Even Violent Drug Cartels Fear God

Dominic Bracco II/Prime, for The New York Times

The Rev. Robert Coogan waits to exit the prison in Saltillo, Mexico. More Photos »

Early on a December morning, Robert Coogan pulled his red Chevy hatchback into the parking lot of the state prison in Saltillo, Mexico. It was frigid outside, the sun had not yet cleared the reddish mountains, and Coogan lingered, staring at the tall black letters on the prison's high walls: "CERESO" — Centro de Reinserción Social, the place where criminals are supposed to be reformed. Coogan, who has served as chaplain at the prison for a decade, slowly pulled himself from the warm car. In dark jeans, brown boots and a thick gray sweater, he looked more like a factory foreman than a Brooklyn-born priest. He wore no clerical collar, just a necklace of pendants with images of the Virgin Mary and Christ on the cross.

Inside the prison's main building, Coogan tossed his keys onto the counter, and the guard on duty shook himself awake. "Buenos días, Padre," the guard said, placing the keys on a hook as Coogan, 60, walked through a metal detector that failed to register his large silver belt buckle. "Buenos días," Coogan said. He headed up a flight of stairs and down an empty hallway toward a thick steel door that opened into the general prison population. A heavyset guard let Coogan in, and with the morning chill aggravating an old running injury, he marched to the chapel just off the prison's central plaza. A few minutes later, he was at the altar for the 7:40 a.m. Mass.

As usual, only a dozen or so prisoners showed up. Most of the 700 inmates — murderers, rapists, thieves, drug dealers and the innocent among them — were heading to work in one of the prison's factories or carpentry shops. A crew of musclebound Zetas — Mexico's most feared criminal syndicate, which runs the Cereso from the inside — sat on red plastic chairs outside the chapel and watched the prisoners pass by, making sure they went where the Zetas' comandante wanted them to go.

As soon as the Mass was over, Coogan grabbed his portable priest kit — a red laundry basket with wrinkled vestments, hosts in Tupperware and holy water and wine in plastic soda bottles — and quickly made his way to the maximum-security unit, a separate building at the prison's southeastern corner, where a prisoner whom I'll refer to as M. stood waiting for him on the other side of a gate. There wasn't a guard to be seen. They rarely venture inside, Coogan explained, preferring to leave the job of discipline to the Zetas. A few minutes later, a prisoner working for the cartel, in dark sunglasses and cargo pants, showed up to let us into the unit.

M. had been in prison for about three years. He was normally a regular at morning Mass, skinny and skittish, with light eyes, and he had recently grown a scruffy beard. "You look like you belong on 'Lost,' " Coogan said when he greeted him. Unlike other prisoners, M. actually had a family of some means, and in a prison system without uniforms, his style often seemed more appropriate for an indie rock club. His sneakers were clean and hip; his jeans had designer labels.

Inside maximum, M. shared space not just with hard-core Zetas but also with inmates too insane to be kept anywhere else — including one who refused to wear clothes and spoke to angels. He slept little, like any prey encircled by predators, and that morning he anxiously greeted Coogan's arrival, signaling immediately with darting eyes that he needed to talk privately. Coogan followed him into the yard, where M. pulled out a Bible for cover and positioned himself near a faraway wall. There, he explained that the Zetas wanted him to pay them 2,000 pesos ($165), with the first half due at noon the next day. Coogan, brightening the dusty pen with his purple robes, nodded as M. spoke. He had paid small ransoms to keep M. safe from the Zetas twice already, but this latest demand was larger, more than a week's pay. He wasn't sure whether the Zetas were serious or if they were just toying with M. He also didn't know if M. could be trusted. M. claimed to be locked up because a friend stole a television and he was taking the rap, but other inmates doubted his story and said he was a schemer. Coogan considered his options. Paying the Zetas would encourage extortion, but ignoring the threat, or confronting the Zetas directly, could get M. beaten or killed.

"Why don't you talk to your parents?" Coogan asked.

"I don't get any support from my parents," M. said. His eyes widened with doubt; the priest wasn't going to help? He flipped through a few pages of the Old Testament. "I don't want any problems," he said. "They said, 'If you don't pay, you know what's going to happen.' I've seen them kill people."

Coogan gently pushed the dirt around with his boots, then bent down and picked up a piece of petrified wood, turning it over in his hands. On the wall behind him loomed a painting of a giant clown with blood-red shoes and a demented smile, the tag of the comandante. All over the Cereso, images of the demented clown appeared. The symbolism was obvious: the Zetas were always watching.

Mexico's federal ombudsman for human rights said last year that around 60 percent of the country's prisons were run by inmates. More than 1,000 prisoners have escaped since 2006, often dozens at a time, and hundreds more have been murdered along with an untold number of guards. When I asked the warden at the Saltillo Cereso about the power structure inside, even he did not deny it. Standing near his office, unshaven and exhausted, he emphasized that peace was the priority, not control. "Estamos tranquilo," he said. "We're calm."

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