New fear rises in Tijuana

Tijuana —  ONE sunny morning last year, a middle-aged businessman was turning off the Via Rapida toward work when a convoy of black vehicles slipped behind his car. They caught up with him in his office parking lot and a dozen heavily armed men spilled out, threw him in a van and sped off into the gritty sprawl.

Within minutes, his family received the ransom demand -- $1 million.

A week later, hands trembling, the businessman’s brother said the family still didn’t have the money.

“It looks like you don’t love your own flesh and blood,” sneered the kidnapper he spoke to over a cellphone walkie-talkie.

Ankles bound, hands cuffed so that his palms were clasped as if in prayer, the businessman was by now stuck on a smelly sofa in a safe house, whispering repetitions of Our Fathers and Hail Marys while his captors smoked marijuana and giggled at telenovelas.

“How can you say I don’t love him. Of course we love him,” the businessman’s brother told the kidnapper, according to a tape recording he made of the conversation.

“You’re playing games,” the voice said. “If you don’t hurry, I’m going to kill him and throw his body on your doorstep.”

The businessman’s abduction marked another episode in a two-year crime wave that has turned this border city into one of the kidnapping capitals of the world.

The targets, typically middle- and upper-class businessmen or their sons, often are snatched in broad daylight by organized crime rings masquerading as commando-style federal police squads. It happens outside their homes and on busy streets. One man was grabbed as he left a circus with his kids.

American tourists are rarely targets, so the kidnappings don’t get much attention across the border. They usually aren’t reported to police, many of whom are working with the criminal rings, according to federal and state authorities. Estimates of the number of kidnappings this year in the Tijuana area range from 77 to 120, according to business groups, civic leaders and private security firms. The year before, they say, there were 60.

Tijuana may now have the most kidnappings in the world outside of the Middle East, said Thomas Clayton, chairman of Clayton Consultants Inc., a global private security firm. “Tijuana is going crazy,” Clayton said.

About two years ago, the tide of crime reached into the fashionable Zona Rio district and the nearby hillside streets lined with mini-mansions. Black-clad assailants toting AK-47s began snatching people from restaurants and bars. In one notorious case, assailants dragged a screaming man off the front staircase of the ritzy Club Campestre.

Now rarely a day passes without a brazen kidnapping or murder making headlines. On major thoroughfares, billboards show photos of kidnap victims and plead for help finding them. In a recent newspaper survey, nearly one-third of respondents said a friend or relative had been kidnapped. Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon recently said 10 friends of his have been kidnapped. Residents keep track of the toll the way like Southern Californians watch wildfires burn toward their homes.

The deteriorating situation has prompted Tijuana Bishop Rafael Romo Munoz and civic leaders to call for the Mexican military to patrol the streets.

Meanwhile, hundreds of families, some owners of landmark businesses and institutions, have fled across the border to live in upscale neighborhoods in San Diego County. Many of the exiles, who include some threatened policemen, return to Tijuana only under armed escort. Every day, their bodyguards wait for them at the border.

“Fear industries” commonplace in other crime-ridden cities across Latin America now thrive in Tijuana. Bodyguards shadow children going to elementary schools. Insurance companies specializing in kidnapping policies hire firms such as Clayton’s to conduct ransom negotiations. A paramilitary group headed by a former Mexican general has offered, for a price, to wage war on organized crime on behalf of the families.

Other Mexican cities have suffered waves of kidnappings -- most notably Mexico City in the 1990s. But Tijuana’s kidnapping spree is uniquely brutal because violent drug cartel members are carrying out the crimes, experts say. Victims in Tijuana are more likely to be killed, even if their ransoms are paid.

“It’s a very dangerous situation,” said David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. “What’s disturbing about what’s happening in Tijuana is how organized and how precise these operations are. These are pros who have well-funded plans and organizations -- essentially criminal syndicates that are very, very sophisticated.”

This summer, the kidnapping rate reached one per day, and some business and civic leaders, typically loath to perpetuate Tijuana’s violent reputation, began encouraging people to leave.

“We’re facing the greatest challenge in the history of Baja California,” said Alberto Capella Ibarra, president of Tijuana’s citizens’ advisory council on public safety. “It’s a grave situation, very complicated because of the level of impunity and the displays of strength from the gangs that are rarely seen in other parts of the country.”

