Politician’s Disappearance Raises Questions About Mexico’s Security Strategy

by Kristin Bricker

A much shorter version of this article appears on the Security Sector Reform Centre's blog.

The presumed kidnapping of Diego “The Boss” Fernández de Cevallos, one of Mexico’s most powerful politicians, has put Mexico’s security crisis in the international spotlight yet again.

The Mexican government hasn’t officially classified de Cevallos’ disappearance as a kidnapping. However, the fact that his car was found abandoned on his ranch with traces of blood and signs of struggle has lead his family to plea that his “captors” make contact in order to negotiate his release. At the time of writing, it is unknown if de Cevallos is alive or dead.

The crime itself isn’t shocking—kidnappings are all-too-common in Mexico. Nor would de Cevallos be the first politician to fall victim to violent crime—several local politicians have been killed or attacked in recent weeks as the country prepares for interim elections. What sets this crime apart from others is that the victim is one of the most powerful men in Mexico.

De Cevallos, a member of the President’s National Action Party (PAN), is rumored to be one of the main leaders of the Yunque, a secret ultraconservative Catholic organization that reportedly took control of the PAN in the 1970s and continues to direct its political agenda. He was the PAN’s presidential candidate in 1994 and has served four terms in Congress: one term in the Senate and three in the Chamber of Deputies. His associates and pupils hold key positions in President Felipe Calderón’s cabinet and the Supreme Court. De Cevallos’ law firm was key in blocking a recount in the hotly contested 2006 presidential election, which President Calderón is widely accused of having stolen from opposition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Between 1994 and 1997, the Mexican government investigated his law firm for having represented companies linked to the Juarez drug cartel: a private hospital that performed drug kingpins’ plastic surgeries, a funeral home that held burial services for deceased kingpin Amado Carrillo, and a front company that the cartel used to launder money.

While it hasn’t been confirmed that a drug trafficking organization (DTO) kidnapped de Cevallos, his disappearance has provoked questions about the future of Mexico’s war on drugs.

Ardelio Vargas Fosado, president of the Mexican Congress’ National Defense Commission, told the press “This act marks a turning point. Surely the way we are handling public security and domestic security will have to change… There will have to be a very detailed revision of the strategy that deals with the issue of public security and the risk and threat to the country’s domestic security.”

“Change” as defined by the Calderón administration appears to mean more of the same security strategy. Calderón, reacting to the disappearance of his colleague and close personal friend, compared Mexico to Colombia in the 1980’s: “There are phases that were present in organized crime in the 80’s and the early 90’s [in Colombia] which are presenting themselves in Mexico, and fortunately we are combating them. And even though we might have phases that in their essence could appear to be similar [to those in Colombia], we are confronting them and they will probably occur faster and we can resolve them faster. What took Colombia nearly 20 years, should take us maybe five, six, seven years or less, depending on how persistent we are in our action.”

Calderón’s comparison of Mexico with Colombia is telling. While Colombia did dismantle its major DTOs such as the Cali and Medellin cartels by killing or arresting their leadership, many more boutique cartels sprung up in their place. Cocaine continues to flow from Colombia to the United States; the only difference is that now Mexican DTOs dominate the trafficking routes. Coca cultivation increased by 15% and cocaine production increased by 4% over the course of Plan Colombia, leading the US Government Accountability Office to conclude that “drug reduction goals were not fully met” despite significant US military presence and financial and tactical aid to Colombia’s military.

Mexico appears to be headed down a similar path to failure. Like Colombia, Mexico employs a military and law enforcement strategy that aims to dismantle DTOs through arrests, killings, and seizures. The US government encourages this strategy through the Mérida Initiative, an aid package that supports the Mexican military and police in the war on drugs. One of the Mérida Initiative’s two “performance measures” for Mexico is the “number of high profile drug traffickers and criminal kingpins arrested.”

As Colombia’s experience demonstrates, demand drives the drug trade. As long as there is a significant financial incentive to traffic drugs, the industry will adjust and evolve so that the product reaches the consumer. Just as the disappearance and possible murder of one of Mexico’s most powerful politicians does not in any way weaken the federal government, killing or arresting drug kingpins does not weaken the drug trafficking industry. Just like the government, DTOs adjust to new circumstances and new people step up to fill gaps left by deaths, arrests, and disappearances. And the war continues unabated.

Regardless of how many kingpins the Mexican government kills or extradites to the United States, the industry has accommodated. Since Calderón deployed the military in late 2006 to fight the war on drugs, drug seizures have decreased and drug production has increased in Mexico. Meanwhile, the security situation has deteriorated rapidly. Over the same period, human rights violations committed by the military increased six-fold. The murder rate has increased dramatically every year since 2006, with a total of 22,700 drug war-related deaths. Ciudad Juarez is now considered to be the “murder capital of the world,” and Tijuana is deadlier than Baghdad.

The problem with Mexico’s security strategy is that it simply doesn’t have one. Neither Calderón nor the US government have clearly defined the goals that guide the drug war. Is the goal to decrease drug trafficking-related deaths? The opposite is occurring. Is the goal to completely eliminate the flow of drugs into the United States? That is impossible. Is the goal to reduce the flow of drugs into the United States? If so, exactly how much “reduction” is enough to send the military back to its barracks?

In the absence of a clear set of goals and an endgame scenario, the war on drugs appears to be a never-ending crusade. Up until now, the powerful politicians that wage this war have been immune to its effects. But, as one Mexican magazine wrote in response to de Cevallos’ disappearance, “The ruling party is beginning to harvest that which it has so dedicatedly sowed, because ‘they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.’”

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Who Won and Who Lost in Mexico's "Narco Protests"

Calderon and the Military Become Heroes; Social Organizers and the Poor are Demonized


On February 9, 2009, several hundred young people with their faces covered blocked major highways in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, in a series of highly coordinated actions, paralyzing the city of 1.1 million people. The protesters returned almost every day for over a week, their actions allegedly coordinated by young men on Nextel cell phones. Each time the protesters came back to block the highways, more women with young children in their arms accompanied them.

At first, the protesters' motives were unclear. Then the protesters made it known that they were protesting the use of the military in the war on drugs. Specifically, they called for the withdrawal of the military from civilian policing functions and the resignation of the commander of the 7th Military Zone, Cuauhtémoc Antúnez Pérez.

Within days of the first protest, the Mexican military--which was deployed to Nuevo Leon by President Felipe Calderon in February 2007 to combat organized crime--arrested six alleged members of Los Zetas, the organization founded by Mexican military deserters who work for drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). The government accuses the six men of leading the protests that shut down Monterrey. Among those arrested is Juan Antonio Beltrán Cruz. The military says it found illegal firearms and 71 backpacks filled with school supplies in his pick-up truck. Beltrán Cruz allegedly went to poor neighborhoods with the backpacks to entice parents and young people into participating in the protests.

Some protesters also admitted to the government and the media that they were paid to participate--anywhere from $200 to $1000 pesos (USD $13-$70), with women receiving more money, and women with small children in their arms receiving the most.

On February 17, the day of the most intense protests in Monterrey, anti-military protest blockades occurred in Reynosa and Matamoros in the state of Tamaulipas; various cities in Veracruz; and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua.

On February 18, the military began to patrol the streets of Monterrey. The protesters vanished.

On February 19, President Felipe Calderon gave a speech commemorating Mexican Military Day on the 7th Military Zone base in Monterrey. In his speech, he called the drug cartels "cowards" for paying women, children, and the elderly to protest, and he declared that the military would not return to its barracks until civilian police had the ability to carry on the fight.

Not Your Average Protests

Narco News spoke to an adherent to the Zapatistas' Other Campaign in Ciudad Juarez about the February 17 protests that shut down three international bridges in that city. She actively participates in multiple city-wide organizing networks and says she knows most social organizations and hears about protests before they happen. She wishes to remain anonymous for her own security. The adherent tells Narco News that two of the three blockades were publicized before they happened and known organizations--taxi drivers and families of disappeared people--participated in them. Their singular focus on the military was new--the taxi drivers generally protest the Secretary of Public Transportation's policies regarding licensing, a lack of taxi stands, and other work-related issues. Likewise, the families of the disappeared generally protest violence, insecurity, and militarization, but they never focus solely on the military.

The third protest, however, was "very strange," she says. It was not advertised before it occurred. The adherent says she knows most organizers in the city, but when she watched the protest on the news, she "didn't see a single familiar face." While the adherent says that the February 17 protests were out of character for Ciudad Juarez, she says they weren't nearly as bizarre as the protests that occurred in Monterrey.

In Monterrey, local organizers knew immediately that the anti-military protest was not your average protest. A Monterrey-based collective that is an adherent to the Other Campaign told Narco News that it is in touch with most social organizations in the city that hold protests, and none of them knew any activists or organizations who participated in the protests. They didn't even know the protests were going to occur until they happened--there were no e-mail announcements and no fliers in the streets calling people to protest.

Don Hector Camero of the Monterrey-based NGO Land and Liberty also knew right away that this protest was different. He told Radio Bemba that groups who participate in protests usually make themselves, their, organizations, and their demands known. This was not the case with the anti-military protests. The people who were protesting remained anonymous, even covering their faces. They didn't make their demands immediately known, and they didn't express how they themselves have suffered since the military hit the streets in their city.

Camero knows at least some of the participants were paid. He recounted to Radio Bemba how a family member of a friend accepted $500 pesos to participate in the protests. The man of the house had just lost his job, and someone offered his wife $500 pesos to go particpate in a blockade. She accepted the offer.

The Monterrey Other Campaign adherents also became suspicious when they saw the police reaction to the protest. While this protest was one of the more aggressive protests Monterrey has seen in recent history, the police were more light-handed than they've ever been during previous protests. Burning barricades don't happen on the streets of Monterrey durign normal protests, says Narco News' source. But when 80 or 90 young people set a barricade ablaze on Fidel Velasquez Ave. during the anti-military protests, the police chose dialogue over repression. "If social organziations did that there would have been very strong repression," says one Other Campaign adherent who wishes to remain anonymous due to fear of reprisal.

Camero agrees. "Young people gather in the Civil College Plaza in Monterrey. As soon as the young people start to congregate, the police are on top of them. They don't let the young people meet. They [the young people] show educational, political, and civic movies there--which isn't a sin--and they [the police] don't let them carry out their cultural activities. They run them out of the place. But in this case [the "narco protests"], the police acted very prudently."

