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The stories of narco-violence multiplied Monday when jurors at the trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera heard a terrible testimony on six brutal murders related to drugs.
One of the victims almost had her head cut off by gunfire. Another was killed on the threshold of his door after being pulled from his home when he was told, wrongly, that his son had just been hit by a car.
A third made a small fatal mistake: he refused one day to shake Mr. Guzman's hand.
Last week, federal prosecutors tried by Mr. Guzmán, the Mexican pillar of the Mexican drug known as El Chapo, presented evidence regarding the gothic bloodshed that his cartel had the habit of committing. But as the proceedings entered its second week, the government began directly linking the violence to Mr. Guzmán.
Instead of these bloody tales, the audience was expected that a prosecution witness, Jesus Zambada García, confessed to a bomb attack. Guzmán's lawyers said last week that Zambada is said to have paid at least $ 6 million to the "current president of Mexico". This testimony never took place on Monday, but perhaps Tuesday Zambada returns to the bar.
But no less than half a dozen times on Monday, Zambada said that Mr. Guzmán, his former drug cartel official Sinaloa, had arranged for people to be killed for apparently minor reasons . During his third day of appearance, Mr. Guzmán emerged as a kind of burnt head that has a diamond-encrusted pistol with his initials on the neck and was relaxed in the past by practicing shot-on-goal with a bazooka.
In 2004, Mr. Guzmán and Mr. Carrillo Fuentes were rivals in a larger war between the traffickers of Sinaloa and a vicious gang, the Zetas, with whom Mr. Carrillo Fuentes was allied. At a meeting to restore peace, Ismael Zambada García, a longtime partner of Mr. Guzmán, tried to negotiate a truce. But when Mr. Guzmán reached out, Mr. Carrillo Fuentes did not take it.
Shortly afterwards, Mr. Zambada declared that armed assassins were waiting for Mr. Carrillo Fuentes and his unsuspecting wife, shooting the two men as they were leaving a cinema in Culiacán. "Chapo said that he was going to kill him," Zambada told the jury.
The following year, Julio Beltran-Leyva, one of Guzmán's former allies, had a similar fate. According to Mr. Zambada, Mr. Beltran-Leyva would have disobeyed an order not to send a shipment of cocaine from Acapulco. At the request of Mr. Guzmán, said Mr. Zambada, a team of assassins attacked Mr. Beltran-Leyva, shooting at him so much that his head was hanging from his neck.
According to Monday's testimony, it was clear that drug trafficking, especially in Mr. Guzmán's orbit, was not an occupation promoting health or longevity. People around him seemed to die with alarming frequency.
For example, his younger brother, Arturito Guzmán, was murdered in prison on New Year's Eve in 2004. There was also a policeman who usually stayed at home for fear, but who came out in a jet of bullets after one of the Mr. Guzmán's killers knocked on his door and shouted a lie: that his child had just been hit by a car.
Even those who endured the violence surrounding Mr. Guzmán needed a level of machismo to survive. An armed gunman, caught in the crossfire of Mr. Beltran-Leyva's murder, was stunned for five to ten minutes with a head injury, Zambada said. When he finally woke up, the shooter described the injury as "scratch".
William Purpura, one of Mr. Guzmán's lawyers, asked Mr. Zambada a few questions on Monday afternoon, largely pointing out that in previous statements he had never mentioned Mr. Guzmán as a result of some of the murders that the government had accused him of. Mr. Purpura also suggested that Mr. Zambada was a liar who could say what he wanted because most people who could corroborate – or refute – his story were already dead.
Mr. Purpura noted that Juan José Esparragoza, Mr. Guzmán's mentor, who knew him better than anyone else, had died – along with Mr. Guzmán's brother, Arturito. Guzman's former ally, Amado Carrillo Fuentes – a brother of Rodolfo – has also died, said Purpura, who died after blowing to death in 1997 while undergoing plastic surgery.
"All are dead," Purpura told the witness. "So, there really is nobody other than you, is not it?"
Mr. Zambada readily agreed.
"Fortunately, he says, I'm alive."
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