Drug Trafficking in Mexico - Discussion Paper 36  You are in the MOST Phase I website (1994-2003). The MOST Phase II website is available at: www.unesco.org/shs/most. Management of Social Transformations - MOSTDiscussion Paper No. 36 Drug Trafficking in Mexico: A First General Assessmentby Luís AstorgaTable of ContentsAbstract *Legality and Prohibition *Drug trafficking and political power *Sinaloa and the gomeros *Operation Condor *The Camarena affair *Drug trafficking organizations *The military in anti-drug activities *Money laundering *Drug seizure, destruction and use *Drug traffickers’ corridos *Conclusion * AbstractMedia commonly presents Mexico’s drug scene as a perfect copy of theColombian model, ignoring, among other points, that drug trafficking inMexico began about sixty years before the Colombians got an important shareof the American drug market, the different political systems in both countries,and the historical and structural relationship of subordination of drugtraffickers to political power observed in Mexico. The lack of more academicresearch in Mexico on drug-related problems is another reason for replicatingtotally mechanically Colombian particularities to the Mexican experience.And last, but not least, the U.S.A. government discourses (both those madeby McCaffrey, the U.S.A. drug tzar, and the DEA) on drug issuesin Mexico, and in many other countries, have succeeded in imposing a kindof symbolic domination. They have become, more than the Mexican governmentdiscourse on the same subject, the official versions of what has to beperceived and believed by the public opinion about the Mexican case. Those discourses are never completely objective nor politically neutraland have created some misunderstandings and frictions between the two governments.Despite the overwhelming information and common places generated by U.S.A.officials and reproduced world-wide by the media about drug traffickingin Mexico, there are still many questions that some social researchersare posing and trying to answer. These concern in particular the historicalsociology of the phenomenon in the country, the U.S.A.-Mexico relationson drug issues, the subculture of drug trafficking, drug use, and the dynamicsof the relationship between drug traffickers and political power. The objectiveof this paper is to show a synthetic, comprehensive vision of those drug-relatedproblems in Mexico since the end of the last century.Legalityand ProhibitionIn the nineteenthcentury and the beginning of the twentieth century, drugs such as marijuana,opiates and cocaine were commonly used in Mexico, specially opiates, basicallyfor medical reasons. Laudanum and other opium derivatives such as morphineand heroin, as well as pharmaceuticals such as cocaine, coca wines andmarijuana cigarettes were prescribed by doctors and easily obtained inpharmacies, popular markets and even hardware stores. The authorities wereconcerned about the quality of these products and tried to protect theconsumers. Addicts were considered as ill persons not as criminals (1).There had been some attempts to control laudanum, poppy and marijuana commercesince 1870, but they did not succeed (2).In the first decade of the twentieth century, the U.S.A. governmentwas very active in the international arena, trying to convince other countriesto accept opium control and create special laws to punish the offenders.The Shanghai Conference in 1909 for opium control was the beginning ofthe U.S.A. diplomacy on drugs. The Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, approvedin the U.S.A., aimed at controlling opium consumption, was a sort of foundingreason to expand American official perceptions and laws on drugs world-wide.At that time, the Mexican revolution was taking place. Revolutionary leadersin Mexico were more interested in political survival than in controllingopium trafficking which was of, not an important or special concern forthem. Prohibition on one side of the U.S.A.-Mexican border and legal commerceon the other created the conditions for drug trafficking.Poppy culture existed in Mexico since at least the last quarter of thenineteenth century (1886) in the north-western state of Sinaloa, for example(3). On 19 January 1917, congressman (Coahuila) Dr.José María Rodríguez proposed an amendment to thefraction XVI of article 73 of the Constitution, which gave powers to theCongress to dictate laws on citizenship, naturalisation, colonisation,emigration and immigration, and general health in the country. Among thereasons for the amendment was the concern about alcoholism and the "sellingof substances which poison the individual and degenerate the (Mexican)race". He named opium, morphine, ether, cocaine, and marijuana. The purposewas to stop "the abuse in the commerce of these substances so noxious tohealth", to interrupt their "immoderate or non-medical use". Accordingto him, mortality had increased because of the lack of official controlon those drugs. In the discussions about the pertinence of the amendment,diseases and alcoholism were the main concern of other congressmen. Rodríguezwas the only one to mention drugs. The amendment was approved (4).Most of the illicit drug trade was taking place through Mexicali andTijuana, in the territory of Baja California, governed by colonel EstebanCantú (1916-1920), suspected by the American authorities of controllingopium trafficking. According to customs officials from Los Angeles, thegovernor used wouldto resell through his father- in- law’s family whathe seized from drug traffickers (5). Addicts to opium,or other drugs, were not very important in term of numbers, and "moralentrepreneurs" (Becker dixit) like those in the U.S.A. did not exist.In that context, , socongressman Rodríguez’s proposition seems ,in that context, more like a eugenic and public health concern than a calculatedstrategy to diminish one of the governor’s illegal sources of revenues,a decision to stop drug smuggling at the border, or a concession to pleasethe American government. It was obviously not a more complex interest ina certain need of opium prohibition nation-wide. Years later, poppy fieldswere particularly concentrated, besides Sinaloa, in some other north-westernstates such as Sonora, Chihuahua and Durango.Marijuana culture and commercialisation was prohibited in Mexico in1920, poppy in 1926 (6). According to Mexican officialsan argument for this was "race degeneration" provoked by these and otherdrugs, such as cocaine. Perception of the social and political elites wasmimed on the ideas created and reproduced by members of the same socialgroups in the United States and Europe. Drug use and abuse in Mexico wasnot a widespread phenomenon and the number of people concerned was farfrom the figures of its northern neighbour. Marijuana use was generallyrelated to soldiers, criminals and poor people; opium smoking to Chineseminorities; and morphine, heroin and cocaine to artists, middle class andbourgeois degenerated individuals. Drug traffickers’ main business wasnorth of the border. Drugtrafficking and political powerThe most important illegal plants cultivated in Mexico were poppy andmarijuana. Coca plantations did not exist. For many decades opium traffickingwas the main source - but obviously not the only one - of Mexican traffickers’revenues, the source of their primary accumulation. In the state of Sinaloa,people invented a special word, gomero (7),for opium traffickers. As