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JOJUTLA, Mexico — The recruits filed into aclearing, where a group of trainers with the sternbearing of drill sergeants stood in a tight row, hidingsomething.
“How many of you have killed someone before?”one of the instructors asked. A few hands shot up.
The trainers separated, revealing a nakedcorpse face up in the grass. One thrust a macheteinto the nearest man’s hand.
“Dismember that body,” he ordered.The recruit froze. The instructor waited, then
walked up behind the terrified recruit and fired a
bullet into his head, killing him. Next, he passed theblade to a lanky teenager while the others watched,dumbfounded.
The teenager didn’t hesitate. Offered the chanceto prove that he could be an assassin — a sicario —he seized it, he said. A chance at money, power andwhat he craved most, respect. To be feared in a placewhere fear was currency.
“I wanted to be a psychopath, to kill withoutmercy and be the most feared sicario in the world,”he said, describing the scene.
Like the other recruits, he had been sent by adrug cartel known as Guerreros Unidos to a trainingcamp in the mountains. He envisioned field exer-cises, morning runs, target practice. Now, standing
over the body, he was just trying to suppress an urgeto vomit.
He closed his eyes and struck blindly. To sur-vive, he needed to stay the course. The trainingwould do the rest, purging him of fear and empathy.
“They took away everything left in me that washuman and made me a monster,” he said.
Within a few years, he became one of the deadli-est assassins in the Mexican state of Morelos, an in-strument of the cartels tearing the nation apart. By2017, at only 22 years old, he had taken part in morethan 100 murders, he said. The authorities have con-firmed nearly two dozen of them in Morelos alone.
When the police caught him that year, he could
‘They took away everything left in me that was human and made me a monster.’
Officers in Quintana Roo, Mexico, where Alberto Capella, who built a witness protection program around a drug cartel’s assassin, is now police chief.TYLER HICKS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
He Killed for His Cartel. Then He Exposed It.By AZAM AHMED
and PAULINA VILLEGAS
Continued on Page 13
WASHINGTON — Even as theHouse Judiciary Committee pre-pared to vote on articles of im-peachment, Lindsey Graham wasin a back room trying to cut a last-minute deal. If the president fullyadmitted what he had done, hecould head off charges of highcrimes and misdemeanors. Mr.Graham scribbled on a piece of pa-per what the president had to say.
As the president came beforecameras at the White House,members of the committee sus-pended their meeting to watch ontelevision. But while he generallyadmitted wrongdoing, he did notgo far enough for Mr. Graham.Nine minutes after he stoppedspeaking, the committee votedalong party lines to impeach Pres-ident Bill Clinton.
Twenty-one years later almostto the day, the House JudiciaryCommittee this past week gath-ered to approve articles of im-peachment against another presi-dent along party lines. For anyonewho lived through the last timethat happened, there was a power-ful sense of constitutional déjà vu.Closing one’s eyes, it was possibleto hear many of the same argu-ments articulated in almost the
ImpeachmentNow vs. Then:A New Terrain
By PETER BAKER
Continued on Page 23
ESZTER HORVATH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A special section revisits moments of majesty, pain and grace from the Arctic, above, to Hong Kong.The Year in Pictures
LONDON — The notion thatglobal economic integrationamounts to human progress hada good run, dominating the think-ing of the powers that be for
more than sevendecades. But a newera is underway inwhich national
interests take primacy overcollective concerns, with tradingarrangements negotiated amongindividual countries.
Britain’s voters made thatclear on Thursday in handing anemphatic majority to PrimeMinister Boris Johnson and hisConservative Party, all but en-suring that the world’s fifth-largest economy — and a chartermember of the internationaltrading system — will proceedwith its abandonment of theEuropean Union.
A preliminary deal hailed onFriday by the two largest econo-mies, the United States andChina, raised the prospect ofeasing their high-stakes tradeanimosities. But the nature oftheir engagement — country tocountry, not mediated by theWorld Trade Organization orsome other international author-ity — underscored the principlesof the new age.
Britain now faces anothercomplex phase in its tangledEuropean divorce proceedings —negotiations over the terms of itsfuture economic relationshipwith the Continent. But in oneform or another, “getting Brexitdone,” the mantra that Mr. John-son promised and can now de-liver, marks a profound change inthe world trading system.
