The 2011 San Fernando massacre, also known as the second massacre of San Fernando, was the mass murder of 193 people by Los Zetas drug cartel at La Joya ranch in the municipality of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico, in March 2011. Authorities investigating the massacre reported numerous hijackings of passenger buses on Mexican Federal Highway 101 in San Fernando, and the kidnapped victims were later killed and buried in 47 clandestine mass graves. The investigations began immediately after several suitcases and other baggage went unclaimed in Reynosa and Matamoros, Tamaulipas. On 6 April 2011, Mexican authorities exhumed 59 corpses from eight mass graves. By 7 June 2011, after a series of multiple excavations, a total of 193 bodies were exhumed from mass graves in San Fernando.
Reports mentioned that female kidnapping victims were raped and able-bodied male kidnapping victims were forced to fight to the death with other hostages, where they were given knives, hammers, machetes and clubs to find recruits who were willing to kill for their lives. In the blood sport, the survivor was recruited as a hitman for Los Zetas; those who did not survive were buried in a clandestine gravesite. After the massacre, thousands of citizens from San Fernando fled to other parts of Mexico and to the US. The Mexican government responded by sending 650 soldiers to San Fernando and establishing a military base in the municipality. The troops took over the duties of the police force in the city and worked on social programs. In addition, a total of 82 Zeta members were arrested by 23 August 2011. In 2012 tranquility slowly returned to the city, along with the inhabitants who fled because of the violence.
Mexican authorities are not certain why Los Zetas decided to abduct people from buses, and then torture, murder and bury them. They speculate that the Zetas may have forcibly recruited the passengers as foot soldiers for the organization, intending to hold them for ransom or extort them before they crossed into the US. Some killers, however, confessed that they abducted and killed the passengers because they feared their rivals, the Gulf Cartel, were getting reinforcements from other states. One of the leaders confessed that Heriberto Lazcano, the supreme leader of Los Zetas, had ordered the investigation of all buses coming in through San Fernando; those "who had nothing to do with it were freed. But those that did, they were killed." In addition, the killers claimed to have investigated passengers' cellphones and text messages to determine if they were involved with the Gulf Cartel or not, and that they were particularly worried about buses coming in from the states of Durango and Michoacán, two strongholds of the rival La Familia and the Sinaloa Cartels.
Background
In early 2010, Los Zetas broke apart from the Gulf Cartel and both organizations turned their weapons against each other. The first clash between the groups happened in Reynosa, then expanded to Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros. The war spread throughout 11 of Tamaulipas' municipalities, 9 of which border Texas, and soon thereafter spread to Tamaulipas' neighboring states: Nuevo León and Veracruz. In the midst of violence and panic, authorities and media initially attempted to downplay the situation.
In San Fernando, Gulf Cartel forces led by Antonio Cárdenas Guillén "strung the bodies of fallen Zetas and their associates from light poles." The Gulf Cartel lashed out to attack Los Zetas at their stronghold in San Fernando. According to The Monitor, the municipality of San Fernando is a "virtual spiderweb" of dirt roads that connect with Monterrey, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, and Matamoros—making it a prized territory for drug traffickers.
In August 2010, Mexican Naval Infantry found 72 dead immigrants—58 men and 14 women—in San Fernando, killed by Los Zetas for their failure to pay their ransom and their refusal to work for the cartel. An Ecuadorian survivor faked his death and made it up to a military checkpoint, and subsequently led authorities to the 72 dead inside a warehouse on a ranch. The massacre was internationally condemned.
Massacre Between 24 and 29 March 2011, several public transportation buses that were heading to Reynosa, Tamaulipas, were hijacked in San Fernando.
On 6 April 2011 Mexican authorities found 59 bodies in eight clandestine mass graves in San Fernando, Tamaulipas. This discovery led officials to acknowledge that the Mexican drug cartels had begun to inflict fear through a new modus operandi: "stopping buses and removing passengers, some never to be seen again." Two weeks before the bodies were found, there were reports of buses being hijacked by the cartels near San Fernando, where cartel members would "stop the bus, select passengers, take them hostage." Fourteen cartel members were arrested too. By 8 April 2011, the secretary general of Tamaulipas, Morelos Jaime Canseco, confirmed the finding of 13 more bodies, increasing the body count to 72. When the death toll reached 72, bus lines in Tamaulipas refused to take people to San Fernando until the situation was resolved. Investigators began to mention that those killed were not migrants (like the previous massacre of the 72 migrants in 2010), but "fellow Mexican citizens".
