human traffickers, the notorious “polleros,” massacring migrants and they suffocated boxes in their cargo because not even Covid-19 could stop their criminal enterprise.
The hustle and bustle was total. Engine noise. Carbon monoxide smell. Screams of children and their mothers insulting them. Posters with health warnings everywhere. People with or without face masks talking. Husbands or lovers kissing or arguing. Sweaty drug or human traffickers hoping not to get caught.
***
The orange light of the rising sun gave way to blue skies as the Washington Post’s weather section already announced the first bad omen of the day: “Southern California faces a rare threat of wildfires in January due to warm, dry and windy weather.”
The misfortune caused by the still-mysterious virus was not enough; The drought and wind that hit California continued to cause fires everywhere. The times there were more than apocalyptic. While doctors in hospitals struggled to save lives and control the still-raging pandemic, firefighters battled the flames that spread from Riverside to Santa Barbara. California’s wildfire season had been exceptionally severe this month.
On the Mexican side, the weekly Zeta – Tijuana’s main media outlet – announced new bad news from the city considered the most violent in the world: “On the Tecate-Tijuana highway they find a body wrapped in a tarpaulin; There were 87 murders in January.”
But even with this news, it was not possible to predict the impending storm that would impact both sides of the border.
***
At 1:00 p.m. it was the turn of a 43-year-old woman, 1.68 m tall, medium build, with a round complexion and long, dyed blonde hair, to check the vehicle. She was in a vehicle with Mexican license plates, accompanied by her two minor daughters, Teresa and Caridad. His only son, Eduardo, of age and with a family, had decided to stay in Mexico.
The masked immigration officer asked him for his documents as usual. The woman, whose big eyes seemed more dramatic when you couldn’t see the rest of her face, was as nervous as someone who knows there’s a bomb attached to her body that’s about to explode.
“I need political asylum,” he said as he lowered his mask and handed over his passport and those of his daughters. Even at her age, she was the type of woman whose face still had childhood features, a baby face, the immigration officer might well have thought.
With an annoyed look, the CBP agent, who was used to such requests, gave her a stern look. He told him to take his car out of the queue and contemptuously pointed to the place where he should wait for a second inspection.
When they reached the point, the woman and her daughters got out of the car. The officers immediately tied the woman with her hands behind her back like a criminal. Francesca, a friendly Yorkie terrier dog who was part of the family, was traumatized when officers took her away from her owner and put her in a cage.
So they took the handcuffed woman and her daughters to an office to check her documents. They were able to determine that she had been living illegally in a Colorado city for almost a year, which was a serious offense.
“I am Celeste V. I am the mother of the daughter of drug trafficker Arturo Beltrán Leyva, and they want to kill me,” the woman told immigration officials, who were stunned to hear her. Of the millions of vehicles that pass through the San Ysidro border crossing each year, why on earth would this happen to them? anyone would have thought. I am applying for political asylum. “I bring with me evidence that Arturo Beltrán himself gave me for you, and it has very important content for your government,” Celeste hastened to speak.
***
As employees of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Border Patrol agents could not ignore who Arturo Beltrán Leyva was, one of the most powerful and bloodthirsty Mexican drug traffickers of modern times.
Arturo, better known as El Barbas, El Botas Blancas or Boss of Bosses, cousin of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, El Chapo, was an associate of him and Ismael el Mayo Zambada in the Sinaloa Cartel. The three, along with the Juárez Cartel, the Milenio Cartel, Ignacio Nacho Coronel and Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, el Azul, founded the Federación in 2001, a conglomerate of Mexican cartels that became the largest drug trafficking organization ever by flooding the markets of the United States and Europe with cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines.
Arturo founded his own group and became the leader of the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel. The bloody wars between him and his enemies left tens of thousands dead and missing in Mexico. Sometimes the violence managed to cross the border and cause fear in some districts of the American Union.
Arturo Beltrán Leyva in archive photos.RR. HH
Barbas was executed on December 16, 2009 by the Secretary of the Navy in Cuernavaca, Morelos, in an operation directed by the United States government itself. Celeste was one of the last of her inner circle to remain alive or free. For more than a decade, he had been at the epicenter of the Federation on the side of the Beltrán-Leyva faction. She had been Arturo’s assistant, friend, lover and confidant. They had a daughter.
Celeste was not his wife, but she had lived with the boss more than Marcela Gómez Burgueño herself, to whom Arturo was married. This was because, unlike Marcela, Celeste was not jealous of him, which over the years of living together had created an absolute trust that had made her the keeper of Arturo’s most intimate secrets, including the long list of wives, friends and accomplices . who had kept him company in the long hours of his free time when he wasn’t dealing drugs or murdering.
Celeste was a burning woman who had battled death since the day she was conceived. She had nothing left to lose and was willing to do anything to save the only valuable thing she had left in her life: her children.
***
The CBP’s rigidity and experience led them to believe that the normal-looking woman was bluffing. They told her that she would be held with her daughters while deportation documents were processed and that Fraccesca would be sent to a shelter for adoption.
