Poppa La Plaza

8/13/2019 Poppa La Plaza

1/13

La PtazaTnnnnNcn Poppefrom Drug Lord: A True story. The Life 6 Death of a Mexican Kingpin, 199g' ottons' Norp: In the early part of his book DrugTord, which is a case study of pablo Acosta,s-:ign ry the druglord of the ojinaga "plaza," Terrince poppa details th, ,roiuiio, of drug:'rtuggling along the Texqs/Chihuahua section of the t-t.i.)tuexico Border. poppa dlcussis the.ception and the gradual ascendancy of ojinaga-a dusty little town on thiither side of the:'-io Grande from the equally smail and dusty town of rreiidio-as a primary hub for thi: "issage of a large percentage of drugs llowing into the Uniteci States. The book folliws the: 'i-'sing of the plaza from Manual carrasco to shorty Lopez to pablo Acosta. An element of the'ltxican army-traveling by helicopter across [J.s. soil ind supportecl by the (J.s. gorrrr*rr,-tttacked and killed Acosta in Santa Elena, a tiny communiiy within walking diitance of a":'trying area and store in Big Bend National Park. Fuentes Carrillo, the infaious.Lordly theii'its," then assumed management of the plaza and moved its headeluarters to Judrez,-:1,,,^L,.- D",^--t^- -^-...:tt tt trt uc IttLr vut t tttu utl(\euty utea on an operafxng table m Mexico City undergoingt';tic surgery. As of this writing, no one person hai yet been identified as *aniiando li plaza.1:: editors chose this early section of the bookDrugiord becquse ii delnes a,,piaza,, as amu:"rcss franchise that is subservient to authority eitrenched within the Mexican government.i;':: concept of a centralized power controlling operations is essential to understaicling the trade".-egal drugs in Mexico.,;.:ien est6 manejando la plaza?,,-r Mexico this question is generally understood to mean,,who,s in charge?', ori: r's running the show?"

-:i its most literal sense, the word "plaza" refers to a place of gathering_a town square, a'j'.tplace, a bullring. Thus "la plaza de armas" is the parade giound, ,,la plazad" toior,, i,: :iiring and so forth. colloquially, howe ver,la plazirefers t a police authority and ar-. .ommander's jurisdiction. And so the question "who,s in charge here?,,would bringi-:s\rer, "Comandante So-and-So.,,r, the Mexican drug underworld, however, a question about who is in charge has::=: meaning, avery precise and well-understood meaning. \A/tren someone in the drugf;rng world asks who has the plaza,the question is interpletea ,o -.ur, l*t1o h;, ,h.rr,*slon to run the narcotics racket?,,:-: decades, Mexican informants tried to explain the idea to their law enforcement-srA MaNrJaNDo rA Preze?. 93


2/13

contacts in the united States. when somebody had the plaza,rtmeant that he was paying anauthority or authorities with sufficient powel to ensure that he would not be bothered bystate or fecleral police or by the military. The protection money went up the ladder' withp.r..rtug., shaved off at each level up the chain of command until reaching the GrandProtector or the Grand Protectors in the scheme'

To stay in the good graces of his patrons in power, the plaza holder had a dual obligation:to generate money fo, fri, protectors and to te"a nit intelligence-gathering abilities by fin-gering the independent op;rators-those narcotics traffickers and drug growers who trjedto avoid paying the necessary tribute. The independents u'ere th-e ones who got busted bythe Mexican Federal Judiciai Police, the Mexican equivalent of the FBI' or by the army' pro-viding Mexico with statistics to show it was involved in authentic drug enforcement' Thatmost;f the seized narcotics were then recycled-so1d to fhvored trafficking groups or out-rightly smuggled by police groups-was irrelevant. The seizures were in fact made and ther;were headlines and photos to prove it'

Usually, the authorities would protect their man irom rivals; other times they wouldnot, preferring a variety of natural selection to determine rvho should run the plaza' If theauthorities arrested o, iiit.d the plaza holder, it rvas usuallr'because he had stopped makingpayments, or because his name had started to apPeal in the press too frequently and thetrafficker had become a liability. Sometimes inteinational pressure became so strong thatthe government was forced to take action against a specific individual-regardless of howmuch money he was generating for the s\-stem'It was a system th"at enabled the Nleliican polrtical and police structures to keep a lid ondrugs and profit handsomelv from it at the same time'When pablo Acosta fled Nerv \legco ior Oiinaga, Chihuahua, in late 1976, the Ojinaga un-derworld lvas in a state of llux.Manuel Carrasco, Pablo',s source of marijuana and heroin and the drug trafficker whohad converted Ojinaga into an important hub for narcotics, was on the run' The Ojinagaplaza was up for grabs.

