What is it like to be married to a Mexican drug dealer
'27.07.2018'
Source: Vice
“Two days before my daughter’s birth, my husband’s bodyguard was kidnapped. At dawn on the day she was born, we found him hanged on the bridge. ”
Since the former Mexican president Felipe Calderon declared war on drug trafficking more than a decade ago, 200 000 people have been killed, and 28 000 has gone missing, he says Vice.ru. The current president of the country, Enrique Peña Nieto, continued this war; the total amount spent on this project by the Mexican ministries of justice, national security, public order and internal security since 2006 was 1,8 trillion pesos (almost 100 billion US dollars). However, according to INEGI (the state body responsible for census data), only in 2016, about 70 percent of Mexicans admitted that they did not feel safe.
Meanwhile, as reported by the National Survey on the Use of Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco (ENCODAT, in Spanish), conducted from 2016 to 2017 a year, in the previous seven years, drug use in Mexico has increased by 47 percent; 8,4 A million people aged from 12 to 65 have admitted that they have used illegal drugs at least once in their lives. At that time, the most popular illegal drugs in Mexico were marijuana (consumption of which increased from 6 percent in 2011 to 8,6 percent in 2016), cocaine (from 3,3 percent to 3,5 percent over the same five year period) and hallucinogens, whose consumption remained stable , at the 0,7 percent level.
Camille 35 years. She lives in a city in the outskirts of Mexico City with her husband Emilio, a drug dealer. Both names are pseudonyms that VICE uses to protect their personal data.
In a sense, this couple and the way they make their living here is the norm: according to the Secretary of Public Security of Mexico City, it was only in January 2017 that there were about 20 000 illegal drug distribution sites in the city. But Camila experienced along with Emilio enough of such episodes (and in some of them took part), which would have frightened experienced veterans of the local drug trade. Here is her story.
I met my husband through my brothers who worked with him in the drug business. Around 2006, we started dating, but very frivolously. I liked him because we were equal and both were great jovialists. We love to have fun and fool around.
When I met Emilio, he experienced a black line in life, selling off his property to pay for his dependence on meta in crystals. Upon learning of this, I did not want to throw him alone with this - on the contrary, it only increased my need for proximity to him. I gave him injections and tried to send him to the clinic, but he never did. Once I got angry and stopped meeting him. For six months I have not heard anything about him. When I saw him again at the disco, he had already ended his addiction, but he had no money. We got together again. It was in 2008. We got married, got together, and he started working in Mazatlan, a seaside resort town in the western state of Sinaloa.
Having contacted the drug trade, a person, of course, begins to risk a great many. When Emilio and I were married, two gangs began to fight for control of our region: “Los Setas”, the most solid criminal syndicate in the country, acted in alliance with the Beltran-Leyva cartel against the Sinaloa cartel (the one with whom El Chapo ). In one of them was my brother, and he persuaded Emilio to work with him. He gave him territory - an area in one town in Sinaloa, where he was in charge of product accounting and sales management.
Because of the clashes between cartels, we had to move to a new home every three months. None of the other relatives could not come to visit us, and we left the house, just being sure that nobody followed us.
We were, in fact, locked up in that house; nobody knew that we live there, and in general. Moreover, the cartel competing with us had my photos, and his people followed me. Realizing this, I began to turn to my husband to tell me where to go. I stayed in one place while he was chatting with someone to understand who could follow me. Since Emilio did not leave the house so that they would not start hunting for him, they decided to find him there through me. For security reasons, I always had to make sure that no one followed me to the house.
By January 2010, I got pregnant, but I was carrying goods, because my husband could not leave the house. In the end, the situation began to improve, although we still had to move regularly. Then the conflict escalated, and all the subordinates of my husband were killed. Two days before my daughter was born, a bodyguard was kidnapped from him. At dawn on the day she was born, we found him hanged on the bridge.
Emilio had to move to the state of Nayarit, and then to Mexico City. Just a week after the cesarean section, I had to deliver the goods and money to his new subordinates by taxi, with my daughter in my arms, terrified - well, you imagine. I was alone at home with my son and newborn daughter. A year after the birth of my daughter, in January 2011, I left for Mexico City with Emilio. I never thought about danger. Now I look back and say: “Oh, how did I decide on this? I was terribly vulnerable. ”
When we moved to Mexico City, Emilio tried not to repeat the mistake. With the money he made, he created a legitimate business. He opened two gambling halls. But in July 2011, he was kidnapped, and almost all of our money went to the ransom. After rescuing Emilio, we began to sleep in the game room, because we were afraid to go to the apartment in which we lived. So we spent four years since we got married and until our second daughter was born in 2013, the same year that Emilio began to carry drugs in Mexico City.