David Musto says, even though there were somemarijuana users in the thirties in the U.S.A., it was not until the sixtiesthat marijuana consumption was generalised (8). TheAmerican authorities, especially Harry J. Anslinger, Chief of the Bureauof Narcotic Drugs (BND), were concerned about marijuana use in the U.S.A.There was a sort of marijuana hysteria in the media to which Anslingercontributed. The Marijuana Tax Act, to control the transportationand selling of the plant, was approved in 1937 (9).In the thirties, marijuana production could be counted already in tonsin states like Puebla, Guerrero and Tlaxcala, and some of the alleged ownersof the crops living in Mexico City, such as "Lola la Chata", were suspectedof being protected by high ranking members of the anti-narcotics police(10). At the same time, drug traffickers from thenorth-western region were making fortunes out of opium smuggling, developingtheir routes through Nogales, Mexicali, Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez.In Coahuila, according to the investigation report sent by special agentJuan Requena to the Mexican Department of Public Health, the most importantopium trafficker, the Chinese Antonio Wong Yin, was a compadre ofgovernor Nazario Ortiz Garza. Others were in close touch with general JesúsGarcía Gutiérrez, who was in charge of military operationsin the state (11). Similar situations were reportedin a less precise way about governors from Baja California (12)and Chihuahua (13). Doctor and General JoséSiurob, the Department of Public Health Chief, recognised in 1937 thatanti-narcotic agents used to be paid with the drug they seized. Once, hesaid, a governor sent some cans of opium to his office, but when they wereopened they contained only tar (14). There were obviouslydifferent levels of perception about the need to control drug traffickingand the seriousness of the drug control politics.A political scandal of unknown proportions exploded in 1947 when GeneralPablo Macías Valenzuela, ex-Secretary of War and Navy (NationalDefense) and governor of the state of Sinaloa (1945-1950), was suspectedof leading a drug trafficking ring or protecting the opium traffickers.The information was published by national newspapers such as Excélsiorand El Universal (15). According to JesúsLazcano Ochoa, Attorney General of Sinaloa in Valenzuela’s government,the governor had never even seen opium in his life until he showed himsome samples seized from the traffickers (16). TheAttorney General added that the accusations were inventions of his politicalenemies who also suspected him of having masterminded the assassinationof his predecessor, Col. Rodolfo T. Loaiza (1941-1944) (17),from the Lázaro Cárdenas group. The scandal cooled off aftera private meeting with president Miguel Alemán, when he was on anofficial visit in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, six days after the first noteappeared in the press against Valenzuela. The governor finished his termand became Commander of the 1st Military Zone (1951-1956) (18).It was the first time the drug trafficking issue was used publicly andpolitically by one power elite group against another.In 1947, the year the CIA was founded, President Alemán createdthe Security Federal Agency (Dirección Federal de Seguridad-DFS),a kind of President’s political police, also with the power of interventionin drug issues. That same year, drug policy, traditionally an attributionof the Department of Health, was transferred to the Attorney General’sOffice (Procuraduría General de la República-PGR). Reportsfrom the American Embassy in Mexico to the Department of State in Washingtonremarked on the unreliable backgrounds of the people put at the head ofthe DFS, suspected of being involved or controlling drug trafficking. Amongthem, Senator (Distrito Federal) and Colonel Carlos I. Serrano, the realchief and brain behind the scenes, close friend of President Alemán(19).It is important to note that, since the beginning of the drug business,the best known drug traffickers in Mexico were related in special officialreports in Mexico and the U.S.A. to high ranking politicians. More precisely,these politicians were suspected of being directly involved in the illegaltrade and even of controlling it. In that scenario, free-lancers or outsiderswould not have any chances to build up their own networks and succeed intheir efforts. The political system emerged after the Mexican revolutionwas a state party system, a social pyramid with the President at the top,concentrating powers over the legislative and the judicial branches. Governors’fidelity – most of them military officers formed on the battlefields –was in many cases assured in exchange of a certain liberty to do any kindof business. The limits were the President’s will, their own entrepreneurialcapacity, and their ethical dispositions. In that context, drug traffickingwas just another profitable business that could be achieved by powerfulmembers of the "revolutionary family", because of the political positionsoccupied by some of them at a given moment. Controlled, tolerated or regulatedby mighty politicians in northern states, drug trafficking seems to havebeen a business that was developed from within the power structure, anddrug traffickers do not give the impression of having emerged as an earlyautonomous specialised social group, but rather as a new class of outlawsthat depended closely on political and police protection and was bannedfrom political activity, according to recent U.S.A. and Mexican archivesand newspaper archives investigations.Since the prohibition years in the twenties until 1947, governors fromnorthern states where illicit plants were cultivated seem to have had animportant and sometimes direct role in controlling drug trafficking andtraffickers. After 1947, the DFS and the Federal Judicial Police (PolicíaJudicial Federal-PJF, depending on the PGR) as well as the army, became,more than before, the institutions responsible for fighting against theforbidden trade. Imputations on governors were transmuted into indictmentsagainst members of those institutions, protecting governors from an eventualpolitical pressure because of drug affairs and leaving police agents andthe military assuming the consequences of the dangerous and structuralliaisons with drug traffickers. In a way, this new structure created aninstitutional mediation between drug traffickers and the political powers,groups who previously had a direct line of communication. On one hand,the drug business grew very quickly during the war years and did not stopin the aftermath. More social agents belonging to the power structure placedin strategic positions where business was booming had the possibility ofmaking quick and easy profits, and so they did. But, on the other hand,police agents and the military also had the role of preventing drug traffickersfrom becoming completely autonomous or getting so wild as to go beyondcertain limits of socially and historically tolerated violence. As longas the outlaws were politically controlled, federal agents could get apiece of the cake, not so big as to become autonomous themselves, and certainlynot without sharing profits with their superiors in the political structure.That was the rule in order to secure impunity. Sinaloaand the gomerosFor many reasons, the state of Sinaloa has become a paradigmatic casein the study of drug trafficking in Mexico. Articulated