Brutal cartels fight over Mexico's 'conflict-free' gold revenues

Reuters: Heroin traffickers linked to the abduction and disappearance of 43 students a year ago are battling over millions of dollars paid by Canadian mining giant Goldcorp to a village in Mexico's southern gold belt, leading to a wave of murders.

As a signatory to a Conflict-Free Gold Standard drawn up by the World Gold Council industry group, Goldcorp (G.TO) commits to extracting the precious metal in a manner that "does not fuel unlawful armed conflict or contribute to serious human rights abuses." Read more. 

Sinaloa Cartel Boss Smuggled Drugs from Mexico into U.S. Using Various Means

Note: It seems strange that we have these US court filings on El Chapo only now that they do NOT have him in custody. There are still a lot of questions about whether the US ever requested extradition while El Chapo was being held and just exactly what the government's relationship with the Sinaloa Cartel is.

Latin American Herald Tribune: Fugitive Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman used planes, submarines, trains, sailboats and tunnels to smuggle narcotics from Mexico into the United States, court filings show.

The man who became public enemy No. 1 in the United States after the death of terrorist Osama Bin Laden escaped from a Mexican prison a month ago and the Obama administration has repeatedly said it would like to extradite and try the drug lord. Read more. 

Mexico brothers lose final death sentence appeal in Malaysia

Note: Another issue that should be taken up at the UN meeting is this. A mandatory death sentence by hanging for trading in prohibited substances? That is utterly outrageous.

Mexico has protested death sentences for far worse crimes. It should make an exemplary stand on this one, committing to diplomatic sanctions against Malaysia if these men are murdered by the state.

AP: Three Mexican brothers and two other people on Thursday lost their final appeals against death sentences for drug trafficking in Malaysia, their lawyer said.

The Mexicans are from Sinaloa state, the cradle of their country's drug trade, but have no criminal record at home. They were arrested at a secluded drug-making factory in Malaysia in 2008, and claimed they had been cleaning the place, not making drugs. Read more. 

Final round: Cartel twins vs. cop-backed kidnapper

The Sun Times: To Pedro Flores, the two men who pulled him over had looked like cops.

But moments later, face down in the back of a windowless van, his hands and feet zip-tied, Flores realized he’d been duped.

At 22, he had been quietly working with his twin brother, Margarito, to create the most successful drug-dealing partnership in Chicago’s history. Read more. 

Twins who became 'significant rats' to cartel await sentence

AP: In the underworld of illegal drug trafficking, identical twins Pedro and Margarito Flores rose from middling Chicago dealers to partners of Mexico's most notorious cartel lord, eventually building a nearly $2 billion franchise that spanned much of North America.

Anyone convicted of trafficking a fraction as much cocaine and heroin could normally expect a life sentence. But the twins can enter their sentencing hearing Tuesday confident of receiving far less. Because they spilled secrets that led to the indictments of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, a half-dozen of his lieutenants and about 40 lower-level traffickers, prosecutors are asking for a remarkably lenient term — around 10 years. Read more. 

253,000 U.S. guns smuggled to Mexico annually, study finds

The Miami Herald 
By Tim Johnson
McClatchy Newspapers

Mexico City -- Some 2.2 percent of all U.S. gun sales are made to smuggling rings that take firearms to Mexico, a scale of illegal trafficking that’s “much higher than widely assumed,” an academic study released Monday found.

An average of 253,000 weapons purchased in the United States head south of the border each year, according to the study by four scholars at the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute and the Igarape Institute, a research center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Profit margins at many gun stores are razor thin, and thousands of U.S. gun vendors would go out of business without the illicit traffic to Mexico, said Topher McDougal, an economist educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who’s one of the study’s authors.

The study’s conclusions are likely to add to controversy over what role U.S. weapons smugglers play in Mexico’s drug violence. Mexican officials have long blamed lax gun laws in the United States for the availability of weapons in Mexico, which has only one gun store and considers gun ownership a privilege, not a right.

The value of the annual smuggling trade is $127.2 million, says the study, “The Way of the Gun: Estimating Firearms Traffic Across the U.S.-Mexico Border.”  Read more. 

Mexico considers marijuana legalization after ballot wins in U.S.

