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Daniel Connolly, for the Pulitzer Center
Queretaro, Mexico
This image is from Noticias newspaper in Queretaro.
Note: I wrote these blog entries in December, as I traveled to Mexico to report on the Craig Petties story. Now that we are ready to publish our articles on the case, we are posting them.
Tuesday, Dec. 8. - This was our first day of on-the-ground reporting in Queretaro. It was a warm, sunny day, and the local reporter we've been corresponding with, Rafael Pinzon, picked us up at our hotel and drove us to the Plaza de las Armas.
This is the beautifully manicured central square which has a statue that commemorates the person who built the stone arched aqueduct running through the center of town. The legend is that he built the aqueduct as an act of love for a nun who was in a convent.
There's a real contrast between this idyllic scene and the horror that occurs every day in other parts of the country.
We met up with several local reporters for a breakfast at a restaurant on the plaza. Our seats were in an outdoor area and everyone jumped in to help with our story. Later on, as we drove off, Rafael passed several colleagues from a television station and suddenly they were in the mix, too — one guy leaning in the window talking with Rafael as I sat in the passenger seat. They were all trying to figure out the exact address where Petties was captured.
We asked "What's unusual about this story?"
One reporter said he'd never seen such a huge mass of authorities in one place and that this was very unusual. The raid generated a lot of fear locally, because of the sense that the cartels are moving in. Another reporter said the traffickers' interest in Queretaro is to develop it as a place to foster local drug consumption. It's a regional distribution point.
Later that day we visited the local office of the Mexican federal prosecutor, or PGR for the initials in Spanish.
We picked up some new information. For instance, we learned that during the raid, the army rounded up everything from Petties' house and brought it to the PGR office. It filled up much of the auditorium. There were plasma televisions, lots of jewelry, Rolex watches, et cetera. He was there only 24 hours before agents came and took him off for deportation.
We also got the exact address where the raid took place. It was Sendero de la Girola #30.
A good start, and the afternoon is still ahead of us.
We would return to Sendero de la Girola several times over the next few days.