Celeste was tough, having survived at least four murder attempts and three kidnappings. No one who knew her would have thought that the thought of losing Francesca would be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
He fell into an emotional crisis. He fell to his knees and began to cry inconsolably. Collapse. I couldn’t take it anymore. Later he would think it was ridiculous. But at that moment she felt devastated. She began to think that it would have been better for her if he had pulled the trigger that crazy night in Acapulco when he sleepily put the gun to her head. But he didn’t, and now she had to try to glue the remaining pieces of herself together and fulfill the last wish of the man she had loved, but above all of the only one who had been faithful to her.
***
Hours later, Celeste, Teresa and Caridad were locked up at the illegal immigrants detention center, where they would remain like the rest of the illegal immigrants and then be deported. Since 2020, under the pretext of Covid-19, Donald Trump issued an immigration directive called Title 42, which ordered the immediate deportation to Mexico and Canada of illegal migrants who sought asylum at the border. They locked her in a solitary cell. You wouldn’t have better luck. Everything seemed lost. Celeste knew that if she returned to Mexico, her death warrant would already be signed.
They gave them food and clean sheets to sleep on. It was an endless night for her, but the next day a guard took her out of the cell. – Madam, come. Tell me some of the information you have. Are you ready to cooperate? – Yes, whatever you want. What I want is justice, which means that things move. The officer looked at her doubtfully again. She didn’t look like the typical Buchona you see on TV shows, but she let her intuition carry her away and called two Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents; a woman with a Colombian accent and a man of Mexican origin. Now the hot potato was in his hands.
When they saw it, they probably thought the same thing as their CBP colleagues. Celeste’s ordinary, unexpected appearance had made her the perfect Trojan horse for Arturo Beltrán Leyva. She was able to penetrate worlds that he would not have been able to reach with an armed army, and in that world she had access to people that he could not. Contrary to the saying, “If the mountain doesn’t go to Mohammed, Mohammed goes to the mountain,” Celeste moved the “mountain” and brought it to Arturo.
The look the DEA gave her worried her. He knew it, he wasn’t at his best, like when he first met Arturo in Acapulco in the early ’90s. She was not yet 20 years old at the time and was being persecuted by politicians, business people and drug traffickers alike.
“I’m from Guerrero, I’m not from Sinaloa,” he said, breaking the silence. He wanted to explain why he didn’t have the face or body of Emma Coronel Aispuro, Chapo’s already famous wife.
—What evidence do you bring with you? – snapped the DEA agent.
“Send my things, I have everything here,” Celeste replied and began to play the game in which she had become an expert since childhood and which had allowed her to stay alive: tug of war.
***
It was true that the treasure he had taken with him as a precaution had been left among the things he had brought back from Acapulco on his last trip. She lived anonymously on the border for several years, fleeing those who wanted her dead.
In 2016, Celeste fled what was once the most beautiful bay in the world after an armed group kidnapped her along with Teresa and Caridad to force her to give them money or a folder of property deeds left behind by Arturo Beltrán. Leyva in Acapulco. The order came from Clara Laborín Archuleta, her cousin so to speak, since she was married to Héctor Beltrán Leyva, Arturo’s brother. In her own words, she was in charge of the criminal business of the family that she ran with her right arm: Joaquín Alonso Piedra.
Alonso Piedra, better known as El Abulón, was a political relative of the current governor of Guerrero state, Evelyn Salgado Pineda, of the official National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party. Abalón’s son, Joaquín Alonso Bustamante and Evelyn, were a couple and had a son born on July 5, 2015, registered in Acapulco, Guerrero. At that time, Alonso Bustamante, born April 8, 1975, was 40 years old, and the current governor, born February 5, 1982, was 33 years old. A year later, El Abalón was arrested in Acapulco and accused of being an operator of the Beltran Leyva.
The Morenista governor is the daughter of the former mayor of Acapulco and current senator Félix Salgado Macedonio – also a Morenista – who, as mayor, was paid on two payrolls: that of the government and that of Arturo Beltrán Leyva.
“The only thing they want is money, they won’t hurt us,” Celeste told her daughters during her captivity for a few hours to calm them down. Every time he talks about it again, his voice shakes and his eyes fill with tears. When her captors got what they wanted, they threw her out of the vehicle like dogs outside a bus station in Acapulco. They gave him the opportunity to leave town that night. The blow caused Caridad’s ear to bleed and her eardrum to be damaged; and Teresa broke two front teeth.
– It’s nothing, daughter, it’s nothing! And don’t complain! – Celeste told them harshly so as not to break down. It was his harsh temper that served as a crutch throughout his life.
She knew it, it was a miracle that they were still alive. After the death of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the parents of his children’s schoolmates gradually began to disappear. Only suddenly they were gone. Friends of his eldest son Eduardo, who was about twelve years old at the time, entire families, disappeared.
From the terminal, Celeste ran home to her daughters. The food that was served was left there. He took out his suitcases and packed what he could. He took his vehicle and drove to Tijuana.
