Pubdate: Sat, 24 Aug 2002
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2002 The Dallas Morning News
Contact:  http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author:  Ricardo Sandoval

SMALLER DRUG GANGS FLOURISHING IN MEXICO

Fox's Reforms Haven't Changed Way Of Life In Crime-Ridden Region

CULIACÁN, Sinaloa - Candelario Sánchez Vega and José Luis González swore 
they were simple farmers. But in the eyes of police here, the automatic 
weapons and boxes of ammunition they were carrying marked them as gunmen on 
their way to a hit.

That was a nice bust for a harried state police force that has found it 
difficult to keep up with rampant drug-related crime in Sinaloa, one of the 
most violent places in Mexico. It got better when the pair led authorities 
to an even larger stash: 10 weapons - six of them automatic rifles - boxes 
of ammunition, and bulletproof vests, caps and canteens belonging to 
federal police agencies.

"Up near our ranches, there are armed people up to no good," Mr. Sánchez 
Vega told police as he was being booked, saying that the weapons were for 
his protection.

The heavily armed pistoleros represent a growing concern for Mexican 
President Vicente Fox and his drug-busters, who have made significant gains 
against the country's largest narco-traffickers.

As Mr. Fox's anti-crime reforms roll out across Mexico, he faces a 
substantial challenge in keeping the Sinaloa-style, small-time trafficker 
from growing and threatening the president's fragile police institutions.

As in Colombia after the sprawling Medellín and Cali cartels were broken 
up, Mexico is seeing the limits of a "kingpin strategy" that focuses police 
primarily on a few key traffickers.

Indeed, the huge Arellano Felíx and Juárez cartels are not what they used 
to be in Mexico, after two years of intense pressure from Mr. Fox. But now 
it's the smaller drug gangs that are proliferating, dominating life and 
death in places like Sinaloa.

During their "perp walk" through a stifling hot police headquarters in 
Culiacán, the suspects were blinded for several minutes by the rapid-fire 
camera flashes of local press photographers.

The suspects remained cool, however, insisting they were innocent. But it 
was hard to ignore the weapons that, by Mexican law, can be held only by 
military personnel.

Agriculture, Crime

Culiacán is a thriving agricultural hub that attracts foreign investment 
and briefcase-toting business people. Tomatoes from here adorn many a 
McDonald's hamburger. But the city is also a gritty urban center with so 
much murder and corruption that it seems immune to Mr. Fox's anti-crime 
reforms. And Culiacán sits on the edge of a range of rugged, semi-arid 
mountains that hide fertile valleys where contraband drug production has 
ruled for a century.

"The bad guys have been killing each other off [in Sinaloa] for as long as 
any of us can remember," said an American law enforcement official who 
spoke on condition of anonymity.

"It's so common that people might take it for granted. But almost all of 
Mexico's drug lords in recent times have gotten their start in Sinaloa as 
local gunslingers moving marijuana and opiates through mountain passes 
above Culicán," the official said. "It's like a rite of passage: If you can 
survive the daily shootouts in Sinaloa, you graduate into a big-time cartel."

Through June, the number of homicides in Sinaloa stood at 282 for the year. 
The 2001 total was 550, in a state with 2.4 million people.

This part of Mexico is easily more dangerous than New Orleans, the U.S. 
city with the highest homicide rate, according to FBI data. Sinaloa had 23 
homicides for every 100,000 people last year. New Orleans had a rate of 
20.4 in 2000. The U.S. average was 5.5, and the Dallas rate was 8.5.

For Sinaloa, officials say 70 percent of the homicides are drug-related. 
"And most of the people involved in those have some sort of local criminal 
history," said Sinaloa State Prosecutor Oscar Fídel González, who admits 
that local police are falling short in their fight against drug violence.

"Our police infrastructure was not prepared for the arrival here of 
organized crime in the 1970s, when there was rapid growth in violence that 
matched great demand for illegal drugs," he said. "That spread the seeds 
for a law enforcement challenge we're still dealing with."

Mr. González has overseen plenty of change in Sinaloa's drug fight in the 
two years he has been on the job. He has ordered up more training for state 
police in crime-scene investigation and forensics. And he has persuaded 
federal prosecutors to call in federal police to focus on arms and drug 
trafficking - federal crimes that are the root of the local murder problem.

His work has drawn praise, and he captured positive attention for the state 
police shootout in February in which drug lord Ramón Arellano Félix was killed.

But it has not been enough. Law enforcement sources say they fear that 
Sinaloa's police corps remains thoroughly corrupt and contributes to the 
violence that is the trademark of the state's many small drug gangs.