Mexico, which has fought a long war against drug cartels that supply U.S. users, is rethinking its marijuana policy after Colorado and Washington approved legalization.

Los Angeles Times: By Richard Fausset, January 4, 2013.
MEXICO CITY

Forgive the Mexicans for trying to get this straight:

So now the United States, which has spent decades battling Mexican marijuana, is on a legalization bender?

The same United States that long viewed cannabis as a menace, funding crop-poisoning programs, tearing up auto bodies at the border, and deploying sniffer dogs, fiber-optic scopes and backscatter X-ray machines to detect the lowly weed?

The success of legalization initiatives in Colorado and Washington in November has sparked a new conversation in a nation that is one of the world's top marijuana growers: Should Mexico, which has suffered mightily in its war against the deadly drug cartels, follow the Western states' lead?

Mexico's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, opposes legalization, but he also told CNN recently that the news from Washington and Colorado "could bring us to rethinking the strategy." Read more. 

New Home for Juveniles Recruited to Drug Trade

Texas Tribune: EAGLE PASS, Tex. — Freddie knows he is lucky. If he were six months older, he could be in a state prison.
Or he could have been labeled a snitch and treated as such by Mexican cartel operatives.

Or he could be dead. Instead, Freddie will be free in December after finishing a year of court-ordered juvenile probation in his drug smuggling case. And he owes his good fortune to Bruce Ballou, the chief juvenile probation officer for Maverick, Zavala and Dimmit Counties. Read more.

Mexico seeks more international cooperation in war on drugs

Fox News Latino: Mexico wants to expand international cooperation in the war on drugs to create "new strategies and lines of action," Mexican Deputy Attorney General for Judicial and International Affairs Alejandro Ramos told Efe.

"Mexico's biggest concern is promoting international cooperation at a higher level of effectiveness," Ramos said Monday at the international anti-drug meeting in Lima.

Drug trafficking is a problem that affects all countries and Mexico is promoting a global approach because distinctions should not be made among consumers, producers and transit areas, Ramos said.

"What Mexico is pushing for in the hemisphere is to move from having meetings of a political nature to taking action to create a center to coordinate sensitive intelligence about criminal organizations that can be shared in a secure manner," the deputy AG said. Read more.

Man Is Killed by U.S. Agent in Drug Raid in Honduras

The U.S. becomes more involved in counternarcotics operations in Central America.  

NY Times: WASHINGTON — A United States Drug Enforcement Administration agent shot a man to death in Honduras during a raid on a smuggling operation early Saturday, a spokesman for the American Embassy in Honduras said Sunday. The man who was killed had been reaching for his weapon, the official said, and the agent fired in self-defense.

The shooting brought further attention to the growing American involvement in counternarcotics operations in Central America. Commando-style squads of D.E.A. agents have been working with local security forces in several countries and have been present at several firefights in Honduras in which people have died in the last 15 months.

The latest episode, however, is the first in which the United States government has said that an American agent, rather than a Honduran police officer, has killed a suspect. The shooting underscored the delicate issues of national sovereignty raised by the growing American participation in the operations. Read more. 

How the US Government, Banks, Prison-Industrial Complex, Corrupt Officials, Businesses, Law Enforcement, Racists and the CIA Profit From Illegal Drugs

This article is broad and brings together many strands of the story. The resulting image is of a war on drugs that for reasons of its own leaves in tact the financial empire built on illegal flows through powerful "legitimate" financial institutions and targets foreign countries, the poor and people of color. The links are also useful.

Truthout: A recent article in The Guardian UK offers evidence that "while cocaine production ravages countries in Central America, consumers in the US and Europe are helping developed economies grow rich from the profits." According to The Guardian UK story, the study by two Colombian professors found that "2.6% of the total street value of cocaine produced remains within the country [Columbia], while a staggering 97.4% of profits are reaped by criminal syndicates and laundered by banks, in first-world consuming countries."

One of the researchers, Alejandro Gaviria said: "We know that authorities in the US and UK know far more than they act upon. The authorities realize things about certain people they think are moving money for the drug trade - but the DEA [US Drug Enforcement Administration] only acts on a fraction of what it knows." Read more.

Candidates in Mexico Signal a New Tack in the Drug War

This article would be good if it were accurate. We at the Americas Program have been monitoring closely the views of the major candidates on the drug war and although it is easy to find a few comments regarding the need to devote more attention to the root causes of the violence (even the U.S. State Department--a staunch promoter of the drug war-- does this), both Peña Nieto and Vázquez Mota have repeatedly affirmed their commitment to toeing the line (what Peña Nieto might actually do in office is a different matter.) López Obrador presents the closest to a paradigm shift, stressing the need to address poverty and inequality, and offering to remove the army from the streets as soon as the police are adequately trained (not something we see happening in the short term, given the high levels of corruption and complicity). Nor is it correct to say that the US government is remaining neutral--Under-Secretary Brownfield and others have explicitly voiced their strong desire to see a new government continue with the present strategy and levels of military and police cooperation in counternarcotics efforts, despite the counterproductive impact so far.

The most interesting thing about this article is the comments section--be sure to take a look at the many informed and thoughtful comments, which weigh in overwhelmingly against the war on drugs model.

NYT The top three contenders for Mexico’s presidency have all promised a major shift in the country’s drug war strategy, placing a higher priority on reducing the violence in Mexico than on using arrests and seizures to block the flow of drugs to the United States.

The candidates, while vowing to continue to fight drug trafficking, say they intend to eventually withdraw the Mexican Army from the drug fight. They are concerned that it has proved unfit for police work and has contributed to the high death toll, which has exceeded 50,000 since the departing president, Felipe Calderón, made the military a cornerstone of his battle against drug traffickers more than five years ago.  Read more.

Despite Deaths in Honduran Raid, U.S. to Press Ahead With New Antidrug Policy

The New York Times: WASHINGTON — After several villagers were killed on a Honduran river this month during a raid on drug smugglers by Honduran and American agents, a local backlash raised concerns that the United States’ expanding counternarcotics efforts in Central America might be going too far. But United States officials in charge of that policy see it differently.

Throughout 2011, counternarcotics officials watched their radar screens almost helplessly as more than 100 small planes flew from South America to isolated landing strips in Honduras. But this month — after establishing a new strategy emphasizing more cooperation across various United States departments and agencies — two smugglers’ flights were intercepted within a single week, a development that explains why American officials say they are determined to press forward with the approach.

“In the first four months of this year, I’d say we actually have gotten it together across the military, law enforcement and developmental communities,” said William R. Brownfield, the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs. “My guess is narcotics traffickers are hitting the pause button. For the first time in a decade, air shipments are being intercepted immediately upon landing."

With Washington’s attention swinging from Iraq and Afghanistan — and with budget dollars similarly flowing in new directions — the United States is expanding and unifying its antidrug efforts in Central America, where violence has skyrocketed as enforcement efforts in the Caribbean, Colombia and Mexico have pushed cocaine traffic to smaller countries with weaker security forces. Read more. 

Drug Trade: US State Department Report Paints Grim Picture of Central American Drug Trade

The Pan-American Post: "The US State Department 2012 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report was released Wednesday...

It warns that the security situation will likely continue to deteriorate in Belize, which the White House added to its list of major drug producing and transit countries in 2011.... The outlook is similarly grim for countries in the Northern Triangle. 79 percent of all cocaine smuggling flights from South America now pass through Honduras.... Meanwhile, 15 percent of the total cocaine exports which enter the US first pass through Guatemala. El Salvador, which along with Belize was named a major drug transit country for the first time last year, is also described as facing serious security challenges. 


... On drug trafficking and Mexico, the report finds that drug-related murders rose 20 percent between 2010 and 2011, and that much of the fight over drug trafficking routes involves “multiple fractured organizations.” The domestic market for drugs in Mexico is growing, especially in the northern border states, where drugs are used as payment for smugglers. 


Other trafficking trends include the increased presence of Mexican smugglers in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe. Rather than maritime or air routes, land corridors through Mexico and Central America are now the most important smuggling routes for cocaine headed to the US, the report says. ... Mexico’s major drug trafficking organizations may be fracturing, but “significant challenges” still remain, the report concludes." read more"

Drug War: Mexico Attorney General inaugurates program to seize clandesting meth labs

See our post of InSight Crime's analysis of the growth of methamphetamine production in Mexico and its implications for the cartels and for the war against them.

