Speaking at a Gulf Cartel Funeral

I’ve never been more out of place. Ever.

My experience speaking at a Gulf Cartel commander’s funeral, and several other experiences around this time in my life, continue to drive my fascination and passion around the topic of Mexican drug cartels. Until you see certain things up close, you can never understand how profoundly these groups impact certain regions, individuals, and the United States as a whole.

A little background.

I grew up Mormon. I’m not anymore.

As you may know from your own experience or from pop culture moments like The Book of Mormon Broadway musical, the Mormon Church sends volunteer missionaries all over the world to spend two years (for the men) or 18 months (for the women) teaching people the Mormon Gospel and doing service. Nearly all of my male cousins served missions, my brother and father both did, all of my close friends growing up did. Many of those close to me served in European countries, and I expected to be sent to Europe.

After a prospective missionary completes paperwork, medical exams, and worthiness interviews with local unpaid clergy (no porn, masturbation, drugs, alcohol, etc.), the completed application is sent to the church headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. There, a member of the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles or First Presidency reviews each application and, per their explanation, assigns the missionary to one of around 400 church missions around the world by “inspiration”.

Opening your mission call, a letter telling you where you’ll be serving for the next two years, what language you’ll learn, etc., is a big moment in Mormon culture. I was stoked as hell when my letter got there. Admittedly, I was not stoked to be called to the Texas McAllen Mission, speaking Spanish. I wanted to go to Europe, or at least leave the country. I would find out that McAllen and the majority of the area in my assigned mission was right up against the Mexican border — I was as close to leaving the country as I could be without actually leaving. Cruel.

Getting to Texas

The months passed, I got ready, and, after nine weeks in a training facility in Provo, Utah learning to teach and how to speak the basics of Spanish, I shipped out to south Texas. Real south Texas, not San Antonio. The Rio Grande Valley is unlike any other part of Texas or the US you’ve ever seen, and impossible to adequately describe. It’s objectively hideous, neglected, with many impoverished areas, but the most kind people and wonderful souls.

My first few months were spent in Laredo, Texas. Very quickly, the situation on the other side of the border became clear. Large columns of black smoke would emerge over Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican city divided only by the narrow Rio Grande, apparently from car bomb attacks. At night, gunshots could be heard as Los Zetas fought to maintain their turf. This was during the later months of the reign of Z-3, Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, one of the more brutal of Los Zetas’ leaders, although somehow less so than his eventual successor, Z-42, Miguel Angel Treviño Morales.

The violence on the Mexican side of the border was more conspicuous than that on the American side, so we were relatively safe. I had a gun in my face two weeks into my time in Laredo, and had a man attempt to chase us on our bikes after we rode past a particularly sketchy-feeling rendezvous of large trucks in a dirt lot late one night. I thought I’d seen the most I would of cartel doings.

Rio Grande City

Several months later, and after a stint in the city of Mission, Texas, I was sent to Rio Grande City, Texas, which is nearly the midway point between McAllen and Laredo on US Highway 83, which runs along the border. The border as a whole has a particular feel, but Rio and its surrounding cities is different. It doesn’t have the size or economy of Laredo or McAllen and its nearby towns. Where other larger border towns may have brighter lights or some semblance of a night life, Rio plunged into near complete darkness every night. Nearby colonias such as Las Lomas, Alto Bonito, La Grulla, and Garciasville lacked maintained roads if they’d been paved as well, and a quarter mile of farmers’ fields provided a weak buffer between the Rio Grande and Highway 83.

Rio sits across the border from an area of Tamaulipas known as la Ribereña, which includes towns such as Camargo, Ciudad Mier, and Ciudad Miguel Alemán, which sits across from Roma, Texas. These smaller towns were constantly changing hands as Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, which had historically controlled the area, fought for territory.

Not unlike my time in Laredo, we would often hear bullets from across the border at nights as rival groups fought. As the violence got worse, families on the American side would host loved ones who lived on the Mexican side until things returned to normal.

One family we met through the Church, the Peña family, was always just a tad different. The grandmother and one of her sons were always kind and loving and welcoming to us in their home, which was perhaps the most intriguing thing to us. Their home was a connected system of what seemed like three homes, decorated much better than the typical home in the area. They had a brother, who had apparently once been a member of the Church but now did not want to speak with us, and we were warned not to come around if we saw he was home. We respected the situation.

