A Gang Member's Past Creates An Unlikely Connection
Earlier this month my reporting on the Barrio Azteca gang took me to a Mexican prison in the city of Chihuahua, which is about four hours south of El Paso.
Once inside the prison, I asked to speak with a Barrio Azteca member. What came next was a stunning example of just how interconnected we are on the border.
The guard brought out Jose Enrique Jimenez Zavala. Green eyes, grey sweats with smiley and sad faces inked onto his earlobes. His nickname is "El Wicked" and he spoke perfect English.
"I'm from originally from Juárez, I was raised in El Paso," he told me.
Turns out El Wicked and I grew up in the same neighborhood. We're also the same age. But that's not all.
"You said you went to Bassett Middle School?" I asked him. "That's where I went. I went to Bassett. We probably were in the same school at the same time."
I drove 250 miles to come face-to-face with a Barrio Azteca member who had been my middle school classmate.
El Wicked's mother was a drug dealer and his father was absent. At 18 he did time for robbery. He joined the gang in prison. After being deported he ended up in Juárez, where he got into drug trafficking.
Now he's serving a life sentence for murdering 16 people in a Chihuahua bar. He's accused of killing 300 others.
"There was nothing nice about my world. Just parties, girls, cars, all the material things that we're always looking for. It's just a real big price I had to pay at the end," he said. "I'm looking to spend the rest of my life here."
After the interview, I returned to El Paso and stopped by Bassett Middle School to flip through old yearbooks. I found his photo, and mine.
