ZeroZeroZero

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Take a rubber band and stretch it. At first there’s almost no resistance. You can make it longer, no problem. Until it reaches its full extension, beyond which the elastic will break. Today’s economy works like your elastic: All merchandise has to submit to the rules of the elastic. All but one. Cocaine. No market in the world brings in more revenue than the cocaine market. No financial investment in the world gives better returns than cocaine. Not even the record upward trends on the stock exchange are comparable to the “interest” coke offers. In 2012, the year the iPhone 5 and the iPad mini were launched, Apple became the most valuable company in terms of market capitalization ever listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Apple shares shot up by 67 percent in just one year. If you had invested €1,000 in Apple stock in the beginning of 2012, you would have €1,670 in a year. Not bad. But if you had invested €1,000 in cocaine at the beginning of 2012, after a year you would have €182,000.

Cocaine is a safe asset. Cocaine is an anticyclical asset. Cocaine is the asset that fears neither resource shortages nor market inflation. There are plenty of corners of the planet where people live without hospitals, without the web, without running water. But not without cocaine. According to the UN, in 2009, 21 tons of it were consumed in Africa, 14 in Asia, 2 in Oceania. More than a 101 in Latin America and the Caribbean. Everyone wants it, everyone does it, everyone who starts using it needs it. The costs are minimal; you can place it immediately, and the profit margin is extremely high. Cocaine is easier to sell than gold, and the revenue from it can exceed that of petroleum. Gold requires mediators and bargaining time; petroleum needs oil wells, refineries, pipelines. You could discover an oil well in your backyard, or inherit a coltan mine and supply all the cell phones in the world, but you wouldn’t go from nothing to villas on the Costa Smeralda on Sardinia as quickly as you would with cocaine. From the streets to the stars with a nuts-and-bolts factory? From poverty to prosperity selling cars? A hundred years ago maybe. Today even the big multinationals that produce primary assets, or the last remaining colossal car manufacturers, all they can do is hang in there. Lower costs. Beat the far reaches of the planet in an attempt to increase exports, which is proving to be less and less feasible.

The most reckless licit investment, the most forward-looking speculation, the fastest movements of vast sums of money — which affect living conditions on entire continents — none can compare with cocaine’s multiplication of value. Whoever bets on cocaine accumulates in just a few years the sort of wealth that it takes big holding companies decades to achieve through investments and financial speculation. If an entrepreneurial group manages to get its hands on coke, it holds a form of power impossible to achieve in any other way. Which is why, whenever coke is traded, there is always a violent, ferocious clash. With cocaine there’s no mediation. It’s all or nothing. And all doesn’t last long. When you traffic in cocaine, you can’t have unions and industrial plans, government assistance or rules subject to court appeal. If you’re the strongest, the cleverest, the most organized, the most armed, you win. The more you stretch the elastic, the more you assert yourself on the market — that’s true for any business. Only the law can break the elastic. But even when the law traces the criminal roots and tries to eradicate them, it probably won’t be able to track down all the legal activities, real estate investments, and bank accounts acquired thanks to the extraordinary tautness white powder allows.

Cocaine is a complicated asset. Behind cocaine’s candor hides millions of people’s work. But only those at the right point on the chain of production are getting rich. The Rockefellers of cocaine know how their product is created, every step. They know that in June you sow and in August you reap. That the sowing must be done with seeds from plants at least three years old, and that harvest is three times a year. That the harvested leaves have to be laid out to dry within twenty-four hours; otherwise they’re ruined and you can’t sell them. That the next step is to dig two holes in the ground. In the first, along with the dried leaves, you have to put in potassium carbonate and kerosene. That you have to pound this mix really well, so as to obtain a sort of greenish dishwater — cocaine carbonate — which, once filtered, is transferred to the second hole. That the next ingredient is concentrated sulfuric acid. That is how you get cocaine sulfate, the base paste, an off-white paste that then needs to be dried. That the final steps call for acetone, hydrochloric acid, and pure alcohol. That you have to filter it over and over, and then let it dry again. They know that’s how you obtain cocaine hydrochloride, commonly known as cocaine. The Rockefellers of cocaine know that to obtain more or less half a kilo of pure cocaine, you need 300 kilos of leaves and a handful of full-time workers. The cocaine entrepreneurs know all this, just as any company head would. But more than anything, they know that the majority of the peasants, dealers, and transporters who have found jobs that pay a little better than those they could hope to get somewhere else still have both feet firmly planted in poverty. It’s unskilled labor, a sea of interchangeable subjects, that perpetuates a system of exploitation of the many and enrichment of a few. Those few at the top of the heap are the ones who had the foresight to realize that, in cocaine’s long journey from the leaves of Colombia to the nostrils of the casual consumer, the real money is made through sales, resale, and price management. Because if it’s true that a kilo of cocaine in Colombia is sold for $1,500, in Mexico for $12,000 to $16,000, in the United States for $27,000, in Spain for $45,000, in Holland for $47,000, in Italy for $54,000, and in the UK for $77,000; if it’s true that the price per gram varies from $61 in Portugal to $166 in Luxembourg, going for $80 in France, $87 in Germany, $96 in Switzerland, and $97 in Ireland; if it’s true that on average 1 kilo of pure cocaine is cut to make 3 kilos that are then sold in single-gram doses; if all this is true, it’s also true that whoever controls the entire chain of production is one of the richest men in the world.

Cocaine traffic today is managed by a new middle class of mafiosi. They use distribution to gain control of the territory where it is sold. A game of Risk on a planetary scale. On one side are the areas where cocaine is produced, which become fiefdoms where nothing but poverty and violence grow, areas the mafias keep under control by generously doling out charity and alms, which they pass off as rights. No development, only profits. If someone wants to better himself, he demands riches, not rights. Riches that he needs to know how to grab. In this way only one model of success is perpetuated, of which violence is merely a vehicle and a tool. What is established is power. On the other side are countries where you plant your little flags to mark your presence: Italy, England, Russia, China. Everywhere. For the most powerful families coke works as easily as an ATM machine. You need to buy a shopping center? Import some coke, and after a month you’ll have enough money to close the deal. You need to sway an election? Import some coke, and you’ll be ready in a few weeks. Cocaine is the universal answer to the need for liquidity.