These changes came as a result of a relatively insignificant accidental shooting that laterflared up i.rto ahil-s.a1e gun battle, bringing Carrasco's caleer to an end' at least in OjinagaThe shooting took plu.. o"rr. er.ening in March 1976,inthe town's outlying zona detolerancia, tie red light district, eighl months before Pablo Acosta fled to Mexico' Carrascoand several drug assiciates had been getting drunk and shooting their

pistols in the air inrevelry with several bar girls. One of th. .o.rrrdt ricocheted, hitting one of the girls in thefoot.According to informed accounts given of this pivotal incident' Carrasco was in the barin the company of Heraclio Rodriguez Avilez, ,r.ph.* of a powerful drug kingpin in Parralsome 150 miles south of Ojinaga und orre of Cariasco's chief suppliers' Heraclio had-flowninto town in a iight airplane "uili", that week with three gunmen to discuss money that

;Qui6N Esr,{ M,tNnJINDo LA Pttzl:94


3/13

EaN

aJINuuedJouo;JnSenauuu 'pepp&e '.eqJuuu

'pSSpona aeeJILao

1oauS'uJ^u 'e

JaqPnaq-

p{o1ouu-8oup

squEqJJ

aenuBPEsleoJn1

Jnu 'aeuJJpuspnuou-paqgoa uAJu-sJla '1

nIua-mSaeoqeSpSAaePo

sopnueppdmsuPB

uJo;su,seuan'qpu6Su

sSSIuppaeeO 'uU

uniqu'ua3o^0IEpuPE

pUeseJ^doleJEsS


4/13

way, a logical assumption due to Ojinaga's growing importance as a transit point for narcotics.State police in New Mexico, however, Iater picked up a scenario that American narcotics

officers thought was more likely: Manuel Carrasco took advantage of the unexpected confu-sion to shoot Heraclio to clear the drug debt. Manuel could then claim that he had aireadypaid off the big debt he owed in Parral and did not know what Heraclio or his men haddone with the money.

But then Manuel got shot too.According to accounts later picked up by the New Mexico State Police, the older Avilez,then in his seventies, called the hospital in Chihuahua City where Manuel was gettingpatched up and asked him what happened to Heraclio. Manuel reportedly said in a sad-dened voice, "There's been a problem, Seflor Avilez. Heraclio has been killed."After Manuel gave an edited account of the shooting, the older Avilez asked, "And whatabout the money?""I don't know; I gave it to him earlier that day. I don't know what he did with it."But Heraclio's pistoleros had a different story to tell. They had eluded the army andmade it back to Parral about five days later. One of them, a pilot named Huitaro, supposedlysaid, "That's bullshit. I saw Manuel shoot Heraclio." None of the survivors could rememberany money being handed over to Heraclio.Old man Avllez not only put a price on Manuel Carrasco's head, he also put out a con-tract for every one of the municipal cops in Ojinaga. They were all tobe killed.

Rumors flashed around town that two airplanes full of Avilez men armed with machetesand machine guns were on the way with orders to butcher the policemen. To the last man,the Ojinaga police force fled to the United States. Some of them went to towns in NewMexico, others to communities in Oklahoma where they had relatiyes. U.S. Immigrationand Customs authorities in Presidio proved very understanding. They obtained specialpcrmito for thc policc chicf and thc deputy police chief and their families. And they lookedthe other way as the remainder of the Ojinaga police force came to the United States, bring-ing their families with them.Manuel Carrasco disappeared too, and his vanishing act left the Ojinaga underworld indisarray. Treacherous himsell he suspected eyeryone else of sinister intent and did not say aword of his whereabouts even to his closest associates. He simply abandoned a lucrativeplaza.lt was as if the proprietor of a multimillion-dollar firm walked out the door one daywithout saying goodbye to any of his employees and never came back.Rumors later circulated that "higher-ups" had decided to promote Carrasco to a bigger,more challenging plaza in the state of Sinoloa. Other stories circulated that he was able tobuy his way into the military and was now the general of an army unit in the state ofDurango. Other rumors had him hiding out from old man Avilez'vengeance in the port cityofVeracruz.

For a short time one of Manuel Carrasco's cousins was thought to be runnin gthe plaza,but he was soon arrested in the United States.

