A Profile of Mexico’s “El Comandante Diablo” and How His Use of Atrocity-Based Propaganda Backfired
A Profile of Mexico’s “El Comandante Diablo” and How His Use of Atrocity-Based Propaganda Backfired
David Rosales Guzmán, Alias “El Comandante Diablo”
David Rosales Guzmán (a.k.a El Comandante Diablo–the Devil Commander), was captured alive by Mexican authorities on September 1, 2012. He is accused of functioning as the Gulf Cartel’s leader in Monterrey, Mexico, and is held in connection with the deaths of at least 19 victims (Blogdelnarco.com, October 1, 2012). Two were hanged from a bridge outside of Monterrey and four others were kidnapped from unknown locations. Additional attacks occurred at bars including the Makiavelo (August 8, 2012, three dead), Matehuala Men’s Club (August 14, 2012, nine dead), Azul Tequila, Jarros 2, and Eternidad (August 20, 2012, one dead) (Info7, October 1, 2012). Those locations were probably targeted for suspected ties to illegal profit-generating activities controlled by Los Zetas, an enemy organization. The attacks outraged the local population, which had already become weary of Comandante Diablo’s gratuitous violence. This was because he had advertised it only too effectively through a psychological warfare campaign utilizing public violence and atrocity-based propaganda videos disseminated through social media. The negative public reaction served to prioritize him as a target for Mexican authorities. A closer examination of his approach to psychological warfare against Los Zetas will help to clarify the significance of his capture.
El Comandante Diablo’s Atrocity-based Psychological Warfare Campaign against Los Zetas
In mid-April 2012, Comandante Diablo released images depicting beaten and beheaded victims alleged to be operatives of Los Zetas leader Miguel Treviño Morales (a.k.a Z-40) (Blogdelnarco, October 1, 2012). Two victims appeared to have been in their mid to late teens, and one may have been female. [1]
Comandante Diablo later released a three-part video in early May 2012 (Blogdelnarco.com, May 15, 2012). The first segment was a drive-by shooting at a guard post on April 20, 2012 resulting in one death and one injury. The second was a gun- and knife-point interrogation of a prisoner who denied present criminal involvement with Los Zetas. Thoroughly terrified, he lost composure as the interrogators demanded him to apologize “for being part of the filth” (a reference to Zeta membership), and he complied. Diablo’s operatives also demanded information on local Zetas and threatened to kill the prisoner’s family if he did not comply. He tearfully asked his captors to verify with his wife that he did not know anything of value to them. The prisoner’s execution was edited out of the video, but it did show operatives stepping into a wooded area to shoot the mortally wounded man for good measure. An operative can be heard demanding the woman be brought to him, though no female appears on the video. The third section featured the gun- and knife-point interrogation of another prisoner who suggested his uncle was of significance to the Zetas. Terrified and kneeling before three of Diablo’s operatives, his hands drifted upwards to protect his head. One of the operatives threatened to sever his genitals if he didn’t lower his hands. They displayed a small plastic bag of marijuana claimed to have been found on the prisoner as evidence of supporting local Zeta marijuana sales. They laughed obnoxiously after shooting him in the back.
A video released in mid-May 2012 displayed an execution by gunfire and three decapitations, one of whom was dismembered (Mundunarco, October 1, 2012). One decapitation was performed by a female operative. Two of the victims were beheaded in a manner that maximized the nervous twitching that occurs as a spinal cord is severed. Their heads were held up to the camera, then tossed aside dismissively. One head was placed by the victim’s genitals. Diablo’s operatives threatened Los Zetas’ leader Morales and his Zeta supporters, and claimed to have killed all the Zetas and their families within the area.
The Zetas responded by releasing a video in June 2012 featuring a severely beaten man alleged to be one of Comandante Diablo’s operatives (Tierradelnarco, October 1). The captors pressured him to portray Diablo as afraid of the Zetas, dishonorable, and a victimizer of innocents uninvolved in the Zetas-Gulf Cartel dispute. He was then beheaded while alive.
In early July 2012, Comandante Diablo released a video that depicted the beheading and dismemberment of two alleged Zetas, one of whom was killed in the beheading process Notaroja.mundonarco, June 7, 2012). That individual was interrogated only briefly, with little more than his Zeta affiliation being established before the violence began. Most of the video’s 18-minute duration was devoted to dismemberment. Diablo’s operatives appeared to retain at least one small body part, perhaps as a trophy. [2]
The Zetas released another video in July 2012 featuring the interrogation and execution of four prisoners alleged to be Gulf Cartel informants (Notinfomex, October 1, 2012). However, all of the prisoners identified themselves using the family name, “Banderas Padilla”, and all stated they were there because they were related to Comandante Diablo. [3] The Zetas clubbed each several times before beheading them on video. Like Diablo’s propaganda, the Zetas’ responses were cruel, reprehensible, and terrifying. Unlike Diablo, they attempted to frame the violence as sensible (i.e. revenge-retaliation for his murder of Zetas’ relatives) and restrained (as clubbing spares the experience of beheading).