5. FEROCITY IS LEARNED

For years I’ve been asking myself what the point is of dealing with shootings and death. Is it really worth it? Why? Are you going to be called in as a consultant? Do a six-week teaching stint in some university, the more prestigious the better? Throw yourself into the battle against evil, believing you are the good? Wear the hero’s crown for a few months? Will you profit if people read what you write? Will they hate you, the people who said these things before you did but were ignored? And what about those who didn’t say them, or said them poorly, will they hate you too? Sometimes I think I’m obsessed. Other times I’m convinced these stories are a way of measuring the truth. Maybe that’s the secret. Not for others. Secret for me. Hidden from myself. Left out of my public pronouncements. Tracking the paths of drug trafficking and money laundering makes you feel you can measure the truth of things, understand the fate of an election, a government’s fall. It’s no longer enough to listen to the official statements. While the world is clearly heading in one direction, everything seems focused on something else, something banal even, superficial. Some government minister’s statement, some tiny, insignificant event, some piece of gossip. But everything is really being decided by something else. This intuition is at the base of every romantic choice. Every journalist, novelist, and director would like to tell things the way they are, the way they really are. To say to his reader or viewer: It’s not how you thought it was, this is how it is. I’m going to open the wound for you, so you can glimpse the ultimate truth. But no one ever succeeds completely. The danger is in believing that reality — that real, pulsating, decisive reality — is completely hidden. If you trip and fall into it, you start thinking everything’s a conspiracy — secret meetings, Masonic lodges, spies. Reporters are full of this sort of idiocy. To square the circle of the world in your own interpretations is the onset of shortsightedness in an eye that thinks it has perfect vision. But it’s not that simple. The complexity lies precisely in not believing that everything is hidden or decided in secret chambers. The world is more interesting than a conspiracy between sects and secret agents. Criminal power is a mixture of many elements.

When you do figure out how to make the story gripping, when you hit on the exact doses of style and truth, when your words finally rise from your chest and begin to resonate, you will be the first to be disgusted by them. The first to hate yourself, with your entire being. And you won’t be the only one. Those who listen will hate you too, the very people who choose to listen, without being coerced, because you make them face this abomination. Because they’ll always feel you’re holding up a mirror to them: Why didn’t I do it? Why didn’t I say it? Why didn’t I understand? It hurts. A wounded animal usually attacks: He’s the one who’s lying, he’s doing it to throw people off, because he’s corrupt, because he wants fame, or money.

Maybe you think that dealing with all this is a way of redeeming the world. Of reestablishing justice. And maybe it is, in part. But maybe you also have to accept the burden of being a tiny superhero without a shred of power. Of being, in the end, a pathetic human being who has overestimated his strength merely because he’s never run up against its limits before. The truth is that there’s really only one reason for deciding to stay inside these stories of drug traffickers, criminal entrepreneurs, massacres. To know that what you find out won’t make you feel better. Yet you keep trying. And you start to develop a disdain for things. By things I mean objects, stuff. You come to know how things are made, where they come from, how they all end up.

And even if you feel bad, you convince yourself that you can really understand this world only if you decide to stay inside these stories. You may be good at what you do, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you want your calling in life to be to stay inside these stories forever. Being inside means they consume you, compel you, corrode your daily life. Being inside means you carry city maps in your head, maps marked with construction sites, open-air drug markets, places where pacts were sealed and where “excellent” homicides were carried out. You’re not inside them just because you’re on the street or you infiltrate a clan for six years, like FBI undercover agent Joe Pistone. You’re inside because these stories are what give meaning to your being in the world. I decided to stay inside them years ago. Not only because I grew up in a place where the clans decided everything and I’d seen those opposed to their power die, not only because defamation dissolves all desire to oppose criminal power. Being inside cocaine trafficking was the only way I could fully understand things. To look at human weakness, the physiology of power, the frailty of relationships, the inconsistency of bonds, the appalling power of money and ferocity. The absolute impotence of all those teachings about beauty and justice I’d been raised on. I realized that the axis around which everything turns is cocaine. There was only one name for the wound.

• • •

“The Serbs. Precise, ruthless, meticulous torturers.”

“Bullshit. The Chechens. They have such sharp knives, you bleed to death before you even know you’ve been cut.”

“Amateurs compared to the Liberians. They rip your heart out when you’re still alive and eat it.”

It’s one of the oldest games in the world. The ranking of cruelty, the top ten of Earth’s most ferocious people.

“What about the Albanians? They’re not satisfied just eliminating you; they wipe out your future generations as well. They cancel everything out. Forever.”

“The Romanians put a bag over your head, tie your wrists to your neck, and let time do its work.”

“The Croatians nail your feet down, and all you can do is pray that death comes as soon as possible.”

The escalation of blood, terror, and sadism goes on for quite a while, eventually getting to the inevitable list of special forces: France’s Foreign Legion, Spain’s El Tercio, Brazil’s BOPE.

I’m sitting at a round table. One by one the men around me, all soldiers, share their experiences and catalog the cultural distinctions of the people they know best, having been on peacekeeping missions in various territories. It’s a ritual, this sadistic and slightly racist game, but like all rituals, it’s necessary. It’s the only way they have of saying that the worst is over, they survived, it’s real life from here on in. A better life.

I keep quiet. Like an anthropologist I try to interfere as little as possible, so that the ritual will unfold without any hitches. The guys’ faces are serious. When their turn comes to talk, they all avoid looking at the guy across the table or the one who just finished talking. Each one tells his own story as if he were in an empty room talking to himself.

I’ve heard dozens of these classifications over the years, in meetings, conferences, dinners, over a plate of pasta, or in court. Usually they’re just lists of acts of increasingly inhuman brutality, but as these episodes gradually accumulated in my mind, a common denominator surfaced, a cultural element that recurred with stubborn insistence. Cruelty is awarded a place of honor in the genetic patrimony of a people. Making the mistake of equating acts of ferocity or war with an entire population, drafting lists of this sort becomes the equivalent of showing off one’s sculpted muscles after endless hours in the gym.