since the end ofthe nineteenth century to the economy of California and Arizona in theU.S.A., the opium produced in that state followed the same route as certainagricultural products that were exported via the Pacific railroad. Chineseimmigrants and local producers and traders, mostly but not exclusivelyfrom the mountains of Badiraguato (a municipal division of the state ofSinaloa) transported their merchandise to the border cities of Nogales,Mexicali and Tijuana. Criminals by law, they were merchants, some of themfrom wealthy families, peasants, adventurers, and middle class people,living in cities and towns where everybody knew each other, who decidedto tempt the devil and tried to make quick money to get rich, to capitalisetheir legal business, or to earn a living living (20).Those who persisted and specialised in drug trafficking, those who becameprofessionals, were, most of the time, people from the mountains wherepoppy fields bloomed. They created dynasties, transmitted their know-howto the successive generations and succeeded in founding a source of permanentdrug trafficking leaders to manage the business nation-wide. In the longterm, they appear as a kind of oligopoly: they have been leading the mostimportant drug trafficking groups since the beginning of prohibition; thepower of the groups has not followed the six-year political cycles; andthey have never shown any interest in organizing themselves in politics,as Carlos Lehder, Pablo Escobar and the Extraditables did in Colombia.There was an early process of "naturalisation" of drug trafficking insome regions of Mexico. Anybody could be a trafficker. A brother, a cousin,a friend, a neighbour, a friend’s friend. In rural areas with few peoplein the villages it was very easy to know who cultivated illegal plants.They needed legal cultures to survive, and illegal ones to live a betterlife. An important and interesting reason to accept the coexistence withtraffickers was the absence of drug use and abuse, specially opium andits derivatives. They produced for the market abroad, not for local consumption,except perhaps for marijuana which was used for medical or recreationalpurposes. Another reason was the level of violence. In small towns, itwas more difficult, although not impossible, to resort to violence becausealmost all the inhabitants were related. There was room for everybody inthe drug business, so it was not necessary to fight to death to get a shareof the market. Traffickers’ ethics were more related to the logic of theeconomy than to law or religion. Besides, in their experience, police agentsand the military, representing the state and in charge of destroying illegalplants and chasing traffickers, were sometimes really doing their job andother times promoting the business and trying to make a profit like everybodyelse. Trust and respect became relative values. Why then act accordingto the law if the authorities did not or did so in an erratic way?To commercialise opium, peasants from the mountains had to come downto the cities. They chose to stay in neighbourhoods at the periphery, placessharing both rural and urban facilities to make their stay more comfortable,or the transition easier for those who wanted a new life. In the saloonsthey frequented, alcohol, music and pistols were usually a deadly combination.The reasons for the shootings were not always related to drug affairs,but some traffickers began to use the saloons and the neighbourhood inwhich they lived as battlefields. For that reason, in the fifties, thepress in Culiacán, for example, named the city "a new Chicago withgangsters in sandals" (21). The business had grownand so had the violence associated with it. Confrontations in urban areaswere between traffickers or against the police in specific spaces, noteverywhere in the city. In general, innocent people were not touched. Itwas not a blind violence.In the Culiacán press, there were also editorials asking theUnited Nations for permission to cultivate poppy in Sinaloa, like in Yugoslavia,India, Turkey and Iran. It would be a source of work and wealth, they argued.Mexico, and Sinaloa in particular, was the only opium-producing countryin Latin America – and good quality – they added. Opium and its derivativeswere only used by Chinese minorities and some "degenerate" rich people;the majority of the Mexican citizens were not affected, they said. In anaddress to the Mexican government they advised it to use the funds frompoppy eradication in the fight against marijuana cultivation. The latterwas perceived as a plant whose use would make people degenerate, drivethem mad and lead them to crime.The proposition was difficult to accept by the government, they said,because campaigns against drugs depended on treaties with the U.S.A. Thedirector of the newspaper which published those editorials later becameAttorney General of Sinaloa (1951-1952) (22). A paradoxindeed, and a clear example of the different levels of perception of theofficial drug policy designed by the federal government. It was also anexample of a higher degree of tolerance and pragmatism of important socialgroups in Sinaloa, who knew first hand the meaning of the old illegal businessfor the local economy. For the first time, newspapers from Mexico Cityused the word "narcotrafficker" (23) as a more legitimatedesignation for gomeros, commonly used by traffickers themselvesand by people who recognized them as a newly-forming social group. Theterm was neither commonly used in the official discourse of that time,nor widespread in the media, but was years later.According to Mexican authorities, campaigns against drugs in the fiftieswere so successful as suggest a "definitive liquidation" in Sinaloa (24).They were exaggerating, of course, thinking about the acceptance of theU.S.A. government and the U.N. observers. Their strategy provoked the immediateexpansion of illegal cultivation in the states of Jalisco, Nayarit andMichoacán. Tougher measures in one place created trafficking problemsin another: this was consistently observed throughout the years of drugcampaigns. Drug trafficking – mostly opium – via planes was so intensethat the Minister of Communications and Public Works decided to suspendcommercial flights in some airfields in Sinaloa, Sonora, Chihuahua andDurango in 1953, and closed the Aviation School in Culiacán. A formerpilot and flight instructor at that time recognised having transportedopium on his plane very often; however, he said, national airline companies(Aeronaves de México) had done it on a bigger scale. Miguel Urías,a very important drug trafficker from Badiraguato was in charge of sellingthe tickets to fly from Bacacoragua, a small opium-producing town in thesierra of that municipality, to other places (25).The official successful results of these campaigns were of merely rhetoricnature.It was estimated that there were three hundred clandestine airfieldsin northern Mexico in the sixties. Interpol announced that Mexico had takenthe place formerly occupied by Cuba in the "transatlantic narcotic trafficking".Sinaloa, Durango and Sonora were mentioned as places where extensive poppyfields existed (26). Other smaller plantations weredestroyed in Michoacán, Guerrero, Durango, Morelos, Chiapas, Oaxaca,Jalisco, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Baja California, Estado de México,Zacatecas, etc (27). For the PGR, Sinaloa was rankedfirst in marijuana and poppy cultivation (28). Themost impressive figures in the sixties were those concerning marijuana.American soldiers’ and students’ demand for drugs had an immediate effectin terms of Mexican offer. In 1966, the PGR reported the destruction, in45 days, of three thousand tons of marijuana only in Chihuahua and Sinaloa(29). According to some American anti-narcotics officialsfrom San Diego, 75 or 80 percent of the heroin and almost all of the marijuanaintroduced to the U.S.A. came from Mexico (30). In1968, Look magazine estimated marijuana smuggling from Mexico tothe U.S.A. at around 3.5 to 5 tons per week (31).In 1969, president Nixon launched "Operation Intercept" (32),translated into meticulous car inspection for drugs at the border. Thiswas the beginning of a new era on drug politics in the U.S.A.