The Making of a Narco State

by Guy Lawson

The target of the raid was the narcotraficante known as "El Conejo" – the Rabbit. In keeping with his stature as the main supplier of cocaine to one of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels, the Colombian was throwing a lavish party at a sprawling mansion on the south side of Mexico City. As always, there would be plenty of high-end prostitutes, who served a dual purpose: They not only made money for Conejo while they were working, they could also be sent back to Colombia loaded down with the cash from his drug trafficking – by some accounts as much as $40 million in profits every month.

Tipped off by an informant, 100 federal police wearing ski masks and armed with assault rifles descended on the mansion at one in the morning last October, when the coke-fueled debauchery was in full swing. Storming through the residence, the federales grabbed 11 Colombians. They also seized every drug raid's clichèd cache: mounds of coke, cash, guns. Afterward, the Mexican media were ushered into the mansion to document the narco fantasia for the viewing audience at home: the opulent gardens, the private cinema, the cages stocked with two lions, two white tigers and two black panthers.

For once, it seemed, the rule of law had prevailed in Mexico. After years of watching the drug lords operate with near-total impunity, killing and torturing thousands of victims at will, the police finally appeared to be regaining a measure of control in the War on Drugs.

But in the days that followed the raid, another version of the story emerged – one that betrays the lying, thieving, violent, paranoia-inducing disaster that is the Mexican drug war. The federales, it turns out, had turned the takedown into a violent shakedown. According to witnesses, the police burst into the mansion screaming, "F**king bitches! Daughters of whores! Now the real party has begun!" For the next 24 hours, the cops went on a crime spree of their own. They pocketed Cartier and Rolex watches, diamond rings, mounds of pesos. They stole a honey-colored English bulldog, which was carried to the back seat of an armored police car. They dragged the prostitutes into the screening room and administered electric shocks to the men. Then they filled the swimming pool with ice and forced the men into the freezing water, as a way of extracting names and addresses from them – not to arrest other traffickers, but so police could be dispatched to their residences to steal from them as well. All told, seven houses were robbed of nearly $600,000. One narco was instructed to come up with half a million dollars in cash, which was stuffed into two Winnie the Pooh bags for delivery to the officer in charge of the raid – Gerardo Garay, the commissioner of the federal police and head of a top-level commission charged with punishing misconduct and rooting out corruption in Mexican law enforcement.

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March 14, 2009

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