Ferocity is learned. You’re not born with it. As much as one may be born with certain inclinations, or have inherited rancor and violence from his family, ferocity is taught, it is learned. Ferocity is passed down from teacher to pupil. The impulse isn’t enough; it has to be channeled and trained. You teach a body to empty out its soul, even if you don’t believe in the soul, even if you think it’s religious nonsense, a flight of fancy, even if for you it’s all muscle fibers and nerves and veins and lactic acid. Yet something’s there. Otherwise, how do you explain the brake that, right at the last minute, keeps you from going all the way? Conscience. Soul. It has a lot of names, but regardless of what you call it, you can compromise it. It’s convenient to think that ferocity is inherent to the human condition, handy for anyone who wants to cleanse his conscience without first coming to terms with things.

When one soldier finishes his story, the guy next to him starts immediately. Everyone seems to agree that some populations just have that impulse, it’s in their blood, there’s no way around it, we’re born with it. A soldier to my right seems particularly eager for his turn to speak. He fidgets in his plastic chair, making it squeak slightly. He’s obviously not some undisciplined novice: His long beard suits his face, and the insignia on his uniform make it clear that he’s faced quite a few dangerous situations. He shakes his head. I think I even glimpse a scornful smile on his face. It’s distracting, so now I’m eager for his turn too. I don’t have to wait long, because halfway through a graphic description of someone’s nails being removed by some secret service in Eastern Europe, the man silences the discussion.

“You haven’t understood a damn thing. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. All you do is read the tabloids, watch the eight o’clock news; you don’t know shit.”

Then he rummages in his pants pockets — military fatigues — and takes out a smartphone, scrolls his finger nervously down the screen until a map appears. He zooms in, blows it up, zooms in more, and finally shows the others a slice of Earth. “Here, these guys are the worst.” His finger points to a place in Central America. Guatemala.

“Guatemala?”

The veteran utters just one word, unfamiliar to most of them: “Kaibil.”

I’d heard that name in depositions from the 1970s, but no one remembered it anymore.

“Eight weeks,” the bearded soldier starts up again. “Eight weeks and everything human about a human being is gone. The Kaibiles have a way of annulling one’s conscience. In two months they can extract from a human’s body everything that distinguishes him from a beast, what allows him to tell good from evil, to know moderation. They could turn Saint Francis into a killer in eight weeks, capable of biting animals to death, of drinking piss to survive and eliminating masses of people without worrying how old they are. All it takes is eight weeks.”

Silence. I’ve just witnessed a heresy, the paradigm of innate savagery has been shot down. I have to meet a Kaibil. I start reading. I learn that the Kaibiles are the Guatemalan army’s elite counterinsurgency force. They were formed in 1974, when the Commando School, which would later become the Kaibil training center for special operations, was established. A civil war was raging in Guatemala at the time, and government and paramilitary forces, backed by the United States, had to face first disorganized guerrilla fighters and then the rebel group Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, or Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity. A relentless struggle. Students, workers, professionals, opposing party politicians — anybody and everybody — were caught in the Kaibiles’ net. Mayan villages were razed to the ground, peasants slaughtered, their bodies left to rot. In 1996, after thirty-six years and over 200,000 deaths, 36,000 desaparecidos, and 626 confirmed massacres, the civil war in Guatemala finally ended. A peace treaty was signed. The first president after the war, Álvaro Arzú, decided, at the request of the United States, to transform Guatemala’s counterrevolutionary army, considered to be the best anti-insurgency force in Latin America, into an efficient weapon against drug trafficking. On October 1, 2003, a counterterrorism platoon of Kaibil special forces was officially created.

By their own definition, Kaibiles are “killing machines.” They are put through gruesome tests, their courage challenged constantly, day after day, horror after horror. Drinking the blood of an animal he has just killed and eaten raw makes a Kaibil grow stronger. Guatemala’s Historical Clarification Commission has been taking an interest in these practices and drafted a document entitled “Memory of Silence.” It states that 93 percent of documented crimes in Guatemala in the thirty-six years of civil war were committed by law enforcement or paramilitary groups, in particular the Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil and the Kaibil special forces. The report also states that Kaibiles committed acts of genocide.

One of the most brutal slaughters took place in Las Dos Erres, a village in the department of Petén, which was razed to the ground. On December 6, 1982 forty Kaibiles entered the village to take back nineteen rifles lost in a previous guerrilla ambush. No one was spared: They killed men, women, and children; raped young girls; kicked and beat pregnant women with their rifle butts, jumping on their stomachs until they aborted; threw live children into wells or beat them to death with clubs, even buried some alive. The youngest were smashed against walls or trees. The bodies were thrown into wells or left to rot in the fields. There is talk of more than 250 deaths: 201 deaths have been documented, 70 of them children less than seven years old. When they left the village the soldiers took with them two girls, ages fourteen and sixteen. They made them dress as soldiers and held them for three days, raping them repeatedly. When they got tired of them, they strangled them.

• • •

It’s not hard to meet a Kaibil, as it turns out. They are proud of who they are. After I heard that soldier talk I started asking around, looking to meet a Kaibil fighter. I was directed first to a household servant who works for a Milanese entrepreneur’s family. He’s pleasant; we arrange a time and meet on the street.

He tells me he used to be a journalist; he keeps copies of some of his articles in his wallet. He rereads them every now and then, or maybe just saves them as proof of his former life. He knows a Kaibil.

“I know him. It’s hard for a Kaibil to become an ex-Kaibil, but this one has done some not good things.”

He doesn’t want to explain what those not good things are.

“You won’t believe a word he tells you. I don’t believe him either, because if what he says is true, I wouldn’t be able to sleep….”

Then he winks at me. “I know it’s true, but I hope it’s not exactly completely true.”

He gives me a phone number. I say good-bye to the journalist-servant and dial the number. The voice that answers is cold but flattered by my interest. We arrange to meet, in a public place. Ángel Miguel arrives. Short, Mayan eyes, elegantly dressed, as if for the cameras. All I have is a notebook, which he doesn’t like, but he decides to stay anyway. His cold telephone voice has given way to a studied manner of speaking. The whole time we talk, he never lowers his gaze and never makes a gesture that is not strictly necessary.

“I’m glad you’re a fag,” he starts out.

