Benjamin Smith

In theory, the DEA agents were meant to report any incidents of torture to their superiors. Yet in three years of intense cooperation with the Mexicans, not one single complaint was made. Instead, the higher-ups repeatedly denied any knowledge of malpractice. The U.S. embassy’s narcotics advisor stated that there was “no reason to believe that prisoners have been mistreated by the Mexican police.”

Yet it was clear that the DEA knew very well what was going on. It was a conspiracy of silence.

Agents not only nicknamed what was happening “the atrocities,” they even joked that Jaime Alcalá García, the head of the PJF in Culiacán, had “killed more people than smallpox.”

The barbarians’ accomplishments were dramatic and far-reaching. Over the next six years they attempted to centralize the country’s scattered drug protection rackets. Eventually, the new arrangement would become known as “the plaza system.”