-Mexico relations.The marijuana boom created more quick fortunes than before. The numberof users and the number of new, younger and wilder players in the drugbusiness grew in an exponential way. The unwritten codes were broken. Assassinationof high ranking police officers was a sign of changing times. Older drugtraffickers, suspected of the killing of the chief of the Judicial Policein Sinaloa in 1969 (33), refused the accusationsand blamed younger traffickers who did not respect the old rules of thegame (i.e. not to mess with a higher hierarchy of the police forces andnot to use the city as battlefield). They used M-1 machineguns and .38pistols. The 9th Military Zone Commander in Culiacán said thingswere changing thanks to the active role the Army was playing, and criticisedagents of the PJF who "used to fight among themselves to come to Sinaloa"(34), meaning they wanted to be where the quick moneywas. Federal police agents were qualified as "Attila’s Hordes" by the localpress (35).A new generation was emerging and trying to impose its own law. Decadesof drug trafficking and generations of traffickers had produced a new breedof tougher players, richer and more powerful at a younger age than theirancestors. They were more sure of themselves, they did not hide, they movedto other new and respected middle-class neighbourhoods, drove cars withAmerican license plates and had many parties where tambora, regionalmusic, played for days; they were proud of being drug traffickers. As forthe rest of society, their attitude was a mix of astonishment, fear, admirationand respect. If violence did not touch them directly, they were not particularlyworried and had no explicit and public moral judgement against the traffickers’way of life or business. OperationCondorIn the mid-seventies, the Mexican federal government launched the mostimpressive military operation against drug plantations and traffickerscalled "Operation Condor" (36). Ten thousand soldiersunder the command of General José Hernández Toledo, who hadparticipated in the 1968 students massacre in Tlatelolco and in battlesagainst universities such as UNAM, Nicolaíta and Sonora, were sentto the sierra of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua to destroy the illegalplantations. The PGR representative was Carlos Aguilar Garza. General Hernándezpredicted the end of drug trafficking in six months (37).Despite the use of defoliants and human rights violations, he did not succeed.Instead, hundreds of peasants fled to other states; so did big drug traffickerswho continued their business and way of life. Aguilar Garza became a drugtrafficker himself years later and was assassinated in 1993. Tons of drugswere destroyed, production was reduced, prices rose, but drugs continuedto flow into the American market, although in lesser quantity of Mexicanorigin. Many villages in the sierra were deserted. Hundreds of people werearrested, tortured and sent to jail, but not a single big boss (38).The most important group leaders moved to Guadalajara, Jalisco, and continuedtheir business on a bigger scale thanks to cocaine which they had alreadybeen smuggling on a large scale since 1975, according to the DEA (39).The military and political success claimed by the authorities was justa mirage. In the long term, the social cost of the military operation wasmore important for a large number of people, whose negative attitude towardsfederal police and the military was reinforced, than the spectacular destructionof illegal plants which made Mexican and American anti-narcotics officialsso happy and optimistic. According to both governments, their collaboration– through DEA agents and their counterparts, for example – had never beenas good and efficient (40). This did not last verylong. TheCamarena affair (41)At the end of November 1984, Mexican authorities discovered an enormousmarijuana plantation, called "The Buffalo", about 12 square kilometers,in the state of Chihuahua. Twelve thousand people, or more, from differentMexican states and even from Guatemala, worked there. Rafael Caro Quintero,a drug trafficker from Badiraguato, was suspected to be the owner. On February7, 1985, DEA agent Enrique Camarena and Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar,were kidnapped in Guadalajara in different places. Days later, John Gavin,the American Ambassador, and Francis Mullen, DEA chief, said in a pressconference that the discovery of the marijuana plantation was due to Americanintelligence work, affirmed that Guadalajara was the centre of nationaland international drug trafficking, and gave some figures about drug groups,leaders and percentage of heroin of Mexican origin introduced to the U.S.A.The Attorney General’s Office and the Department of Customs decided toput political pressure on the Mexican government. Operation "Stop and Seize"at the border, a sort of remake of "Operation Intercept", was the strategyfor pushing the Mexican authorities to resolve the kidnapping case. DEAchief accused DFS agents of having protected, and PJF permitted, Caro’srunaway from Guadalajara airport. His words were reproduced in the WashingtonPost and broadcast by the NBC. He lost his job.About a month after the kidnapping, two half-buried bodies with torturesigns were found in the state of Michoacán. Four days before thediscovery, a hundred police agents from Jalisco had massacred some membersof a family living near the place where the bodies were found. The policeaccused one of the deceased to be the kidnapper and executioner. CuauhtémocCárdenas, governor of Michoacán, pointed out the illegalbehavior of the neighbour state police and protested in a letter publishedin the press. Officially, Camarena and Zavala were killed because of thedamage they had caused to the traffickers. They informed the authoritiesabout the "Buffalo" and certainly knew too much. Camarena was working ona special assignment called "Operation Godfather", aimed at investigatingthe activities of the Sinaloan Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo, thesuspected "Godfather" of drug trafficking in Mexico, the "boss of bosses".He was also accused in the Camarena case, as was Ernesto Fonseca, fromBadiraguato, another "family" chief.The honeymoon that had existed during "Operation Condor" became a nightmarefor the Mexican government when the DEA agent was killed. A lot of informationgathered by American anti-narcotics agents on Mexico throughout the years,specially on the old special and dangerous relationship between drug traffickersand DFS and PJF agents was delivered to the media. The Camarena case wasa catalyst, a special occasion to show the level of corruption