“I’m not a fag.”

“Impossible, I can prove it. You’re a fag, no need to be ashamed.”

“If I were gay I wouldn’t be ashamed, that’s for sure. But what are we talking about?”

“You’re a fag, because you didn’t even notice all this.”

Without ever taking his eyes off mine he rotates his neck a few degrees to the left, and that instant, as if in response to some call, a girl steps forward. It’s true; I hadn’t noticed her. I was concentrating on the Kaibil.

“If you don’t notice even her, you’re a fag.”

Very blond, her dress like a second skin, vertiginous heels. Despite her outfit, not even a hint of makeup, maybe she decided that her fair eyes, with their golden specks, light up her face enough. His girlfriend. She introduces herself; she’s Italian and happy to be there with this man whom she probably thinks is some sort of war hero.

“You have to become cuas. If you’re not cuas, you don’t know what brotherhood in battle means.”

Ángel Miguel, I realize, doesn’t like to waste time. He’s declared me a homosexual and introduced me to his girlfriend. For him that’s enough; now he can begin his story. I read somewhere that in Q’eqchi’ cuas means brother. But now I realize that it’s not a biological relationship. Cuas is not the brother you meet when you’re born; cuas is the brother who is chosen for you.

“Once, during training, I asked some Kaibiles to leave me a bit of food. My cuas went white, like a dead man. The Kaibiles threw their food on the ground and started stomping on it. Then they tied us up and said, ‘Start pecking, hens.’ If we stretched out our tongues too far, they’d kick and shout: ‘Don’t graze, chickens, peck!’

“If either cuas makes a mistake during training, both are punished; if one of them does well, they both get plenty to eat and both get a bed. You’re practically engaged to your cuas. Once my cuas and I were in our tent, and at nighttime my hermano started touching my dick. It bothered me at first, but then I realized we had to share everything… solitude and pleasure… but we never fucked… just touched….”

He barely breathes as he talks, as if he had to deliver his speech, prepared in advance, in the shortest time possible. His girlfriend nods proudly. The gold specks in her eyes shine more brightly now. I would like to interrupt and point out that just a few minutes before he’d been calling me a fag, but I decide it’s best not to interfere with his thought process.

“You learn what a combat brother is there. You share rations, you huddle close when it’s cold, you beat each other bloody to keep your nerve up.”

To stop being a man, with all his honeyed qualities and imperfect defects. To become a Kaibil. To move through the world hating.

“There’s an inscription at the entrance to the Kaibil training camp in Poptún, in the department of Petén: ‘Welcome to hell.’ But I bet only a few people read the second inscription there: ‘If I advance, follow me. If I stop, urge me on. If I retreat, kill me.’”

My contact rattles off the foreigners who have helped train young Kaibiles since the 1980s: Green Berets, Vietnam Rangers, Peruvian and Chilean commandos. During the civil war in Guatemala it was said that the Kaibiles’ distinguishing signature was decapitation, even though some people were convinced it was only a legend, like their war song: “Kaibil, Kaibil, Kaibil! Mata, mata, mata! Qué mata Kaibil? Guerrillero subversivo! Qué come Kaibil? Guerrillero subversivo!” “Kaibil, Kaibil, Kaibil! Kill, kill, kill! What does a Kaibil kill? Guerrilla insurgents! What does a Kaibil eat? Guerrilla insurgents!”

“The first training phase lasts twenty-one days,” Ángel Miguel says, “followed by the second, twenty-eight days. In the jungle. Rivers, swamps, minefields. This is the Kaibil’s home. And just like you love your home, the Kaibil loves his. The last week finally arrives. The last step in becoming a real Kaibil. You learn to eat whatever there is, whatever you can find. Cockroaches, snakes. You learn to conquer enemy terrain, annihilate it, take possession of it.

“To complete the training you have to go without sleep for two days, in a river up to your neck. They’d given my cuas and me a puppy, a mongrel with watery eyes. They told us to take care of it, it was part of our brotherhood. We had to take it with us everywhere, and feed it. We gave it a name and were starting to grow fond of it when our chief told us we had to kill it. A knife to its belly, one blow from each of us. By that point we were nearing the end of our training and didn’t ask a lot of questions. Then the chief told us we had to eat it and drink its blood. To show him how brave we were. Even this order we carried out, it was all so natural by then.

“The Kaibil knows that you don’t need to drink or eat or sleep in order to survive. What you need is a good rifle and ammunition. We were soldiers, we were perfect. We didn’t fight because we were ordered to, that wouldn’t have been enough. We had a sense of belonging, which is stronger than any command. Only a third of us made it to the end. The others either ran off or were thrown out. Some others got sick, and some died.”

The Kaibiles’ world is above all a symbolic world. Fear, terror, brotherhood, solidarity with your cuas. It all can and must be flaunted through a clever game of codes and cross-references, through the invention of acrostics. Starting with the word cuas: C = comradeship, U = unity, A = adherence, S = safety. Or through the Kaibil motto, which expresses their philosophy: “The Kaibil is a killing machine for when extraneous powers or doctrines attack the country or the army.” The Kaibil must never — not for any reason in the world — be parted from his maroon beret, which bears their coat of arms: a mountaineering carabiner, which represents unity and strength; a dagger, symbolizing honor, with five notches in the handle, which represent the five senses; and the word “Kaibil” in capital yellow letters. “Kaibil” in the Mam language means “he who has the strength and cunning of two tigers.” The name comes from the great Kaibil Balam, the Mam king who in the sixteenth century courageously held out against the Spanish conquistadors, against Gonzalo de Alvarado’s men. Yet the very troops who bear the symbolic name of the Mayan king and his fierce resistance against the conquistadors became a tool for exterminating their own people. The legend has been so distorted that now the word connotes terror.

“At the end of the eight weeks there’s a dinner. Huge, smoking grills, the fire fed constantly, and alligator, iguana, and deer steaks thrown on it all night long. There’s also a tradition of grabbing the Guatemalan minister of defense and throwing him in a pond with crocodiles (they’re far away, but those government guys are real wimps!). After the dinner, you can finally wear the Kaibiles’ emblem: the dagger on a blue and black background. Blue for day: The Kaibil operates in the sea and sky. Black for silence in nighttime operations. Running diagonal is a rope, for terrestrial missions. And rising up from the dagger is a flame that burns eternally. Liberty.”