;QurfN Esr,{ MeNBIeNDo LA Puq,ze?6 ;Qurf x


5/13

tNo

pEJaPmJspeus

rS1opsuneS

pEeJusSUq 's

see]upu ,u{nIu

:eseJnUqqoupIq pnndUu

,paaouqiaEIaqoaeuIuueqSLuueP 0a

{uqnsIEee}oJaaPea8

pnn& 'uuJSqJe-essm1 p

iaEJPSq uao{nJS1u .oE

Ee[e8EJJq^du1mepsq'pJp

fSqqmu1dap{eeuu aAp

JuopaBSaaop

uaeuqqguqe d

Im{esu3 onsuPLepeJfaeequuqq 'o

laPonPoq 'qElzUIdO


6/13

Manuel Carrasco's Ojinaga plaza.But it was always Manuel Carrasco who dealt with theauthorities, jealously guarding his official contacts.That changed after Manuel disappeared.When Carrasco could not be located for the plaza money, his protectors began investi-gating who was left in charge. Manuel Carrasco reputedly had been paying a $100,000 onthe tenth of every month. The unpaid balance began climbing as the months went by.Several months after Manuel vanished, Shorty started getting official visits from Chi-huahua City. Manuel was not making his pavments and was falling behind, Shorty wasinformed. Someone named Shorty Lopez had better come up with the money.

Shorty protested the amount. He had been priry to much of Manuel's dealings, sure, butnot all of his dealings. A hundred thousand dollars a month was predicated upon the totalvolume of Manuel's drug movement. For Shorty', just starting to pick up the pieces of an or-ganization abandoned b,v its chiet, the sum rvould be ruinous. Ultimately, Shorty struck adeal and was 1eft in peace to rvork the plaza.Former underlvorid associates of Shorty Lopez said that Shorty at first made the pay-ments in Manuel's name) but as the months ivent by he began to consider the plaza his own.After all, he was the one generating the money for the plazapayments now not Manuel.Manuel had left him in an ambiguous situation and had not tried to contact him, not theother way around.Adding to his self-importance, Shorty quickly got big in his own right. He soon had allthe trappings of a drug lord-his own ranch equipped with a runway, a warehouse formarijuana storage and his own pilots and runners. The focal point of the smuggling opera-tions shifted away from Manuel's property to his own.

"So what am I supposed to do?" Shorty once asked an American friend. "If Manuel's nothere to pay the plazafee and they make me pay instead, that means I have the plaza and notManuel. I don't owe him nothing."By the time Pablo Acosta reached Ojinaga-the day after his close call with the police out-side of Eunicel-shorty had been making the plaza payments for five or six months. Theirmeeting in Ojinaga was like a slaphappy reunion of boyhood chums.

Shorty handed Pablo a machine gun and a semiautomatic pistol and put him to work.At first Pablo worked as Shorty's chauffeur and bodyguard and escorted his friend and bosshere and there in the dusty border town or to Shorty's desert ranch east of San Carlos, LaHacienda Oriental. It r,vas barely 40 miles from Ojinaga, but it took six hours to get therealong a bumpy and frequently washed-out dirt road.

Pablo, meanwhile, worked his own drug deals, supplying the American networks hehad left behind from his Mexican sanctuary. \A4ren the indictment against him for ther From 1974-L976,Pab1o Acosta, an American citizen, owned a roofing company in Eunice, New Mexico.

The company was a front for his drug distribution business. In November, he narrowly escaped a DEA stingoperation and fled to Mexico.

;QurfN EsrA MeNeleNDo LA Pl.l'zx?8


7/13

62

'8uTo eue1apuE

JeSeqU aSo3unEeay 'eopqpu

'sou rno

Jpp oespIe]ouBauanJ

euu -Ieopoe

spe saSfe

oqpe 'suo 1pBwe

'pnoeJ

uII 'qIB3u e

puQ8J

oqu'a-3ge feEa?u{J 'aeuoeopOaos -ooq

Jp4.q7pP

'tU ufwa aaonDlE

-zo.o

i

S'o

aaaus s.

r-

loloa-

JIE

a'a'u

-e{ -Po 1as-du-

e


8/13

Driving Shorty to his ranch or while with friends out in the desert, he would suddenly slamon the brakes if he saw a rabbit or a quail, leap out with his .45 already drawn and BamBam Bam let offround after round until he had either killed the scurrying animal or runout of ammunition. He got to the point where he could hit a quail at 40 yards with his .45semiautomatic.He and Shorty liked to draw on each other for practice, but Pablo took the rough-housing even further. Many of the drug mafiosos gathered in the morning or afternoonsto water, feed and exercise their quarter horses at stables owned by Fermin Arevalo, one ofManuel Carrasco's former associates. Like the other dopers, Pablo had acquired horsesand went about his chores at the stables just like eyeryone else. But he had a habit ofdrawing on everybody, a quirk that made his victims neryous. He would appear out ofnowhere, his chrome-plated semiautomatic flashing into his hands. Or he would spin

around to aim at someone behind him, or draw face-to-face like an old-time gunslinger.some just waved him offas a trigger-happy punk. "Ah, go stick it up your ass," theywould tell him.Pablo just shrugged.One day, he was certain, a fast draw would make the crucial difference between his lifeand someone else's.