The Funeral

One day, we got a phone call from the leader of the local congregation. There had been a death, and the family was requesting a missionary to speak at the funeral that day. He was less-than-forthcoming about details about who had died and how, but we eventually found out it was one of Hermana Peña’s grandson’s.

What we would later find out was that this grandson was Mario Peña, alias Comandante Popo, a member of the Gulf Cartel. Initial reports were that he’d been killed in a shootout with Los Zetas while guarding $2 million in cash in Comales, a community near Camargo. Later investigations would allege that his death was an act of betrayal by a fellow Gulf Cartel member who would also later be charged in the beheading death of a Honduran immigrant in Brownsville. Mario was born in Roma, Texas, worked his way up from a local street gang to becoming an enforcer in the Gulf Cartel to eventually reaching the rank of comandante, a capo of sorts. He’d been baptized into the Church as a child but his immediate family hadn’t been involved for years. Regardless, they were asking for a missionary to speak at the funeral.

An important thing to know about cartel deaths and funerals is just how dangerous they can be. Mexican media is still in the business of displaying photos of the death bodies of slain narcos in newspapers or on the news as proof that the individual is actually dead. To combat this, cartels will attempt to steal the body of their own fallen leader or of a rival cartel’s leader to control the narrative or challenge the authorities. If he’s really dead, show us his body.

Because of this risk, we were told on the phone the funeral would be at one time, and then got a call later letting us know the real time, which was hours earlier. We headed to the funeral home. The parking lot and foyer were full of people wearing matching black t shirts with a poorly photoshopped photo of the late Mr. Peña against a backdrop of a blue sky with a bright sun. Every eye was on the white dude in the white shirt and tie pushing the 650 pound man in a wheelchair (no exaggeration).

We sat in the chapel with a few family members. Most people waited outside, and for a time it was a relatively peaceful situation. We conducted the funeral, and I spoke something about the afterlife. As I stood, speaking, I felt a sudden drop in my stomach and a very cold energy in the room. A line of six men filed in the back door and sat on a pew near the back of the room, every eye fixed on me.

Regardless of what your thoughts are on spirituality, energy, etc., there is simply a different vibe to a truly evil person. Someone who has not only engaged in horrific acts, but so much so that they no longer feel anything from it. I felt it several times in south Texas, and never more than in this moment.

Fortunately, they were just there to listen, albeit with blackened eyes staring directly at me. It felt like an eternity. I thought they had buzzed heads, and could tell their arms were covered in tattoos. They looked like Mr. Peña.

Soon after I spoke, we left. As I wheeled my 650 pound friend to the back of the room, I took a slight glance at the men who had walked in. Their eyes were still fixed on me, their buzzed heads weren’t buzzed after all, but covered in tattoos. At the back of the chapel, as we left, we saw a large framed photo of the dearly departed, wearing camouflage and a bulletproof vest, holding a grenade launcher. That was the prized photo they chose to display.

American Narcos

As I’ve reflected on interactions with certain individuals from the border, and as I’ve studied narcoculture on both sides of the border, a question still remains: “What turns a regular kid into a gun-toting narco?” In rural, isolated areas like the backcountry of Badiraguato, Sinaloa where Chapo Guzman grew up, the answer may be more simple: there is no other way to succeed. No adequate schooling, no gainful work outside of farming the opium and marijuana plants the cartels hire farmers to tend for them.

But is the answer really that much more complex on American soil? The Rio Grande Valley, for all of its charm, is not the most inspiring place to grow up. It seems to be a number of steps behind many other areas of the country, with the wealth concentrated in pockets of McAllen, Harlingen, and Laredo where legal import/export empires rule.

When I was in high school, the University of Oregon football team was at its peak. They were playing in the National Championship, had Heisman candidates, brand new jerseys every single game courtesy of Oregon alum and Nike founder Phil Knight, and ESPN specials covering their brand new, state of the art training facilities. I was 5'4" and had never played a snap of competitive football in my life, but even I understood the allure that Oregon had to high school football recruits. A similar draw seems to exist with the cartels in the right communities. Never mind the life expectancy, you can have money, cars, new clothes, adventure, and respect. Just say the word.

On either side of the border, the answer needs to be less bureaucratic. Educational resources and assistance programs can only do so much. How can we create allure to compete with that of violent criminal organizations? How can making a legal living become the more viable option? We can do better. We need to do better.