Pubdate: Tue, 16 Aug 2005
Source: Christian Science Monitor (US)
Copyright: 2005 The Christian Science Publishing Society
Contact: http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/encryptmail.pl?ID=3DCFF0C5E4
Website: http://www.csmonitor.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/83
Author: Danna Harman, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

MEXICANS TAKE OVER DRUG TRADE TO US

With Colombian Cartels In Shambles, Mexican Drug Lords Run The Show

CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO - The kingpins of this hemisphere's drug trade
are no longer Colombians.

In the largest reorganization since the 1980s, senior US officials
say, Mexican cartels have leveraged the profits from their delivery
routes to wrest control from the Colombian producers. The shift is
also because of the success authorities have had in cracking down on
Colombia's kingpins.

As a result, Mexican drug lords are calling the shots in what the UN
estimates is a $142 billion a year business in cocaine, heroin,
marijuana, methamphetamine, and illicit drugs on US streets.

"Today, the Mexicans have taken over and are running the organized
crime, and getting the bulk of the money," says John Walters, the
White House drug czar, in a phone interview. "The Colombians have
pulled back."

One consequence of the new dominance of Mexican cartels is a spike in
violence, especially along the 2,000-mile US-Mexico border where rival
cartels are warring not only against Mexican and US authorities, but
also against one another for control of the lucrative transit corridors.

While the Colombian cartels still control most of the production of
cocaine and heroin, explains Jorge Chabat, a drug expert at the Center
for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE), a university in Mexico
City, the more profitable part of the trade - transport to the US, and
distribution there - has come under control of various Mexican
cartels. Those organizations include: Osiel Cardenas' Gulf cartel,
Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's Sinaloa cartel, Arellano Felix's
organization in Tijuana, and the Juarez cartel, said to be led by
Vicente Carrillo.

"With the successful dismantling of some of the biggest cartels in
Colombia, it was only natural that the Mexicans, who had for years had
close contacts with the Colombians and knew the routes and the
business, would take over," says Mr. Chabat. "...and now, they are
fighting among themselves."

The drugs, says Ron Brooks, president of the US National Narcotics
Officers Association in West Covina, Calif., are either flown from
Colombia to Mexico in small planes, or, in the case of marijuana and
methamphetamine, are produced locally. Then, the drugs are shipped
into the US by boat, private vehicles, or in commercial trucks
crossing the border. US Border Patrol statistics show that last year
48 million pedestrians, 90 million private vehicles and 4.4 million
trucks crossed from Mexico into the United States.

According to the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs, as much as 90 percent of the cocaine sold in the
US in 2004 was smuggled through Mexican territory. Mexico is also the
No. 2 supplier of heroin, the largest foreign source of marijuana, and
the largest producer of methamphetamine. Moreover, Mexican criminal
groups now dominate operations in the US, says the bureau's latest
report, released in March, and control most of the 13 primary drug
distribution centers in the US.

US Consulate in Nuevo Laredo closed

Nuevo Laredo, a town of 350,000 in the state of Tamaulipas, which sits
across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas, has been hit hardest by the
drug turf-war violence. Of some 820 registered drug-related killings
in Mexico so far this year, 228 took place in the state of Tamaulipas,
almost half of those in Nuevo Laredo, including two police chiefs and
21 police officers. Six journalists covering drug trafficking along
the border have also been killed in the past 18 months.

Police say this is a battle between Mr. Guzman, who escaped from a
maximum-security prison in 2001 in a laundry cart, and Mr. Cardenas,
who is still locked in a prison near Mexico City.

"We've had something like 109 murders, all but a few of those
connected with the narco war that's taking place here," Michael Yoder,
US consul in Nuevo Laredo, told the press last week, noting that only
six suspects had been arrested. "There really is a feeling that you
can get away with murder in Nuevo Laredo."

The US ambassador to Mexico, Tony Garza, closed the US Consulate in
Nuevo Laredo for a week earlier this month after a downtown shootout
between Mexican traffickers involving high-powered rifles,
rocket-propelled grenades, and bazookas.

"I have heard the voices of those who claim that violence along the
US-Mexico border is an unfortunate fact of life that we must learn to
live with," Garza, who himself grew up in a Texas border town, said in
a statement. As the son of the US-Mexico border, I will not accept
that notion."

But the violence is not limited to Nuevo Laredo.

Rolando Alvarado Navarette, head of the federal police in Ciudad
Juarez, a hardened city of 1.5 million across the border from El Paso,
Texas, says his priority these days is to prevent the Nuevo
Laredo-type violence from spreading to his turf. "So far, there is no
such similar battle for power under way here," he says, alluding to
the belief that the Juarez cartel is securely in control of the
trafficking in this corridor.

The Mexican federal police investigative teams (AFI) under Mr.
Navarette's command, working together with state and municipal police,
go out daily on drug raids here. But their adversaries are still doing
a booming business. In 2000, police here carried out 40 major drug
busts. This year, so far, there have been 200.