Like many of the campesino-traffickers, Shorty was detached from the effects of the sub-stances he dealt. He could sell a pound of black-tar heroin, his mind whizzingand clickingas he tallied up the profit, yet perhaps never once give any thought to the thousands of dosesof chemical enslavement his profits represented. Then he could turn around and give muchof the money to the poor in the Ojinaga area.It was the tradition of a drug lord to take care of people in need, of course. For onething, it was good for business. Give a peasant food for his malnourished children, he willbecome a loyal pair of eyes and ears in the sinister desert. A lot of small-time welfare addedup to a big-time intelligence network.But with Shorty, generosity was not mere pragmatism. He enjoyed helping the underfedcampesinos who scrounged for a marginal living on the harsh land. Stories were told of howShorty would filI his pickup truck with groceries in Ojinaga before making a trip to hisranch. On the way he would stop at this adobe hovel and that, distributing the food andsupplies, having nothing left by the time he got to his ranch. One of the beneficiaries ofShorty's generosity was an invalid with the nickname Pegleg, a one-legged man who had abig family and lived in a village outside Ojinaga. One of Shorty's former associates recalledhow Shorty drove up to Pegleg's primitive adobe one day and tooted his horn to rouse theman from the shack."Goddammit, you lazy old fart, I'm going to put you to work," Shorty said, slapping theastonished man on the back.

;QurfN EsrA MaNrIaNDo LA PLi'zll?

Hum"ffiNdMffiryirMmiqfuCr5nfilrmsMrSmcMEIftffiehiffiomomm,Er kffiEod'- gndlba*T*I*F

*CAScouldS

deserShornthrougper trTrr'as h

ET

and torumoShorrv

;Qurfr


9/13

|YYSN

'aq SuSJqp adz

i s'oI

d dqdqSeduBo'd e

00 suaa1Qoedeqs0m aJepoQ 'a

JnupoeSeu

'uI.ee

(u,n1

.s


10/13

Manuel Carrasco considered Shorty a traitor. Shorty had taken advantage of his self-imposed exile to grab what was rightfully Manuel's. It didn't matter that Manuel had nottrusted Shorty enough to contact him and clarify the situation. It only mattered that Shortynow considered himself master of the plaza, that he was boasting about it and makingmoney Manuel thought was his. Shorty was going to pay for it with his blood.

Shorty kept a pistol and an American assault rifle on the floor of his truck, but he did notwalk about town armed and he did not always have a bodyguard with him.In the early spring of L977, Shorty accidentally ran into Manuel Carrasco in ChihuahuaCity. He and a couple of his men had taken some Ojinaga girls to the state capital for anouting, spending several days shopping and partying. One afternoon they turned a cornerin one of the quieter downtown side streets near the state government buildings. There wasManuel Carrasco, arm-in-arm with his wife, walking toward them It was like finding theproverbial needle in the haystack, only they had not even been looking.Manuel Carrasco was tall in his cowboy boots, with a look of stolid dignity in his ran-chero suit and hat."You little son of a bitch;' Carrasco sneered when he recognized Shorty. "If I don't killyou right now, it's out of respect for my wife."It didn't take much to throw the 110-pound Shorry Lopez into a bantam-rooster flutter.He marched up to Manuel, who towered over him by about ten inches. "I'11 fight you anytime you want," Shorty yelled. "You name the time and place."

Manuel's wife nervously tugged on her husband's arm. Shorty's men pulled him away.Without another word, Manuel and his wife brushed past the small group from Ojinaga anddisappeared around a corner.During the three-hour drive back, Shorty's men tried to reason with him. If Shortyhadn't been so goddamn cocky, he could have settled it with Manuel right then and there inChihuahua City. A1l it would have taken was a fewwords explaining how Manuel had lefthim in the lurch."Why don't you make a deal with him? You could still work it out with him," one of themen said."Oh, the hell with him " Shorty said.

Manuel Carrasco caught up with Shorty on May 1,1977, outside the river village ofSanta Elena. Shorty had a load of marijuana to ship north that day and had his runners takeit across the Rio Grande somewhere downstream from the tiny village. Following the smug-gling operation, he returned to Santa Elena with his driver to party with the locals.

