A Night Lost in Ajusco, The Forest Controlled by Los Chapitos

The old man’s instructions seem incomprehensible to me: “Go straight, turn left, then right, then make a U-turn and go back left, go straight for 100 meters and you’ll find the exit.” It’s as if he were giving me coordinates in Mandarin to escape the labyrinth I’d found myself in.

I try to stay calm and memorize every move. But it’s useless. The blackness of the forest surrounds my car, and fear leaves my mind blank. I can’t remember anything, and doing so is a matter of life or death. I urgently need to find the exit from this area controlled by Los Chapitos.

It’s nine o’clock at night somewhere in Ajusco, in the rural south of Mexico City, which I can’t locate because I have no cell phone service and my battery drains quickly with these desperate attempts. “Fucking bills of a thousand pesos a month, and my phone leaves me stranded in an emergency,” I think, as I drive down a road with no lighting other than my sedan’s high beams.

I try to remember the confusing directions from the old man, the only human I’ve seen in the last half hour. “Go straight, turn left, then right, then a U-turn…” What was next? In this deep forest, all the rural roads look the same. I feel like I’ve been over the same dirt road three times already. Or maybe it’s a new road. I don’t know. I can barely see ten meters ahead of the road, and I’m terrified of getting out. At least inside the car, with my dog, Diputado, I feel protected.

But then I remember that, despite being a pit bull, Diputado would gladly lick the face of any stranger who’s seen me driving in circles. “Get out, by any means, but get out,” I repeat to myself. I try to say it out loud so the self-convincing effect will have a greater effect, but my mouth feels thick. I have a metallic taste as if I’d stuck a coin under my tongue.

This is what fear tastes like on this Sunday night, when I wish I weren’t a journalist. Specifically, I wish I weren’t a journalist covering organized crime. That way, I’d be more comfortable not knowing that these borders between Mexico City and Morelos are a zone of drug traffickers, looters, and kidnappers who for years have operated under the protection of cells of the Sinaloa Cartel.

14 arrested in Ajusco with the badges of a rodent

I continue driving, feeling guilt pounding in my chest. My recklessness has left me lost, isolated, alone, and in the dark. Hours earlier, I had gone out with Diputado to spend a quiet afternoon together in Ajusco. A Sunday like any other: hiking, throwing a ball around, sitting and resting under the treetops and filling our lungs with fresh air before returning to the smog of the city.

But the common land we always go to, for some reason, seemed boring, and I wanted to continue straight ahead to explore new landscapes. I remembered a friend telling me that kilometers ahead there was a plain with a river that was ideal for testing a frisbee that promises to span the length of a soccer field.

I must have been so focused on finding that ideal spot because I forgot that with every kilometer I traveled, I was entering a more dangerous area. I ignored that the rugged terrain of Ajusco is prized by criminals. For example, it was on a ranch outside the town of San Miguel Ajusco that Édgar Valdez Villarreal, La Barbie—Arturo Beltrán Leyva’s Texan bodyguard—organized a summit of powerful drug traffickers in 2010 to create a mafia syndicate in Mexico City, which was first called La Nueva Administración and later became La Unión Tepito. No one saw them enter, no one saw them leave this remote forest.

The protected nature reserve covers 920 hectares and its highest point reaches 3,930 metres above sea level. There are not enough police officers to patrol such a large area. Sometimes, only two patrols make rounds, but after nine o’clock they prefer to leave the stormy, unlit areas for fear of the loggers. The sound of chainsaws indicates that you are close to them, and you have to get away because they shoot at any stranger from a distance. Or they capture them and hand them over to kidnapping gangs that operate hidden among pine, fir and oak trees.

How could I have forgotten the National Defense reports that the Sinaloa Cartel has been operating here since 2016? Or how could I have forgotten what happened a few meters from me—I think, I’m not sure—in July 2022?

That month, a group of police officers were searching for safe houses in Ajusco and encountered armed men who opened fire on them. What began as a shootout in the town of San Miguel Topilejo ended with the rescue of four kidnapped people and 14 detainees. They were all wearing badges with the image of a rodent: an allusion to Ovidio Guzmán López, son of Joaquín “El Chapo,” nicknamed “El Ratón.” The discovery made it clear that “Los Chapitos” controlled the area.

The Collectives of Searching Mothers

And here I am. Lost, scared, and anxious. Diputado and I played longer than usual, and I thought it was a good idea to wait until dusk to return home. As the temperature was starting to drop, I decided to get in the car and drive to where I could best see that orange sky, so rare in my neighborhood. A turn here, another there, and a little straighter toward that landscape that captivates city dwellers. The music of Oasis made me lose my fear, it began to get dark, and inexplicably, I kept going.

By the time I tried to turn back, I’d already lost my sense of direction. I’ve become a Hansel and Gretel with no crumbs to get back. A Lewis Carroll Alice falling down the white rabbit hole without GPS or internet.