of Mexicanpolice agents, and even politicians. Some agents and police commanders,accused of protecting Caro, were put in jail. DFS and Interpol-Mexico directorswere removed. Caro was captured on April 4, 1985, in Costa Rica, and sentencedon December 12, 1989, to 92 years in prison. Fonseca did not escape either.Félix Gallardo was caught in Guadalajara on April 8, 1989. In May1994, he was sentenced to 40 years.The Camarena case did not end with the incarceration of police agentsand big drug traffickers. The second chapter of the story began in January1990 when NBC broadcast the program Drug Wars, based on the bookDesperados (1988) by Time journalist Elaine Shannon, whosemain source of information was the DEA. The TV series showed the storyof the good guys, DEA agents, against the bad guys, Mexican officials,police and military. Mexican authorities felt offended and protested. MiguelAldana Ibarra, ex-chief of Interpol-Mexico said he doubted Camarena wasdead, added he might be living in California or Colorado, and accused himof smuggling marijuana with his Mexican drug trafficker friends. Some mediacontrolled by the government reproduced similar versions. The White Housespokesman defended Camarena’s memory. On January 31, the Los Angeles federalprosecutor formally accused Aldana, Manuel Ibarra Herrera, ex-chief ofthe PJF, Humberto Alvarez Macháin – Caro’s family doctor – FélixGallardo, and Hondurian trafficker and Gallardo’s associate in the cocainebusiness Ramón Matta Ballesteros, all of them involved in Camarena’smurder. General Juan Arévalo Gardoqui, ex-Secretary of NationalDefence, was on their waiting list. In 1992, DEA protected and paid witnesses,recruited among Fonseca’s and Caro’s associate gunmen and bodyguards, accusedRubén Zuno Arce, owner of the house in which Camarena was killed,Manuel Bartlett, Secretary of Government, Enrique Alvarez del Castillo,Attorney General, and general Arévalo Gardoqui, of having plannedthe crime. Zuno, ex-President Echeverría’s brother in law, was detainedin the U.S.A. in 1989, judged and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1992.In 1990, Alvarez Macháin was kidnapped in Mexico by policemen paidby the DEA, delivered to DEA agents in El Paso, taken to prison, judged,and finally liberated because of lack of evidence. Accusations againsthigh ranking politicians were never proven, but suspicions in both countriesremained.For the first time in Mexico-U.S.A. relations, members of the politicalelite were publicly linked to drug affairs by American authorities. Thiswas nothing new for many people in Mexico, especially in those regionswhere illegal plants had been cultivated for decades and drug traffickinghad become an industry. Nothing has been proved throughout the years, butit is also true that the Judicial power has not been efficient nor independentfrom the Executive. Political opposition in a state party system has beensymbolic. The only political force the Mexican government has ever listenedto, in drug matters, is the U.S.A. government. Multiple reports sent byAmerican anti-narcotics agents to Washington since the 1910s show how muchthey knew and learned about drug production, trafficking, and traffickers-officialsrelations in Mexico. The drug issue has not always been a relevant pointin the American political agenda. The cumulative knowledge of anti-narcoticsagencies has been used to put pressure on Mexican governments when needed.The "war on drugs" declared by President Reagan in the 80s, and continuedduring the Bush administration, enhanced the power of "drug warriors" whodid not hesitate to use their information to damage the political eliteimage and credibility. They waited until one of their agents was killed,but they knew it long before. Drugtrafficking organizationsWhen opium was prohibited in the U.S.A. it was legal in Mexico. Socialagents who commercialised it were criminals on one side of the border andlegitimate traders on the other. The circle was completed when Mexico adoptedsimilar laws. A new social category was born: the drug trafficker. Alcoholprohibition in the U.S.A. (1920-1933) and the greater demand for alcoholcompared to opiates, marijuana and cocaine, made alcohol smuggling muchmore profitable. Bootleggers were, by far, a larger, wealthier and morepowerful group. In Chicago, Al Capone (42), a cocaineuser himself, and his group of outlaws became the prototype of the gangster,the entrepreneur of the underworld. He made investments in legal businessand financial contributions to political campaigns. He bought policemenand politicians. He became a legend. In Mexico, known and famous drug traffickersin the thirties such as Enrique Fernández, from Ciudad Juárez,were soon compared to Capone by the press. Interim governor (1929-1930)from Chihuahua, Luis León (Secretary of Agriculture under Callesgovernment, and of Industry and Commerce under Ortíz Rubio) helpedhim get out of the Islas Marías prison (43).Some said Fernández had made pacts with politicians. Shootings amongtraffickers were Chicago style. The discourse on drug trafficking resembledthat used during the alcohol prohibition.María Dolores Estévez, known as "Lola la Chata", was themost important drug trafficker operating in Mexico City from the thirtiesto the fifties. Captain Luis Huesca de la Fuente, ex-chief of the NarcoticsPolice, was sent to jail, accused of having stolen the drug he seized andof having protected la "Chata" (44). In Baja California,Dr. Bernardo Bátiz B., Delegate from the Health Department, suspectedhigh ranking officials from the local government of protecting traffickersand sending them to prison only when they became greedy (45).In the forties, Max Cossman, associated to Harold "Happy" Meltzer – connectedhimself to Mickey Cohen (46), from the old Capone’sband, who was living in California –, was accused for the murder of EnriqueDiarte, an important opium trafficker operating in Tijuana and Mexicali(47). According to Harry Anslinger, Benjamin "Bugsy"Siegel, from the Luciano – Lansky group, and Virginia Hill negotiated withMexican politicians to finance poppy culture in the Northwest part of thecountry (48). Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, indictedin Camarena’s murder, began his trafficker career in the fifties. In thesixties, Eduardo Fernández, Pedro Avilés and Jorge Favela,were included in a large list of traffickers from Sinaloa mentioned inthe press. In the post-war years, traffickers from Sinaloa became definitelythe most important in the country. They began with opium smuggling, andcontinued with marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines, depending on thedemand.In the seventies, Pedro Avilés, Manuel Salcido Uzeta (the "CrazyPig"), and especially Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo, were the mostcommon names. Félix G. was born in the suburbs of Culiacán,Sinaloa’s capital. He studied for a commercial career, but decided to workas a policeman. He was assigned to the governor’s house where he becamehis family bodyguard. The governor of Sinaloa Leopoldo Sánchez Celis(1963-1968) was his godfather when he got married (49).According to the DEA, Félix G., associated to Ramón MattaBallesteros, the Honduran contact with Colombians, became the number onecocaine trafficker in Mexico starting in the mid-seventies (50).He lived as a respectable and respected entrepreneur for many years. Hisrelationship with ex-governor Sánchez Celis (some