Manuel Vald ez, the driver, was a young, eager campesino who worked on Shorty's ranchwith two older brothers. The young Valdez occasionally chauffeured the drug lord aroundthe desert, doubling as bodyguard.

A week earlier Manuel Carrasco had spread the word from Chihuahua City that Shorty'send was imminent-the kind of psychological terrorism Manuel seemed to relish. Shortykept on about his business.

;Qur6N EsrA MeNBJeNDo LA Prez,t?

,i[uie,i$h,lWUmurywmffiiuIM,ds-.llnrfmhp

,l


11/13

fNN

'uaIJ^oPooJS'e 'n

JasSuopppn4unPaloTJYi#'Pne

zL6sI ,nmsgpdS1uqoJ fh)oh4qn@oa3,su

ds

P q-a

;

aJu u

,p'

,'Jn

iH-asJulo

d-

fo1gp'I oudopaoq&uouSa l@Snx

n aulouoswruBuumoes

spopqnSoJrn7131apSJUu pSpo

^esoanoLe

r-tao7

IP uP'suunn uJu0sa{e oguue,uE

'JreL

sqJa-naP

auPA 'oIAMnoenPn eu'&

:W..Y|1aP


12/13

Shorty's blood began to boil; he wasn't about to run. He was going to show them whatkind of stuff he was made of. He grabbed an assault rifle from the floor. He slapped an am-munition clip into it. "You drive on. I'm getting in the back," he shouted to Manuel Yaldez.Shorty grabbed some extra clips, shoved one of the semiautomatic pistols into his belt

and jumped into the back of the truck. Valdez checked his own handguns and placedthem-chambered and cocked-next to him on the seat. He put the truck in gear andmoved on up the bumpy road. Shorty lay flat in the bed of the pickup, ready to spring up atthe right moment.

The ambush site was several miles away. The road dropped nearly 10 feet into a wide,flat-bottomed arroyo. One had to drive across the arroyo bed and climb the steep slope onthe opposite side to get back onto the road. Carrasco's gunmen were waiting on both sides,on thelop of the rises. As soon as they knew it was Shorty in the middle of the arroyo theywere going to gun him down.But the advance warning had allowed Shorty to prepare. When Yaldez drove down intothe wash, the gunmen could see only one man-and it wasn't Shorty. They let Valdez drivethrough and up the other side. Once the truck had bounced up to the top of the wash, theman with steel-capped teeth walked into its path and shouted, "Iudicial "lVhat happened next took place in the space of time it takes for about a dozen menfiring simultaneously to shoot several hundred rounds of ammunition.

Shorty jumped up from the bed of the truck, firing a burst from his AR-15 at Steel-Tooth, then turning his fire on the group of men that had started to emerge from the mes-quite brush the moment Steel-Tooth halted the truck. Several of those men fell. Yaldezleaped from the pickup cab at the same moment, firing toward the other side of the road.The hammering of machine guns became thunderous. Bullets coming from three directionstore into the pickup. Manuel Valdez was hit and fell to the ground. Shorty jumped downfrom the truck and shot backward as he ran up the road.

Steel-Tooth had only be en grazedby Shorty's initial spray of bullets, and had hugged theground to keep out of the line of fire. When he saw Shorty running, he got to his knees andaimed. A .45-caliber bullet tore into Shorty's spine. He fell face forward to the ground.The marks people later saw in the dirt showed that Shorty crawled a short distance, scratch-ing and clawing the ground, then writhed in the scorching sand. Tire tracks showed that aheary vehicle had driven again and again over his frail body before finally driving over hishead. Shorty was probably already dead when someone stood over him, lifted a healy ma-chete high and then brought it down with savage force that cut off the top of his skull at thehairline.Only the bodies of Shorty Lopez and Manuel Yaldezwere found later. The assailants fledwith their own dead and wounded. Reports later reached San Carlos that several men hadchecked into clinics in towns across the state line in Coahuila. One of the men had steel-capped teeth and claimed to be a judicial.

to4 ;QurfN EsrA MeNnJeNDo LA Prtzl^?

Ser-err,mal funeko'Plenharequiempellbeare&urchwhgers- TgPtrP thShorrbout thetmthe mhe insertur,affickehenzs rThe

2Qtr


13/13

9YN

'palppqI 'eqies u

Jlup0ouoaepa1oJ suu

'sneoJa

enm aoAeuJloQe

pueaIIU 'pqJuieEI

eusJ8&1

)

ppa

-

-pa

s

Poppa La Plaza

Documents

Transcript of Poppa La Plaza