I keep going in circles. The only consolation I find is that I still have half a tank of gas. Also, water, some donuts, and a blanket I kept in the trunk, enough to cover me with Diputado, if I give up and decide to park on the side of the road to wait for dawn. Temperatures in Ajusco can drop to below zero in the early morning, but that doesn’t worry me as much as someone discovering us and never seeing the dawn again.

It’s not a catastrophic or exaggerated thought. In recent years, Ajusco has hosted monthly collectives of mothers of missing persons who dig in the earth in search of bones, clothing, or identification that might lead them to their loved ones. They have learned to perfect the search techniques developed by collectives in the north of the country, pioneers in recognizing that nature speaks and points out clandestine graves. Coming from Mexico City, Morelos, and the State of Mexico, the collectives are convinced that this beautiful, cold, and imposing place is a vast clandestine cemetery.

Here, Jaqueline Palmeros found the bones of her 21-year-old daughter, Monserrat Uribe Palmeros, in November 2024, after four years of searching. Fernando Vargas returns here regularly to continue searching for his 24-year-old son, Olin Hernando Vargas, kidnapped in the Tezontle Valley along a nearby road, which I hope to reach very soon. Here, 19-year-old hiker Ana Amelí disappeared. She sent a photo to her family from Pico del Águila to let them know she was coming down from Ajusco, and she has never been seen again. Later, I’ll remember more names of missing people being sought along the roads I travel: Pamela Gallardo, Axel Daniel, Leonardo Sandoval, and more.

“Straight or right? Which way was it?” I ask myself again. I want to speed up, but I’m driving almost blind. The only thing worse than being lost would be a flat tire, so I slow down in case I fall into a ditch or a pothole. I speak to Diputado in a tremulous voice meant to be sweet, to calm him down, but I quickly realize I’m doing it for myself.

Territory of clandestine synthetic drug laboratories

I try to pay attention to the sounds of the forest. I convince myself I’ll back up if I hear a chainsaw and honk my horn if I see the National Guard. Another National Defense document that comes to mind tells of how the Sinaloa Cartel has used the leafy treetops to set up drug kitchens undetectable by the authorities’ helicopters. I pin my hope on a remote possibility: that I could ask the police or the military for protection if there were an operation against these clandestine laboratories.

But there isn’t a soul. Not a tent or a feeding trough. Not a single house with a light on that would prompt me to beg for more directions or a 911 call. I think Ajusco is also a zone of extortion and that the makeshift huts made of thick logs—abandoned by the side of the road—were once businesses on which neighbors pinned all their hopes for advancement and surely closed due to the relentless right of way.

Ajusco cemetery. Cursed forest. Devouring park. It would have been easier to be lost alone, but the anguish doubles when I see Diputado’s face in the rearview mirror. He’s starting to sense my tension and is no longer sleeping in the back seat, but is standing, attentive, like a faithful adventure companion. “Don’t worry, fatso, we’ll leave right now and go get chicken tacos,” I whisper to him, because I once read that when you’re desperate, what saves you from anxiety is thinking of a kind and possible scenario. All I long for is to get out of here to be with Diputado at our favorite taqueria.

Resisting crime in Ajusco with fear in my bones

Left, right, and I keep going straight. I’ve done it a thousand times, and, according to writer Rita Mae Brown, I must be crazy to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. Left, right, and right. Until, suddenly, I see a light on the horizon. Then another and another. I accelerate as if my life depended on it—maybe it does—until I make out those flashing lights: they’re streetlights. The sign that I’ve finally arrived at a place I can use to find my way around.

With the urban infrastructure, my phone revives. There are barely two bars of signal, but it’s enough. GPS now seems like humanity’s greatest invention: a blue line on my screen will guide me through 23 minutes of paved roads to a familiar gas station. Once we get there, we’ll be safe, and I’ll just need to drive home to end this shitty Sunday.

Oasis starts playing again in my car. Diputado relaxes in the backseat. The blood returns to my hands and feet, the taste of the hardware store is dissipating, and a feeling of calm washes over me like a sip of warm water. I’ve only spent a few hours in a forest controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel, and I felt like my life would flash by. The realization that I’ve been through the danger brings with it what psychologists call “survivor’s guilt,” the anguish of having been able to get through a traumatic event when others can’t.

“Is this what it’s like to live in a rural area under the yoke of organized crime?” I wonder, as I walk along my neighborhood with my perfect internet connection and the certainty that a taco stand is open waiting for us. I’ve interviewed hundreds of people in that situation, and they’ve told me about that crushing fear. “Is this the anguish felt in their bones by those who must cross by land, every day, the forests where the cartels rule? Is this what it’s like for those who still resist crime in Ajusco?”

Finally, the day is over. I sink into bed. I try to sleep, but anxiety still keeps me awake. While the snores of a chicken-stained Diputado lull me to sleep, I repeat to myself: “Go straight, turn left, then right, then make a U-turn, then turn left, right, go straight for 100 

Source: Milenio