Ángel Miguel suddenly raises his hand and spreads out his fingers.

“Smell. Hearing. Touch. Sight. Taste.”

The five senses, which the perfect Kaibil must develop and always keep sharp.

“Unity and strength.”

I look at Ángel Miguel. He’s no longer a Kaibil, but he still has that hollow look in his eyes. When you meet a Kaibil you come face-to-face with absence. He’s barely five feet four inches, but Ángel Miguel looks me up and down. All that talk about training and brotherhood has fed his pride, and he lords it over me and his girlfriend somehow. I have a question, and this could be the time to ask it.

“What can you tell me about the Kaibiles and narco-trafficking?”

Amnesty International began noting this phenomenon in 2003, in a report denouncing dozens of cases of military and police participation in drug-trafficking networks, as well as illegal activities such as car theft, trafficking in children for illegal adoptions, and “social cleansing” operations. In the same year, Washington included Guatemala on the list of “decertified” countries, because between 2000 and2002 the Guatemalan government seized only a fifth of the cocaine seized three years earlier.

If Ángel Miguel is annoyed, he certainly doesn’t show it. So I look to see his girlfriend’s reaction, but she too remains immobile, except for shifting her weight slightly from one high heel to the other. I’m sure she had to pass some sort of training too, before she could be with him. Finally, Ángel Miguel opens his mouth. “Unity and strength,” he repeats, and falls silent.

“Is it true that some former combatants have had successful careers in Mexican cartels?”

For several years Mexican authorities have been reporting a growing number of former Kaibil and Guatemalan soldiers being recruited by local criminal organizations. Former soldiers are a real plus for these organizations, who save time and money by enlisting young men who are already trained and experienced. A former Kaibil, who knows how to handle a weapon and operate in mountains and woods, can be very useful to the cartels. A former Kaibil knows how to survive in extremely difficult conditions and can maneuver just as well in southern Mexico as in northern Guatemala, regions with similar climates. The situation is made even more worrisome by the demobilization of the Guatemalan army, which in recent years has dropped from thirty thousand to fifteen thousand soldiers. Many soldiers were discharged and found themselves out of work. Some joined private security agencies and were sent abroad as mercenaries, to Iraq, for instance. But others ended up expanding the ranks of criminal cells.

Ángel Miguel is rubbing his thumb and index finger together, as if rolling an invisible cigarette, and there are tiny wrinkles, which I hadn’t noticed before, at the corners of his eyes. His girlfriend looks around and curls her lips nervously.

On the phone, before he agreed to meet me, Ángel Miguel had given me a list of rules that at the time I had taken for pure propaganda, but which, in his sustained silence, I now realize I hadn’t respected. A Kaibil must “earn the trust of his subordinates, direct their efforts, clarify objectives, inspire safety, create team unity, be an example of moderation at all times, keep hope alive, sacrifice himself for victory.” With two simple questions about Kaibiles past and present I had broken the spell. Our conversation was over.

6. Z

Ángel Miguel left me wanting more. He had painted a picture of his apprenticeship to violence, but he was merely playing a part: the retired combatant reminiscing about the glory days of his training. But it’s not enough. I have to see it in action, to go back to where the savagery took root and grew into an instrument of power. I have to go back to Mexico. To Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the boss of the Gulf cartel.

Osiel is famous for never making mistakes and never forgiving those who do. But even he finally made one, and with the wrong people. In November 1999, Joe DuBois, a DEA agent, and Daniel Fuentes, an FBI agent, were in a Ford Bronco with diplomatic plates, a Gulf cartel informer sleeping in the backseat, his head pressed against the window. The informer was taking the two agents on a tour of Gulf cartel bosses’ houses and hangouts in Matamoros. He didn’t wake up even when the Ford Bronco slammed on the brakes and voices — all too familiar — were heard. “That guy’s ours, gringos!” Several vehicles surrounded the agents’ Bronco, and a dozen or so cartel members hopped out, AK-47s pointed. Osiel got out of his Jeep Cherokee, went over to the Bronco, and stuck a gun in one of the agents’ faces. So the Americans flashed their badges, revealing their identities. But Osiel didn’t give a damn who they were. It was the first time he had exposed himself like that; he knew it was risky, but he didn’t have a choice; he couldn’t let the informer talk. Time froze; the players faced off but without showing too much muscle — one wrong move and what seemed like a negotiation could quickly become a bloodbath. The FBI agent took a chance: “If you don’t let us go, the United States government will hunt you all the way to your grave.” Osiel caved. He shouted at the gringos: This is his territory, they can’t control it, and don’t ever show your faces around here again. Then he ordered his men to reverse. The FBI and DEA agents gave a sigh of relief.

It was the beginning of the end. The American authorities put a price of $2 million on Osiel’s head, and he began to get paranoid. He started seeing enemies everywhere; even his most trusted collaborators could be madrinas—godmothers, as informers are called. He needed to increase his firepower, and decided to buy himself an army. He didn’t want to be imprudent and so chose corrupt defectors from GAFE (Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales or Special Forces Airmobile Group), the Mexican army’s elite corps. Ironically, GAFE’s role was to flush out criminals like him. GAFE men are tough: They’re modeled on U.S. special forces and trained by Israeli and French specialists. Among these Mexican Rambos was Lieutenant Arturo Guzmán Decena. Guzmán and Osiel had some traits in common: Both were cynical, ambitious, ruthless. Arturo, along with thirty other deserters, was put on Osiel’s payroll. So troops that had been paid to fight drug trafficking now swore loyalty to the very man who was, until recently, the enemy to take out. But the Friend Killer paid more than the Mexican government. That is how Osiel’s private army was born, and why it was baptized Los Zetas: Z was the code letter the GAFE soldiers used to communicate with one another via radio. Lieutenant Arturo Guzmán Decena became Z1.