On 10 April 2011, in four other mass graves, 16 more bodies were exhumed, increasing the death toll to 88. Witnesses then reported that cartel members had stopped the bus at a fake military checkpoint, and that they had ordered the passengers to "pay up to $300 US dollars" for them to continue on their route. The investigation continued, and on 12 April 2011 the Mexican military confirmed the finding of 28 more bodies, upping the death toll to 116 and the mass graves up to 15. It was then proven by the PGR that the massacre was carried out by Los Zetas, a drug trafficking organization formed originally by former military soldiers in Mexico. By 13 April the authorities found six more bodies, making the death toll 122. The next day, on 14 April, 12 more mass graves were found with 23 bodies, and the body count reached 145. Investigators mentioned that the bodies had been deceased for between "one and two months". Also, 16 police officers from San Fernando were arrested for allegedly serving as accomplices to members of Los Zetas in the slayings.
On 21 April 2011 authorities found 32 more bodies in eight other mass graves; the death toll went up to 177. Five days later, on 26 April, the body count reached 183, and the mass graves found now numbered over 40. Seventy-four suspected killers had been captured too. By this date only two of the 183 bodies found had been "fully identified" by authorities, and around 120 bodies were sent to Mexico City for identification. Finally, on 7 June 2011, the bodies found in clandestine mass graves in the municipality of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, stopped at 193 corpses. One US citizen was killed in the massacre.
Gladiator-like killings Houston Chronicle journalist Dane Schiller interviewed an alleged cartel member, who explained Los Zetas had been using an "ancient Roman gladiator blood sport" to groom new assassins and to find recruits for their organization.
The kidnapped victims were forced to fight to the death with other victims. Men were given knives, hammers and machetes, and were ordered at gunpoint to fight for their lives like a "gladiator-style contest". The winners were ordered to go on suicide missions and shoot at rival drug cartel members elsewhere. The dead were buried in mass graves. Almost all the corpses found in the mass graves had evidence of "blunt force trauma".
A cartel member on trial in Laredo, Texas, testified that the fighting contests between the kidnapped victims were ordered by Miguel Treviño Morales, a high-ranking Zeta lieutenant, and that they were used to make the killers "lose their fear." In addition, he mentioned that 100 Zeta recruits were being trained in Ciudad Victoria, and 300 more in San Fernando in January 2012.
Federal Highway 101 Mexican Federal Highway 101, which extends from the border city of Matamoros, to the capital of the state, Ciudad Victoria, is known by local residents as the "Highway of Death". Those who traveled through this highway in 2010 and 2011 used to see "burned vehicles, bullet-shot trucks on the side of the road, and dead bodies, often decapitated, that the cartels would leave behind."
Others who have traveled through this highway and have survived car hijackings and checkpoints the organized crime groups have installed from Padilla to San Fernando have reported what happens on the highway. A survivor saw "four SUVs, all grey and with tinted windows," adding that "everyone was armed."
The violence and constant car hijackings were so bad that bus lines avoided Highway 101 by driving out of their way. Another survivor stated that heavily armed men would stop buses at roadblocks, and then force women and young girls at gunpoint, "strip them naked, rape them," and then drive away in trucks, leaving the passengers traumatized. One bus driver, "who said he had avoided being stopped thus far," claimed that another bus driver at the station had said that 12 people were pulled off the bus just 30 minutes before him. Other witnesses claim that once the buses were stopped, gunmen would storm the bus and point at certain passengers and say "you, you're coming down," and take them at gunpoint. The buses were then ordered to leave.
Highway 101 is the biggest and most important transportation system in the state of Tamaulipas, and it connects the state with Matamoros and Texas with the rest of Tamaulipas. Local residents mention that there is only traffic on this highway during daylight. , they mention that the cartels "still kill people in San Fernando." The US has issued travel warnings south of the border.
Unconfirmed higher death toll On 17 June 2011, federal police captured Édgar Huerta Montiel, a high-ranking boss in Los Zetas and the man responsible for the killing of 72 migrants in 2010. He confessed during interrogation that "more than 600 bodies" were buried in clandestine mass graves near San Fernando, unconfirmed by Mexican authorities. Isabel Miranda de Wallace of "Stop the Kidnappings" suspects that the mass graves in San Fernando contain more than 500 dead, but that the government of Tamaulipas has not released such information because of the political troubles it may instigate.
Aftermath
Arrests On 17 April 2011, in the capital city of Ciudad Victoria, Mexican authorities captured Martín Omar Estrada Luna, alias El Kilo, lieutenant boss of Los Zetas in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, and responsible for at least 217 killings in that locality. Along with El Kilo, 11 additional Zeta gunmen were apprehended. They were linked to the killing of a policeman and an investigator who were covering the massacres. In addition, Estrada Luna was one of the masterminds of the massacre of the 72 migrants and of the mass graves found. He was regarded by the DEA as "one of the most aggressive leaders in Los Zetas organization." On 17 June 2011 in Fresnillo, Zacatecas, the Federal Police captured Édgar Huerta Montiel, alias El Wache, a high-ranking lieutenant of Los Zetas and the man responsible for the killings of the 72 immigrants. Huerta Montiel was an army deserter before joining Los Zetas. Other Zeta lieutenants, like Abraham Barrios Caporal, alias El Erasmo, were captured on 30 June 2011.