The police and military's "prudent" response to the protests is widely documented in Mexican media. Approximately fifty people were detained during one of the protests. They were freed hours later after paying a $500 peso bail. Thanks to Mexico's draconian organized crime laws, these people, whom the government accuses of working for drug cartels, could have been held without bail--but they weren't. Reforma reports that one young woman was detained on Constitution Ave, but was freed minutes later. Soon thereafter she was seen blocking Gonzalitos Ave.

It is unknown why the police behaved so prudently. The local government's official reason is that so many women, elderly people, and children participated in the protests. Narco News' Monterrey source reports rumors that the police had received threats. That is a likely scenario: the day after police arrested alleged Zeta Beltrán Cruz with a 9mm submachine gun and 71 backpacks in his possession, a police commander involved in his apprehension was murdered in broad daylight. The attackers shot him so many times that his face was unrecognizable. The shells recovered from the scene of the crime show that at least some of the weapons used--a 9mm submachine gun and an assault rifle--are limited under Mexican law as exclusively for military use (though law has not prevented these weapons from winding up in the hands of drug cartel members).

The Winners and Losers in the "Narco Protests"

During the "narco protests," the world's attention was focused on one question: Who was behind the protests? The government says the Gulf cartel and its armed associates Los Zetas organized the Monterrey protests. Some have quietly speculated that the government itself set up the protests to boost the military's popularity. The truth is that no one except the protest organizers themselves will ever really know who was behind these protests. Therefore, the real question isn't "Who did it?" but "Why did they do it?"

The reasoning behind the careful planning and masterful execution of the Monterrey protests is best understood by evaluating who gained and who lost when the "narco protests" finally ended.

The Winners

President Felipe Calderon: Calderon ran on a "get tough on crime" platform. Within days of taking office, he made the highly controversial decision to deploy soldiers to states where he felt territory had been lost to drug traffickers. Since then, drug violence has skyrocketed: in 2008, the number of organized crime-related murders more than doubled the 2007 total, making the drug war more deadly than the drugs themselves. However, the day he arrived at a Monterrey military base to give his Military Day address was the first day in over a week that no "narco protests" occurred in Monterrey. Whereas before Calderon was associated with surging homicide rates, chaos, and violence, he is now associated with peace and tranquility. As the anonymous Monterrey Other Campaign adherent put it, "Everyone was talking about a 'failed state,' and then Calderon arrives and he brings order."

The National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI): 2009 is an election year in Nuevo Leon. Both the Monterrey mayor position and the governorship are up for grabs on July 5. Monterrey is currently controlled by the PAN, while Nuevo Leon's governor is a PRIista. Both contests have turned into races to see which politician can repress dissent better than the rest of the candidates. The PAN, being the party behind the deployment of the military to combat organized crime, already has a proven "iron fist" (mano dura) track record when it comes to organized crime. However, the PRI, which ran Mexico with an iron fist for over seven decades, won't be outdone so easily. Rodrigo Medina de la Cruz, the PRI's gubernatorial candidate, proposed that the Nuevo Leon state congress pass a law making blocking a road "in a violent manner" punishable by up to six years in prison and a fine of $7,500-$25,000 pesos (USD$492-$1,639). Monterrey's PAN mayor, Adalberto Madero Quiroga, delivered his own proposal to the state congress: street blockades should be punishable by six years in prison, but if someone dies during the protest, the sentence is doubled to 12 years. Quiroga's proposal does not specify if the 12-year sentence applies only if protesters kill the person, or if it applies when police or the military kill someone, too. In Mexico, the police, the military, and pro-government paramilitaries are generally responsible for protester deaths, not the protesters themselves.

The Military: The Monterrey protests have turned the military into heroes. Press and eyewitness reports say that Monterrey citizens literally welcomed the soldiers with open arms when they began to patrol the city's streets just one day prior to Calderon's arrival. People on the streets reportedly cheered and clapped when they saw the soldiers. Narco News' Monterrey contact says that "the city is completely militarized"--and people seem to like it.

If someone wanted to stage protests to boost the military's popularity, Monterrey is the perfect place to do it. The Monterrey collective told Narco News that there was never significant anti-military sentiment in Monterrey, despite the military's presence in Nuevo Leon for over a year. Camero explains why: "In Monterrey there haven't been the sorts of violations committed by soldiers that there have been in other places. I'm not saying they don't exist; we've had 150 or 200 PFP agents on top of us [the Federal Preventive Police, or PFP, are federal police that have also been deployed in the war on drugs and participate in joint operations with the military]. But in general, soldiers' patrols are carried out with caution. There have been some complaints due to mistaken house searches or the military checkpoints. But in general there haven't been a lot of complaints regarding their treatment of the population. So these protests, where the young people have not only covered their faces, but they're also walking around with sticks threatening drivers or young ladies, have created a situation where the population is standing behind the military. They're saying, 'We're with the military.' So the protests are actually provoking the opposite" of their stated goal, which is the withdrawal of the military.

Indeed. Just two weeks after the protest ended, the federal government announced that it was sending an additional 5,000 soldiers to Ciudad Juarez, which is Mexico's most violent city and also the site of a protest the media linked to the "narco protests." One thousand federal police and two thousand soldiers have already arrived. Prior to the recent build-up, 2,000 soldiers were stationed in Ciudad Juarez, meaning that when all of the reinforcements arrive, 7,000 soldiers will patrol the city of 1.4 million people. That's one soldier for every 200 civilians in a city with a population density of over twelve thousand people per square mile, or sixty soldiers per square mile. While the federal government's announcement is probably not a direct result of the "narco protests," the protests surely didn't hurt military public relations prior to one of the more intense military surges in the country.

Any DTO that Collaborates with Sectors of the Military: In December 2008, Narco News correspondent Bill Conroy laid out the evidence that corruption within the Mexican military may not be limited to a few isolated incidents of (albeit high-ranking) officers on the cartel payroll in his story "Juarez Murders Shine Light on an Emerging 'Military Cartel.'" One source, former DEA agent Celerino “Cele” Castillo III, told Conroy:

During the presidential elections, El Chapo [Joaquin Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa drug trafficking organization, or DTO] supported [Mexican President] Calderon. Calderon then rented the military to El Chapo to take out Osiel [Cardenas Guillen, leader of the Gulf DTO, which controlled the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo]. Keep in the back of your mind, why has Chapo not been arrested?

Calderon took back the military and is now working hand in hand with El Chapo. … [U.S.] Iraq [War] veterans were acting as mercs for the Mexican military. Right now, as we speak, there are U.S. Iraq veterans work ing for this organization. They are doing the enforcement work on this side [of the U.S. border] for the Mexican military. They are collecting the … profits of drug sales in the U.S. They [targets who owe money to the drug organization] are grabbed and given 24 hours to wire some of the money into Mexico bank accounts. If not, they are executed. ...

The old M-79 grenade launcher uses the 40 mm round. The ones that were laying on the table in the picture [of weapons confiscated by Mexican authories] of today’s paper. What the story is not telling is these 40mm [rounds] are U.S. military issued. How about them apples?

Conroy goes on to write, "Castillo adds that he recently was provided information that indicates another group made quite famous by the media, the Zetas (a U.S.-trained Mexican special operations group that defected from the Mexican military) is now assisting the Mexican military in its narco-trafficking operations along the border."

In the same story, Conroy quotes Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, a former high-ranking member of the Juarez DTO who is an informant in the House of Death case, as he describes how the Mexican Navy ran drugs for his DTO from Colombia.

Conroy's story does not point to one DTO that has control over the Mexican military. He mentions three or four separate DTOs who are allegedly in cahoots with the military: El Chapo Guzman's organization, Los Zetas (who allegedly work for the Gulf DTO or anyone else who pays well), and the Juarez DTO. Rather, Conroy's evidence and sources show that in a clandestine industry where to survive one has to keep his friends close and his enemies closer; where alliances and rivalries change with the wind; and where politicians, police, and military officers go to the highest bidder, the military has emerged as another player in the game. Just like other cartels, the "military cartel's" alliances shift as conditions change, and it finds new allies if the price is right. Different military officers may choose to ally themselves and the troops under their command with different DTOs. And even if rumors that President Calderon has a preferred DTO and is using his military campaign to take out that DTO's enemies are true, Calderon can't keep all of his troops in line any more than El Chapo can keep all the cells of the Sinaloa "Federation" in line.

So, while it is possible that one DTO or an alliance between a DTO and a sector of the military masterminded the "narco protests," no one knows which military officer and his troops are working with which DTO until someone snitches on the officer. Even then, it's not certain that the snitch is telling the truth. So the official and clear-cut winner in the "narco protests" was the military as a whole. Whichever DTOs are currently aligned with sectors of the military just saw their ally's power, and therefore their own, increase. And because the military, which has been fighting a constant public relations battle over its involvement in the war on drugs, just increased its power and popularity, it may have also just increased the going rate for its loyalty.

The Losers

In addition to any drug cartel that is not aligned with the military, particularly in regions where the "narco protests" occurred, civil society suffered a significant blow thanks to the protests.

Social Organizers and Organizations: The "anti-military" protests in Monterrey succeeded in neutralizing very legitimate demands (that the military withdraw from civilian policing duties) and complaints (that soldiers performing civilian policing functions without an official declaration of war is unconstitutional).

When anti-military protests broke out in areas that do have a history of legitimate protests against militarization, such as Veracruz and Ciudad Juarez, there was immediate speculation in the press that they were also linked to drug traffickers. However, unlike Monterrey, no concrete proof has emerged that these protests were organized by anyone other than the protesters themselves. While an Other Campaign adherent in Ciudad Juarez told Narco News that one of the anti-military blockades of an international bridge in that city was "very strange" when compared to other similar protests, she did say that legitimate social organizations were definitely involved in the other protests and blockades that occurred in other parts of Ciudad Juarez that day. Even though the government verified that legitimate family members of persons allegedly disappeared by the military participated, the press reported--without citing further evidence--that unidentified "security agents" said people were hired to protest. While the government has not presented any proof or made any official statements that at least some protesters in Ciudad Juarez received compensation for their participation, if someone did pay people to protest while legitimate organizations were also protesting, they have succeeded in ripping away all credibility that legitimate social organizations had in that city. And even if not a single protester in Juarez participated because they were paid, the specter remains--the media discussed the protests in all four states as if they were the same, without a shred of proof that participants outside of Monterrey received any compensation.