In the aftermath of World WarII, the victorious Allies built aninternational order on the under-standing that when countries
Shift in Trade Around Globe: To Go It Alone
U.K. and U.S. Lead aNationalist Push
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Continued on Page 12
NEWSANALYSIS
Comb through more than 35 puzzles topass the time this season, includingsudoku, acrostics and the largest cross-word puzzle in New York Times history.
SPECIAL SECTION
Holiday Puzzle Mania!A creative shake-up, rewrites and adirector not known for great endings:J. J. Abrams and company discuss mak-ing “The Rise of Skywalker.” PAGE 10
ARTS & LEISURE
‘Star Wars’ Finale Molly Worthen PAGE 4
SUNDAY REVIEW
In 2018, Liu Jingyao, a college student,accused the founder of one of China’slargest companies of rape. Soon, theonline shaming in China began. PAGE 1
SUNDAY BUSINESS
The Internet Turned on Her
STOCKTON, Calif. — MichaelR. Bloomberg and Mayor MichaelTubbs seemed like an improbablepolitical pair on Wednesday asthey heaped praise on each other.Mr. Tubbs, a 29-year-old liberalwho is Stockton’s first black may-or, hailed Mr. Bloomberg as a
leader “with the resources, withthe record and with the relation-ships” to defeat President Trumpin 2020. Mr. Bloomberg, a 77-year-old centrist billionaire, called theyounger man “my kind of mayor.”
Mr. Tubbs had reason to feelkinship with Mr. Bloomberg. Lastyear, he graduated from a mayoraltraining program that Mr. Bloom-berg sponsors at Harvard Univer-sity. Mr. Tubbs had attended a con-ference co-sponsored by Mr.Bloomberg’s philanthropic foun-dation in Paris in 2017, and wasfeatured in its 2018 annual report.And this past June, Mr. Bloom-
A Fraternity of Mayors, Cultivated by BloombergThis article is by Alexander
Burns, Nicholas Kulish and ShaneGoldmacher.
Continued on Page 20
Investing $350 Millionin City Leaders
Felix G. Rohatyn, a former childrefugee from Nazi-occupiedFrance who became a pillar ofWall Street and a trusted govern-ment adviser who engineered therescue of a beleaguered New YorkCity from insolvency in the 1970s,died on Saturday at his home inManhattan. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by hisson Nicolas Rohatyn.
Mr. Rohatyn’s journey fromwar-ravaged Europe to the pinna-cle of the illustrious investmenthouse Lazard was a quintessen-tial tale of immigrant success. Asone of the world’s pre-eminent fi-nanciers, he brokered numerousmergers and acquisitions, leavinghis stamp on Avis, Lockheed Mar-tin, Warner Bros., General Elec-tric and other corporations. Hecounseled innumerable businessleaders and politicians.
For nearly two decades, from1975 to 1993, as chairman of thestate-appointed Municipal Assist-ance Corporation, Mr. Rohatynhad a say, often the final one, overtaxes and spending in the nation’slargest city, a degree of influencefor an unelected official that ran-kled some critics.
His efforts to meld private prof-it with the public good defined
him: In the perception of many hisname was synonymous with twoinstitutions — the M.A.C., whichwas hastily created in 1975 to savethe city from insolvency, and La-zard (formerly Lazard Frères),the storied investment firm thatstarted as a dry-goods business inNew Orleans in 1848.
What distinguished him in bothdomains were his deft negotiating
Wall St. Alchemist Who KeptNew York City Finances Afloat
By SEWELL CHAN
Continued on Page 29
FELIX G. ROHATYN, 1928-2019
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Felix G. Rohatyn, shown in1981, devised a way to avert thecity’s financial crash in 1975.
L.S.U.’s Joe Burrow, the third straighttransfer quarterback to win the trophy,set records for percentages of votesearned and margin of victory. PAGE 1
SPORTSSUNDAY
A Historic Heisman Win
Late Edition
VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,542 © 2019 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2019
Today, partly sunny, windy, chillier,high 47. Tonight, clear to partlycloudy, low 31. Tomorrow, mostlycloudy, snow and sleet late, high 37.Details, SportsSunday, Page 6.
$6.00