Milenio: "The Attorney General of the Republic, Marisela Morales, inaugurated the Interdepartmental Program for Seizure and Procesecution of Clandestine Laboratories which seeks to train federal officials.

With the help of the DEA (U. S. Drug Enforcement Agency), the Attorney General's office will instruct personnel from the Army, Air Force, Federal Police, Navy and PGR laboratories to detect and seize laboratories that process synthetic drugs.

Ms. Morales said synthetic drug labs have grown exponentially in the country and warned that the process for making these drugs is being industrialized. The current administration has managed to destroy 712 of these places. "The development of synthetic drugs has begun to displace the cultivation of marijuana and poppies among criminal organizations, as well as the acquisition of cocaine," the official explained.

She added that the U.S. government has offered to do the training in the state of Virginia, using officials who excel in this matter." Spanish original

Drug Trade: Meth in Mexico--A Turning Point in the Drug War?

Mexican authorities announced Feb. 8 the largest seizure of methamphetamine in Mexican history -- and possibly the largest ever anywhere. Stratfor Global Intelligence provides a detailed analysis of the significance of the growth of meth manufacturing in Mexico.  Here is their conclusion:


Stratfor: "Historically, organized criminal groups have relied on control of a market for their source of wealth and power. But the current situation in Mexico, and the cocaine trade in general, prevents the Mexican groups (or anyone) from controlling the market outright. As long as geography and market forces keep the traffickers split, all sides in Mexico will try to use violence to get more control over territory and market access. We assume that Mexico's geography will not change dramatically any time soon, but market forces are much more temporal.

Mexican criminal organizations can overcome their weakness in the cocaine market by investing the money they have earned (billions of dollars, according to the most conservative estimates) into the control of other markets. Ultimately, cocaine is impossible for the Mexicans to control because the coca plant can only grow in sufficient quantity in the foothills of the Andes. It would be prohibitively expensive for the Mexicans to take over control of coca cultivation and cocaine production there. Mexican criminal organizations are increasing their presence in the heroin market, but while they can grow poppies in Mexico and produce black-tar heroin, Afghanistan still controls a dominant share of the white heroin market -- around 90 percent.

What Mexicans can control is the methamphetamine market. ... For the Mexican TCOs, industrializing and controlling the methamphetamine market offers a level of real control over a market that is not possible with cocaine. We expect fighting over the methamphetamine market to maintain violence at its current levels, but once a group comes out on top it will have far more resources to expel or absorb rival TCOs. This process may not sound ideal, but methamphetamine could pick the winner in the Mexican drug war." read more

Drug trade, not a lack of food, the biggest problem in the mountains of Chihuahua: local priest

A powerfull and poignant story of how the drug trade is devastating the youth in the Tarahumara Mountains of Chihuahua state, as told by the local priest.  Translated by Michael Kane, CIP intern.

La Jornada: "Though it is very serious, the greatest crisis in this part of the Tarahumara Mountains in Chihuahua is not the food shortage, but the presence of narcotrafficking and its quota of violence: “the Rarámuri communities are being crucified by organized crime.”

In an interview, the pastor of the village of Creel and general vicar of the diocese, Hector Fernando Martinez, who has worked in the area for 17 years tending to 39 communities, vehemently repeats himself. This past Wednesday he reminded Governor Cesar Duarte of that fact at a public event in the community of San Ignacio organized to distribute emergency food that the state government had delivered to respond to the food shortage in Tarahumara.

The presence of narcotrafficking – explains Martinez – has devastating results for the community’s social structure, “because it uproots people from their land, displaces them from their houses, and--out of fear--they stop farming or altogether abandon their towns.” At the same time, in the face of unemployment and a lack of options, “it attracts young Rarámuri people and teenagers because it offers them work, encourages them to join; it provides an income.” Seduced by this life, teenagers and young people, who range between ages 16 and 20, end up rejecting their identity.

The middle-aged priest, a jovial character who translated the Hebrew Bible into Rarámuri, doesn’t speak of rumors; he knows it, he’s seen it, he’s lived it. Today, many of those who pass through Creel and the surrounding towns in trucks with tinted windows, music turned all the way up, and “armed to the teeth,” attended catechism with him when they were children.

