2011 Matamoros mass kidnapping

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2011 Matamoros mass kidnapping
Part of Mexican Drug War
Cazares-periodico.jpg
Newspaper showing the monetary reward offered for the five Cázares that remain missing
Location Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico
Coordinates Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
Date July 9, 2011 (2011-07-09)
5:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. (CST)
Target Cázares family
Attack type
Mass kidnapping
Victims 18 (5 remain missing)
Perpetrators Gulf Cartel
Motive Unknown

On July 9, 2011, alleged gunmen of the Gulf Cartel kidnapped 18 members of the Cázares family from three different households in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The children and women were eventually released three days later, but the abductors kept five men. Forty-eight hours later, the Gulf Cartel contacted the members who had been released to start negotiating ransom. After several days of negotiation and three different ransom payments, the Cázares were called to deliver their final payment on July 27. They sent the money to the kidnappers and waited in a disclosed location for a white van the kidnappers had pledged to deliver their remaining family members. However, the van never arrived and the phone the kidnappers used to contact the Cázares went out of service. The family then decided to contact authorities and open the case. The Cázares men have been missing ever since.

The mass kidnapping of the Cázares family stands out from other abduction cases in Mexico because all the eighteen victims were related. Among them were three U.S. citizens. The family has sent letters to officials in the lowest and highest levels of the Mexican government and has reached out to international heads of state for assistance on the case. The kidnapping is currently unsolved; the whereabouts of the five remaining abductees and the motives behind the kidnapping are officially unknown. Federal sources, however, agree that the kidnapping was masterminded by the top echelons of the Gulf Cartel.

Kidnapping

At around 5:00 a.m. on July 9, 2011, at least eight alleged gunmen of the Gulf Cartel entered the first domicile of the Cázares family in neighborhood San Francisco in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico to carry out a kidnapping.[1][2] The first house was owned by Rodolfo Cázares Garza.[3] The kidnappers were wearing military-style uniforms and ski-masks, but the victims noticed that they were sporting white-colored sneakers, speaking vulgarities, and looking for valuable house possessions, which suggested they were not law enforcement or military personnel.[4] They stormed each of the bedrooms in the house to round up the victims before blindfolding them (except for two children). Once the kidnappers ordered the patriarch to open the family's safe, they forced all the family into their vehicles before taking off. By 7:00 a.m., the Gulf Cartel kidnappers reached the second home of the Cázares in neighborhood Río and forced the family to open their front door.[1][2] "We have your brother", one of the kidnappers said as the others guarded the entrance booth of the neighborhood with assault rifles.[5] Four more relatives were kidnapped at the second domicile, owned by Rodolfo's brother Héctor Cázares Garza. However, one of them managed to escape through the back door of the house before running to the third house of the Cázares a few blocks away. A few minutes later, the kidnappers made their way into the third house, owned by Alberto Cázares Garza, one of the other brothers.[1][3] By 8:00 a.m., 18 members of the Cázares family were kidnapped. This mass abduction stood out from other kidnapping cases in Mexico because all of the victims were related.[2][6]

Six of the Cázares men, Rodolfo Cázares Garza, Manuel Alberto Cázares Garza, Héctor Cázares Garza, Rodolfo Ignacio Cázares Solís, Rubén Luna Mendoza, and Rodolfo Garza Solís, were kept together.[2][7] The women and children, along with one of the grandfathers, were kept in a separate vehicle throughout most of the first day. After leaving the house, the captors drove them around the city for several hours and switched them into different vehicles on busy streets in broad daylight.[1] According to one family member, the kidnappers even stopped for gas and did not pay for the service. In their portable radio conversations while driving, the family heard them speaking about avoiding Los Zetas, the rival crime syndicate of the Gulf Cartel. That evening, the women were taken to a hostage safe house where at least twenty other men were drinking and smoking cannabis. The windows in this disclosed location were covered. A shootout broke out near the premises and the victims were transported to another location in another SUV (while in the vehicle, the family was blindfolded and placed next to a corpse).[8][9] The Cázares had the impression that they kidnappers were looking where to hide their victims. The family believes that the kidnappers moved them around Matamoros for hours because they did not expect to find a lot of people in the houses where they carried out the abductions.[10]