THE businessman agreed to tell his story if his name and the names of his relatives were withheld. He asked that details about the family business and family members’ homes also be left out. Such precautions are common. Some families have suffered multiple kidnappings. Even members of police anti-kidnapping squads cloak their identities behind ski masks.

The businessman’s large family, including brothers and sisters, moved to Tijuana in the 1990s to expand their thriving business. Riding the crest of Tijuana’s economic boom, the family prospered, purchasing large homes, enrolling their children in private schools and taking regular trips across the border to shop and cheer on the San Diego Padres and Chargers.

Before the businessman’s kidnapping, the family had taken precautions -- hiring security guards, installing video surveillance cameras and lining their office building’s walls and doors with steel. The video cameras caught the scene when the masked kidnappers pounced on the businessman, but the gang’s overwhelming force and quick getaway ensured that no one would intercede.

Led by a municipal police car, the convoy veered into traffic -- honking and flashing strobe lights to disperse cars. Arriving minutes later at the safe house, the men at first threw the businessman in a closet.

They asked him if he had a global positioning chip implanted in his body that would allow him to be tracked, a precaution said to be taken by some Mexican law enforcement authorities. The businessman said no. Then one kidnapper used the businessman’s cellphone to contact his brother.

“We’re the family of Tijuana,” said the man, referring to the Arellano Felix organized crime cartel. “We have your brother.”

The cartel once controlled much of the cocaine trafficking into the U.S. but has fallen on hard times, with many of its bosses arrested or killed. Starved of profits, it has turned to kidnapping, Mexican authorities say.

About five cells operate in Tijuana, each containing 20 to 30 members, according to a Mexican law enforcement source. They operate safe houses scattered throughout the city, where they often hold several victims at a time under brutal conditions.

In a police raid of a safe house in March, officers rescued four men, including an attorney and a baker, shackled and locked inside a metal cage.

THE businessman shared a windowless room with seven victims who came and went over his two months of imprisonment. The safe house where his captors had moved him after two days in the closet was a former auto repair shop hidden in plain sight: Near a Mickey Mouse billboard across from a 24-screen movie theater.

But rescue was unlikely. Police cars passed regularly, honking greetings to the kidnappers. Some Baja California politicians were downplaying the problem, saying kidnap victims were usually shady people who owed money to the drug cartels.

The businessman’s family turned to a negotiator, a young man who impressed them with his shrewd yet compassionate manner.

Professionals bill up to $2,500 per day, but this negotiator didn’t charge for telling them the brutal reality of ransom negotiations: The full amount shouldn’t be paid, he told the family. The kidnappers, sensing deep pockets, would only want more.

The businessman’s life was to be bluffed about and bartered over like an everyday commodity. His brother, in a radio call, calmly told the kidnappers that the family wasn’t wealthy, that $1 million was too much.

He and his siblings held their breath waiting for the reply.

“Get as much as you can,” said the voice over the radio. “If you don’t do it, we’re going after you.”

The next few weeks unfolded in a blur of threats and pleas for more time as the family raised money. Family members gathered every day, waiting with a mix of dread and anticipation for the radio calls. Sometimes Tijuana’s coroner’s office called, saying another murder victim had arrived and asking, did the family want to view the body?

The businessman’s birthday and his son’s first Communion sailed by without celebrations. When his young children asked, “Where’s Papi?,” relatives said he had gone fishing.

In the safe house, the businessman spent Mother’s Day crying with a fellow captive he had befriended, a small-time contractor who said he had been mistaken for a wealthy builder and couldn’t afford a ransom.

The kidnappers, meanwhile, sometimes made calls to the businessman’s family while they were drunk, slurring their threats. Once they called from a party, the sounds of a brass band and revelry filling the dead air in the family’s home.

Two weeks into the negotiations, $75,000 was delivered to the kidnappers through an intermediary, a family friend with contacts in the criminal underworld. The payment was a sort of good-faith deposit -- to keep the businessman alive while negotiations continued.

Fourteen days later, the family put an additional $55,000 in a brown paper bag for the intermediary to pass along. The businessman’s brother hoped the end was near and awaited word on where the businessman could be picked up. But when the intermediary returned he brought bad news: The kidnappers wanted more money.

“My heart sank,” the brother said.

