Cochiloco: The death

TEACAPAN, SINALOA, Mexico — Death seems to have
caught up with our neighbor Crazy Pig, a strange man in
this country where the strange is sometimes commonplace.

Everybody says Crazy Pig was

a narcotics overlord. Probably he ~

was, although I have lived long
enough to not always believe what
everybody knows.

For instance I recall a morning
when a jet landed on our airstrip
and on our main street were big
cars with unsmiling men who did
not say gocd morning to us.
Everybody knew it was a drug
trans-shipment. __

“‘See nothing, Paul, hear
nothing,” 1 was told.

It chanced I'did see, hear and
know. It was a harmless visit by a
state cabinet minister discussing
refrigerated Zebu semen with local
stock breeders. .

However, that cabinet minister
came and went quickly. Crazy Pig
was around for years, a quiet,
reclusive man of ominously large
and bad reputation.

He built a handsome estate a
few kilometres up the beach — an
imposing house on the ocean
front, expensive stables for expcn-
sive horses,.vast gardens and
numerous staff houses. All are
now deserted except for a
caretaker.

Looking back on life with
Crazy Pig as a neighbor, perhaps
the striking feature is how dif-
ferently we saw him from the way
high officials of the U.S, and
Mexican drug administrations saw
him. The perspective in a Mexican
village is different.

He came over to the village oc-
casionally, usually to hire
workmen.

He paid his workers well and
treated them fairly, dut they were
instructed by foremen to never
presume to open a conversation
with him. ;

“Speak.to the patron only if he
speaks to you.”’

.. Neither would they have ad-
‘dressed him as Crazy Pig although
he himself, when introduced by

Paul
St. Pierre

)

PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES

ms proper name, Manuel Saicido
Uzeta, would sometimes say ‘No,
my name is Cochiloco."’

He was a short, blue-eyed,
sandy-haired man who limped.
The couple of times | saw him he
was accompanied by very large,
hard-eyed men who were never
more than four metres from him,

I regret now that I didn’t in-
troduce myself to him and talk,
but I was deterred by his gunmen.
Also I was practising minding my
own business at that time and get-
ting rather good at it.

However, I was frequently his
uninvited guest. His mansion
overlooked one of the best corvina
fishing holes on the beach and
regularly, at dawn, I would go
there to hurl ures and vaths at
the surf.

That was the only place Mex-
ican police ever gave me trouble.
They came churning across the
soft sand one morning in a six-
wheel pickup truck ‘and began a
long session of questioning.

Who was I, where did I live,
was I married, what was my
work, did I have a wife, please tell
my address, why was I here and

_ Cassiar

Connector Opens

what was my business?

You didn't need any smarts to
recognize that the same question
was recurring again and again and
that your answer had better be the
same every time around.

After a while they left and I
went back to fishing. Later it oc-
curred to me that they may have
been Crazy Pig’s men.

I had been fishing in my jockey
shorts. If they were Mexican
police they should have arrested
me for public indecency.

One way or the other, it didn’t
seem vastly important. There is a
peculiar sense of safety in having
a man of Crazy Pig's reputation
nearby. You can depend on him
to arrange for social tranquility in
his neighborhood.

Certainly assault and burglary
are far less common in Teacapan
than in such places as Fort
Langley, B.C., where I live most
of each year.

An acquaintance who had some
real estate dealings with him tells
of visiting Crazy Pig at the man-
sion where security was about as
tight as at the Kremlin in Stalin’s
day.

He quotes Crazy Pig as saying,
“What else can [ do? I keep a
million dollacs cash around the
place always. It is tf” price af one
general,"’

I never envied Cochiloco’s
wealth. Who could? The man was
condemned to a life without peace
or privacy, a fate as dreadful as
being King of England.

Three years ago he disappeared.
We are told now that he went to
the state of Colima, where he
built another mansion, complete
with artificial waterfalls. The man

_was a compulsive palace builder.

In Guadelajara, he seems to
have tried to establish another,

private persona. He was known as_

Rodolfo Orozco Garcia, engineer,
automotive executive, building
contractor, wealthy, reclusive.
Apparently he shed the body-
guards.

On Oct. 9, driving with his
daughter and only the chauffeur

| Sunday, January 12, 1992 ;

You-are invited to walk through
the project Saturday, January 11
before the Cassiar Connector

tunnel and associated ramps-
open to traffic early Sunday,

January 12, 1992.

RUPERT ST. E-~

Friday, January 10, 1992 - North Shore News - $

of Crazy Pig

44 The couple of times I saw him he was
accompanied by very large, hard-eyed men
who were never more than four metres
from him.99

called The Sergeant for a guard,
motorcyclists cut him off at
Lapizlazuli and Obsidiana streets.

They rolled a grenade under his
truck and opened up with AK47s
and other automatic guns. Only
the daughter survived and she lost
an arm.

Not everybody in this village
believes that Cochiloco could be
trapped se easily. They say a
substitute was killed.

l’s the same Iegend that arose
after tiie assassination of the great
revolutionary hero Emiliano

Januat y *
Special.

Zapata and, like it, may last a
long time.

One of his last remarks before
he disappeared from this area was
to another resident who quotes
him as saying, almost plaintively,
“Tam a good neighbor. I have
proven it. 1am a good neighbor.”’

Well, Crazy Pig, whatever your
business was, wherever you are,
alive or dead, hear this: yes, you
were a good neighbor. And thanks
for the fishing.

cooked
with
Bleck
Bean
Sauce

t

* Dim Sum ‘1%

*Saturdays for month of January on 10 items.
7 26: now. for Christnvas Parties .

‘New Gate 9 for
PNE parking

Adanac St.
ré-opens
in February

Jan

SKEENA ST.
zap

BI New trattic signals

CASSIAR St. wili be closed
to through traffic
January 12th, 1992

Province of
British Columbia
Ministry of Transportation
and Highways