“Ivan” for Borderland Beat
Mayo Zambada’s warning
We gave the newspaper away on cruise ships. We made brigades ourselves and from the first issue, of which we threw out 10,000 copies, we were received with sympathy. As the weeks went by, Ríodoce began to penetrate people’s curiosity. We would give a copy to the drivers and they would ask us for another one for their compadre or their dad, as they said as they passed by. Giving it away had been a tactic to penetrate the minds of our potential readers. We would provoke a certain “addiction”, we said jokingly, but also very seriously. The idea was to let people know what we were doing and that they would find a difference with what the rest of the print media were doing, more concerned with money or survival than with doing journalism.
But none of the first editions caused as much impact as that of the “little clock”. From the moment the edition hit the streets we felt the impact. It was only number 8 of Ríodoce. We had a very provocative title on the cover: “La hora del Mayo” (The hour of May). And as an image a clock whose pendulum was swinging, suggesting that Ismael Zambada was rising in the world of drug trafficking due to the fall of some of his main rivals.
Earlier, in issue 5, Javier Valdez had published his Malayerba with a piece he titled “El Bailador” (The Dancer). There he told how El Salado’s boss had the habit of holding a dance contest at his birthday party, in which the man who danced the longest without stopping won 100,000 pesos. Many would enter the dance floor but only one had to remain standing. They could drink as many beers as they wanted but they could not stop dancing until the last one fell.
The capo, of course, was Ismael, El Mayo Zambada.
It wasn’t long, three or four weeks, before we got the notice: “Don’t mess with me and I’m not going to mess with you”.
We had the office by the Mocorito River, in the Guadalupe neighborhood and we were all there and we saw each other every day, so there was no need to make any prior appointments. We listened to the story without interruption.
“Days ago my brother was at a handicapped protest in the plazuela in Navolato and some batos came looking for him. They were in a new pickup truck. They approached him and said “the gentleman wants to talk to you”. My brother thought it was the governor and said ‘well, let’s go’. They helped him into the vehicle and drove to Culiacán; once they were here they took him to a house where Mayo Zambada was. They went into the garage and my brother didn’t get out. Mayo came out and approached the window and there they talked. He told him that we were messing with him and that he didn’t think it was right, that Ismael Bojórquez had been messing with him for a while since he was at Noroeste… Tell them not to mess with me and I’m not going to mess with them. I know they are good journalists and that they are struggling financially. And if they need my help, I’m here for them.
That was it, in short. For a moment we were speechless and looked at each other. El Mayo was the undisputed boss of the plaza, no one more powerful than him, as we had just published. A small burning invaded my belly.
While in Noroeste we did a report on the monopoly of the milk industry and trade. In Sinaloa, especially in the center, no other brand was sold than Santa Monica, owned by Mayo. It was unheard of.
And it was not new, it had been happening for many years, against the laws themselves, which stipulated open trade. But state regulations emanating from the government prevented other brands from entering the market, not only affecting the interests of other dairy companies, but also the consumers themselves, since they had no purchasing options, condemned to consume only what was sold in the stores.
Reporter Alfredo Beltrán was in charge of the report, which was divided into several parts, all documented to such an extent that brands such as Lala, Yaqui and Sello Rojo entered the competition, even, in the case of Sello Rojo, with the construction of a plant in Mazatlán.
It was obvious that El Mayo was angry, since a good part of the legal business it had was going to collapse. The plant, which had always been in the Las Quintas neighborhood, had just been installed in the valley, with more technology and distribution logistics.
Now with strong competition, Santa Monica continued working until it was secured by the government of Felipe Calderon, thanks to the fact that the U.S. Treasury Department included it as part of Mayo’s illicit businesses.
We never thought of the report to affect El Mayo, but we knew that behind the obstacles of the state government, led by Juan Millán, was the interest of looking good with the drug lord.
When in 2001 the PGR secured the Puerto Rico ranch in an operation led by Mariano Herrán Salvatti, it was Juan Millán himself who operated, with the discourse that a labor plant was being affected, so that the property would be returned to them.
But there was something that reassured us. The messenger was an old acquaintance of Mayo, even as a neighbor. So, intimidation, threat, warning, warning, wake-up call, or whatever you want to call it, left us perplexed.
“So what are we going to do?” we wondered. “Be careful, that’s all.” We didn’t agree not to mention it and not to talk about drug trafficking either. Just be careful. We reread the paper we had published and found possible reasons for their discomfort. One, we were putting him in the center of people’s attention as if we were placing him on a counter -the government already knows what place he occupies and what not-; two, in the report we referred to very personal matters, since, although it was information that had already been published by the newspaper Reforma -which we quoted- we mentioned nuptials he had contracted in another state. And three, we mentioned the murder of one of his brothers in Cancun, something that must have hurt him very much.
A boy we only knew as “El Conan” sold newspapers at the intersection of Nicolas Bravo and Emiliano Zapata streets, and we had given him newspapers to offer to motorists. We would give him five and if he sold them he would come back for more. The cover price was ten pesos and he kept the money. What interested us was to measure people’s interest in buying them. With the report on the Mayo he had an unusual success and months later he took the ones of the week and “the one with the little clock” because he said people asked for it in the street.
We did not mention Mayo Zambada again for several months, until the drug trafficker Javier Torres Felix, the JT, was arrested in a residence in Culiacan, hours after he killed a military officer when he tried to escape from a search. Javier Torres, everyone knew, was then Ismael Zambada’s right-hand man.
We continue to touch on the subject of drug trafficking, but with a more nuanced approach to names and facts. Nothing that had to be published about Zambada Garcia’s organization, and about Chapo Guzman’s, the Beltran Leyva brothers, the Cazarez brothers, the Esparragoza brothers, Rafael Caro… was left unpublished. Everything, from that beginning until now, has passed through the pages of Ríodoce?
But the Mayo Zambada episode was a lesson, without a doubt, because the message was direct. And we had to learn from it if we wanted to die of old age or love.