It's been this way for decades in Sinaloa.

Going Global

Early in the 20th century, small-time drug runners here gained notoriety by 
corrupting politicians and killing rivals with impunity. But in the 1970s, 
Mexican police and the military swept through Sinaloa's mountains, 
capturing dozens of small-scale drug producers and traffickers. The biggest 
drug lords fled to Mexico's western cities, but they kept strong local 
connections among the poor Sinaloa farmers who grew marijuana and opium.

Then demand for illegal drugs exploded in the United States, and Sinaloa - 
with its rich soil and a network of remote trails that can take a smuggler 
right up through neighboring Sonora to the U.S. border - was in a perfect 
position to comply.

The emerging drug barons also went global, setting up distribution deals 
with Colombian cartels, while undercutting Mexican police and politicians 
with rampant bribery.

By 2000, three large Mexican cartels controlled 72 percent of the cocaine 
and heroin sold on American streets, according to the U.S. government.

Then Mr. Fox rode into office, backed by a posse of untouchables: elite 
military commandos and a newly minted corps of federal police who booted 
out the old, corrupt officers.

The Arellano Félix gang, which started in Sinaloa, was crippled this year 
by the arrest of Benjamin Arellano Félix and the shooting death of his 
brother, Ramón, in nearby Mazatlán.

Under The Radar

And now Mexican drug trafficking has come full circle. The old-style 
Sinaloa drug traders are back, vying to fill the void left by the Arellano 
Félix network. But the Mexican government has recently concentrated on the 
big dealers, allowing the small but violent gangs to operate under the 
federal radar. The brunt of the battle against these smaller cartels is so 
far in the hands of ill-equipped and corruptible local police.

"The big groups are done," said Estuardo Mario Bermúdez Molina, the federal 
prosecutor who heads Mexico's drug task force. "Now we have to worry about 
the smaller 'franchise' type of dealer that seems to be the rule. ... Our 
challenge is to now break up the infrastructures of many smaller groups. We 
may not capture the headlines like before, but it's important work."

U.S. law enforcement officials suggest that Mr. Bermúdez Molina should 
quickly implement his new strategy against the smaller gangs. They point to 
a disturbing spread of Sinaloa-like violence in other parts of Mexico.

Recently, nine people were lined up and executed in rural Michoacán, three 
states south of Sinaloa on Mexico's West Coast. Police suspect a drug 
dispute, the likes of which authorities there had not seen in years.

And around Mexico City, small-time drug dealers reportedly aimed recent 
death threats at local police and politicians. Two high-ranking police 
officials and a police bodyguard were killed this summer. And Héctor 
Bautista, mayor of the hardscrabble city of Nezahualcóyotl, just outside 
Mexico City, took to wearing a bulletproof vest and sleeping in different 
locations.

"You can't go around with high-fives and then go home and say you won," 
said the American law enforcement official. "You have to try to stop these 
small gangs from killing people and growing to the point where they corrupt 
and harm your government institutions."

The spectacular killing of Ramón Arellano Félix has only added to the 
Sinaloa region's drug lore."It's an old story that begins with poor farmers 
with good soil and no real cash crops, except for the drugs that people 
have always wanted," said Jesús Cerda Lugo, a law professor and drug-trade 
historian at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. "Traffickers saw the 
chance to seed the crops and set up the trade routes many years ago, before 
the cartels."

Mother's Day Massacre

A massacre last spring is emblematic of Sinaloa's - and Mexico's - problem 
with violence among drug traffickers. On Mother's Day, men armed with 
automatic weapons gunned down 11 people who had gathered for a barbecue on 
a remote ranch east of Culiacán. It was a mistaken hit on an innocent 
gathering, investigators said. But it came 14 months after 15 people - 
allegedly employed by drug dealers - were gunned down by hooded men in 
military uniforms on a remote road in the Sinaloa mountains.

In the wake of the shootings, police launched almost daily raids on 
suspected trafficking dens in the rugged mountains east and south of 
Culiacán. The operations have yielded dozens of arrests and a warehouse 
full of illegal weapons and drugs.

Still, there's no major arrest connected to the Mother's Day massacre. 
Instead, many innocent families have abandoned their foothill farms in fear 
of becoming crossfire victims in Sinaloa's drug war, according to police.

"Society needn't fear the violence from these small-time tough guys, so 
long as they kill each other," said Alejandro Hernández, a Culiacán student 
who recently took refuge from 100-degree heat to review drug culture 
history books in the Sinaloa state archives. "But when you see shootings go 
beyond the narcos and corrupt police, like I fear we may see if this pace 
of killing continues, then all of Mexico has a problem."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens