Murder City_ Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields - Charles Bowden [89]
In each safe house, there would be anywhere from five to fifteen kidnap victims. They wore blindfolds all the time, and if their blindfold slipped, they were killed. At times, they would be put in a chair facing a television, their eyes would be briefly uncovered, and they would watch videos of their children going to school, their wife shopping, the family at church. They would see the world they had left behind, and they would know this world would vanish, be destroyed if they did not come up with the money. The neighbors never complained about the safe houses. They would see police cars parked in front and remain silent.
And the money. They might owe a million, but when the work was finished, they would pay everything, their entire fortunes, and maybe, just maybe, the wife would be left with a house and a car. People would be held for up to two years. They were beaten after they were fed, and so they learned to associate food with pain. Once in a great while, the order would come down to release a prisoner. They would be taken to a park blindfolded, told to count to fifty before they opened their eyes. Even at this moment of freedom, they would weep because they no longer believed it possible for them to be released, and they still expected to be murdered.
The prisoners memorized the individual footsteps of their keepers and knew when a hard beating was coming.
“Sometimes,” he notes, “prisoners who had been held for months would be allowed to remove the blindfolds so they could clean the safe house. After a while, they began to think they were part of the organization, and they identified with the guards who beat them. They would even make up songs about their experiences as prisoners, and they would tell us of all the fine things they would make sure we got when they were released. Sometimes, after beating them badly, we would send their families videos of them, and they would be pleading, saying, ‘Give them everything.’ And then the order would come down, and they would be killed.”
Payment to the organization would always be made in a different city from where the prisoner was held in a safe house. Everything in the organization was compartmentalized. Often, he would stay in a safe house for weeks and never speak to a prisoner or know who they were. It did not matter. They were a product, and he was a worker following orders. No matter how much the family paid, the prisoner almost always died. When the family had been sucked dry of money, the prisoner had no value. And besides, he could betray the organization. So death was logical and inevitable.
He pauses in his account. He wants it understood that he is now similar to the prisoners he tortured and killed. He is outside the organization, he is a threat to the organization, and “everyone who is no longer of use to the boss, dies.”
He is now the floating man remembering when he was firmly anchored in his world.
“I want it understood,” he says, “that I had feelings when I was in the torture houses and people would be lying in their vomit and blood. I was not permitted to help them.”
He is calm as he says this. He alternates between asserting his humanity and explaining how he maintained a professional calm while he kidnapped, tortured, and killed people. He says he is feared now because he believes in God. Then he says he could make a good grouping on the target with his AK-47 at eight hundred yards. He would practice at military bases and police academies. He could get in using his police badge.
The work, he insists, is not for amateurs. Take torture—you must know just how far to go. Even if you intend to kill the person in the end, you must proceed carefully in order to get the necessary information.