Despite the turmoil, the kidnappers tried to keep the victims calm. They told the family that they had inadvertently mistaken their identities and that they were going to be released. "We're from the Gulf Cartel", one of them told them. "We're the good guys" (in the kidnappers's perspective, the "bad guys" were the members of Los Zetas).[1] The women claimed that although they were scared of a few of their captors, for the most part, the kidnappers treated them well. The Cázares recall that the younger members of the kidnapping ring were the friendlier ones and fed the adults milk and bread, and gave the kids juice to drink. Some of them allowed the victims to take of their blindfolds while the boss of the ring was gone.[10] The women and children were kept in a safe house with gunmen for another three days. On July 11, the kidnappers released the women and children around midnight at a Walmart parking lot.[1][5] Five Cázares men, however, remained in captivity (Rodolfo Garza Solís, 82, was later released by his captors sixteen days after the kidnapping).[2][3]

Ransoming

On July 13, the kidnappers contacted Sergio Cázares Garza, one of the family members who lived in Texas, and told him that his remaining relatives would be released if the family paid a ransom. Initially, the family said they could only pay a few thousand dollars, but the captors allowed for them to have at least two days to collect more money. In total, the Cázares made four different payments to the kidnappers in Matamoros in a sum of $100,000 USD.[A 1] The first one was delivered at a grocery store parking lot and the second one was left behind a fast-food eatery. The kidnappers communicated with the Cázares family that was in hiding in Texas through telephone, and the cash deliveries were made by a trusted employee of the family in Matamoros.[8][12] Each time the deliveries were made, the Gulf Cartel sent a different envoy to pick up the money from the Cázares at a disclosed location.[10]

Throughout the ransoming process, the Cázares were allowed to talk with their remaining relatives in three occasions. In their first phone conversation, the victims talked about their concern for their wives and children. Their second conversation was a lot shorter and emotive for the Cázares, however. By July 27, the kidnappers said they needed a final cash deliver in order to release them. The Cázares sent the money to Matamoros from Texas and eagerly awaited at a disclosed location for a white van that was supposed to deliver their relatives. The van never came and the phone line that the family used to contact the kidnappers was out of service. Weeks after that, the family decided to contact law enforcement.[1][A 2]

Initial proceedings

Once the Cázares decided to search for help within law enforcement, the local police stated that they were going to investigate the case. However, about a month in, they stated in a letter written to the Cázares that the case was outside of their jurisdiction. The family tried to contact the police with e-mails and phone calls, and even attempted to get a hold of the Matamoros mayor Alfonso Sánchez Garza, but their messages were not answered.[5] In September 13, 2011, the Cázares issued a formal complaint at the Public Ministry of Matamoros (Spanish: Ministerio Público de Matamoros) and the case was opened by state authorities in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas. A family member who happened to be a U.S. citizen also contacted the FBI and asked them for help in the case. The case was brought to the attention of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who promised to support the investigation. A few weeks after that, one of the alleged kidnappers was arrested in Texas following a traffic violation.[10][11] That same month, a Tamaulipas anti-kidnapping squad began to work on the case and recollected the testimonies of the Cázares that were kidnapped.[8]

In October 2011, the soldiers of the Mexican Navy visited the three houses where the Cázares were abducted to investigate the crime scene.[15] In November 2011, Mexican security forces arrested two suspects on federal charges for drug and weapon offenses. According to the agency's investigator Manuel Adolfo Benavides Parra, the Cázares identified the two men as part of the Gulf Cartel kidnapping ring. However, since the two suspects were arrested under federal charges, his agency was prevented from interrogating them.[6][8] At the same time, a Tamaulipas law enforcement official stated that the case was under state jurisdiction and refused to comment on the two detainees arrested for federal offenses. "We have nothing else to say [about them]", he added.[1] U.S. authorities did not give details on the other alleged suspect arrested on Texas soil either.[10] On November 2011, a friend of the Cázares managed to put them in contact with Deputy Interior Secretary Felipe Zamora Castro, a high-ranking official within the Mexican government that said was willing to help in the kidnapping investigation. A couple of days after being in contact with the family, however, Zamora was victim of a tragic helicopter accident along with Secretary of Interior Francisco Blake Mora.[1] In December 2011, the Cázares case was received by Gualberto Ramírez, coordinator of the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the now-extinct Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada (SIEDO), Mexico's organized crime investigatory agency.[15][A 3]