"I am not waiting until we become another Nuevo Laredo," says Linda
Lincoln, a 21-year-old mother of two, doing her weekly shopping in a
Ciudad Juarez supermarket. She wants to move a few miles away to El
Paso, Texas. "The violence is getting too ugly now," she says,
relating how there are drug sales and shooting in her neighborhood
nightly. "I want my kids to grow up in a safe place."

Arthur Werge, FBI special agent in El Paso, Texas, points to the low
crime rate in El Paso as evidence the violence is stopping at the
border. "People cross over and abide by the law," he says. "We won't
tolerate anything else.... You won't find people driving around with
AK47s, executing police officers or throwing bodies wrapped up in
blankets on the side of the road.... And you wont find people running
red lights either. Things are different here."

But others, including Mr. Walters, the director the US Office of
National Drug Control Policy, say its only a matter of time before the
border violence reaches into the US. "The killing of rival traffickers
is already spilling across the border," he says. "Witnesses are being
killed. We do not think the border is a shield."

Mexico hits drug traffickers

Since President Vicente Fox came to power in 2000, 36,000 drug
traffickers have been arrested, among them top figures from almost all
the cartels, according to the National Center for Analysis Planning
and Intelligence against Organized Crime in Mexico City (CENAPI).

Furthermore, more than 2,000 police officers were investigated for
corruption in connection with drug trafficking, and 711 officers were
ultimately charged with offenses ranging from receiving bribes from
cartels to kidnapping and murder. The former state police chief in
Ciudad Juarez is under investigation for murder.

But, observers say, these crackdown may have added to the
violence.

Walters admits there have been some unwanted consequences to the
arrests. "President Fox has taken an aggressive role which leads to
. power vacuums and destabilization, with one cartel attacking the
other," he says. "In a way the violence is terrible but also a sign
that the cartels are being squeezed by government."

Chabat says Fox has gone far in fighting the cartels, but not far
enough. Fox, says Chabat, is like a "poor guy trying to impress a rich
girl" - the US. "He gets a nice car for the evening, but does not have
money for flowers." Fox, says Chabat, has arrested some of the top
drug lords - but is unable or unwilling to reform the justice or
police system enough to finish the job.

US officials claim that the Mexican government's reluctance to
extradite top drug criminals - the way Colombia has - is hampering
efforts. Colombia has extradited 173 drug suspects since 2002,
including many major figures, to the US. Mexico extradited a record 34
in 2004, but no major drug lords.

"I understand the difficulty in extraditing nationals, but left in
Mexican jails these people continue to run the show," says Walters.

"And the show," adds Juarez police chief Navarette, "is not a pretty
one."

US crackdown on 'meth' pushes labs into Mexico

Once controlled by West Coast biker gangs, or rural "cooks" working
out of trailers in the US Midwest, the trade in methamphetaminein
recent years has been moving south of the border, say officials.

About 65 percent of the drug, known as Crystal, Ice, Glass, Tweak, Zip
or just Meth is now either being made in bulk quantities in "super
labs" run by Mexican nationals in California, or, increasingly, coming
from labs in Mexico, says Doug Coleman, a special agent at the US Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Such super labs produce 10 pounds or more of the drug in a 24-hour
period, according to DEA statistics. One ounce is considered enough to
get 120 people high. The Mexican labs, says Mr. Coleman, mainly
produce a crystalline version of the drug. It's not more potent than
other forms, but is increasingly popular in the US. "American
consumers think 'ice' is like crack cocaine and better, and will pay
more for it," he says.

"What we have seen in past 3 years is significant," he says in a phone
interview from Washington, DC. "There has been a doubling of seizures
of methamphetamine coming in from Mexico...and, we know of a
significant shipments of pseudoephedrine [a key ingredient in meth]
from factories in Europe, India, and Asia into that country."

Ron Brooks, president of the National Narcotics Officers Association,
which represents 60,000 police nationwide, says the Mexicans are
filling gaps left by the squeezing of the domestic market, in
particular the crackdown on pseudoephedrine.

Under political pressure, US pharmaceutical companies have begun
reformulating their cold remedies to avoid using pseudoephedrine and
30 states have restricted pseudoephedrine sales in retail stores.
Target, Wal-Mart, Rite-Aid and other retailers have moved
nonprescription cold pills behind the pharmacy counter, where meth
cooks have a harder time getting at them.

"We have successfully moved to cut off the chemicals used to make meth
in the US," says White House drug czar John Walters, "But that success
in attacking the problem in one place has pushed it across the border."

"The Mexican cartels were already smuggling in marijuana and heroin
and cocaine," says Mr. Brooks. "And they quickly realized the
crackdown on meth in the US was an opportunity for them to use their
already existing distributions lines and expand the business." By
making meth themselves, says Brooks, the cartels didn't have to share
the profits, as they do with Colombian suppliers.

=95 Ms. Harman is Latin America bureau chief for the Monitor and USA
Today. Eloise Quintanilla contributed to this report.
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