Violence is self-absorbing; it voluntarily degrades itself in order to renew itself. In the tortured territory of Mexico, Los Zetas are like a cell that annihilates itself in order to grow stronger, more powerful, more destructive. The escalation of atrocity increased national and international pressure to get Osiel Cárdenas. On March 14, 2003, after a shoot-out in Matamoros, the Mexican army arrested him. Osiel was locked up in the La Palma maximum security prison. But being behind bars didn’t undermine his leadership; in fact, the alliance between the Gulf and Tijuana cartels was born in that prison. But although Osiel might have been able to issue orders from his cell, he couldn’t control his men, particularly Los Zetas, who were showing increasingly clear signs of wanting to be independent. Los Zetas are attracted to the most ruthless aspects of organized crime: They have absorbed the worst from the paramilitary forces, the worst from the Mafia, the worst from the drug traffickers.

From a military point of view, it’s hard to compete with Los Zetas: They have bulletproof vests and Kevlar helmets, and their arsenal includes: AR-15 assault rifles; thousands of cuernos de chivo (or goat’s horns, as they call AK-47s); MP5 submachine guns; grenade launchers; frag grenades like those used in Vietnam; surface-to-air missiles; gas masks; night-vision goggles; dynamite; and helicopters. A February 2008 army raid on the El Mezquito, one of Los Zetas’ farms near the city of Miguel Alemán, about sixty miles west of Reynosa, uncovered 89 assault rifles, 83,355 ammunition cartridges, and enough explosives to blow several buildings sky-high. Los Zetas members are highly professional; they use a modern phone-tapping system, encrypted radio signals, and Skype instead of regular telephones to elude surveillance.

Their internal hierarchy is rigid. Every plaza has its own capo and bookkeeper, who manages the finances for the criminal cell, which, in addition to drugs, exploits various niches of the criminal economy: theft, extortions, kidnappings. According to Mexican and American sources, there is a precise division of duties within Los Zetas, each with its own name:

— Las Ventanas, the Windows: kids who sound the alarm when they spot police officers sticking their noses into drug-dealing zones;

— Los Halcones, the Falcons: who take care of distribution;

— Los Leopardos, the Leopards: prostitutes trained to extort precious information from clients;

— Los Mañosos, the Clever Ones: in charge of weapons;

— La Dirección, the Command: the brains of the operation.

• • •

Ángel Miguel may not have known Osiel’s story, but he certainly would have known that relations between Los Zetas and the Kaibiles were very tight. The Guatemalans had trained GAFE soldiers who then became Los Zetas. Then, once they were independent, Los Zetas started recruiting Kaibiles, their former teachers.

If there is one thing the Guatemalans did not need to teach it was the uses of the video recorder. Type in “Los Zetas Execution Video” on YouTube and a list of videos uploaded directly by group members pops up (or better yet, don’t). Savagery works if it spreads like an infection, from mouth to mouth, person to person. Decapitations, suffocations, and flayings are their marketing strategy, videos of bestiality their press releases. Los Zetas are particularly fond of electric saws, and the heads they brandish are their calling card. They want their victims to scream, and they really know how to make them do it. Their cries have to be heard everywhere; they have to be the ambassadors for Los Zetas throughout Mexico and the world. One characteristic in particular distinguishes Los Zetas from other cartels: They don’t have a territory of their own, no physical place, no geographical roots. A postmodern army that has to produce an image that creates outposts. Terror must conquer the country. The mujahedin realized that decapitations could be a trademark of atrocity before they did, but Los Zetas didn’t take long to adopt the same technique.

The web is their preferred platform, but Los Zetas don’t disdain old methods either, such as the banners they hang in Mexican cities and towns. “The operating group Los Zetas wants you, soldier or former soldier. We offer good pay, food, and protection for your family. Stop suffering from abuse, stop suffering from hunger.” These so-called narco-banners promise benefits and money to soldiers who decide to enlist in Los Zetas; they deliver messages directly to the people; and they aim to intimidate enemies and governments. “They will not be able to stop us, even with the support of the United States government, because here Los Zetas rule. Calderón’s government must reach an agreement with us, because if he doesn’t, we will be forced to topple him and take power by force.”

Los Zetas’ enemy cartels started using them too. In February 2010 La Familia Michoacana hung a banner announcing the creation of a resistance front to fight Los Zetas and inviting the people to join in: “A polite invitation to all Mexicans to unite in a common front in order to put an end to Los Zetas. We are already taking action against Los Zetas. Let’s join forces against these evil beasts.”

• • •

Resortito and El Bigotito are two clowns. Jokes, water pranks, imitations, tricks. They know that the kids are expecting them on the buses that run the Cárdenas-Comalcalco-Villahermosa route.The kids laugh and snort and always get home a little later because these guys are really good. Resortito and El Bigotito collect a few coins every time, nothing much, but it’s better than begging. And besides, the kids’ clear laughter makes them feel good, appreciated.

A misunderstanding, a cruel joke that spun out of control, or a deliberate, studied attack. It’s a mystery, but the fact remains that a rumor started going around. A false rumor, maybe. “Army informers hide under the clowns’ wigs.” On January 2, 2011, the clowns’ lifeless bodies were found on the edge of a country road. They’d been tortured and then shot to death. Near their bodies, a piece of paper with a brief message claiming responsibility: “This happened to me because I was a spy and thought that SEDENA would protect me.” SEDENA is the Mexican Secretariat of National Defense. An acronym identified those responsible: FEZ, or Los Zetas special forces.

There’s no end to Los Zetas’ brutality: Cadavers swing from city bridges in broad daylight, for children to see; bodies are decapitated and hacked to pieces, then abandoned along the side of the road, their pants often pulled down for one final humiliation; mass graves are discovered in the countryside, dozens of bodies are heaped on top of one another. Cities have become war zones.

Violence. It always comes back to violence. A word that smacks of instinct, primitivism, yet which Los Zetas — like the Kaibiles — knew how to write into education. Rosalío Reta was one of their pupils. Born in Texas with the dream of becoming Superman, at age thirteen Rosalío ended up in a Los Zetas military training camp, on a ranch in the state of Tamaulipas. At first it seemed like a game.

“Here’s your super weapon, a laser.”

“But Superman doesn’t use lasers.”

“That’s okay. Just point it, press, and everybody in front of you will disappear.”