He admits that the situation hurts and frustrates him: “I grieve for them, because I know sooner or later they are going to be killed, and it frustrates me because life in the Tarahumara Mountains, the expectations it gives them, it’s very little. For them, the gun, the truck, the money is more important in order to feel powerful.”

“Bless our weapons, father.”

He tells of this past December 12, when a group of them stopped him when he was travelling from one town to another. They asked him to bless their weapons: “I refused outright; I told them: ‘I will bless you, if you’d like, that God may care for you and so that you don’t use them, but I will not bless them.’” They insisted, “Come on, father. In the movie ‘El Infierno’ they bless guns. Plus we’re not the ones who are extorting money; we’re just in it for the work!

They let him go, but later on stopped him again: “They told me ‘Get out (of your car), we want you to try our weapons.’” They weren’t AK-47’s, they were grenades launchers: “I told them, I am on my way out of the community; people are gathered in my church, if you shoot they’re going to get scared, it’s not worth it, guys. Then it occurred to me to tell them that it was the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe and that I still had people to baptize. So they let me go.”

Those kinds of experiences don’t make Hector Fernando Martinez feel threatened or fearful: “the truth is I’ve never been threatened; I’ve told them that we’re not going to refuse them access to the church when one of them passes on, but we’re not going to hold a mass, because we don’t want to be part of the narcocorrido (ballad).” He said, “One time an important narco from here was killed and they brought him to the church; they made a narcocorrido about him and the town cried and they rang the bells; you become part of it. We don’t want to let that happen.”

The problem of insecurity in Creel can’t be attributed solely to the presence of armed groups. The more difficult problem is that the town finds itself in the middle of a fight: on one side is the La Línea cartel and on the other the Sinaloa cartel. Creel is, as it’s always been, the battlefield.

One of the few remedies the priest has devised to respond to the situation is sports, particularly soccer (the locals root for C.D. Guadalajara). However, Creel has nothing more than a hard court for fast soccer: “we’ve gone door to door, we’ve told the government that we urgently need places for the kids because they don’t have anything to do and, obviously, the hitmen come into Creel with their guns and the kids look up to them, and despite that, there’s no official program, no strategy to counter it.”

Outsiders can only note the obvious: the furtive glances in the passenger busses that make the four and a half hour trip from the capital of Chihuahua to Creel; the stories of the burrito street vendor in a small town who – without anyone asking – admits that he once sold pirated goods on the street until the organized crime syndicates started to charge high protection fees; the truck drivers with tinted glass who slow down and ride along next to those who seem like strangers or out-of-towners.

Against this background, the pastor of Creel has a conviction that he calmly expresses: we’re not going to let them intimidate us.” Spanish original

Drug Trade: Mexican navy seizes huge haul of precursor chemicals

We post this, not for the supposed "achievement" of the Mexican navy, but for what it demonstrates about the size of the drug trade and the "transnational" capacity of the Mexican cartels to move drugs around the world and to take over Central America.

BBC News: "The Mexican navy says it has seized 195 tonnes of chemicals which can be used to make the drug methamphetamine. The navy found 12 shipping containers full of the precursor chemical in the Pacific coast port of Lazaro Cardenas.

They said the chemical had been shipped from China and was destined for Guatemala and Nicaragua. The authorities said that Mexican drug cartels have been expanding their methamphetamine operations to Guatemala." read more

Drug Trade: Worrisome Uptick in Crack Consumption in Mexico

Fox News Latino: "Drug rehabilitation professionals in Mexico report a worrisome uptick in crack addiction, part of an overall trend of increased drug consumption in Mexico. A 2008 National Addictions Survey showed crack consumption, albeit still small relative to marijuana and alcohol use, was six times greater than in 2002.

At 0.59 percent, the percentage of people who reported having consumed crack was higher than the reported incidence of heroin, amphetamines and methamphetamines. Cocaine consumption (the statistics for which include crack, as well) doubled over the same period, to 2.4 percent of the population." read more

Drug Trade: Nachos and meth don't mix at border

89.3 KPCC: "Ever order nachos with extra cheese? How about a side of methamphetamine? Federal agents say they found 7 pounds of the drug stuffed inside cans of nacho ingredients at the San Ysidro border crossing in San Diego County. The meth was found hidden in cans of cheese sauce and jalapenos." read more