Organizers are thorns in the side of undemocratic power. As such, organizers can be as much of a liability for narcos as they are for the government. In locales where the narcos own or are the government, or in regions where narcos are the caciques (local political bosses), organizers threaten DTOs' power. Whoever was behind the protests--be it the government or a DTO or a mix of both--has further consolidated its power by stripping organizers of theirs.

The "narco protests" didn't just serve to damage organizers' credibility; the government is also using them to push measures to repress protests and gain some control over them, much like the US government does. As previously mentioned, Nuevo Leon officials have proposed 6-12 year prison sentences and high fines for blocking a road during a project, which is currently a traffic violation. The one proposed exception to the law is if a legitimate protest group advises the government prior to its action that it wishes to block a road during a protest. This will effectively introduce a protest permit system to Mexico, in which protesters who wish to protest the government must first ask permission of the government to do so. The system is widely in place in the United States and gives the government significant control over protests. The government tells organizers where they may protest and when. When the government does not want protests to occur, it outright denies permits to protesters, as was the case during the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Philadelphia in 2000. The city government granted protest permits to the RNC for the entire city for the duration of the convention, leaving none for social organizations (the RNC, of course, did not use the permits to protest itself--it simply wanted to lock out activists). The only permit given to protest organizers was in a "free speech zone" (implicating that "free speech" was only a right in that area, but not in the rest of the city) which was a fenced-off area in a corner of a parking lot so far away from the Convention Center that no one even noticed the few protesters who decided to use the zone. If protest serves to raise the costs of a government policy or decision such as a war, permitted protests reduce the costs to the government to a minor and temporary headache.

Thanks to the "narco protests," public opinion in Monterrey has given the government and pro-government civilians the green light to kill demonstrators. Narco News' Monterrey contact sent comments posted on online forums that he says are accurate representations of how many Monterrey citizens feel about the protests. In a forum on the Monterrey newspaper El Norte's website, one poster says, "If you're in your car and one of them [the protesters] crosses your path, run them over and don't stop even if you leave them lying on the ground. Don't even turn around, as if you'd run over a toad..." Another poster says that after running over a protester, motorists should put the car in reverse "to see if they still want to act like clowns for a couple of backpacks." Yet another says that if a citizen runs across protesters on a bridge, s/he should throw the protesters off the bridge. No one on the forum criticizes comments that encourage murder.

Being an organizer in Mexico is already dangerous, even without public support for their murder. This past February, the Mexican Supreme Court refused to hold accountable the police who killed Alexis Benhumea and Francisco Javier Cortes in the 2006 San Salvador Atenco protests. In its decision, it didn't even acknowledge that police were responsible for the murders, even though a tear gas canister killed Benhumea and the gun that killed Cortes is of the caliber that is issued to state police commanders but is illegal for civilians to carry. Also in February, armed men "who appeared to be soldiers" abducted two indigenous human rights activists in Guerrero and tortured and murdered them.

Colonias Populares: Colonias populares are poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of cities. They have to fight for basic municipal services such as paved roads, running water, and sewer and drainage systems.

Narco News has documented how the joint federal police-military operation in Michoacan is being used to repress colonias populares, particularly those who belong to social organizations. Given that there is proof that residents of colonias populares were paid to block roads during the "narco protests," it can be expected that government repression will increase in Monterrey's colonias populares--even in those that did not participate.

If the blockades provoked rage against protesters in general, it provoked a particularly fierce rage against Monterrey's poorest residents because it is known that some of them participated in exchange for school supplies and money. One poster on El Norte's forum wrote that the military should be deployed against the protesters (it was deployed six days after the post) and that "if they [the soldiers] kill those people no one will miss them, they stream out of every trash dump or piece of poop...a couple of dead ones won't hurt anyone, it's better that way because we'd be doing society a favor by not keeping fucking people who are dying of hunger alive, because these idiots cost us in an indirect way."

The anger towards Monterrey's poor residents is misdirected, says Camero, because it ignores the conditions, created by the government itself, that led to people blocking roads in exchange for school supplies and cash. "There is a crisis of unemployment and of abandonment of young people. There's no guarantee [of employment for young people]. I'm not even talking about school or sports here--I'm talking about employment. With this abandonment it's easy to make these sorts of offers [to get paid to protest]. This is a very strange, unimaginable scenerio, but it can easily happen because of the situation."

Camero blames the government for spending millions of pesos in public money on maintaining political parties when it doesn't adequately supply schools with basic necessities. "How is it possible that the narcos are offering people school supplies? We have a long-term campaign to get school supplies in [Nuevo Leon] schools. These are conditions that the government has allowed to develop, and organized crime can take advantage of them."

Originally from Narco News: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/03/who-won-and-who-lost-mexicos-narco-protests

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DEA's Operation Xcellerator is Another Justice Department Dog and Pony Show

Despite the "Largest and Hardest Hitting Operation to Ever Target" the Sinaloa Cartel, the DEA is Merely Treading Water in the War on Drugs

On February 25, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) held a press conference celebrating the culmination of Operation Xcellerator, which it says resulted in the arrests of 755 Sinaloa cartel members in the United States and Mexico. Law enforcement agencies arrested the last 52 suspects the day of the press conference, which the DoJ held on the same day the House of Representatives voted on 2009 funding for Plan Mexico. Plan Mexico, also known as the Merida Initiative, is the US government's estimated $1.6 billion military and law enforcement aid package to support the Mexican government's increasingly violent war on drugs.

With Plan Mexico, the United States government wedded itself to Mexican president Felipe Calderon's stated strategy of attacking the big drug trafficking organizations in Mexico head-on. Calderon didn't invent this strategy; it is the same strategy the United States and Colombia used in Colombia under Plan Colombia.

Since the strategy in Mexico has not decreased the levels of illicit drug flows into the United States, and because it has not decreased drug-related violence (drug-related murders more than doubled in Mexico last year), pressure is on both the Mexican and US governments to prove some quantifiable successes in the war on drugs. They're doing this by making (or creating) high-profile arrests of suspected members of Mexico-based drug trafficking organizations (DTOs).

DEA Acting Administrator Michele M. Leonhart stated that Operation Xcellorator resulted in the arrests of "US cell heads" who worked for the Sinaloa cartel. She went on to say, "We disrupted this cartel's operations." However, unlike previous busts, the DEA did not state the name of a single high-priority target that was arrested or even indicted in Operation Xcellerator.

In fact, the only Consolidarity Priority Organizational Target mentioned in the press release announcing the culmination of Operation Xcellerator was Victor Emilio Cazares-Salazar, aka Victor Emilio Cazares Gastelum, an alleged Sinaloa cartel "command and control leader" who is still at large. The US government indicted Cazares-Salazar in absentia under Operation Xcellerator's predecessor, Operation Imperial Emperor. The DEA says Operation Imperial Emperor resulted in the arrests of over 400 members of the "Victor Emilio Cazares-Salazar drug trafficking organization."

The DEA's mention of Cazares-Salazar in the Operation Xcellerator press release lead to confusion amongst the corporate media as to who he is and what he did or does within the Sinaloa cartel. The DoJ press release says, "The 21-month [Operation Xcellerator] investigation began shortly after the culmination of Operation Imperial Emperor, an investigation which resulted in the indictment of Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF)-designated Consolidated Priority Organizational Target (CPOT) Victor Emilio Cazarez-Salazar, believed to be a command and control leader within the Sinaloa Cartel. CPOT Victor Cazarez-Salazar remains a fugitive." Both the Washington Times and the Financial Times incorrectly stated that Cazares-Salazar is the leader of the Sinaloa cartel.

This isn't the first time there's been DEA-related confusion regarding Cazares-Salazar. In its press release announcing his indictment under Operation Imperial Emperor, the DEA didn't even mention the Sinaloa cartel. Rather, it claimed that Cazares-Salazar is the leader of his very own drug cartel, the "Victor Emilio Cazares-Salazar drug trafficking organization," a "drug empire that rose to such heights of power in only two years." Such a statement is suspicious because it is very unlikely that the extremely powerful Mexican DTOs, most of whom have existed in some form or another for decades, would allow a newcomer to create his own DTO and turn it into a "sprawling drug domain, headquartered in Mexico, [that] penetrated deep into all corners of this country" without a fight.

Who is Victor Emilio Cazares-Salazar?

To understand who Cazares-Salazar is, it's important to understand how the Sinaloa cartel is allegedly structured. Hierarchical cartel structures have proven to be prone to decapitation--if the leader or leaders are taken out, the organization lies in shambles. The Sinaloa cartel, on the other hand, allegedly has various DTO leaders (often entire families) who work together in an alliance known as "the Federation." Sometimes some leaders fall out of favor with each other (such as in the case of the alleged feud between Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and the Beltran Leyva brothers), but the Federation continues to control large swaths of territory in western Mexico.

Victor Emilio Cazares-Salazar is the brother of Blanca Margarita Cazares Salazar, who is allegedly head of the Sinaloa cartel's money laundering operations. The Cazares-Salazars are allegedly allied with the Zambada family DTO, another Sinaloa cartel associate.

It was allegedly Victor Cazares' alliance with Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada that allowed him to take over the territory he allegedly controls. The Tijuana magazine Zeta writes, "One theory says that after the capture of Arellano Felix Organization [aka the Tijuana cartel] deputy Gilberto Higuera Guerrero on August 5, 2004, in Mexicali, his enemy, deputy Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada from the Sinaloa cartel, gained more territory in the capital [Mexicali, the capital of Baja California] and then cleared the way for Victor Emilio Cazares Gastelum. Coincidentally, around that time the DEA began to detect Victor Emilio Cazares Gastelum's cell's drug activity operations."

Gilberto Higuera Guerrero, for his part, gained control of Mexicali when the Arellano Felix Organization chose him to replace his brother, Ismael Higuera Guerrero, after the latter was arrested in 2000.

A pattern begins to emerge: government authorities can arrest or kill as many cartel lackeys or even king pins as they want, but as long as there is a lucrative market, there will always be more to step up and take their place. Cazares-Salazar is at least the third consecutive alleged Mexicali deputy that the US government has indicted since 2000. With the arrest of Gilberto Higuera Guerrero, the Arellano Felix Organization reportedly lost control of Mexicali. But El Mayo's organization moved in to fill the vacuum, and the drugs flow north unabated.

Furthermore, every two years the US government announces hundreds of arrests of alleged Sinaloa cartel members, but the Sinaloa federation adapts, fills in the holes created by the arrests, and remains one of the strongest drug trafficking organizations in the country. And if someday the US and Mexican governments manage to significantly weaken the Sinaloa cartel, as they did with the Arellano Felix cartel, there will be someone else to fill that vacuum as well.

Are All 755 Operation Xcellerator Suspects Really Sinaloa Cartel Members?

Like most operations of this size, Operation Xcellerator was a joint effort between the DEA, FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Marshals Service, attorneys from the Criminal Division’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section, and state, local, and foreign law enforcement agencies, according to the DoJ press release. The press release also notes the that the defendants are "entitled to a fair trial in which it will be the government’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."

The Department of Justice's past behavior in operations of this magnitude raise questions about how many of the 755 suspects arrested in Operation Xcellerator will actually be convicted, and how many are really Sinaloa cartel operatives or "associates"--and how many aren't.

That very question came into focus in an FBI dragnet called “Sudden Impact,” an 18-month operation that targeted false medical claims in connection with staged or fictitious accidents, according to the FBI. Former FBI director Louis Freeh wrote in his "A Report to the American People on the Work of the FBI, 1993 - 1998" that Operation Sudden Impact resulted in the arrest or indictment of 723 people. Like Operation Xcellerator, it was an almost two-year investigation that resulted in arrests throughout the operation. In both operations, a significant number of arrests were made on the day of the press conference to add to the excitement and media show.

The FBI mechanizations behind Sudden Impact have been detailed in prior media reports, including a past story published by Narco News.

Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] documents made public as a result of those news reports show that Operation Sudden Impact was designed to coordinate media coverage with raids and arrests made during a planned “national takedown” day on May 24, 1995. The goal of this coordination was to maximize positive public exposure for the FBI.

Included in the FOIA records released by the FBI about Sudden Impact is a Dec. 1, 1993, memo from FBI headquarters to some 40 field offices, which states the following:

It is recognized that (FBI) field offices will be at various stages of their investigation at the takedown date. It is believed that each office will most likely still be in a position to contribute significantly to the takedown event. At the culmination of this initiative, field offices may choose to participate by executing arrests or search warrants, announcing indictments, or announcing recorded convictions. Prior to this event, the media packages will be prepared by (FBI headquarters) and distributed to field office media representatives.

A fill-in-the-blanks press release was even drafted at FBI headquarters and provided to the local field offices to assist with maximizing the press coverage of the “takedown” day.

"Field offices are encouraged to prepare their own media release and as a guide, the FBI National Press Office has prepared the following draft copy of a media release for the May 24 takedown," states a May 19, 1995, memo included in the FOIA documents.

The pre-packaged press release from FBI headquarters included a narrative about Sudden Impact, information about the number of people to be arrested and even canned comments from then-FBI Director Louis Freeh.

The pressure exerted by FBI headquarters to get all of the field offices to “contribute significantly to the takedown event" even if some were "at various stages of their investigation at the takedown date” poses a risk, however. That pressure to “contribute” — when it comes from superiors who hold the keys to career advancement — can foster a bandwagon effect that results in bad police work.

In fact, according to the media reports, that is precisely what seems to have played out in the case of the FBI's Sudden Impact.

In one case, a San Antonio lawyer who was a target of Sudden Impact—his office raided and name splashed all over the media—was never even charged with a crime. In addition, according to FOIA documents, FBI headquarters later claimed it had no record of the attorney ever being of "investigatory interest" to the bureau.

A similar miscarriage of justice also seems to have played out for a Houston attorney whose law office also was raided (and his name released to the media) as part of Sudden Impact. In that case, the attorney was charged initially with insurance fraud, but the charges were later dismissed, according to the media reports.

Even though they were never found guilty, both men were included in Operation Sudden Impact's "723 arrests or indictments" [emphasis added].

Press manipulation was not the only strategy employed by the FBI, the FOIA documents reveal. Operation Sudden Impact also was intended to impress Congress and affect pending legislation:

This initiative [Sudden Impact] through the diligent efforts of the participating field offices has served to further establish the FBI as a law enforcement agency actively involved in combating health care fraud," states the May 4, 1995, FBI memo surfaced through the FOIA documents. "Congressional leadership also recognizes the bureau's capabilities in investigating complex health care fraud cases and legislation has been introduced that would provide the FBI and all law enforcement with improved investigative tools, better criminal statutes and investigative resources.

The DEA's Operation Xcellerator was also conveniently timed to coincide with Congressional legislation important to that agency: Plan Mexico. The House of Representatives voted on legislation that included Plan Mexico on the same day the Department of Justice held its press conference announcing the Operation Xcellerator arrests.

Plan Mexico has received sharp criticism from both the left and the right. Activist organizations such as Witness for Peace and Friends of Brad Will have pressured the US Congress to make the Merida Initiative a stand-alone bill to be considered on its own merits. Some Republican congressmembers supported this effort in 2008. They don't believe Plan Mexico funding would pass so easily if it weren't tucked into broad hundred billion dollar spending bills.

They may be right. The "war on drugs" approach to addressing drug problems is becoming increasingly unpopular. As Senator John Kerry noted during Hillary Clinton's Secretary of State confirmation hearing, "An October 2008 report by the GAO [Government Accountability Office] concluded that, although Plan Colombia improved security conditions in Colombia, it has not significantly reduced the amount of illicit drugs entering the United States." What Kerry didn't mention is that the GAO report said that cocaine production in Colombia had actually increased under Plan Colombia.

The reason for Plan Colombia's failure is simple: drug traffickers evolve to adapt to changing market conditions. When US funds paid for aerial detection and fumigation programs, Colombian growers moved away from large-scale cultivation in open fields in favor of smaller plots hidden under trees or in tall weeds or amongst other crops. When the military brought down the Medellin and Cali cartels, who once dominated the Central American-Mexican corridor to the United States, Colombian traffickers formed smaller boutique cartels. These cartels no longer control the Central American-Mexican corridor; their Mexican colleagues do. The case of Mexicali and how it has changed hands over the years as the US imprisons the deputies who control it is reproduced at the international level: the players change, but the game continues.

As the failures of the war on drugs become more obvious, the DEA finds itself relying on one of the only tools it has left to shore up support for pro-drug war legislation: media spectacle.

However, in its efforts to shore up support for the drug war, the DEA may actually be playing into the Mexican DTO's hands. If a significant number of the Operation Xcellerator arrests are not associated with the Sinaloa cartel as the DEA claims, the arrests may have benefited major DTOs.

DTOs have been known to propose truces to the Mexican government that include taking out "unorganized crime," that is, the small-time drug runners in exchange for the government leaving the large DTOs alone. Proceso reporter Ricardo Ravelo obtained a Mexican Secretary of Defense report dated January 14, 1997, that illustrates such proposals. The proposal was from the late Juarez cartel leader Amado Carrillo Fuentes to then-Secretary of Defense Enrique Cervantes Aguirre. Ravelo sums up the document in his book, "Los Capos":

"He [Carrillo Fuentes] didn't want to turn himself in. He was interested in negotiating and coming to an agreement with the government. He also asked that his family be left in peace and that they let him work without being bothered. In turn, he would grant the State 50% of his possessions; he would collaborate to do away with unorganized crime; he would act like a businessman, not a criminal; he wouldn't sell drugs in national territory, but rather in the United States and European countries; he would bring in dollars to help the national economy; and he wouldn't act violently nor in rebellion."

General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, Mexico's former drug tsar who was arrested for his alleged ties to the Juarez cartel, gave testimony that one of Carrillo Fuentes' agents had three meetings with Secretary Cervantes Aguirre regarding the proposal.

The proposal was never finalized. Both Amado Carrillo Fuentes and a lawyer involved in the negotiations who claimed to represent the Secretary of Defense died in 1997. Carrillo Fuentes reportedly died of a fatal overdose of Dormicum during plastic surgery to change his appearance. The overdose was foreseeable and preventable, leading to speculation that he was murdered*. The lawyer, Rafael Perez Ayala, was found stuffed in the truck of his car.

* There are also reports that Carrillo Fuentes staged his death, and that he is not actually dead.

From Narco News: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/02/deas-operation-xcellerator-another-justice-department-dog-and-pony-

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Why Plan Mexico will Crash and Burn

Rampant corruption on both sides of the border exacerbate the ineffectiveness of an already failed strategy


Plan Mexico, the US military and police aid package to the Mexican government, is based on a failed “war on drugs” model. This model prioritizes criminalizing the drug trade at the expense of focusing on the harmful effects of drug abuse and addiction as a public health problem. The result has been a blood-soaked disaster.

The War at Home

The United States’ war on drugs kicked into high gear beginning with the Nixon administration in the 1970s. President Nixon increased the federal resources dedicated to prosecuting drug crimes and increased penalties for drug dealers. The Reagan administration followed suit and increased penalties for drug users, especially crack users. The first Bush administration continued the march to war by appointing Bill Bennett as drug czar. Rolling Stone’s Ben Wallace-Wells reports that Bennett once commented: “Two words sum up my entire approach: consequences and confrontation.”

Decades of drug war policy decisions were made based on rhetoric, not hard data. A 2001 report from the National Research Council on the drug war concluded, “The existing drug-use monitoring systems are strikingly inadequate to support the full range of policy decisions that the nation must make.... It is unconscionable for this country to continue to carry out a public policy of this magnitude and cost without any way of knowing whether and to what extent it is having the desired effect."

After decades and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on get-tough drug policies, the war on drugs’ collateral damage is painfully evident. The Drug Policy Alliance Network (DPAN) states that approximately 1.5 million people are arrested each year in the United States for drug law violations, making the US the biggest jailer in the world—at the expense of US taxpayers. Even the chronically ill are fair game in the war on drugs: the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the federal government can prosecute medical marijuana patients, even in states where medical marijuana is legal. And the drug war is making US residents even sicker: because the federal government refuses to fund needle exchange programs, intravenous drug users are at high risk for hepatitis and HIV infection. Thirty-four percent of all reported new HIV infections are amongst intravenous drug users, with 75% of reported new HIV infections amongst women and children being in some way related to intravenous drug use. Needle exchange programs, while painfully under-funded and stymied by some states’ laws against the possession, distribution, and sale of syringes, are scientifically proven to lower infection rates.

The US government’s blanket criminalization of all narcotics use has focused the overwhelming majority of its resources on enforcing an arbitrary notion of “right and wrong” at the expense of the nation’s health. A better policy would focus on the harmful consequences of drug abuse, redirecting drug war resources to drug treatment programs so that people who desperately want to quit can do so.

While the majority of US citizens support drug treatment over incarceration, incarceration still remains the priority in many states. This reporter watched as a mother arrested for a drug violation begged a Philadelphia judge to sentence her to a drug treatment program instead of jailing her. She explained that she’d already been in jail and it didn’t get her off drugs, and that she couldn’t get into a drug treatment program she could afford. The judge sentenced her to prison.

In the US, this mother’s story is not unique. There are numerous reports of drug addicts dying from overdoses while on waiting lists for beds in rehab centers. Despite Virginia’s state Congress-led study that found that many rehab programs cost less than incarceration, states all over the country continue to cut funds. The federal government is also cutting funds for drug rehab: while the US government hopes to spend between $400-$470 million on Plan Mexico in 2009, President Bush proposed a $73 million cut in domestic drug treatment programs in the 2009 budget he sent to Congress.

The War Abroad

Bush’s criminal under-funding of drug treatment programs in the US flies in the face of the logic of supply and demand: while the US continues to be the world’s biggest market for illicit drugs, drug traffickers will find a way to produce and transport those drugs into the United States, even if they have to kidnap, torture, or kill every rival, cop, and journalist in Mexico to do it. They have an impressive incentive: drug trafficking is an estimated $50 billion a year industry in Mexico alone.

Plan Mexico, officially known as the Merida Initiative, has a number of striking similarities to Plan Colombia. So far, the US has sunk nearly $5 billion in US personnel, armament, aid, pesticides, and training to Colombia’s military and police in order to continue the drug war in that country. The results: Plan Colombia has exacerbated violence in the region, has been implicated in massacres of indigenous communities in resistance, and has failed to meet its own benchmarks.

When Presidents Clinton and Pastrana proposed Plan Colombia, their stated goal was to cut Colombia’s drug production in half. However, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported this month that coca cultivation has actually risen 15% since 2000, when Plan Colombia first went into effect. Cocaine production rose 4% over the same period.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) explains how drug cartels have managed to increase production despite the unprecedented military offensive: “Coca growers, primarily in Colombia, have sustained and seemingly increased overall cultivation in South America by expanding growing operations to areas where large-scale coca cultivation had not been reported previously.” This increase happened despite the fact that “[t]he U.S. State Department reports that 2006 was the sixth consecutive year of record aerial spraying in Colombia, surpassing the previous year's record by 24 percent.”

This increase occurred because, with US demand for Colombian drugs unaffected, drug cartels have adapted and evolved. Producers have abandoned cultivating large open coca fields in favor of many tiny ones hidden under trees or in tall weeds in order to avoid aerial detection and spraying. When US and Colombian forces took out the notorious Medellin and Cali cartels, drug trafficking was virtually unaffected. Scores of smaller “boutique” cartels stepped up to take their place almost immediately. These “cartelitos” have managed to keep a lower profile than their drug kingpin predecessors. Furthermore, whereas the Colombian cartels previously dominated drug trafficking (including through the Central American-Mexico corridor to the United States), the US DoJ reports that Colombian drug trafficking organizations increasingly rely on Mexican cartels to smuggle heroin to the United States. As for cocaine trafficking, in 2002 approximately 72% of the cocaine that entered the US traveled the Mexico-Central American corridor. This number rose to 90% in 2006. Mexican drug cartels now dominate the US market thanks to the evolution of the drug trade caused by Plan Colombia.

While Plan Colombia may have failed to stop or even slow down drug trafficking, it has succeeded in opening up Colombia to international financial institutions and transnational corporations. When it announced the $7.5 billion Plan, the impoverished Colombian government pledged $4 billion of its own money towards the project. Colombia then took out a $2.7 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in December 1999. In exchange for the loan, it agreed to IMF-imposed structural adjustment and economic austerity measures. Global Exchange reports that in order to comply with the IMF’s demands, Colombia “cut health care, education and other social services for millions of Colombians, laying off tens of thousands of workers in the process.” Colombia’s neoliberal nightmare isn’t over: George W. Bush has proposed a hotly contested free trade agreement for Colombia.

Internal displacement skyrocketed under Plan Colombia. In 2001, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that the decades-long civil war in Colombia had resulted in 525,000 internally displaced people. By 2005, the year Plan Colombia officially expired (although to this day Colombia remains the biggest American recipient of US foreign military financing), the UNHCR estimated two million internally displaced people. The Catholic Church carried out its own independent investigation that same year and counted 2.9 million displaced people.

The Center for International Policy’s Colombia Program reports that arbitrary arrests also skyrocketed under Plan Colombia. During the 6-year period between 1996 and 2002, there were 2,869 documented arbitrary arrests by Colombia government security forces. During the 2-year period between 2002 and 2004, when Plan Colombia was in full effect, there were 6,332 documented arbitrary arrests.

The Center for International Policy’s Americas Program reports that other human rights indicators also suffered: “Killings of unionists increased from 91 in 2003 to 94 in 2004.” The Americas Program also reports a “rise in reports of torture and disappearances, as well as arbitrary detentions and extra-judicial executions carried out by the security forces. The Colombian Commission of Jurists reports that the state security forces killed 184 civilians in 2003, up from an annual average of 120 between 1998 and 2002.”

While Colombia’s President Uribe and the US government argue that the body count in Colombia’s decades-long civil war is finally decreasing, Colombian researcher Hector Moncayo argues, “When they’ve already massacred an entire population, the fact that now they’re killing less isn’t an improvement. That’s like saying that [Chilean dictator Augusto] Pinochet, after four years of being in power, turned democratic because he was no longer killing and disappearing people. Well of course—he’d already achieved what he’d set out to do by that time.”

Five Reasons Plan Mexico Will Crash and Burn

Despite the drug war model’s documented history of death, destruction, and miserable failure, some believe that it can work in Mexico, or at the very least be a Trojan horse for improving human rights and the rule of law. So, for those who believe that Mexico can be the exception to the rule, Narco News presents Five Reasons Plan Mexico Will Crash and Burn.

The Plan Mexico spending plan that Narco News obtained in September of this year does not detail the quantity of funds and resources each Mexican agency will receive. Instead, it groups chunks of money thematically (such as “Governing Justly and Democratically” and “Peace and Security”) and mentions recipient agencies in its overview of the category. It is therefore impossible to determine exactly how much money in resources and training each individual Mexican agency will receive, or where exactly the money will go.

Reason #1: The Mexican Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR in its Spanish initials):

The PGR is mentioned 17 times as a recipient of US armament, equipment, and training in the spending plan. Specifically, Plan Mexico will provide the PGR with training and technical assistance to develop electronic and undercover evidence, and systems design and programming support for the PGR’s intelligence unit—in other words, spy training. Funds will also expand the PGR’s case-tracking system. Plan Mexico will pay to refurbish and equip two Citation II C-550 surveillance aircraft, which have radar and cameras and can be (and often are) outfitted with weapons for the drug war. Plan Mexico will also support and expand Project OASSIS, a bilateral program that targets human smugglers on the US-Mexico border. Through Project OASSIS, the US and Mexican governments exchange critical information, coordinate enforcement operations, and jointly target cross-border criminal activity. The Plan Mexico spending plan also vaguely mentions other unspecified “security equipment and training” for the PGR.

Like most Mexican agencies charged with investigating and combating drug trafficking, the PGR has been wracked by scandals due to a significant number of its agents and top officials being on drug traffickers’ payrolls. These cartel informants are paid significant sums of money in exchange for both protection and information. While security and intelligence integration is a goal of both Plan Mexico and its inspiration, the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the US should be very careful about who in the PGR receives sensitive drug trafficking intelligence. It seems as though no one in the PGR is immune to the lure of high-paying cartel side jobs, not even the people who run it.

The highest-ranking PGR official to be detained for working for the cartels is Mexico’s drug tsar himself, Noé Ramírez Mandujano. Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora announced on November 20 that Ramírez Mandujano has allegedly been on the Pacific cartel (also known as the Sinaloa cartel) payroll since shortly after he began working as the head of the Assistant Attorney General’s Office for Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime (SIEDO). As an agency within the PGR, the SIEDO is responsible for the PGR’s drug trafficking investigations. Medina Mora accuses his colleague Ramírez Mandujano of having received at least one payment of USD$450,000 in exchange for passing confidential information to the Sinaloa cartel. The $450,000 was intended to be a recurring monthly payment, but Medina Mora did specify whether or not the payments continued. Ramírez Mandujano is being held under administrative detention pending formal criminal charges.

While Medina Mora did not specify what information Ramírez Mandujano allegedly passed to the Sinaloa cartel, it remains painfully clear that Ramírez Mandujano has consistently dragged his feet in investigating corruption within the SIEDO, which has been leaking like a sieve under his watch. The Mexican weekly Proceso reports that Ramírez Mandujano received concrete information about moles within his agency as early as March 2008 when the DEA told him, “Your office has turned into an extension of the Beltran brothers’ cell.” [The Beltran Leyva brothers operate a Sinaloa cartel cell.] The DEA went on to give Ramírez Mandujano a list of SIEDO agents who worked as Sinaloa cartel informants. The list included Fernando Rivera Hernandez, then-deputy director of SEIDO’s Technical Coordination, and SIEDO commanders Roberto Garcia Garcia and Milton Celia Perez.

Ramírez Mandujano’s response to the DEA’s revelation was to investigate the three men—for 15 days. He gave up the investigation after the three men under investigation got angry.

It’s not clear that Ramírez Mandujano’s investigation would have produced results even if it had continued. Four of the seven agents Ramírez Mandujano assigned to investigate and follow Rivera, Garcia, and Celia were also on the Sinaloa cartel payroll. The Sinaloa informants who were in charge of investigating their colleagues were SIEDO agent Miguel Colorado Gonzalez and Federal Investigation Agency (AFI, the PGR’s police force) agents Antonio Mejia Robles, Jorge Alberto Zavala, and Francisco Javier Jimenez. Colorado, Mejia, and Zavala are all currently imprisoned for their ties to drug traffickers. Jimenez is at large. Rivera, Garcia, and Celia have all entered into the witness protection program. They are testifying against their former boss, Noé Ramírez Mandujano.

According to Medina Mora, Ramírez Mandujano was fully aware that both Rivera and Colorado were working for the Sinaloa cartel when Ramírez Mandujano assigned Colorado to investigate Rivera’s alleged links to drug trafficking. Rivera and Colorado both participated in a meeting between Ramírez Mandujano and a Sinaloa cartel member.

It will be interesting to see how many of the PGR officials currently arrested or held under administrative detention will actually serve time in prison. In his article “Links between Mexican Security Secretary Garcia Luna and Drug Kingpin ‘El Mayo,’” Proceso’s veteran drug reporter Ricardo Ravelo recounts:

In 1993, when Rodrigo Esparza was a PGR delegate in Sinaloa, the first rumblings surfaced over his alleged relationship with Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, then a bitter rival of the Arellano Félix brothers, the bosses of the Tijuana cartel.

According to the official memo DGPDSC/UEA/1938/2005, dated August 12, 2005, and obtained through a request to the Federal Institute for Access to Information (record number 0001700181305), Esparza was accused of impeding the administration of justice. Said accusation was registered in the criminal proceeding 159/93, which came out of the criminal investigation 3423/93. On June 28, 1993, the charges were accepted by the Third Criminal Court in the Ramo District in Mexico City, and later he was imprisoned awaiting trial.

His detention was revoked on August 23, 1993, via judicial tricks. In less than three months, Esparza saw the investigation into his alleged wrongdoings buried with a stay of proceedings in his case. This precedent notwithstanding, Rodrigo Esparza is now [Secretary of Public Security Genaro] Garcia Luna's right hand man in the PFP [the Federal Preventive Police].

Heated debate over human rights in an increasingly militarized Mexico was at the center of the process of approving the first year of funding for Plan Mexico. Rather than opposing financial and logistical support for a military strategy that has by all measures been a human rights disaster as well as a miserable failure in slowing down the drug trade, US lawmakers and large human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) pushed for the inclusion of so-called human rights conditions in the final bill. The efficacy of these conditions is in question: the human rights requirements only condition 15% of the anti-narcotics and military funds (USD$43 million out of 2008’s USD$400 million by the US government’s calculations). Furthermore, the US Secretary of State is responsible for certifying compliance with the conditions. While this $43 million is currently held up because Mexico has failed to meet the human rights conditions, it remains to be seen for how long the US State Department will be willing to implicitly admit that one of its principal allies in the western hemisphere is a criminal human rights abuser.

One of the Plan Mexico human rights conditions requires that the Mexican government “is continuing to enforce the prohibition, in accordance with Mexican and international law, on the use of testimony obtained through torture or other ill-treatment.” The Mexican government does not appear ready to comply with this condition any time soon.

The PGR has been caught up in a series of unresolved torture scandals and has failed to purge known or suspected torturers from its ranks. One criminal investigation, PGR/SIEDO/UEIDCS/106/2005, involves an incident in which AFI agents allegedly detained five alleged members of Los Zetas (the former Mexican military’s Special Forces soldiers who defected to work as the cartels’ private army), and instead imprisoning them, handed them over to people working for the Beltran Leyva criminal organization. The alleged Zetas were tortured, and one was murdered. The Beltran Leyva cartel later published the video of the torture and execution online. One of the PGR officials named as an accomplice in the criminal investigation is Francisco Lara Saldaña, who at the time was a PGR subdelegate in charge of Penal Processes in the city of Acapulco. Despite the fact that the criminal investigation remains open, Lara Saldaña was promoted in December 2007 to be the PGR’s delegate in the state of San Luis Potosi.

Even after the US Congress passed Plan Mexico, the PGR showed no signs of ending its use of evidence obtained under torture in criminal investigations. The three alleged Zetas that the PGR arrested shortly after the terrorist grenade attack on Independence Day celebrations in Morelia, Michoacan, on September 15, 2008, were tortured before they officially entered into the PGR’s custody. There is physical evidence of the torture, including x-rays of their broken bones. The suspects claim they were brutally tortured by unknown assailants over a period of days until they learned a script confessing to the grenade attacks. The PGR then received an anonymous tip stating the location of the suspects. Inexplicably, the PGR waited 26 hours before sending only three SIEDO agents to the house described in the anonymous call—odd behavior considering the men are suspected of carrying out a terrorist attack and belonging to an organization that is armed to the teeth with military-issue weapons. An official memo leaked from a Mexican intelligence agency to Proceso’s Jorge Carrasco Araizaga and Francisco Castellanos states that unnamed Michoacan security forces met with representatives of the La Familia cartel just prior to the arrests. La Familia runs Michoacan, is in the middle of a turf war with Los Zetas, and had promised to carry out an independent investigation of the Morelia grenade attack.

The PGR is also responsible for the Brad Will murder investigation. Multiple US Congressional aides have said the PGR “mishandled” the investigation. The PGR recently issued arrest warrants for the witnesses to Will’s murder who claim that Oaxacan police and public officials shot the Indymedia reporter from a distance during the 2006 uprising in that state. The PGR ignored video, photographic, and ballistic evidence that clearly points to the officials, and is basing its case almost entirely on the testimony of the local mayor’s cousin, who claims an unknown “voice” told him APPO supporter Juan Martinez murdered Will.

Reason #2: The Federal Public Security Ministry (SSP)

The SSP and its police force, the Federal Preventive Police (PFP, which is charged with preventing crimes and acts as a notoriously brutal federal riot police squad during protests), will receive training, security equipment, non-intrusive inspection equipment, contraband-detecting canines, “education in police techniques, professional conduct, and ethics,” and polygraph equipment and training.

Of all of the Mexican security agencies currently embroiled in corruption scandals, the SSP’s troubles appear to be the most pervasive: the Public Security Secretary himself has been accused of having links to drug traffickers, primarily Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. Despite the claims of federal police who have worked under Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna’s watch, multiple former cartel members who turned state’s witnesses, and current cartel members, all of whom say Garcia Luna is working for the Sinaloa cartel, the Secretary remains in power. He’s even survived PGR criminal investigations against him, which, rather than absolving him of any wrongdoing, simply went nowhere and remain open.

Garcia Luna’s impressive ability to advance within the federal government despite all the accusations against him is made all the more suspicious due to Narco News correspondent Bill Conroy’s argument that the Sinaloa cartel seems to be receiving preferential treatment under the Calderon administration. Conroy’s suspicions are somewhat corroborated by veteran drug reporter Ricardo Ravelo’s assertion that if one analyzes arrests statistics and body counts, one cartel (always a different one) emerges as each Mexican president’s untouchable cartel.

The most damning accusation against Garcia Luna comes from a group federal police officers who recently wrote a letter to the Mexican Congress detailing their case against Garcia Luna. They claim an unnamed high-ranking cartel member and his convoy of gunmen stopped Garcia Luna and his 27-agent motorcade, which was also armed, on the Cuernavaca-Tepoztlan highway this past October 19. According to the federal police officers’ letter, the gangsters disarmed Garcia Luna’s bodyguards without any resistance, thanks to Garcia Luna’s order to that effect. Ravelo, who reported the incident in Proceso, writes, “The agents who are familiar with the incident, and whose names are omitted for fear of reprisals, state in the document that the ‘gangster’s’ voice said to Garcia Luna: ‘This is the first and last warning so that you know that, yes, we can get to you if you don't follow through on the pact.’” Garcia Luna then left his disarmed and blindfolded bodyguards to go to an undisclosed location to meet with the high-ranking cartel member for four hours.

Garcia Luna’s credibility is further called into question by his closest colleagues’ criminal ties. In addition to Rodrigo Esparza Cisterna, the acting commissioner of the PFP who managed to only spend three months in jail for his alleged ties to Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman of the Sinaloa cartel, another Garcia Luna colleague who is currently imprisoned is Édgar Enrique Bayardo del Villar, an inspector for the PFP’s Anti-Drug Division. Two witnesses claim that the Zambadas paid Bayardo “millions” to protect their drug business. During Bayardo’s tenture in the PFP, Garcia Luna apparently failed to notice that Bayardo had purchased (in cash) a Mercedes, a BMW, and armored Jeep, paintings, sculptures, and two houses, all valued at around MX$21 million (about two million dollars at the time). Bayardo earned about US$2,600 per month at the PFP.

Even more alarming, in November the SIEDO detained the PFP’s former head of Regional Security, Javier Herrera Valles. Herrera, a 30-year PFP veteran, is accused of “receiving payments from groups linked to organized crime.” The government is keeping an uncharacteristic tight lid on information related to the case, and has not disclosed the quantity of money nor the criminal organization involved. In February, Herrera sent a letter to President Calderon that detailed problems within the SSP, amongst them bad management, poor planning of anti-organized crime operations, and a lack of intelligence gathering. As a result of his complaints, the government suspended his salary and later fired him.

SSP corruption isn’t limited to Garcia Luna and his close circle. On October 20, just one day after Garcia Luna’s alleged meeting with a cartel member, a shootout occurred in Mexico City’s Lindavista neighborhood, where the Zambada family had rented a house. When AFI and Mexico City police officers attempted to arrest suspects associated with the Sinaloa cartel—including “El Mayo” Zambada’s brother, Jesus “El Rey” Zambada—they came under fire from PFP, AFI, and state police officers who were attempting to protect the Zambada family. The four corrupt officers were apprehended. They were identified as: Marco Antonio Valadez Rico, a mid-level commanding PFP officer assigned to the Airports and Borders Division (“El Rey” is accused of controlling the Mexico City airport, which is notorious for the drugs and drug money that passes through there); Carlos Gerardo Castillo Ramirez, assigned to the AFI’s Regional Deployment department (he joined the AFI when Garcia Luna was in charge of that police force); Jose Guillermo Baez Figueroa, who worked in the PFP’s Regional Deployment Division and was also assigned to the Mexico City airport; and Francisco Alvaro Montaño Ochoa, ministerial agent from the state of Mexico.

Remarkably, the PFP’s involvement with the Zambada family doesn’t end there. According to Reforma, on October 22, two days after the shoot-out, about fifty PFP agents arrived at the Zambada’s Lindavista house, even though the investigation was not within their jurisdiction. SIEDO agents were already inside carrying out their investigation. Four of the PFP agents exited an unmarked car without license plates and attempted to forcibly enter the Zambada property. When SIEDO agents stopped them, the man in charge of the PFP agents, donning a bullet-proof vest, told the SIEDO, “I come under higher orders.” The SIEDO agents demanded the name of the person who sent them, but rather than answering the question, all fifty PFP agents left the scene. Garcia Luna never explained why his police officers attempted to enter the Zambada house after PFP agents had already been arrested for violently defending that property.

The alarming number of arrests from within the SSP and the PFP shouldn’t be surprising. Mexican Congress recently sent President Calderon a list of questions requesting information it felt was lacking in his State of the Union report. One of the questions regarded the trustworthiness of the nation’s police forces. Calderon responded that only 41.7% of the 56,065 federal, state, and municipal police recently evaluated were found to be “recommendable,” whereas 49.4% were found to be “not recommendable.” The PFP scored on par with the rest of the nation’s police: only 41.7% of PFP agents passed the examination, which included medical, psychometric, medical, and toxicological exams; a financial audit; and a polygraph test.

Reason #3: State and Municipal Police in Mexico

Plan Mexico provides an unspecified amount of funds for protective equipment (mentioned in previous drafts of the Plan as bullet-proof vests and riot gear) and training for Mexican police. Plan Mexico will also expand Mexico’s database of biometric data (such as DNA and fingerprints) so that state and municipal police will be able to access it. Plan Mexico also funds human rights training for local police. While Plan Mexico places heavy emphasis on the federal police and military, it is important to remember that local police have historically been on the frontlines of the war on drugs—and they’ve fought on both sides of the battle line that divides the cartels and those who oppose them.

The Plan Mexico-funded human rights training is likely to have little impact on police behavior as long as those same police continue to receive torture training from US police and private contractors. The Leon, Guanajuato, Special Tactics Group was recently discovered to have received training from the San Diego SWAT team, a Mexican company called Sniper, and a US/British company called Risks Incorporated. Leaked videos of a Spring 2008 training show the trainers demonstrating torture tactics on trainees. One of the Risks Incorporated employees, Jerry Arrechea, also has training programs for police and the military in the Mexico City metro area and Chiapas, so it is unlikely that the scope of police torture training is limited to just Leon. The Leon government said these “extreme trainings” were to prepare the police for the fight against organized crime—in other words, these are exactly the sort of trainings Plan Mexico would pay for.

It is universally agreed that local police forces, especially those in areas with particular importance to drug traffickers, have been corrupted to an alarming degree by the cartels. This was one of the justifications for the deployment of the military against drug trafficking. Indeed, once the military hit the streets, it began to take control of police stations throughout drug trafficking hotspots because the federal government suspected that these police stations were involved in drug trafficking. The military has taken control of police stations and arrested significant numbers of police in cities and municipalities in Tamaulipas, Tabasco (where they arrested the state police chief and a county police chief), Baja California, and Chihuahua. In Tijuana, soldiers recently fired 500 police officers, or over a quarter of the city’s police force.

Local police have been linked to some horrendous drug-related massacres. Federal police recently arrested Pedro Jaime Chávez Rosales, the police chief of Huixquilucan, Mexico State; and Antonio Careaga Ramírez, the ex-police chief of San Mateo Atenco, Mexico State, for their alleged involvement in the deaths of 25 people whose bodies were found dumped in La Marquesa National Park.

These are extreme incidents, but they aren’t isolated. In ongoing government evaluations of federal, state, and local police, a majority of the nation’s police failed to be deemed “recommendable.” Local police fared the worst: 61.6% of the 26,165 state and municipal police who were evaluated are “not recommendable” and 30.1% are “recommendable.” Calderon noted that in areas that suffer from higher levels of violence and insecurity due to drug trafficking, police were even more likely to fail. In Baja California, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, and Nuevo Leon—all drug trafficking hotspots—between 60% and 88% of the police there are considered “not recommendable.”

Reason #4: Mexico’s National Defense Department (Sedena in its Spanish initials)

In 2008, Sedena will receive will receive almost all of the $116.5 million in military armament and related training under Plan Mexico. The US Defense Department’s Security Cooperation Agency says this money, which is categorized as Foreign Military Financing (FMF), is for “financing through grants or loans the acquisition of U.S. military articles, services, and training.” The Plan Mexico spending plan specifies that Sedena will receive up to two CASA 235 aircraft for maritime surveillance, up to five BH-412 EP (Bell Helicopter) medium-lift utility helicopters along with a logistics support package for two years for new aircraft and possibly four Mexico-owned helicopters already in service, and an undetermined number of ion scanners, which analyze molecules to quickly test for drugs. Ion scanners are highly unreliable and widely abused by prison officials in the US as a means of harassing prison visitors. All of the equipment will come with US training, although it is unclear if the US government or private contractors will provide the training.

Approximately $90 million in FMF funds (perhaps up to $99 million) have already been released. The remaining balance (15%) is on hold pending the US Secretary of State’s certification that Mexico has complied with certain human rights conditions laid out in Plan Mexico.

One of Calderon’s primary reasons for deploying the military to combat drug trafficking was because the cartels had corrupted or in other ways incapacitated the local police. In some cases, the army relieved entire police forces of their duties because all of the officers and their commanders were corrupt or had quit because they feared for their lives.

However, this confidence in the military may just be window dressing. Maureen Meyer from the Washington Officer on Latin America (WOLA) writes that military initiatives have succeed “in generating a temporary sense of improved citizen security,” but that “ultimately, these efforts have faltered in the face of basic laws of drug supply and demand.” These efforts have also failed to actually improve citizen security. Bill Conroy recently wrote, “Since Calderon sent the military into Juarez in late March 2008, the murder toll in the city has jumped dramatically. The data obtained by Narco News shows the death toll on a steady climb from 18 in January — and after a slight lull in April — to 119 in June. The murder figure for November, according to Mexican news reports, hit 192.”

Human rights have also fared poorly under Calderon’s policy of intense militarization: Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) received eight complaints of human rights abuses committed by members of the military in 2006. Calderon deployed the first troops in the war on organized crime in December 2006. In 2007, the number of complaints the CNDH received regarding human rights abuses by soldiers increased to 384. The CNDH reports that the military is on track to surpass this number in 2008: its mid-year report on human rights abuses committed by the military had counted 242 complains between January and July 2008.

Moreover, just like the other agencies responsible for combating drug trafficking, Sedena has been infiltrated by the cartels. Prior to Calderon’s declaration of war on organized crime, this corruption may have been limited due to Sedena’s limited role in combating drug trafficking. But the corruption has always been there, and some fear that now that the military is a lead player in the drug war, this corruption will only increase.

Military corruption may be the most dire in the war on drugs. In addition to the same sensitive confidential other Mexican agencies have regarding anti-drug operations, the military receives the most deadly and sophisticated weapons and training—a lot of it from the US. US training and weapons have been known to fall into the hands of the cartels, and Plan Mexico plans to increase the flow of information and weapons technology.

The most cited example of US training gone wrong in the war on drugs in Mexico is Los Zetas. Los Zetas came from a Mexican military Special Operations unit—the best of the best. The Mexican government has confirmed that they received their top-notch training in the US. Some accounts say it was in Fort Bragg, and others say it was in Fort Benning’s infamous School of the Americas. Shortly after receiving quality training at US taxpayers’ expense—training that most likely included torture, due to the contents of leaked military training manuals used at these bases—Los Zetas defected en masse to take higher-paying jobs working as a private military for drug cartels.

Narco News’ Conroy notes that it isn’t just US military training that’s benefiting the drug cartels—it’s also US military weapons. Former DEA agent Celerino “Cele” Castillo III analyzed photos from government press conferences that show off the weapons it has seized from cartels. Castillo tells Conroy that the 40mm rounds that appear in a recent press conference photo are US military issue. But how did those weapons wind up in the cartels’ hands?

Castillo elaborates in a recent Fort Worth Weekly article by Peter Gorman:

“The majority of the weapons being used by the cartels these days are U.S. military weapons and explosives,” he said. “They’ve got M-16s, hand grenades, grenade launchers. Even in Texas you can’t buy those. Those are U.S. military weapons. Last year an 18-wheeler full of M-16s was stopped headed to Matamoros, a border town controlled by the Gulf Cartel. Our U.S. military is either supplying the Mexican military with that weaponry, and corrupt elements in the Mexican military are selling it to the cartels, or someone in the U.S. military is supplying them. Either way, those are U.S. military guns being used in very violent cartel rivalries.”

In addition to weapons and training, information on planned military operations also flows to the drug cartels, both from other Mexican government agencies’ agents who are assigned to liason with the military, and from military officials themselves.

Fernando Rivera, for example, was the SIEDO agent recently arrested along with his boss, drug tsar Noé Ramírez Mandujano. El Correo de Guanajuato reports that Rivera was in charge of coordinating joint SIEDO-Sedena operations against criminal organizations. Rivera is now in custody, accused of participating in the same organized crime he was in charge of combating. He allegedly leaked information to the cartels.

A January raid on one of Alfredo "El Mochomo" Beltrán Leyva’s houses in Culiacán, Sinaloa, produced a detailed list of twenty former and current military officials who are on the Sinaloa cartel payroll. Mexico’s Reforma reported that a notebook recovered from the house recorded the informants’ names, ranks, and the amount of money each was paid. The military men were allegedly responsible for passing on information about SIEDO investigations and upcoming military raids. Some were also accused of protecting drug cultivation. As a result of the notebook’s meticulously detailed information, four of the five agents assigned to Culiacán’s Ninth Military Zone were detained. The notebook also recorded a payment of $150,000 to Major of Military Justice Francisco de Jesús Pérez Chávez. Prior to his arrest, Major Pérez worked as a district attorney in the office of the Attorney General for Military Justice (PGJM). Much to the chagrin of everyone who isn’t a soldier, Mexico has a special justice system responsible for investigating, prosecuting, and punishing soldiers and military officials. In addition to virtually guaranteeing impunity in human rights abuse cases, the PGJM is notorious for selectively prosecuting high-ranking military officials accused of working for cartels. Veteran drug reporter Ricardo Ravelo documents this trend in his book Los Capos: Las narco-rutas de Mexico.