said he was hisprotector) facilitated his political and business contacts. He was a prominentcounsellor of Somex bank (Chihuahua) in 1979, and a shareholder and distinguishedclient at the national level at least until 1982. In 1976 there was anarrest order against him in Tijuana, but nothing was done. The chargeswere heroin and cocaine trafficking. He was protected by an important narcoticsofficial, said the DEA. Starting in 1971 he accumulated at least fourteenarrest orders. He did business for four more years after Camarena’s murder.He was himself godfather of the governor’s son (Rodolfo) at his marriage,a dangerous liaison that caused Rodolfo’s assassination when he was aboutto visit his godfather in prison. He had been previously abducted at theMexico City airport and tortured.Like the Hydra, other heads appeared after one was cut, all of thememerging from the same root. Caro’s brothers and relatives, GüeroPalma and "Chapo" Guzmán, the Arellano Félix brothers, andAmado Carrillo, were important lieutenants on the waiting list or alreadyleading their own groups in different parts of the territory. They wereall Sinaloans of rural origin, except the Arellano brothers, who were urban,middle class, and with a higher education. The empire was divided but thenew groups were not less powerful than the original despite their rivalries.The northeast was controlled by Juan García Abrego (51),a trafficker from Tamaulipas whose rise and fall followed the six-yearpolitical cycle and became, according to Mexican and U.S.A. authorities,the most important.In 1993, Cardinal Jesús Posadas Ocampo and his driver were killedin a shooting as they arrived at the parking lot of the Guadalajara airport(52). Posadas was going to pick up Girolamo Prigione,the Vatican’s representative in Mexico. The Attorney General, Jorge Carpizo,said that Arellano’s gunmen had mistaken him for "Chapo" Guzmánbecause their cars were alike: same model, same colour. Guzmán,who was not very far from there with his people, repelled the attack andran away under a rain of bullets. Minutes later, some gunmen and one ofthe Arellano brothers took a regular flight to Tijuana. The PGR could notexplain why nobody tried to stop them. Guzmán was caught the nextmonth and sent to Almoloya high security prison. The elder of the Arellanos,Francisco Rafael, was accused of illegal arms use, detained in Tijuanain December 1993 and imprisoned in Almoloya. Two of his brothers, Ramónand Benjamín, held secret meetings with Prigione in December 1993and January 1994, gave him a letter for the Pope and told Prigione theirversion of the story. Benjamín said Posadas was perhaps mistakenfor Ramón by Guzmán’s gunmen. He added that while Ramónwas in Prigione’s house, the Vatican’s representative telephoned presidentSalinas, went to his house (Los Pinos) and had a meeting with the presidenthimself, the Secretary of Government and the Attorney General. The Arellanobrothers were ready to surrender in exchange for an arrangement. Prigionesaid there would always be certain unrevealed aspects about Posadas’ murder.The brothers did not accept that and decided to take a risk. The authoritiesdid not clarify the situation. Marcos, the leader of the EZLN, has the"intuition" that Posadas was killed because he knew that some high rankingofficials were implicated in the drug business, information he was aboutto tell to Prigione (53). In 1998, there are stillimportant and influent clergy members, as well as numerous social groupsnation-wide, who do not believe the "mistake" theory and are still waitingfor a credible explanation.Juan García Abrego was born in a ranch called "La Puerta", Matamoros,Tamaulipas (54). He did not finish primary school.He worked as a milkman and car thief before entering the drug businesswith the help of his uncle, the legendary smuggler Juan N. Guerra. Oneof his lieutenants, Prof. Oscar López Olivares, who became an FBIinformer, said he taught him even basic distinction rules such as tablemanners, how to dress and the appropriate way to show his Rolex. Duringthe Salinas government (1988-1994) he became the most important drug traffickerin Mexico. He smuggled tons of cocaine, from the Cali group, to the U.S.A.A key person in his career was PJF commander Guillermo GonzálezCalderoni. He led the team that killed Pablo Acosta, a big trafficker fromOjinaga, Chihuahua, in 1987 (55). He arrested JaimeHerrera Nevares y Jaime Herrera Herrera in 1987 (56),heroin traffickers from Durango, and his alleged "compadre" Miguel A. FélixGallardo in 1989. According to an FBI infiltrated agent (SA 2620-OC) inGarcía Abrego’s group, González Calderoni was associatedto García and protected him at least since 1986. Calderoni was accusedof "unexplainable enrichment" in 1993. He escaped to the U.S.A. where heis at present in the protected witness program. When the Mexican governmenttried to extradite him, he revealed having done political espionage workfor Raúl Salinas - the president´s brother -, who was suspectedhimself of having protected García Abrego. Raúl is now inAlmoloya facing charges for "illicit enrichment" and for the murder ofhis ex-brother in law, José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, former presidentof the PRI. Swiss authorities have "frozen" more than $100 million in Swissbank accounts belonging to Raúl under fake names. They suspect Raúlof money laundering for traffickers. Calderoni sent a warning: if the Mexicangovernment insisted in extraditing him, he would "remember" more things(57).García Abrego was captured in 1996 and immediately extraditedto the U.S.A.. According to Janet Reno, the U.S.A. Attorney General, Mexicanand U.S.A. officials agreed to say he was an American citizen, born inLa Paloma, Texas. President Zedillo justified his decision in a privatemeeting with some congressmen, who leaked the information to the press.He said García Abrego was a very dangerous character who could setup a destabilising situation. The President’s spokesman later denied hehad ever said such a thing (58). In fact, the drugleader did not act as a desperado while he was being searched for. Therewere no bomb explosions or shootings against politicians or innocent people.There was no speculation attack against the peso, nor a flight of capital.A strange behaviour, indeed, for somebody whose fortune was officiallyestimated (in fact, invented) to 10 billion dollars (about 3.48% of Mexico’sGNP in 1995, $5.7 billion less than the international reserves, and $1.6billion more than the oil revenues the same year). His alleged destabilisingpower did not show up at all. The National Narcotics Intelligence ConsumersCommittee (NNICC) 1996 Report stated: "In Houston, García-Abregowas tried and convicted on 22 counts of drug trafficking, money laundering,and operating a continuing criminal enterprise. He received a sentenceof eleven consecutive life terms in prison and was fined $128 million.García-Abregos’s arrest and conviction, unfortunately, had littleeffect on cocaine trafficking into the United States, as elements of hisorganization remained intact. Moreover, any reduction in territory andinfluence suffered by the Garcia-Abrego organization was balanced by anincrease in the power of the rival Carrillo-Fuentes organization" (59).In the eighties, Amado Carrillo ("The Lord of the Skyes"), another Sinaloan,Ernesto Fonseca’s nephew according to Mexican authorities, was sent toOjinaga, by the Félix Gallardo group, to