That’s how Rosalío got his first pistol, and after six months of training he was ready for a loyalty test: In one of the cartel’s safe houses a man waited, tied to a chair. Rosalío didn’t know anything about him, didn’t know why he was condemned. Rosalío didn’t ask questions. He was handed a pistol, 38 caliber, just like the one he had fired at cardboard targets for six months. All he had to do was pull the trigger. The adrenaline rush was electrifying. Rosalío felt invincible, like Superman. He can fly, he can stop speeding bullets, “leap tall buildings at a single bound.” He can kill. “I thought I was Superman,” he later confessed to the court judges in Laredo, Texas, after he was arrested: “I liked doing it, killing that man. Then they tried to take my pistol away, but it was like trying to take candy from a child.”

A couple of years after his initiation, Rosalío — along with Gabriel and Jessie, two kids his age — arrived in Los Zetas’ Never-Never Land: a nice house that the cartel rented for them in Laredo; every type of pill imaginable; a console hooked up to a plasma TV. In the beginning the aim was simply to kill liquid crystal men. Days and days with the game pad, pretending to drive a car that zooms through imaginary American cities. In that virtual reality you can do whatever you want. Kill whomever you want, no consequences, no remorse. The worst that can happen is, your eyes get bloodshot. For Rosalío and his friends the reality of the game superimposed itself on real life: Everything became possible, and fear disappeared. Los Niños Zetas were ready. The deal was clear: Five hundred dollars a week for stakeouts and odd jobs, but the real money was in special jobs. Some men had to be eliminated, but it wasn’t enough just to kill them; you had to slit their throats. That’s where the money got good, a fifty-thousand-dollar bonus for every hit. When Rosalío was arrested four years and twenty murders later, the police officers who interrogated him never noticed any fear or remorse in him. The only time a shadow even crossed his face was when he talked about a mission to San Nicolás de los Garza. He missed his target and caused a massacre, four people dead and twenty-five wounded, none of them with any ties to organized crime. “I made a mistake,” Rosalío said, “and now they’re going to make me pay.” “They” were his old teachers, Los Zetas.

• • •

In 2002, a year before Osiel’s imprisonment, Arturo Guzmán Decena, El Z1, was killed in a restaurant in Matamoros. A crown of flowers was placed on his tomb with the message: “You will always be in our hearts. From your family: Los Zetas.” After his death Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano took over. Lazcano, alias El Lazca, born on Christmas Day 1974, was also from the army special forces and was wanted by the federal authorities in the United States and Mexico for drug trafficking and multiple homicides. Mexico offered a reward of 30 million pesos for anyone who could provide information leading to his arrest. The U.S. Department of State offered $5 million.

El Lazca was famous for his favorite method of killing: He’d lock his victim in a cell and then watch him starve to death. Death is patient, and so was El Lazca. Following in Guzmán Decena’s footsteps, he reinforced and expanded the group, setting up training camps for fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds and for former local, state, and federal police, and he recruited former Kaibiles.

Under El Lazca’s leadership Los Zetas gradually went from being merely the armed branch of the Gulf cartel to more independent roles. Los Zetas were feeling strong; they wanted their independence. And in February 2010, after a series of shoot-outs and murders, their break from the Gulf cartel was decisive. Los Zetas, now an independent cartel, sided against the Gulf cartel, their former employers, and aligned themselves with the Beltrán Leyva brothers and the Tijuana and Juárez cartels.

El Lazca was a young boss, but he was already a myth, and his legend was amplified by his death. In October 2012 an anonymous tip arrived at the Mexican navy: El Lazca was watching a baseball game in a stadium in Progreso, in the state of Coahuila, right this minute. An unexpected gift. El Lazca, the most wanted drug trafficker after El Chapo, was killed during the police siege. It was a great coup.

Less than twenty-four hours later the triumph was soured when a group of Los Zetas commandos stole their boss’s body from the morgue before forensics had finished with it. Fingerprints were a match, but they still had other tests to run, including the decisive one: DNA. But now the body had disappeared. Los Zetas had another incredible story to tell, at any rate.

Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, alias El Z40, became the next Los Zetas leader. He had been rising through the ranks since the group’s founding, and was known for his “stewing” technique: He’d stuff his adversary in an oil barrel and then set it on fire. But Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales’s rule didn’t last long. He was arrested in Nuevo Laredo on July 15, 2013. The baton passed to his younger brother Omar, close to him because of his nickname; El Z42. However, Miguel Ángel’s subordinates apparently did not trust Omar Treviño Morales, who was wanted in Mexico and the United States on charges of drug and arms trafficking, murder and kidnap. The Mexican government offered a 30 million peso reward and the United States up to $5 million for information leading to his arrest. On March, 4, 2015, Omar was arrested in a luxury home in San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León. His neighbors, who were interviewed by Mexican newspapers, said the house had been bought about six months earlier by a quiet family, which did not mingle with other residents. Omar’s capture was possible thanks to a joint operation by the federal police and the army. They seized the Zetas’ chief without a shot being fired, but there was little time to celebrate: The hunt for a new boss was on.

• • •

Los Zetas’ epicenter of economic power is the border city of Nuevo Laredo. But they’ve spread throughout the country, into the states of Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Michoacán on the Pacific coast, in Mexico City, in Chiapas, and in the states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo, and Tabasco along the Gulf coast. In Nuevo Laredo they have total control, with sentries posted all along the main traffic routes in the city and roadblocks near the area bus stations and airports, the better to know who is leaving, but what is more important, who and what is arriving.

Los Zetas is a criminal dictatorship whose laws are based on extortion, whose decrees are kidnappings and torture, and whose constitution is founded on decapitations and dismemberments. Its targets are often politicians and police, with the aim of intimidating the government and dissuading people from accepting institutional roles in opposition to Los Zetas’ interests.

It was two in the afternoon on June 8, 2005, when Alejandro Domínguez Coello, a former typographer, fifty-six years old, took over as chief of police in the city of Nuevo Laredo. “I’m not tied to anyone,” he declared. “My only obligation is to the citizens of this city.” Six hours later, as he was getting into his pickup, a Los Zetas commando unloaded thirty large-caliber bullets into him. His body wasn’t identified right away because his face had been completely obliterated.