By 2012, the Cázares claimed the Tamaulipas agency had not questioned potential suspects or eyewitnesses of the kidnapping, nor had they visited the locations relevant to the case. The Cázares have insisted that authorities should start by investigating the house they were taken following their kidnapping, given that it is located just a block away from a busy street in Matamoros. In March 2012, an electricity bill was found on the door of the premises. The bill showed that the service was used exponentially during the month the family was kidnapped, and that the last time someone paid the bill was on January 2011. A neighbor who lived near the house where the Cázares were held hostage said he did not know who the owners of the property were but did acknowledge seeing suspicious activity during the evenings.[8] On March 7, about 10 months after the mass kidnapping, Gérald Martin, the General Consul of France in Mexico, told the Cázares family that a squadron of Mexico's Federal Police had been dispatched to Matamoros to work directly on the case. The family claims, however, that were not sure if the investigation was actually carried out. They said they did not receive any documents of the investigation. By October 2012, a criminal court in Jalisco under judge Francisco Martín Hernández Zaragoza was assigned to investigate the case. The family claims they do not know the details of the investigation.[15]

Letters to heads of state

Mexico

Exactly six months after the kidnapping, on January 9, 2012, the Cázares sent a letter to Mexico's former President Felipe Calderón titled "Request Special Military and Police Assistance Regarding a Kidnapping in Matamoros" (Spanish: Solicitud de ayuda militar y policial especial respecto a un secuestro en Matamoros). Copies of the document were also sent to other high-ranking officials in the government, including: Marisela Morales, the Attorney General of Mexico; Eugenio Javier Hernández Flores, the former Governor of Tamaulipas; Egidio Torre Cantú, Governor of Tamaulipas; Rick Perry, Governor of Texas; Alejandro Poiré Romero, former Secretary of Interior; Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, former Secretary of Foreign Affairs; Rodolfo Quilantán Arenas, Mexican consul in Brownsville, Texas; es (Carlos de Icaza González), Mexico's ambassador in France; Francisco González Díaz, Mexico's ambassador in Germany; Gérald Martin, the General Consul of France in Mexico; Guillermo Galván Galván, the Secretary of National Defense; Erwin Rodolfo Solórzano Barragán, Mexican Army General; Jaime Domingo López Buitrón, director of the Center for Research and National Security; Rafael Lomelí Martínez, former Secretary of Public Security in Tamaulipas; Bolívar Hernández Garza, former Tamaulipas Attorney General; es (Raúl Plascencia Villanueva), director of Mexico's National Human Rights Commission; Luis González Plascencia, head of Mexico City's Human Rights Commission; Antonio Aranibar Quiroga, Mexico's ambassador at the Organization of American States; and Edgardo Buscaglia, a professor at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and organized crime expert. Three days later, the Mexican government replied to the request and stated that the case was given to the es (Procuraduría Social de Atención a Víctimas de Delitos), a government agency specialized in aiding victims of violence. The Cázares claimed, however, that that government agency never got in contact with them. Attorney General Morales responded the next day by appointing José Cuitláhuac Salinas Martínez, the Deputy Attorney General of the SIEDO, to work directly on the case.[10]

Ludivine Barbier, a France-native and wife of Rodolfo Cázares, also gathered around 72,400 signatures through Change.org in late 2012, and asked Mexico's President Enrique Peña Nieto to help bring her husband back. The petition was also directed to politicians Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, Luis Videgaray Caso, and Erwin Manuel Lino Zárate. In the petition page, Barbier complained that Mexican authorities have been silent about the case and that the police have ignored them for over a year. She stated that Peña Nieto had to improve his image abroad, and argued that if her petition managed to gather signatures from all over the world, the President would have no other option but to work on the case.[17] Barbier also joined in solidarity with Frédérique Santal, the sister of Olivier Tschumi, a Swiss native who was kidnapped in Cuernavaca, Morelos in 2010 and remains disappeared.[18] In December 2012, both of them met in Paris with Mexican peace activist Javier Sicilia, who handed over a petition Mexico's ambassador to France. The petition intended to ask Peña Nieto to enact a law protecting victims of violence in Mexico.[19][20] Barbier also gave the petition letter for Peña Nieto to Juan Andrés Ordóñez Gómez, who managed the administrative duties of the Embassy of Mexico in France and substitute of Carlos de Icaza González.[15]