Married to a drug dealer, it’s wonderful that you never need anything. Emilio gives me everything. On his birthday, he gave me 100 000 pesos (about 5400 dollars), but the best gift I received from him is my home. And whatever I want, it is worth me to say this, as he will give it to me.
In the most difficult years of your life, you might not have been able to go somewhere for the weekend, because you spent all the money on rental housing. And I? I could not take my daughters to the beach, because I had to think about how much it would cost us. Now I drive here and there ... I buy everything I want. I do not worry about life and do not sit with folded arms.
I tell my husband: “Do as you wish: so that someone else is wearing these new shoes first, or so I can walk them earlier?” He does not limit me at all. If I say, “I want it,” he agrees. But I also try not to be a tyrant and not to harm my family with my expenses, and family is most important to us.
In addition to taking care of my family, I help Emilio with accounting. He is not very organized. I do the inventory, watch who and how much he owes him, and write down to whom he gives the goods. I am the only person who manages his money. His brother is also in this business, and he passes the money to me. I need to prepare reports on new deliveries that arrive every day, and be ready to demand from debtors. I also check clients wallets to reduce the likelihood of theft.
If ten grams of goods disappear, we have to go back to the warehouse and find out where the error is. Last week I finished my bookkeeping only at 3 in the morning, and after all, it had already gone to her all day. This is chaos. My husband does not touch reporting at all and says that you have to pay for everything and I also need to make a contribution.
People use us. They always want to profit from our earnings and are always ready to moan us. They never please us or our family with any kind words. I used to be hated by Emilio’s subordinates because I didn’t cover the mistakes I’ve noticed. When people behave badly, I must report this to my husband, because if this is not stopped, then you will be considered a fool. One day my husband lost 400 grams of cocaine, which cost us 100 000 pesos. So simple: here they were, and the next day they disappeared. And who took them? Who knows.
At another time, I started counting everything: 80 minus 10 grams is 70 grams, and my subordinate wrote down all 50 grams of cocaine. “There is a mistake,” I told my husband. This employee turned out to have as many as four pages of documentation with a bunch of tricks and forgeries. Emilio almost had a heart attack. "Do not yawn," he warned. It's hard when you have to keep track of everything so that you are not overwhelmed.
Emilio and I have had marriage problems because of relatives. They are very curious, and if they are looking for problems on their heads, I better dissociate themselves from them. I still pray for them every day — I just prefer not to know anything about them. And there are other women and related gossip. Once a guy called me from a private room and said that Emilio was at the hotel with another woman. I called him on the mobile; he did not answer. In the end, he finally answered, and I realized that he was on a motorcycle, so the devil knows what happened there. I try not to be embarrassed, and I also want to have fun. In general, he treated me well, so I said: “You are doing something now or not, but I am not embarrassed by this. I'll just find out what I need to know. ”
And people are always hysterical. They are afraid to go somewhere with us or spend time with us, as they are afraid, no matter how we bring bad luck. Therefore, I no longer communicate with anyone. If I calmly chat with our neighbor, he will certainly begin to ask what we are doing and be interested in our expenses. If you give people the opportunity, they begin to draw conclusions in their own way. It’s better to just say hello - that's all. We say we sell clothes and nothing else. I have girlfriends — the wives of Emilio's friends — but I don’t trust any of them. Their envy I fear the most.
I tell my daughters that their dad sells sneakers and clothes. Apparently, my daughter once at school said that her father sells branches of dried plants. She saw our goods, but I always tell her: “Do not say anything about what you see [at home], because it is very dangerous, because of this, your dad can go to jail”.
In the future, I would like to open a clothing store as a plan. B. Emilio wants to move to the north of Mexico with my father - he wants to finally quit the drug trade. He plans to buy apartments and rent them out, or maybe open a seafood restaurant or even a franchise. But I doubt that he will start thinking seriously about quitting before he becomes as bad as it was in 2008. I would rather (a thousand times, any day of the week!) Just to retire and leave it all in the past, and would not want him to endanger himself in some way or something terrible happened to him . For me, my family is more important than anything. If he, my children and myself are in danger, then all this - money, material wealth - loses its meaning.