work with Pablo Acosta(60). He was suspected of having paid GonzálezCalderoni to get Acosta out of his way. When García Abrego was extraditedCarrillo took his place as number one on the official list. He smuggledtons of cocaine in big planes, his speciality. His group was based in CiudadJuárez. The Arellano brothers tried to kill him once in a MexicoCity restaurant (1993). His main problems began when General JesúsGutiérrez Rebollo, the new chief of the National Institute of DrugCombat (INCD), was accused of protecting Carrillo for years (61).He was forced to move from one place to another. The police said he travelledto Russia, the Middle East, South America and the Caribbean. He went frequentlyto Las Vegas (62), undetected by the DEA. The Mossadpaid no attention to him when he was in Jerusalem, neither did Cuban authoritieswhen he was in their territory.Mexican Military Intelligence service documents, dated January 14, 1997,stated that Carrillo did not want to give up since he wanted to make apact with the government. He proposed to collaborate in counter-actingdisorganized traffickers, stop drug sales in Mexico and direct them tothe U.S.A. and Europe, help the country’s economy with his dollars, avoidthe use of violence, and act as an entrepreneur, and no longer as a criminal.He wanted freedom to run his business, tranquillity for his family, and50% of his possessions. If his conditions were not satisfied, he wouldmake his offer to other countries (63). For somebodywho, according to the DEA, was the number one drug trafficker in the planetand chased world-wide, he was very successful in keeping himself invisible.His worst decision was to have plastic surgery in a Mexico City clinicto change his face and take off excessive fat in order to change his appearance.He died of post-surgery complications on July 4, 1997 (64).After his death, the police said he had been trying to settle in Chilewhere he was buying property. He wanted to control drug trafficking withoutthe mediation of Colombians and to expand his business to Australia. Carrillo’scareer makes him one of the most entrepreneurial and cosmopolite of allMexican drug traffickers ever.The Arellano brothers and their Tijuana based group, as well as someother of Carrillo’s lieutenants started a new war for drug traffickingcontrol along the U.S.A.-Mexico border and also in Jalisco. The FBI putRamón Arellano on its top ten fugitive list on the Internet, andoffered a fifty thousand dollars reward for information leading to hisapprehension. Janet Reno offered a two million dollar reward for informationabout the brothers (65). The FBI informed that :"Ramon Eduardo Arellano-Felix ( born in 1964) has been charged in a sealedindictment in U.S.A. District Court, Southern District of California, withConspiracy to Import Cocaine and Marijuana. Ramon Eduardo Arellano-Felixis believed to be one of the leaders of the Arellano-Felix Organization(AFO), which is also known as the Tijuana Cartel. The AFO is a drug gangknown for their large distributions of controlled substances and propensityfor violence in enforcement of the operation" (66).The Mexican government sent the military to chase them in Tijuana, withoutsuccess. Their fire power is assured by young gunmen from wealthy Tijuanafamilies and from popular neighbourhoods in San Diego. The brothers havemurdered important police officials and tried to kill in November 1997an influential journalist in Tijuana, Jesús Blancornelas (he wasseriously wounded), whose magazine Zeta has given information abouttheir activities and protectors (67). Despite theincarceration of an important group of their lieutenants in Mexico andthe U.S.A., the Arellano brothers are still free and running their business. Themilitary in anti-drug activitiesBefore 1947, the Health Department was in charge of the drug policy.There were not many anti-narcotics agents to cover the whole territory.Mexican officials used to talk about "campaigns" against drugs since thosedays. What those agents could do to destroy the illegal plants was reallysymbolic. In the thirties, there were people who proposed that the PGRlead anti-drug activities. President Cárdenas refused and refrainedhis support to health authorities. In the post-war years, the U.S.A. government,worried about the probability of an increase in drug use among soldiersreturning home, as had been the case in other post-war experiences, tooka stronger leadership in drug affairs and tried to influence other governments,especially of countries producing poppy and marijuana, to reinforce theiranti-drug policies. In 1947, President Miguel Alemán decided thePGR would be in charge of the anti-drug policy. At the same time he createdthe DFS, also with authority in drug matters. In 1948, the Mexican governmentannounced a "Great Campaign" to destroy the illegal plants in the country:"The 1948 campaign involved the military for the first time as a permanentlyassigned eradication force...(but) only between 100 and 400 were assignedto support police agents in the destruction of one third to one-half ofthe entire opium poppy crop" (68). The military,formally and legally under the command of the PGR in drug affairs, wereplaced in a key position with special mediation, containment or control,among producers and traffickers, the PJF, the DFS, and the political power.There were more players in the drug trafficking camp. From then on andfor decades, the military’s hermetic attitude, the mutual protection ofpolitical families from the state party, and the law of silence, put thenew mediators such as PJF and DFS agents in the centre of the accusationsof drug related corruption.The objectives of the anti-drug campaign were not easy to achieve. Theterritory was large and there were illegal plantations in many isolatedplaces. Destruction by hand, even with the military’s help, did not makemuch difference in the amount of drug smuggled. In the sixties, the Mexicangovernment acquired airplanes, jeeps, weapons, helicopters and spare partsfrom the U.S.A. The new technology helped to increase the destruction ofpoppy fields. According to Richard Craig, "it also made future campaignsmore difficult as opium and marijuana cultivators, aware of the increasedprobability of aerial detection, began concealing their crops amidst legitimateones and planting smaller plots in even more remote regions" (69).After Operation Intercept in 1969, the U.S.A. government political increasedpressure on Mexican authorities.. By 1974 it was said that Mexico was theprincipal source of heroin for U.S.A. addicts. In 1976, five thousand soldiersand airmen were involved in the anti-drug campaign (70).The number was ten thousand in 1977 when Operation Condor was officiallylaunched (71).In 1986, President Reagan signed an important document concerning his"war on drugs" policy (a "war" he had already declared in 1982 (72),the National Security Decision Directive, which considers drug traffickinga threat to U.S.A. national security, and permits the Department of Defenceto get involved in a wide variety of anti-drug activities, especially onthe Mexico-U.S.A. border. Some have regarded this policy as an importantelement of the Low Intensity Conflict doctrine (73).The Mexican government accepted immediately that scheme of perception.Every Mexican president since Miguel de la Madrid (1982-1988) has repeatedReagan’s basic idea. They have also said drug trafficking is a health matterand their