International support

Given the delays and the perceived unwillingness of Mexican law enforcement to properly investigate the case, however, the Cázares have sought for help abroad. Barbier also reached out to Europe and wrote letters to the governments of France and Germany (the former because Rodolfo Cázares was a French citizen and the latter because he was a symphony conductor with legal residence there).[21][22] In France, she issued a formal complaint and sent a letter to France's former President Nicolas Sarkozy.[10] In addition, Barbier reached out to the media to talk about the kidnapping and called for the freedom of her husband and family. "He is the eighth Frenchman kidnapped in the world, but officially there are no more than seven," said Barbier in an October 12 interview with Le Parisien.[23] France's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development responded by saying that they were working on the case with Mexico and that Rodolfo Cázares counted with all the consular support he needed due to his French citizenship.[24] She also managed to convince France's President François Hollande to talk about the case with Peña Nieto during the latter's visit at the Élysée Palace on October 17.[15] She also expressed her interest in involving First Lady Valérie Trierweiler.[25] On December 5, Barbier contacted Gérald Martin and sent a letter to Los Pinos presidential residence asking for an interview with Peña Nieto.[15] On December 11, the French government stated that Rodolfo Cázares was not considered a political hostage and thereby was not included in the list of Frenchmen kidnapped abroad. This came after Barbier demanded French authorities to classify her husband as a political hostage.[26] Barbier believes that French authorities were uninterested in the case because they were primarily concerned with solving the case surrounding Florence Cassez, a French native who was arrested in Mexico and given a 60-year sentence for reportedly participating in a kidnapping.[27]

Barbier also got in contact with German authorities to work on the case with them and Mexican authorities.[28][29] The arts community where Barbier's husband Rodolfo Cázares worked with in Bremerhaven attempted to create a fundraiser for the family to help pay the ransom to the kidnappers in exchange for the abductee.[30] Ingeborg Fischer-Thein, chairman of the International Association of Wagner Societies, where Rodolfo was a member, sent a letter to Germany's and the International Music Council saying the community was looking for ways to help in the case. Fundraisers were carried out in music events and at the apartment complex where Rodolfo and Barbier lived in Bremerhaven. The city's mayor de (Melf Grantz), along with local leader de (Artur Beneken), showed their interest in the case and contacted the Embassy of Mexico in Berlin on December 6, 2011.[10] The Cázares also got in contact with Germany's Minister for Foreign Affairs and with Bernd Neumann, who was the Representative of the Federal Government for Culture; with the Embassy of Mexico in Berlin and with more municipal authorities in Bremerhaven.[31] The Media and Public Relations Department of the Embassy of Germany in Mexico City stated that they were sadden by the kidnapping but the case was out of their jurisdiction because Rodolfo was not a German citizen.[10]

The family also tried to reach out to the United States and involve them in the case too. Though the five men that are disappeared hold only Mexican citizenships, three of the abductees hold U.S. citizenships and others were legal residents of the U.S. The family wants to the U.S. to investigate the case because they believe that the Gulf Cartel fears the involvement of U.S. authorities (according to the Cázares, a 9-year-old boy who was kidnapped from the first home was dropped off one of the international bridges in Matamoros after the kidnappers found out that he was a U.S. citizen and that his mother had contacted the FBI).[1][6] The family also sent letters to U.S. President Barack Obama and to Pope Benedict XVI, and asked the latter to speak about the case with President Calderón during his visit to Mexico in March 2012.[5][32] Barbier also sent letters to Catholic cardinals in the archdioceses of New York, Berlin, Paris, and Munich and Freising, asking them to pray for her family members that were missing. They received the same petition letters the family sent to President Calderón in their respective languages.[6][10]