DESPERATE, the family drove the streets near the family business looking for the telltale signs of a safe house: concertina wire wound over railings, blankets covering windows, dark SUVs tucked into tiny garages.

They confided in Baja California’s anti-kidnapping squad, a highly regarded state unit separate from the corruption-ridden Tijuana municipal police. Authorities debated whether they should track the money after the drop-off. Such operations have led to spectacular rescues but also tragedies.

A week after the squad saved the four men in the cage, a safe house raid turned up another cage. Inside this one, investigators found the bodies of two young brothers who had been shot execution-style.

Investigators decided an attempt to rescue the businessman would be too risky.

The businessman’s depression, meanwhile, was deepening. The contractor had been freed after paying a $5,000 ransom. Now, he’d been alone for 30 days. Every day he could hear his captors -- a rotating crew of two to three young men -- watching television news blaring the grisly details of the latest kidnapping or murder.

Except for once, when a drug-addicted captor hit him across the chest with a pipe, he was not hurt. The kidnappers promised to keep him alive and showed signs of compassion. They fed him eggs and beans regularly. He was given a small television set. One young kidnapper watered the roses daily at a little shrine to the Virgin Mary in the parking lot.

Then one day the door opened and four men and a young woman stumbled inside. The woman and two others, he gathered, were methamphetamine addicts who had stolen money from the criminal ring.

A few hours later the captors took the addicts upstairs and raised the volume on the television. He could hear the sounds of a scuffle, yells, and bodies hitting the floor. The woman yelled, “No, no,” before her screams gave way to a choking sound.

The next day, the businessman said, he heard on the television news that three bodies -- a young woman and two men -- had been found on a nearby hillside. It’s not clear if they were the same bodies from the safe house. One kidnapper later told police that he had tossed the three in acid-filled barrels, turning them into “pozole” -- a red Mexican soup with chunks of meat.

The businessman thought he was next. He and the two remaining captives -- drug dealers who owed money to the cartels -- took turns reading the Bibles the gang had given them.

Meanwhile, the family made two more deliveries, of $50,000 and $100,000. One morning, a captor gave the businessman a razor and told him to shower and shave. He was going home.

On the ride to the drop-off point, the driver told the blindfolded businessman that the ransom had bought him more than his freedom.

He now was permitted to move drugs through the area, and if anyone hassled him, the cartel would have the person kidnapped. “It’s as if they wanted me to be part of their gang,” the businessman said. “As if they were recruiting.”

Arriving at his brother’s house, he was enveloped in hugs and kisses. His salt-and-pepper hair had grown beyond his collar, he had lost 22 pounds and he spread the couch smell to his siblings, who clung to him.

“We were stinky but happy,” said one brother.

A FEW months later, the entire extended family -- more than a dozen people -- moved to a San Diego suburb.

In Tijuana, one of the businessman’s brothers owned a sprawling, 5,000-square-foot home in a gated development. It is called Puerta de Hierro, door of iron, a sadly ironic name for a place that affords no peace of mind, he said.

Three other neighbors, he said, have suffered kidnappings.

The neighborhood, like many other upscale areas in Tijuana, is now dotted with “for sale” signs as families depart -- tired, he said, of feeling like “walking targets.”

A final irony occurred, this brother said, when he rented out a modest home he owned to a former professional soccer player who was later arrested on suspicion of being a kidnapper. “There were dirty mattresses strewn on the floor and blankets covering the windows,” the brother said. “I think my own home was being used as a safe house.”

The brother who lived in Puerta de Hierro returns to Tijuana only about once a month now to check in on his business. Other exiles must go daily. Some drive junky cars to avoid attention. For the businessman, San Diego wasn’t far enough away. One month after his abduction, he received a message: the kidnappers wanted $30,000 more.

Most families end up paying $200,000 to $300,000, but some ransoms have gone as high as $3 million, according to a Mexican law enforcement source.

Knowing that gangs have snatched people in San Diego County -- there have been at least two cases in the past year -- he decided to move to another state in Mexico.

He doesn’t travel much anymore. When he does, he can’t tell his young children that he’s going fishing. “They cry,” he said. “They say, ‘Don’t go. You’re going to get lost, like the last time.’ ”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

77 to 120

Estimated number of kidnappings in Tijuana so far this year

60

Number of kidnappings reported in Tijuana in 2005

$2,500

Top daily fee charged by “kidnap negotiators”