Comandante Diablo responded in late July 2012 with a video beginning with an acknowledgement that the Zetas struck his family, “but no problem—we all know what we’re into” (Mexicorojo.mx, July 25, 2012). It went on to threaten the Zetas and their families in retaliation. The video shows his operatives severing the tongue of a captive and then beheading him to the aria, “la habanera.” After the gruesome scene is completed, the video displays an earlier interrogation of that victim. He gives his name, some information on a friend, the alias of his Zeta commander, and acknowledges being a halcon (lookout) for the Zetas. He testifies that Zeta colleagues have fled Ciudad Victoria, and briefly informs on Zeta lookouts there. The operatives threaten the Zetas’ organization, and offer the captive in an act of retribution, referring to him as “your brother.” They demand he apologize to Comandante Diablo and the King of Kings “for being part of the filth,” and he complies. [4] The torture-execution scene replays with audio of the prisoner’s screams and the laughter of his tormentors. It concludes with a warning for others not to communicate with soldiers.
Problems with El Comandante Diablo’s Psychological Warfare against Los Zetas
Narco-propaganda in Mexico’s drug war is frequently brutal and stylized. [5] Comandante Diablo’s overall approach was less aberrant in its brutality than in its stylization. Although Diablo has left public messages in Ciudad Victoria claiming opposition to the victimization of innocents, his attacks upon authorities, gratuitous violence endangering the public, and atrocity propaganda appeared intended to terrorize through the display of gore, cruelty, and humiliation, with little effort—beyond claiming some victims were Zetas—to frame the violence as sensible according to underworld norms (Mund0narco, October 1, 2012).
Mexico’s public is deeply ambivalent about much of the drug war violence, but Comandante Diablo’s psychological warfare approach polarized public opinion against him for several reasons. His videos depicted disproportionately cruel behavior to low-level enemies. It is true that lookouts are regularly tortured for information and executed, but the torture is not usually disseminated on video, even when the execution is. Cutting out the tongue of a compliant prisoner thus appears to the broad public as atypically cruel. Killing a prisoner for purchasing a small amount of marijuana from an enemy organization also appears atypical, and will not garner public support. It is a fact that women are increasingly involved with drug war violence. However, the use of a female operative to behead enemies resonates poorly with a public that still implicitly regards such dirty work as properly masculine. [6] The negative public reaction also owed to Diablo’s pattern of threatening and killing family members of the Zetas.
The targeting of enemies’ relatives is a drug war reality that remains despicable within Mexico’s public consciousness. Equally disturbing was Diablo’s cavalier response to the deaths of those claimed by Zetas to be his relatives. To dismiss the loss of family is to mock a fundamental basis of social organization in Mexico. In conjunction, these factors inadvertently facilitated local perception of Comandante Diablo as a terrorist, and not merely a drug trafficker. The distinction is critical within Mexico’s drug war. A drug trafficker may be regarded as a hero who invigorates the local economy, albeit by profiting from the problems of foreign drug-consuming societies. A terrorist, however, is more readily interpreted as a problem facing the local community.
Additionally, the basic strategy of “heating up a plaza” is to attack authorities or initiate other public displays of violence to provoke repression upon an enemy organization within that area. It should have been anticipated as counter-productive to release a video of one’s own operatives committing the deed, as did Comandante Diablo. Mexican authorities responded predictably by intensifying efforts already bearing upon the Gulf Cartel. His campaign also scandalized the Sinaloa Cartel because Diablo announced an alliance with its leader, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in that same video.
Conclusions and Implications
Comandante Diablo is not the first in Mexico’s drug war to spread terror throughout the public, provoke authorities, inflict unnecessary cruelty upon low-level enemies, utilize female killers, retain trophy body parts, or target enemies’ relatives, but he is one of the few who has used social media to publicize his involvement with such activities. To cast an enemy as evil personified is among the most time-tested of propaganda strategies. [7] David Rosales Guzmán’s alias and satanically-themed propaganda ultimately facilitated its backfire, resulting in his own satanization. Unlike certain other cartel leaders who employ more thoughtfully stylized terror, his approach alienated the public. [8] Those who replicate Comandante Diablo’s errors in their own psychological warfare campaigns will find themselves similarly prioritized for capture or death by the Mexican state.
Notes
1. The sex of one victim was difficult to determine because of hair obscuring the face and poor image quality.
2. Some drug war violence is cast with religious significance, with reports of body parts being used in religious rituals dedicated to Satan, Santa Muerte, or other deities. See: Sullivan, J. & Bunker, R.J, Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency: A Small Wars Journal—El Centro Anthology, 2012.
3. While the victims of this video appeared related to one another, it is less clear whether they were literally relatives of David Rosales Guzmán. The Zetas’ claim of relation may simply have serviced a symbolic gesture of retaliation, with these victims being relatives to Guzman only in the broadest organizational sense, that is, common connection with the Gulf Cartel.
4. Because of the current alliance between the Gulf and Sinaloa Cartels against Los Zetas, the phrase, “King of Kings” (Rey de Reyes) has been interpreted by some as a reference to Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. Comandante Diablo has stated solidarity with El Chapo within his videos, but his primary affiliation is with the Gulf Cartel. A plausible alternative is that “King of Kings” referenced Eduardo “El Coss” Costilla, leader of the Gulf Cartel.
5. Campbell, Howard, “Narco-propaganda in Mexico’s “Drug War”: An Anthropological Perspective,” Latin American Perspectives, April 30, 2012.
6. This popular sentiment has led another cartel, La Familia Michoacana, to avoid recruiting female enforcers.
7. Lasswell, Harold (1927/1971), Propaganda Technique in World War I, MIT Press.
8. Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán of the Sinaloa Cartel is perhaps the most notable example of a cartel leader who employs a variety of violent techniques (including terrorism) in conjunction with bribery to achieve desired results, yet whose persona is regarded as heroic even by some of Mexico’s law abiding citizens.