Possible motives and investigation

The motives of the kidnapping are officially unknown, but there are several lines of investigation that suggest a number of reasons behind the mass abduction. One version states that the family was kidnapped because one of the grandfathers of the Cázares had a mistress whose sons were involved with Los Zetas, a rival criminal group of the Gulf Cartel.[33] According to Barbier, her husband's grandfather had an illegitimate son known as Rodolfo Cázares (alias "Rudy" and/or "El Rudy"). She believes Rudy was involved with Los Zetas. Barbier stated that during the abduction the kidnappers asked them several times for "El Rudy". However, she said that her family did not have any contact or relationship with Rudy's family branch. Barbier stated that the kidnappers soon recognized their mistake and released her and some of her family members.[12] In Barbier's eyes, the Gulf Cartel easily confused the Cázares men with the actual target because some of them are also named "Rodolfo".[31] Mexican investigators believe that the Gulf Cartel kidnapped the Cázares family to get a hold of Rudy.[34] Rudy was a former member of the Gulf Cartel but had left the group to join Los Zetas; in April 2012, however, he was arrested with four other people in Olmito, Texas for aggravated robbery and organized crime charges. The police stated that he was local recruiter and drug operator for Los Zetas.[35]

Another line of investigation alleges that the Cázares family was kidnapped because the Gulf Cartel was looking for Francisco Ricardo Cázares (alias "El Paco"), a drug operator from San Benito, Texas and the alleged son of one of the victims. Police reports from Tamaulipas describe "El Paco", and a man known as Rodolfo Cázares and his sister Angie Cázares, as the main suspects of a series of a grenade attacks carried out in Matamoros in 2010.[36][37] "El Paco" is identified by law enforcement officers as a member of Los Zetas. Federal sources allege that Rafael Cárdenas Vela (alias "El Junior"), former high-ranking leader of the Gulf Cartel and regional boss of Matamoros, ordered the abduction of the Cázares family as a reprisal for the attacks. The grenade attacks were carried out in the Municipal City Hall, the Municipal Police Station, the Ministerial Police Station, in the Mexican Army barracks, and in a store in the downtown area. At least nine civilians were injured in the grenade attacks.[37] One of the grenades launched in another government building did not detonate.[38] According to federal investigator Rosario G. Sandoval Medina, former high-ranking Gulf Cartel boss Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez confirmed that Cárdenas Vela had ordered the mass kidnapping. Cárdenas Vela was arrested in Texas in 2011, and the Subprocuraduría Especializada en Investigación de Delincuencia Organizada (SEIDO) federal agency under the directorship of José Cuitláhuac Salinas Martínez promised to form an agreement with U.S. law enforcement to interrogate him about the case. The family, however, expressed their disappointment with both Mexican and U.S. authorities for failing to cooperate.[15][27]

On May 28, 2014, the Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) federal agency issued an official diary offering a monetary reward of $1,500,000 pesos (approximately US$101,931) to anyone who provides information leading to the location of the five abductees: Rodolfo Cázares Garza, Manuel Alberto Cázares Garza, Héctor Cázares Garza, Rodolfo Ignacio Cázares Solís, and Rubén Luna Mendoza.[39][40] Another monetary reward of the same amount was offered to anyone who can provide information that can lead to the identity, location, and/or arrest of the people who planned and/or executed the kidnapping. If these stipulations are met, the reward can be given out in a number of ways. The money, which can be issued both in cash or in a bank account, will be rewarded proportionally to the number of people located, and to the utility of the information provided. If two or more people provide useful information to authorities, only the first person will receive the reward. But if the information is provided by two or more people simultaneously, the reward will be distributed proportionally. The information can be provided at the PGR offices in Colonia Guerrero, Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City; through the PGR's public email, or via phone number. The PGR vows that the information provided, as well as the person(s) that provide them, will be strictly reserved and anonymous.[40] The reward information was published in the ad section of several daily newspapers across northeastern Mexico that week.[41]

See also

Sources

Footnotes
  1. Another source said the Cázares made five ransom payments of the same amount.[11]
  2. This course of action is a common practice in Mexico, where most kidnappings go unreported because citizens tend to distrust law enforcement. Popular belief holds that authorities are often involved with organized crime or are incapable of properly investigating the case. This practice is also rooted in the fear that calling the authorities may compel the captors to kill the victim.[13][14]
  3. The organized crime investigatory agency Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada (SIEDO) changed its name to Subprocuraduría Especializada en Investigación de Delincuencia Organizada (SEIDO) on October 17, 2012.[16]
References
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