On July 29, 2009, at five in the morning, two cars stopped in front of Veracruz and Boca del Río deputy police chief Jesús Antonio Romero Vázquez’s home: About ten Zetas men, armed with AK-47s and grenade launchers, got out and stormed the house. It took them a few minutes to kill Romero Vázquez, his wife (also a police officer), and their seven-year-old son. Then they set the house on fire, killing his three daughters as well, the oldest of whom was fifteen.

Rodolfo Torre Cantú, a gubernatorial candidate in the state of Tamaulipas with the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), was killed on June 28, 2010, six days before the election. His killers, armed with AK-47s, attacked his car on the way to the airport in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas. He had been planning on going to Matamoros to wind up his campaign. Four people traveling with him were also killed, and four others wounded. According to witnesses, the killers’ vehicle — a 4 x 4—had an unmistakable Z painted on the windows. But after their statements appeared in the papers, a man who identified himself as the “Los Zetas press officer” contacted several local papers to say that Los Zetas were not responsible for Torre Cantú’s murder. Investigations are still under way, but Los Zetas are among the primary suspects.

When they carry out operations, Los Zetas wear dark clothes, paint their faces black, drive stolen SUVs, and often put on federal police uniforms. In Acapulco in early 2007 they disguised themselves as soldiers and killed five police officers and two administrative assistants. On April 16, 2007, in Reynosa, six men dressed as Tamaulipas ministerial police — maybe Zetas men in disguise or maybe corrupt police officers in the pay of the cartel — aboard five SUVs and carrying R-15 rifles, which are used exclusively by the armed forces, stopped four AFI agents (Agencia Federal de Investigación, the Mexican equivalent of FBI agents until July 2012, when they were replaced by the new PFM, Policía Federal Ministerial) whom the Los Zetas cartel accused of having ties to a “rival gang.” In fact, a few days earlier the agents had burst into the El Cincuenta y Siete discotheque in Reynosa, right before the singer Gloria Trevi’s show was to begin, and handcuffed and removed seven hit men who were in the service of the Zetas. The fake ministerial police made the AFI agents get into an SUV. They beat them and took them to China, a small town in the state of Nuevo León, a known Zetas stronghold, intending to kill them. They didn’t realize that one of the agents, Luis Solís, had a cell phone in his pocket. While his kidnappers were momentarily distracted, Solís took out his cell and dialed Commander Puma at AFI headquarters: “We’ve been kidnapped by Los Zetas, they’re taking us to China, they’re going to kill us.” The message was received. Meanwhile, the four agents were transferred to a casa de seguridad, one of the places the Zetas use to torture their victims before finishing them off. Here the agents were kicked and beaten, including by the illustrious El Hummer, head of the Zetas in the Reynosa area. The kidnappers were convinced that the agents were in the service of a rival cartel and wanted to make them confess. But the agents didn’t talk, so they were drugged and taken to another safe house — for electric shock treatment. But when Los Zetas got wind of the fact that federal agents were searching everywhere for their men, they decided to rid themselves of the agents, and let them go. “We survived by the hand of God,” the agents allegedly said after they were freed.

When Los Zetas kill their enemies, they are sadistic, their revenge exemplary: They burn bodies, stuff them into barrels filled with diesel oil, dismember them. In January 2008 in San Luis Potosí, during a roundup that led to the arrest of Héctor Izar Castro, alias El Teto, considered the leader of the local Zetas cell, weapons of all sorts were found, along with three paddles with a raised letter Z on them: This way, when they beat their victims their mark is imprinted on their skin. To terrify their rivals they often cut off their victims’ genitals and stuff them in their mouths, and hang headless bodies from bridges. In early January 2010 Hugo Hernández, thirty-six years old, was kidnapped in the state of Sonora, taken to Los Mochis in nearby Sinaloa, killed, and cut into seven pieces by men from a rival cartel. The victim’s face was skinned, fixed to a soccer ball, and left in a plastic bag near city hall with a note: “Have a Happy New Year, because this one will be your last.” Other body parts were found in two plastic barrels: in one his torso; in the other his arms, legs, and faceless skull. Dismemberment is the language of Los Zetas. They make bodies disappear inside already occupied tombs, or bury them in clandestine cemeteries within their strongholds, or dump them in mass graves. They often bury their victims alive. Or dissolve them in acid.

Los Zetas are bloodthirsty assassins, yet they have one characteristic in common with normal kids thousands of miles away: They love television, that dangerous teacher. Violent films and reality shows are cultural reference points. One day in San Fernando, a village about eighty-five miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, Los Zetas stopped several buses traveling along Highway 101 and made the passengers get off and fight like gladiators, armed with clubs and knives. Whoever survived was guaranteed a place with Los Zetas. Whoever succumbed was buried in a mass grave. In spring 2011, such a grave was discovered in San Fernando; it contained 193 corpses, the victims all killed with powerful blows to the head.

And this sadistic carnage occurred just a few months after what has become known as the First San Fernando Massacre. More innocent victims, more mass graves: August 24, 2010. More than seventy illegal immigrants from South and Central America were trying to cross the U.S. border at Tamaulipas. We know about them from a man from Ecuador who survived. In San Fernando he and his companions were joined by a group of Mexicans claiming to be Los Zetas. They herded the immigrants onto a farm and started beating them up. One by one. They either hadn’t paid the “toll” for crossing the border into Los Zetas territory or — more likely — they hadn’t accepted the Zetas’ “request” that they work for them. Los Zetas don’t take no for an answer. They shot the immigrants in the head. The Ecuadorian was wounded in the neck and played dead, but later he managed to escape and miraculously reached a roadblock manned by the Mexican army. The soldiers, following his directions, went to the farm and had a shoot-out with Los Zetas. When it was over they found the seventy-two bodies: fifty-eight men and fourteen women, all piled in a heap.

Los Zetas are notoriously the masters of violence, but they’re learning at their own expense that they can be surpassed by their pupils. Some of Los Zetas’ rival cartels began to not just cut their enemies’ heads off but to replace them with pigs’ heads and — of course — post the video on the Internet.

Ferocity is learned. Ferocity works by its own rules. Ferocity spreads, like an invading army. Los Zetas and Ángel Miguel know this. Now I know it too.