420
Founder
As Top Supplier to U.S., Nation Passes Colombia in Narcotics Influence
MIGUEL ALEMAN, Mexico - Hit men, pistols tucked in their pants and walkie-talkies strapped to their belts, move freely in this city of sorghum farmers and cattle ranchers, dropping off their ostrich-skin boots with shoe-shine boys in the city's plaza and stopping at local bars for a beer.
The openness with which they operate -- in countless towns across Mexico -- reflects the drug cartels' grip on this nation of nearly 100 million people, and the power they have gained as the top supplier for Americans' $65 billion illegal drug habit.
Mexico's drug gangs have been highly successful in the past two decades, gradually replacing Colombian gangs in the United States to control the profitable distribution of cocaine from coast-to-coast.
Colombia remains the world's largest producer, but Larry Holifield, the DEA's director for Mexico and Central America, told The Associated Press that Mexican cartels are now the most powerful in the world.
In 2003, Mexican traffickers supplied 77 percent of the cocaine that entered the United States. In 2004, it was 92 percent, Anthony Placido, the top DEA intelligence official, told a congressional panel in June.
The other 8 percent moved through the Caribbean.
Mexican gangs also dominate the growing methamphetamine trade, producing 53 percent of the drugs on the market in "super-labs" in Mexico as the U.S. tightens its laws. Much of the rest is made in clandestine labs in California, also run by Mexicans, U.S. officials say.
And as has been the case for nearly 100 years, Mexico is the biggest marijuana supplier to the U.S. and produces nearly half the heroin consumed north of the border, behind only Colombia.
The drug trade permeates life in Mexico. In Miguel Aleman, drug traffickers boost the local economy and rule with a combination of fear and awe, threatening or bribing anyone who dares to try to stop them.
In this city of 35,000 across from Roma, Texas, hit men are easily identified by their bulletproof pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.
The traffickers have lookouts at every entrance to the city and informants on bicycles looking for anyone suspicious, townspeople say. They will photograph newcomers, including reporters, and question strangers.
The traffickers "speed through the street, drive against traffic and run red lights. But here, no one says anything to them," said a businessman who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. "Here, they are the law."
Network of Power Growing
The Mexican rise to power is rooted in the U.S. crackdown on drug trafficking through the Caribbean in the 1980s, which pushed Colombians to use Central America and Mexico as a major transshipment point.Colombians began paying their Mexican counterparts in cocaine, rather than cash, reducing the need to launder money. That gave Mexican gangs an opening to begin taking over distribution in the United States.
Colombian gangs, facing tough extradition laws at home and stiff U.S. penalties, have largely gone into hiding in Colombia and now focus on production rather than distribution.
In the United States, Mexicans have long controlled distribution in the West and Midwest. But they are also moving into the East Coast, controlling cocaine movement from New York City's lucrative market to other eastern cities, the DEA said in a report this year.
Colombians and Caribbean gangs still mostly control street sales in the region, however, and are responsible for the drug trade in Miami, according to the U.N. 2005 World Drug Report.
Guatemala has become a crucial stopover for Colombian cocaine, its shores the destination for most of the so-called "go-fasts" -- boats that move the bulk of cocaine north. From Guatemala, the drugs are smuggled into Mexico and moved overland to the U.S.-Mexico border.
As Guatemala's importance grows, drug gangs there have begun trying to form a cartel to control all of Central America, Guatemala's top drug investigator, Adan Castillo, told AP.
Consolidating Forces
Most Mexican drug gangs are led by former farmers or police officers from the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, an agricultural area where trafficking in illicit substances dates to Prohibition.
The country's two top drug gangs are the Juarez Cartel, based in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, and the Gulf Cartel, based in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.
Gaining ground is Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, an alleged ally of the Juarez cartel who escaped from a maximum-security prison in 2001 and has been warring for control of smuggling routes along the U.S-Mexico border.
Once mortal enemies, Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas and his Tijuana counterpart, Benjamin Arellano Felix, have united in jail, hoping to keep both ends of the border under their control, said Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, Mexico's top anti-narcotics prosecutor.
"Groups like the one led by El Chapo Guzman are trying to position themselves and, as they fight for drugs and territory and also kill out of personal vengeance, that creates a greater wave of violence," Vasconcelos told AP.
After taking office in 2000, Mexican President Vicente Fox launched a crackdown, netting several kingpins, including Arellano Felix and Cardenas.
But the arrests have done nothing to slow the flow north, with seizures in 2004 increasing 25 percent over 2003. Last year, Mexico seized 27.5 tons of cocaine, and 24.7 tons more were confiscated entering the United States, mainly through Texas, the DEA intelligence official Placido told U.S. lawmakers.
The U.S. government estimates that Americans spend $65 billion a year on drugs -- some $20 billion more than on alcohol.
Mexican traffickers' profits have allowed them to buy off hundreds of law enforcement officials here, including the head of Mexico's anti-drug agency, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, fired in 1997 and now jailed.
They also often provide the only steady, high-paying jobs in rural Mexico, and buy popularity by helping renovate a church or outfit youth soccer leagues.
But recent arrests have sparked a turf battle that forced Mexico to send soldiers and federal agents to many key cities along the 1,900-mile border.
The worst violence this year has been in Nuevo Laredo, 100 miles east of Miguel Aleman. More than 150 people have died, including a new police chief, gunned down eight hours after taking office in June. -- AP writers Sergio de Leon in Guatemala City and Abe Levy in San Antonio contributed.
[sidebar]
FACTS AND FIGURES
Follow the Money
* $13 billion: estimated value of global illicit drug market in 2003 at production level. $94 billion: estimated value at the wholesale level.
* $322 billion: estimated value at retail level.
* $70.5 billion: estimated value of cocaine alone at retail level.
* $17 billion: value of exports worldwide of wine in 2003.
* $6 billion: value of exports worldwide of coffee.
Share of Purchases, Profits
* 44 percent: North America's share of worldwide drug purchases.
* 33 percent: Europe's share of worldwide drug purchases.
* 76 percent: share of total drug profits generated in industrialized countries.
* 1 percent: share of profits earned by producers of cocaine and heroin in developing nations.
Sources: U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime; Drug Abuse Warning Network ( DAWN ); DEA
Source: Charlotte Observer (NC)
Copyright: 2005 The Charlotte Observer
Contact: opinion@charlotteobserver.com
Website: https://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/
MIGUEL ALEMAN, Mexico - Hit men, pistols tucked in their pants and walkie-talkies strapped to their belts, move freely in this city of sorghum farmers and cattle ranchers, dropping off their ostrich-skin boots with shoe-shine boys in the city's plaza and stopping at local bars for a beer.
The openness with which they operate -- in countless towns across Mexico -- reflects the drug cartels' grip on this nation of nearly 100 million people, and the power they have gained as the top supplier for Americans' $65 billion illegal drug habit.
Mexico's drug gangs have been highly successful in the past two decades, gradually replacing Colombian gangs in the United States to control the profitable distribution of cocaine from coast-to-coast.
Colombia remains the world's largest producer, but Larry Holifield, the DEA's director for Mexico and Central America, told The Associated Press that Mexican cartels are now the most powerful in the world.
In 2003, Mexican traffickers supplied 77 percent of the cocaine that entered the United States. In 2004, it was 92 percent, Anthony Placido, the top DEA intelligence official, told a congressional panel in June.
The other 8 percent moved through the Caribbean.
Mexican gangs also dominate the growing methamphetamine trade, producing 53 percent of the drugs on the market in "super-labs" in Mexico as the U.S. tightens its laws. Much of the rest is made in clandestine labs in California, also run by Mexicans, U.S. officials say.
And as has been the case for nearly 100 years, Mexico is the biggest marijuana supplier to the U.S. and produces nearly half the heroin consumed north of the border, behind only Colombia.
The drug trade permeates life in Mexico. In Miguel Aleman, drug traffickers boost the local economy and rule with a combination of fear and awe, threatening or bribing anyone who dares to try to stop them.
In this city of 35,000 across from Roma, Texas, hit men are easily identified by their bulletproof pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.
The traffickers have lookouts at every entrance to the city and informants on bicycles looking for anyone suspicious, townspeople say. They will photograph newcomers, including reporters, and question strangers.
The traffickers "speed through the street, drive against traffic and run red lights. But here, no one says anything to them," said a businessman who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. "Here, they are the law."
Network of Power Growing
The Mexican rise to power is rooted in the U.S. crackdown on drug trafficking through the Caribbean in the 1980s, which pushed Colombians to use Central America and Mexico as a major transshipment point.Colombians began paying their Mexican counterparts in cocaine, rather than cash, reducing the need to launder money. That gave Mexican gangs an opening to begin taking over distribution in the United States.
Colombian gangs, facing tough extradition laws at home and stiff U.S. penalties, have largely gone into hiding in Colombia and now focus on production rather than distribution.
In the United States, Mexicans have long controlled distribution in the West and Midwest. But they are also moving into the East Coast, controlling cocaine movement from New York City's lucrative market to other eastern cities, the DEA said in a report this year.
Colombians and Caribbean gangs still mostly control street sales in the region, however, and are responsible for the drug trade in Miami, according to the U.N. 2005 World Drug Report.
Guatemala has become a crucial stopover for Colombian cocaine, its shores the destination for most of the so-called "go-fasts" -- boats that move the bulk of cocaine north. From Guatemala, the drugs are smuggled into Mexico and moved overland to the U.S.-Mexico border.
As Guatemala's importance grows, drug gangs there have begun trying to form a cartel to control all of Central America, Guatemala's top drug investigator, Adan Castillo, told AP.
Consolidating Forces
Most Mexican drug gangs are led by former farmers or police officers from the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, an agricultural area where trafficking in illicit substances dates to Prohibition.
The country's two top drug gangs are the Juarez Cartel, based in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, and the Gulf Cartel, based in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.
Gaining ground is Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, an alleged ally of the Juarez cartel who escaped from a maximum-security prison in 2001 and has been warring for control of smuggling routes along the U.S-Mexico border.
Once mortal enemies, Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas and his Tijuana counterpart, Benjamin Arellano Felix, have united in jail, hoping to keep both ends of the border under their control, said Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, Mexico's top anti-narcotics prosecutor.
"Groups like the one led by El Chapo Guzman are trying to position themselves and, as they fight for drugs and territory and also kill out of personal vengeance, that creates a greater wave of violence," Vasconcelos told AP.
After taking office in 2000, Mexican President Vicente Fox launched a crackdown, netting several kingpins, including Arellano Felix and Cardenas.
But the arrests have done nothing to slow the flow north, with seizures in 2004 increasing 25 percent over 2003. Last year, Mexico seized 27.5 tons of cocaine, and 24.7 tons more were confiscated entering the United States, mainly through Texas, the DEA intelligence official Placido told U.S. lawmakers.
The U.S. government estimates that Americans spend $65 billion a year on drugs -- some $20 billion more than on alcohol.
Mexican traffickers' profits have allowed them to buy off hundreds of law enforcement officials here, including the head of Mexico's anti-drug agency, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, fired in 1997 and now jailed.
They also often provide the only steady, high-paying jobs in rural Mexico, and buy popularity by helping renovate a church or outfit youth soccer leagues.
But recent arrests have sparked a turf battle that forced Mexico to send soldiers and federal agents to many key cities along the 1,900-mile border.
The worst violence this year has been in Nuevo Laredo, 100 miles east of Miguel Aleman. More than 150 people have died, including a new police chief, gunned down eight hours after taking office in June. -- AP writers Sergio de Leon in Guatemala City and Abe Levy in San Antonio contributed.
[sidebar]
FACTS AND FIGURES
Follow the Money
* $13 billion: estimated value of global illicit drug market in 2003 at production level. $94 billion: estimated value at the wholesale level.
* $322 billion: estimated value at retail level.
* $70.5 billion: estimated value of cocaine alone at retail level.
* $17 billion: value of exports worldwide of wine in 2003.
* $6 billion: value of exports worldwide of coffee.
Share of Purchases, Profits
* 44 percent: North America's share of worldwide drug purchases.
* 33 percent: Europe's share of worldwide drug purchases.
* 76 percent: share of total drug profits generated in industrialized countries.
* 1 percent: share of profits earned by producers of cocaine and heroin in developing nations.
Sources: U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime; Drug Abuse Warning Network ( DAWN ); DEA
Source: Charlotte Observer (NC)
Copyright: 2005 The Charlotte Observer
Contact: opinion@charlotteobserver.com
Website: https://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/