He was in this city for a while. From there he crossed the border every day on his tourist visa to clean houses. It’s not exactly the image one might have of the wife of one of the richest drug traffickers in the history of the world, but at least it was a decent and non-criminal job. “I don’t believe in privilege,” she told herself to encourage herself, “all jobs are honorable to me; Well, not all, but those who are honorable have their honor.”
When she found out that those who wanted her underground started asking about her in the border town, she decided to move to Colorado. Still undocumented – like millions of Mexicans pursuing the American dream – she was hired as a cleaner in a hotel but quickly rose to manager. She wanted to return to Acapulco because it was her home, her children were born there, and a large part of her history was there; but little by little he came to terms with the fact that this was impossible.
She would certainly have stayed in Colorado if her daughter Teresa had not become homesick for the country and began to suffer from severe depression that left her in a state of shock.
In 2018, Celeste reluctantly gave him permission to return to Acapulco for a while to visit friends and family. But when he tried to cross the border again to return to his mother, his visa was revoked. Celeste knew better than anyone what it was like for a young girl to be left behind in the middle of nowhere, so she gave up the life she was trying to rebuild in the United States and returned to Tijuana with Caridad to be with To reunite Teresa. When she returned, she noticed that they were already asking about her again. Then there was a reversal of fate: on December 10, 2019, the arrest of Genaro García Luna, the federal public security minister during Felipe Calderón’s six-year term, was announced, accused of receiving millions of dollars in bribes from members to have the Federation. , particularly by the Sinaloa Cartel and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel.
***
When Celeste told the DEA agents to get her things, they didn’t take it well.
—We can’t help you. “First of all, you didn’t even know Arturo Beltrán and you don’t know what you’re talking about,” the agent told him in a Colombian accent.
– Look, the only thing I will tell you is this: I come here and what I declare is true. You’ll eat your words later because that’s what happens. They discriminate against me because I’m not him, I haven’t stolen, and I don’t live off drug money. I’m not a person who launders money. No, life passed me by! I had a daughter by Arturo Beltrán and everything I saw is real. You know what? What a shame that criminals who have actually committed crimes are listened to; and for me, who is not like her, no. But don’t worry, do whatever you want, God is still there. “God knows the facts and he’s my lawyer and he’s my prosecutor he’s my everything and do whatever you want,” Celeste said in a confident, annoyed tone, leaning forward as she did in difficult moments of her life. .
They took her back to the cell. But the officer, of Mexican origin, came back to look for her.
—Do you have accommodation in the United States? – he asked him. “Yes,” she replied. He had acquaintances in Colorado. -OK. Look, you will master your process with free girls. Obviously this is a conditional release. Take care of yourselves.
The detention center doors opened for Celeste and her daughters, but not before an electronic bracelet was placed on her ankle so that her whereabouts could be tracked. They sent her to Colorado. There she went to her first immigration court appointment with the officer who told her she was under investigation.
“We’ve already tracked you down here in the United States, we’ve already tracked you down in Mexico, and you have no criminal record,” he told him.
He returned to his place of residence and a month later the same agent spoke to him again. He summoned her not to immigration, but to another office where matters involving people with Celeste’s profile are discussed.
“Look, if you work with us, you can be a protected witness,” they told him.
“I don’t believe in protection, but whether you protect me or not, there are many things you should know,” she replied confidently.
***
For more than ten years, Celeste witnessed events within the Beltrán-Leyva cartel that continue to have repercussions today. He directly met people who still have influence. Given the close and deep relationship he had with Arturo, he had psychological and sociological information about the criminal clan, its members and protection networks that was worth its weight in gold.
But she had something more. An ace up your sleeve. At his last meeting with Arturo Beltrán Leyva in a suite at the luxurious Fairmont Princess Hotel in Acapulco, the desperate boss handed him two blue USB sticks.
“I won’t get caught, they’ll kill me,” said Arturo, knowing his days were numbered. Because they want to put me in prison and that’s not going to happen. For all I know they will kill me, whoever it is will kill me!
More than for herself, Celeste hurt for the once powerful man she had come to love, perhaps even more so the moment he was done. She still didn’t understand exactly what he wanted. What did you expect from her? What more could she ask him when she had already done so much for him?
– If they kill me, you take the girl, your family, whoever you care about, your children, your husband, whatever! You go to the border in the United States, apply for political asylum and turn these memoirs over to the government.” Celeste stared at the two memoirs without contradicting him. What I give you, Mija, you give away! – Arturo ordered him with a wild look.
That’s what he affectionately called her. Of all the names Celeste had used, she liked this nickname the best. Arturo was 15 years older than him, but it wasn’t the age difference that made him say that, but rather the strange bond that shared them. A trap of the devil.
– Don’t listen to him! -He warned-. I don’t want you to find out what he says because this information is a bomb and they can kill you for it. Don’t stay in Acapulco! Go away!
Important information emerged about the corruption networks with the highest authorities in Mexico that the leader of the Beltrán-Leyva cartel had established for years to carry out his criminal operations. And some of that information directly concerned García Luna, who was recently arrested in Texas.
“The drug dealers.” Love in hell
Author: Anabel Hernández
Publisher: Grijalbo
Softcover, 304 pages / 369 Mexican pesos
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