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14 August 2006
''Mexico's Internal Drug War''
As U.S. and Colombian authorities began closing smuggling routes through the Caribbean in the late 1980s and 1990s, Colombian criminals began smuggling cocaine and heroin through the Central American isthmus and Pacific routes. Both smuggling routes invariably led them to Mexico.
In the world of organized crime, an individual who wants to smuggle an item into the United States knows he can count on his Mexican counterparts. With an intimate knowledge of the terrain, lists of corrupted officials on the payroll, and decades of perfecting smuggling skills, Mexicans can smuggle just about anything into the United States for the right price. The U.S.-Mexican border is a "soft underbelly" and a porous border. As a result of the important trade relationship between the United States and Mexico, the border cannot be closed.
The Colombians began heavily relying on Mexican smuggling prowess in the 1990s as Colombia's larger criminal factions dissolved into smaller groups. Smaller factions did not have the resources required to operate the length of a supply chain that ran from the United States -- so they focused on the Colombian end of that chain.
Since the Colombians began selling cocaine at the wholesale level to Mexican organized crime, rival factions have battled over control of the downstream revenue, largely dictated by points of entry into the United States, such as Nuevo Laredo, and points of reception from Colombia, such as Acapulco.
The Cartels
The world of Mexican organized crime has undergone an exceptionally violent consolidation process during the past three years. Two factions of organized crime, known as the Sinaloa Cartel and the Gulf Cartel, have risen to the top and battle over trafficking routes that span the length and width of Mexico, from Cancun to Acapulco, and from the Guatemalan border to Nuevo Laredo.
Currently, conflict is concentrated in Nuevo Laredo on the U.S. border and Acapulco on the Pacific. Each cartel protects its holdings in these and other areas with well-trained assassins who execute the dirty work of defending their employer's turf.
The assassins can earn as much as US$3,000 a week working as the soldiers in a drug war fought to control the lion's share of billions in annual revenue generated from smuggling cocaine into the United States.
Osiel Cardenas Guillen leads the Gulf Cartel. It has traditionally controlled access to the Nuevo Laredo-Laredo smuggling routes, referred to as "plazas." Joaquin Guzman Loera, also known as "El Chapo," currently directs the Sinaloa Cartel. Since escaping from prison in 2001, El Chapo has worked hard to increase the Sinaloa organization's control of the Mexican cocaine market.
Another criminal faction, known as the Juarez Cartel, controlled some 14 percent of the cocaine trade between Mexico and the United States until Mexican authorities captured in November 2005 the financial wizard of the operation, Ricardo Garcia Urquiza, also known as "El Doctor." Soon after, the Juarez Cartel fell into a flux, opening an opportunity for other Mexican cartels to take a larger share of the U.S.-Mexico black market profit.
It was then that the Sinaloa Cartel redoubled its efforts to capture control of the Nuevo Laredo plaza from the Gulf Cartel, precipitating the current violence there. This violence spread to Acapulco as the battle for Mexico's drug trade spread from the border to the point of procurement.
Acapulco is a straight shot north from Buenaventura, Colombia, the country's largest Pacific port. Many of Colombia's drug trafficking organizations, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (F.A.R.C.), used the Buenaventura port to smuggle loads of pure cocaine north. The lack of coastal patrols along the Central American isthmus facilitates the route. Speed boats regularly take illicit products north to Acapulco, where they are loaded onto trucks destined for Nuevo Laredo.
For Mexican organized crime, the logistics of procurement is the backbone of the system that brings its product -- which is cocaine -- to markets across the United States.
Control of Nuevo Laredo is important, but it is only a point of entry and useless unless control is also established over a reliable point of reception. Acapulco happens to be the most logical reception point for both cartels because it avoids the better patrolled waters that surround Mexico's Yucatan peninsula in the Caribbean. Unfortunately for Mexico, Acapulco is not big enough for more than one criminal organization.
Two well-organized and ruthless security details propagate the battle between these two criminal factions. El Chapo maintains a group called "Los Pelones," while the Gulf Cartel maintains a group called "Los Zetas." Members of both groups use high-powered automatic rifles, grenades, and ruthless tactics to eliminate the enemy.
The necessary involvement of police officials at the local, state, and national levels, and the Mexican military, complicates the battle over turf. Corruption pollutes well-intentioned policemen and soldiers. The law of "plata o plomo," a choice between accepting a job on a criminal payroll or accepting a bullet in the head, perennially compromises members of the Mexican security forces at all levels.
Due to constant demand for cocaine, heroine, methamphetamines, ecstasy, and other drugs, the Mexican criminal enterprise earns more than US$50 billion a year. A considerable amount of this money makes its way back to Colombia to purchase pure cocaine and heroin. Millions of dollars a year land in the hands of policemen, intelligence agents, mayors, port masters, pilots, and many other officials who face the infamous "plata o plomo" decision.
Mexican organized crime spends millions to purchase weapons and munitions. Every year, authorities trace between 5,000 and 7,000 guns from when they are seized in Mexico back to sources in the United States. According to J.J. Ballesteros, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms chief in Corpus Christi, Texas, this number represents "a drop in the bucket." Ballesteros admits that criminals can literally outfit an army from one gun store, "and it's being done," he said. The most popular guns are the AR-15, AK-47, and Tec-9 pistol.
The turf battle between El Chapo Guzman and his rival Osiel Cardenas Guillen has resulted in the death of U.S. citizens, Mexican journalists, and dozens of Mexican policemen, criminals, and innocent civilians. Murder rates are inconclusive, but according to some estimates, some 1,500 people died in organized crime-related violence in Mexico from early 2003 to June 2005.
Conclusion
Many Mexican politicians claim that Mexico will never become as bad as Colombia in the 1980s, when violence was widespread and men like Pablo Escobar controlled a cash flow that rivaled the country's G.D.P. What many of Mexico's leaders will not say in public is the opposite. The reality is not too far away. Bodies continue to pile up even as Mexicans wait to see who will be their next president, whose greatest challenge may not be improving the Mexican economy, but convincing himself that his country has not become a state controlled by the drug trade.
Report Drafted By:
Samuel Logan
The Power and Interest News Report (PINR) is an independent organization that utilizes open source intelligence to provide conflict analysis services in the context of international relations. PINR approaches a subject based upon the powers and interests involved, leaving the moral judgments to the reader. This report may not be reproduced, reprinted or broadcast without the written permission of enquiries@pinr.com. All comments should be directed to content@pinr.com.
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