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Allende, Coahuila

Coordinates: 28°20′N 100°50′W / 28.333°N 100.833°W / 28.333; -100.833
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Allende, Coahuila
Nickname: 
Coah
Allende, Coahuila is located in Mexico
Allende, Coahuila
Allende, Coahuila
Coordinates: 28°20′N 100°50′W / 28.333°N 100.833°W / 28.333; -100.833
Country Mexico
StateCoahuila
MunicipalityAllende
Founded16 March 1826
Government
 • MayorRicardo Alfonso Treviño Guevara
Area
 • Municipality198.70 km2 (76.72 sq mi)
Elevation
380 m (1,250 ft)
Population
 (2000)
 • Metro
20,153 (Municipality)
Time zoneUTC-6 (Central (US Central))
 • Summer (DST)UTC-5 (Central)
Postal code
26531
Area code862
Websitewww.allendecoahuila.gob.mx

Allende is a city in the Mexican state of Coahuila. The city serves as the administrative center for the surrounding municipality of Allende.

History

The name "Allende" is in honor of Ignacio Allende, a hero of Mexico's War of Independence. The town's folk hero is Arnulfo González who was gunned down in the mid-1920s, and has a "corrido" sung by artists such as Vicente Fernández and many others. Prior to 1832 the settlement was known as San Juan de Mata.

Los Zetas Massacre

In February, 2014, members of the Army, Navy, State, and Federal Police forces began searching for the remains of at least 300 residents of the region, who had been murdered in 2011 and buried in a series of clandestine graves in local ranches. In the Dallas suburbs, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had launched Operation Too Legit to Quit after some surprising busts. In one, police had found $802,000, vacuum-packed and hidden in the gas tank of a pickup. The driver said he worked for a guy he knew only as “El Diablo,” the Devil.

After more arrests, DEA Agent Richard Martinez and Assistant U.S. Attorney Ernest Gonzalez determined that El Diablo was 30-year-old Jose Vasquez, Jr., a Dallas native who’d started selling drugs in high school and was now the leading Zetas cocaine distributor in east Texas, moving truckloads of drugs, guns and money each month. As they prepared to arrest him, Vasquez slipped across the border to Allende, where he sought protection from members of the cartel’s inner circle. But Martinez and Gonzalez saw an opportunity in his escape. If they could persuade Vasquez to cooperate, it would give them rare access to the senior ranks of the notoriously impenetrable cartel and a chance to capture its leaders, particularly the Treviño brothers, who had killed their way onto the list of the DEA’s top targets. Miguel Ángel Treviño was known as Z-40, Omar as Z-42.

What Martinez wanted were the trackable PINs, or personal identification numbers, of the Treviños’ BlackBerry phones. Vasquez had left the agent plenty of leverage. His wife and mother were still living in Texas. The DEA threatened to imprison Vasquez’s mother and wife if he did not get the trackable PINs for the Treviños. Under pressure to get the phones’ PINs, Vasquez turned to Héctor Moreno, a Zeta lieutenant, using a little leverage of his own. It was Moreno’s brother, Gilberto, who had been caught driving the truck with $802,000 in the gas tank. Facing 20 years in prison, Gilberto had confessed that he was working for the Zetas and that the cash belonged to the Treviño brothers. Vasquez arranged for his lawyer in Dallas to represent Gilberto and promised not to let anyone else in the cartel know about Gilberto’s incriminating statements. Moreno repaid the favor by agreeing to get Vasquez the numbers.

The Treviños found out; in response, members of the Zetas seized the towns of Allende and Nava, destroyed 80 houses with heavy machinery, and kidnapped approximately 80 families. These people were not seen again, until the operation began uncovering some of their bodies, many of which allegedly had been dissolved with a mixture of diesel fuel and caustic soda in large barrels of improvised "kitchens", in 2014.[1][2][3][4]

Geography

The city of Allende is located at 28°20′30″N 100°50′2″W / 28.34167°N 100.83389°W / 28.34167; -100.83389, at a height of 380 meters (1,250 ft) above sea level. It straddles Federal Highway 57, with state capital Saltillo some 390 kilometers (240 mi) away to the south, while the international border crossing at Piedras Negras, Coahuila (across the Río Bravo del Norte from Eagle Pass, Texas, United States) is some 55 kilometers (34 mi) to the north. Allende is also crossed by the railway that connects Saltillo to the border city of Ciudad Acuña (across the river from Del Rio, Texas, United States).

Allende municipality covers a total surface area of 198.70 square kilometers (76.72 sq mi) and, in 2000, reported a total population of 20,153. The town's annual festival (fiesta patronal) takes place on 29 August. In addition to the municipal seat, the only other two settlements of any size in the municipality are Río Bravo and Chamucero.

Government

Municipal presidents

Municipal president Term Political party
Canuto Muñoz Mares[5] 1939 - 1940 PRM
Alfonso García 1941 - 1941 PRM
Juan de los Santos 1942 - 1942 PRM
Enrique A. Díaz 1943 - 1945 PRM
Juan José Cantú 1946 - 1948 PRI
Salvador F. Ibarra 1949 - 1951 PRI
Isidoro Flores Ramírez 1952 - 1954 PRI
Pedro A. Valdés 1955 - 1955 PRI
Felipe de Alba 1956 - 1957 PRI
Enrique A. Díaz 1958 - 1960 PRI
Evaristo A. Cadena U. 1961 - 1963 PRI
Guter Lara Castro 1964 - 1966 PRI
Humberto Cantú Villarreal 1967 - 1969 PRI
Isaías Ortiz Rubio 1970 - 1972 PRI
Mario J. Lozano G. 1973 - 1975 PRI
Jesús Perales 1976 - 1978 PRI
José Luis Zertuche 1979 - 1981 PRI
Enrique Navarro Montemayor 1982 - 1984 PRI
Héctor Rocha Contreras 1985 - 1987 PRI
Esteban Barrón Zulaica 1988 - 1990 PRI
Mario Salazar Garza 1991 - 1993 PRI
Tomás G. Navarro Valdés 1994 - 1996 PRI
Esteban Barrón Zulaica 1997 - 1999 PRI
Humberto Leonel Moreno V. 2000 - 2002 PRI
Esteban Barrón Zulaica 2003 - 2005 PRI
Ricardo Alfonso Treviño Guevara 2006 - 2009 PRI
Sergio Alonso Lozano Rodríguez 2010 - 2013 PAN
Luis Reynaldo Tapia Valadez 2014 - 2017 PRI
Antero Alberto Alvarado Saldívar 2018 - 2021 UDC -PAN
José de Jesús Díaz Gutiérrez[6] 2022 - PRI

References

  1. ^ ValorxTruth (February 8, 2014). "Coahuila's Clandestine Body Count Rises to 500". Borderland Beat. Archived from the original on March 1, 2014. Retrieved February 23, 2014.
  2. ^ Cedillo, Juan Alberto (February 7, 2014). "Hallan mas restos de cadavares en Coahuila". Proceso. Archived from the original on March 4, 2014. Retrieved February 23, 2014.
  3. ^ "Victims of Mexico's drug war: Tracing the missing". The Economist. June 14, 2014. Archived from the original on November 26, 2017. Retrieved January 10, 2020.
  4. ^ Noel, Andrea (2016-11-26). "How DEA Informers Sparked a Massacre in Mexico". Retrieved 2019-12-02.
  5. ^ "Enciclopedia de los Municipios y Delegaciones de México. Coahuila. Allende" (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 12 July 2021. Retrieved 12 July 2021.
  6. ^ "IEC. Estadísticas. Resultados × municipio" (in Spanish). Retrieved 12 July 2021.
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