Victor Manuel Ponce in a file image. COURTESY
On March 13, 2013, 75 members of the Ponce family fled Estación Conchos—a town of just 1,600 inhabitants in the municipality of Saucillo, Chihuahua—for their lives. A few days before, Sigifredo Ponce had been assassinated. It was the third homicide the family had suffered in three years. Two of his nephews had died before, the brothers Gerardo and Jonathan. The family fled. Ten years later, violence caught up with them again.
The ranch of Víctor Manuel Ponce, the eighth of the brothers, was abandoned. The day his brother Sigifredo was killed, the hitmen also murdered four workers. The white façade of his supermarket was stained with soot from a fire and riddled with high-caliber bullets. The family, which at the beginning of 1930 had founded that town in the desert, left that night in a caravan, and after a few months, they scattered throughout the country.
Víctor Manuel Ponce, 57, had settled in Huejúcar, Jalisco, after looking for luck in Aguascalientes. He had managed to set up his ranch and get into the cattle business thanks to bank loans. His son Víctor Manuel, El Gordo, had returned from the United States to help him in the business and his daughter Dinorah had married a boy from the town last December. The family was beginning to recover from exile. But on May 23, Víctor Manuel Ponce disappeared.
He had chosen Huejúcar because he considered it “a good place after coming from terrible violence.” Since then, the incursions of organized crime into livestock farming have been heard, but in August 2022 the rumors turned into threats. Members of the “maña” —as the armed groups in the region are known— summoned the ranchers to notify them that they were going to take over the business, that they would be charged a fee —representing at least half of the profit for each calf sold to the United States—and that only a few, including Ponce—could collect the cattle for sales outside of Jalisco.
“They asked my dad for two million pesos. They told him: ‘If you don’t pay us, we’re going to kill you,’ his daughter Anais Ponce said. Víctor Manuel paid the right to the apartment, believing that with that he was saving his life. Later he reported the extortion and threats to the Prosecutor’s Office and went to the Executive Commission for Attention to Victims (CEAV) because he feared for his safety and that of his family. His plan was to sell everything, leave the business and leave Jalisco so as not to repeat the same story as in Chihuahua.
“I believe that he put my uncle at risk that reported to the Prosecutor’s Office,” says Paola Delgado, daughter of Dora Ponce and the lawyer who has handled all the legal processes for her family and had requested protection measures for her uncle. . “He did not feel death. He would say: ‘The worst that can happen is that one day my ranch will be emptied and burned.’
The last time they saw Víctor Manuel Ponce was at his cattle collection center with his employee Luis Fernando García. When his family looked for them in the corrals, they saw his parked truck and found his hats on the ground, as well as shirt buttons and signs that they had been dragged away. In the security video of the neighboring hardware store, it is observed how two trucks enter and five minutes later leave at full speed.
“We thought that maybe they were going to return to my father because when they summoned him to those meetings where they pulled their ears and told them ‘either you do it or you do it’, it took them hours to return. I had no hope because they took him by force, right?” says Anais Ponce. According to the family, the same day of the disappearance, members of “la maña” in coexistence with local authorities, went to the ranch and took between 120 and 150 head of cattle, in addition to holding Dinorah Ponce for hours and threatening her not to start no search.
On June 14, Anais Ponce recorded a video denouncing the disappearance of her father. The only thing she expected was to recover her body. “Even though they took what they wanted, they did not return it to us. I ask that this video go viral, that it reach the highest authorities, that it reach all the news and above all that it reach the boss of the boss of the boss of the person who has my dad. Please, go back to my dad and go back to Luis Fernando.” The next morning they found their bodies in Zacatecas.
The Ponce family’s history of violence began in 2010 with the kidnapping of El Gordo, the eldest son of Víctor Manuel. In Saucillo, the family had prospered by raising and exporting cattle to the United States, they had opened nine supermarkets, planted huge tracts of walnut trees, and every Sunday they got together to make roast meat. Estación Conchos is part of one of the drug routes to the United States and in the neighboring mountains there have always been marijuana plantations, but more than 20 years ago families began to be engulfed by crime.
In an interview in 2018, Víctor Manuel Ponce explained that he believed that all this violence was due to having done business with the wrong person. A rancher connected to the crime borrowed about $50,000 from him and told him that he would repay him with about 200 head of cattle. Over time, the only thing he received in return was a cage of stolen cattle. When he protested, a hitman threatened him with a gun to keep him quiet. For the next year and a half, the Ponces made their living always looking in the rearview mirrors of their trucks. Until in 2013 they tried to kidnap El Gordo again and killed his cousin Jonathan. Víctor began to talk to the authorities: he pointed out the points that, as everyone in the town knew, were for the storage and sale of drugs. In February, Víctor Ponce left town, believing that this would leave the rest of the family alone. Three weeks later, they killed Sigifredo.
A decade later, Víctor Manuel Ponce found himself in a similar situation, in a different state, before another criminal group, with less family around him, tired and tired of seeking justice. He complained about impunity, the non-application of the Victims Law and how despite the complaints, the investigations did not find guilty parties. “I do believe in divine justice, but the justice of man does not exist here in Mexico,” he said in the 2018 interview.
Until today no member of the Ponce family has obtained justice. The Mexican Commission for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, which has handled the case, publicly condemned the death of Víctor Manuel Ponce: “The state is responsible for its inaction in these events that began 10 years ago.” His lawyers explained that the family has at least six preliminary investigations in Chihuahua, three in Jalisco and one in Zacatecas. None have been resolved. This added to dozens of amparo lawsuits, a National Human Rights recommendation, comprehensive care processes and complaints before the CEAV.
“Why my dad? If he wasn’t a murderer, he wasn’t a kidnapper, he wasn’t a drug dealer… Yes, he had a country character, he was tough, he was brave, but why?” Anais wondered.
Days after her father’s death, her daughter remembered the road trips they took as a family and how on the road they always sang Víctor Manuel Ponce’s favorite songs like Dust in the Air, from Little Venice or Coward of the County, from Kenny Rogers. The lyrics of the latter, she interprets as a message:
“Promise me, son, not to do the things I’ve done
Stay out of trouble if you can
Now it won’t mean you’re weak if you turn the other cheek
I hope you’re old enough to understand
Son, you don’t have to fight to be a man.”
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