But Sedena’s involvement with drug trafficking doesn’t end at simply supplying information to the cartels. Conroy’s extensive contacts within US law enforcement agencies anonymously tell him what they know about Sedena’s role in moving drugs:

“The Mexican military and government are corrupt,” one law enforcer says. “The Military escorts smugglers to the border. It’s a daily occurrence. The video cameras at the El Paso Intelligence Center have it all on video, filed away. If we report the suspicious activity to our superiors, nothing ever happens. It’s just covered up.

“The Mexican military cartel has taken over Juarez. Our government knows it; they’re not stupid, but they’ve made some backroom deal with the Mexican government.”

Conroy also quotes government informant Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, a former high-ranking member of the Juarez cartel, as he describes military and PGR involvement in drug trafficking:

“[W]hen I did go to Colombia to make arrangement with the Colombians, the plans was to come by sea, and the Mexico's navy, the ships, they're the ones that would get the drugs in the, in the sea—marina—ocean borders, you know, of the national territories. … and the PGR then would fly this drugs to the - to Juarez, the city of Juarez.

Amazingly, US Drug Enforcement Agency officials are aware of the extent of the corruption within the US military—yet the US government still wants to give Sedena armament and training through Plan Mexico.

A DEA PowerPoint presentation that was leaked to Narco News demonstrates the extent of the anti-drug agency’s knowledge of Sedena corruption. Conroy quotes the PowerPoint extensively:

Between Jan 2000-Dec 2006: More than 163,000 military members were criminally processed during former president Vicente Fox’s 6 years term of office. The majority of the crimes were: [the list includes abuse of power, homicide, embezzlement, kidnapping, bank robbery, illegal possession of firearms and health crimes—essentially organized crime].

Another slide in the PowerPoint provides this analysis:

• DTOs will further reach out to the Mexican military and foreign paramilitary and possible insurgent organizations in order to acquire much needed human and material support to fend off advances by competing Cartels.

• The result will be the emergence of a new type of drug trafficking organization in Mexico and the US precipitating a general militarization of the DTOs.

Reason #5: The United States Government

Plan Mexico focuses on Mexico—and to a lesser extent Central America and the Caribbean—as if drug trafficking were completely isolated from US policies and procedures. The idea that Mexico needs US armament, training, advice, direction, and judicial reform to solve its drug violence problem is patronizing and ignorant. US policy fuels the drug trade through the Central American corridor, and US corruption maintains the flow of drugs across its own border.

The US, Mexico, and Colombia’s preferred method of combating drug cartels—dismantling cartels by taking out their leaders—is a proven failure. Colombia’s Medellin and Cali cartels are long gone, but drug cultivation and production are both on the rise nonetheless, and the decades-long civil war fueled by drug money still rages.

Likewise, for years the US and Mexico have collaborated in their efforts to take out the Tijuana cartel, which was controlled by the Arellano Felix family. They’ve focused most of their efforts on this single target in Mexico. The results? The Tijuana cartel may well be in its death throws—the government has arrested or killed just about all of the brothers who ran it, leaving the cartel in the hands of their sister, Enedina Arellano Felix. In the process of wearing down the Tijuana cartel, the governments have provided a competitive advantage to neighboring cartels who have their eyes on Tijuana. The Tijuana cartel’s weakness has sparked a turf war that in recent months has led to more battle-related deaths in Tijuana than in Baghdad. And the drugs continue to flow unabated across the border.

The United States’ refusal to recognize its significant contribution to both the drug trade and drug-related violence will only add to the body count. Plan Mexico’s lopsided approached to combating drug trafficking focuses on fueling the war in Mexico rather than reducing drug demand in the United States, the world’s largest drug market. In addition to being short-sighted, the strategy is also a waste of money: even though studies have found that drug treatment is much more cost-effective than enforcement, Plan Mexico includes a nominal amount of money for drug treatment in Mexico (which is not a significant drug market), and Bush’s 2009 budget proposal cuts funding for drug treatment in the US.

But drug money isn’t the US’ only contribution to the violent drug war in Mexico: the US is also the source of approximately 90% of drug cartels’ guns (Mexico doesn’t manufacture guns). In addition to US military-issue weapons, which are supplied to the cartels by corrupt elements in either the US or Mexican military, cartels also arm themselves with weapons that were legally purchased in the United States before being illegally turned over to the cartels. The Brookings Institution estimates that about 2,000 guns travel south across the US-Mexico border every day.

According to Peter Gorman, “The worst-offending states are Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, all of which permit almost anyone to purchase and own as many pistols, machine pistols, rifles, and assault rifles as they want, with no waiting time and no record of the sale going beyond the gun dealers’ files.” Gun buyers in those states are required to fill out a form before purchasing a firearm, but “[FBI spokesman Stephen] Fischer noted that the form does not include the number of weapons being purchased, ‘So in theory a person could buy 100 or more at a time if they want.’” Gorman also quotes an unidentified Texas gun owner who tells him, “You go to any gun show, and it doesn’t take long to find someone who’ll offer to take your semi-automatic and turn it into a fully automatic weapon.”

The US government doesn’t escape the drug cartel infiltration that plagues the Mexico. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) meticulously documents the ties that almost all major prison gangs (who also have presence outside prisons as street gangs) have to Mexican drug trafficking organizations. Bill Conroy summarizes the DoJ’s recent National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC) report, which documents gang infiltration in the US military:

• Members of nearly every major street gang, including the Bloods, Crips, Black Disciples, Gangster Disciples, Hells Angels, Latin Kings, The 18th Street Gang, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), Mexican Mafia, Nortenos, Surenos, Vice Lords, and various white supremacist groups, have been documented on military installations both domestically and internationally.
• Gang members may enlist in the military to escape their current environment or gang lifestyle. Some gang members may also enlist to receive weapons, combat, and convoy support training; to obtain access to weapons and explosives; or as an alternative to incarceration. Upon discharge, they may employ their military training against law enforcement officials and rival gang members. Such military training could ultimately result in more organized, sophisticated, and deadly gangs, as well as an increase in deadly assaults on law enforcement officers.
• Gang members in the military are commonly assigned to military support units where they have access to weapons and explosives. Military personnel may steal items by improperly documenting supply orders or by falsifying paperwork. Law enforcement officials throughout the United States have recovered military-issued weapons and explosives—such as machine guns and grenades—from criminals and gang members while conducting search warrants and routine traffic stops
• According to open source reporting and multiple law enforcement reporting, soldiers—including gang members—are currently being taught urban warfare for combat in Iraq, including how to encounter hostile gunfire.

Conroy also provides some case examples from the NGIC report:

• In June 2006 an incarcerated US Army soldier and active gang member identified 60 to 70 gang-affiliated military personnel in his unit allegedly involved in the theft and sale of military equipment and weapons. The solider reported that many of the military personnel in charge of ammunition and grenade distribution are sergeants who are active gang members. The soldier also reported that military commanders were aware of the actions of these gang-affiliated personnel
• In August 2005 a US soldier in San Antonio was suspected of supplying arms—including hand grenades and bullet-proof vests—to the Texas Mexican Mafia (Mexikanemi), according to uncorroborated but reliable FBI source information
• Since 2004, the FBI and El Paso Police Department have identified over 40 military-affiliated Folk Nation gang members stationed at the Fort Bliss Army Installation in Texas who have been involved in drug distribution, robberies, assaults, weapons offenses, and a homicide, both on and off the installation.

Even the US Embassy and the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) have been infiltrated. Alberto Perez Guerrero, an Interpol employee who was found to be on the Sinaloa cartel payroll, has admitted that he used his position within the Mexico City US Embassy to leak DEA information to the Beltran Leyva brothers, who operate a Sinaloa cartel cell. Even more alarmingly, Perez Guerrero implicated his boss, Interpol Mexico chief Rodolfo de la Guardia, and de la Guardia’s predecessor, Ricardo Gutierrez. De la Guardia and Gutierrez are both in jail; Perez Guerrero is now a protected witness.

Drug cartels are also purchasing US police. Starr County, Texas, for example, can’t seem to find a clean sheriff. Gorman reports in the Fort Worth Weekly that this past October, FBI agents arrested Starr County Sheriff Reymundo Guerra for “conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and marijuana” among several other offenses. Gorman writes that “Guerra, who faces life imprisonment, follows in the footsteps of his predecessor, Sheriff Eugenio Falcon, who pleaded guilty to non-drug-related conspiracy charges in 1998. Among many other law enforcement officers caught dealing with the cartels, in 2005 former Cameron County Sheriff Conrado Cantu was sentenced to 24 years in prison for running a criminal enterprise out of his office.”

No End in Sight

History has demonstrated that Operation Clean-up is neither the first nor the last time the Mexican government will find cartel employees amongst its ranks. A similarly significant multi-agency purge occurred in 2001, when the government arrested ten agents from SEDENA, the SSP, the PGR, and state police forces for reviewing, collecting, organizing, and passing information from the three agencies to both the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels.

Every time the government has found networks of informants in its agencies and has subsequently purged the corrupt agents, more step up to take their place. While ten government agents on the cartel payrolls were caught in 2001, Operation Clean-up has swept up at least thirty-five so far…and the arrests are still coming. These networks of corruption stretch across government agencies and seem to have better inter-agency coordination and communication than the agencies themselves. They are sophisticated, well-organized, involve some of the highest-ranking government officials, and—most importantly—are easily replaceable.

In some cases, such as the 2000 scandal involving the sale of PGR positions (in which current and prospective PGR officials were charged significant sums—in one case a million dollars—to keep their jobs or advance to better ones), the cartels themselves arrange for the misdeeds of one or several corrupt officials to be exposed so that the official who exposes them (who is on the cartel payroll) will be promoted to a position where the cartel needs him or her. This complicated strategy is analogous to a carnival game in which the player, after winning several smaller stuffed animals, trades them in for one larger stuffed animal.

The problem with Operation Clean-up and its predecessors is that it has the same failings as the drug war itself: it fails to acknowledge the laws of supply and demand. Like drug trafficking, as long as there is a buyer (in this case, the cartels, who paid USD$150,000-$450,000 monthly to each of the informants caught during Operation Clean-up) there will be a seller (government agents) with a product (confidential information and protection).

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