combat a "reason of state".The Bush administration continued Reagan’s policy and intensified thepressure on some Latin American governments to militarise the "war on drugs".That was the case in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia (74).In Mexico, things were different, but not for too long. On October 23,1995, William Perry, Secretary of the Department of Defence, and generalBarry McCaffrey – Commander-in-Chief of the U.S.A. Armed Forces SouthernCommand co-ordinating all national security operations in Latin Americaat the time, and confirmed by the U.S.A. Senate as the Director of theWhite House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) on 29 February1996 – visited Mexican Secretary of Defence, general Enrique CervantesAguirre in Mexico. Perry said Mexico and the U.S.A. already had politicaland economic ties, but that the "third link" was lacking: the military.He announced five co-operation areas, among them one concerning anti-narcoticsoperations. By 1996, almost a thousand soldiers had received special trainingin counter-narcotics tactics in the U.S.A. The militarisation of drug combatand public security had just begun (75).From November 1995, to September 1996, 72 soldiers were designated asPJF agents in a "pilot experiment" in Chihuahua (76).They failed in their mission to apprehend Amado Carrillo and were sentto fight the EPR guerrilla group in Guerrero. Other military occupied leadingpositions in the PGR structure, as high ranking officials, representativesin the states, and PJF agents. General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollowas designated chief of the INCD on 6 December 1996. He had been Commanderof the 9th Military Zone in Culiacán, and of the 15th Military Zonein Guadalajara, two cities where many big drug traffickers liked to live.He lasted two months in that position. On 18 February 1996, the Secretaryof Defence made an astonishing announcement: general Gutiérrez hadbeen protecting Amado Carrillo, and had been discovered and apprehended(77). He was sent to Almoloya and sentenced to thirteenyears for arms stocking and transportation (78).Not everything of which he was accused has been proven yet. There are stillmany puzzle pieces that don’t fit. As many analysts warned and predicted,drug corruption, or suspicion of corruption and involvement, would notspare the military. MoneylaunderingThe placement of illicit money into the legal economy is an old practicein the world of crime. At the end of the seventies and the beginning ofthe eighties, drug traffickers deposited cases of cash in American bankswithout any problem. They transferred the money to Colombia or to fiscalparadises throughout the world. In 1986, the U.S.A. government approvedlaws requiring banks to report every deposit of ten thousand dollars ormore (79). The United Nations Convention againstIllicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 proposedto consider money laundering as a serious criminal offence, recommendednational governments not to use bank secrecy as an alibi to impede legalacts against it, and asked for international co-operation. In December1988, the Committee on Bank Regulations and Supervision Practices, formedby central banks representatives and supervising authorities from Belgium,France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland,Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States, adopted a resolutionto prevent the criminal use of the bank system for money laundering purposes.On July 1989, the G-7 and the president of the European Community Commissionestablished in Paris the Financial Action Task Force to combat money laundering.They proposed 40 recommendations concerning the enhancement of legal nationalsystems, the reinforcement of the financial system, and international co-operation.A report of the Department of State in 1996 (80)remarked on the inadequate controls of Mexico’s banking and financial systemto avoid money laundering. Mexico was perceived as one of the most importantmoney laundering centres in the Western Hemisphere. U.S.A. pressure ondrug production and drug related corruption would continue, sooner or later,on legislation reforms. Mexican officials discussed the need for laws onorganised crime and money laundering since 1995. In 1995, working groupsfrom the PGR and the U.S.A. Attorney General’s Office met four times toarrange co-operation agreements on law enforcement and mutual legal help.PGR, INCD, and Army officials received assistance and technical advicefrom the U.S.A. government. The federal Law against Organized Crime, November7, 1996, became the legal frame for the decisions taken by the Secretariatof the Treasury and Public Credit concerning the "recycling of resourcesof illicit origin" (81). The new criteria obligedfinancial institutions to register "relevant operations", meaning operationsof ten thousand dollars or more.In November 1995, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, calculated that theworld’s money laundering was something between $300 and $600 billion ayear. In the U.S.A. the figure was $100 billion from drug trafficking (82).Richard Small, from the Federal Reserve, said the U.S.A. was the firstmoney launderer in the world. He calculated a figure of $100-300 billiona year for that country (83). PGR officials estimatedMexican traffickers profits to be $30 billion in 1994 (84)(four times the oil revenues the same year, 7.1% of the GNP, and almostfive times the international reserves). U.S.A. authorities figures were$8-30 billion a year circulating in Mexican banks in 1996 (85)(2.38-8.96% of the GNP).Since money laundering became a political issue, U.S.A. and Mexicanofficials have frequently accused each other’s country of being a paradisefor this kind of illegal business. Impossible to calculate on a scientificbasis, speculations about the amount of dirty money circulating in thelocal or world economy have been used as a political weapon. The U.S.A.government has used controversial ways to prove money laundering activitiesin other countries. A recent example was "Operation Casablanca", a three-yearundercover operation led by the U.S.A. Customs Service, a "six-countrymoney-laundering investigation involving Mexican banks and drug-smugglingcartels" (86) from Cali and Ciudad Juárez.For the Treasury Department, it was "the culmination of the largest, mostcomprehensive drug money-laundering case in the history of U.S.A. law enforcement.''They arrested 112 people and seized $35 million in "illegal drug proceeds".The banks implicated were Bancomer, Confía, and Serfín. Peoplearrested worked for those banks and others such as Banamex, Bital, Banoro,Banpaís, Banorte, Promex, Santander, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya, Bancrecer,Interacciones, Unión, etc (87). U.S.A. TreasurySecretary Robert Rubin said: "By infiltrating the highest levels of ...international drug trafficking..., customs was able to crack the elaboratefinancial schemes the drug traffickers developed to launder the tremendousvolumes of cash acquired as proceeds from their deadly trade''. From theU.S.A. perspective it was a success. For Carlos Gómez y Gómez,president of the National Bankers Association, it was not a proof of banks’policy but of individual deviant actions. U.S.A. officials from the WhiteHouse, the Department of State and even the DEA, said they were not informedabout the operation until the last moment (88). PresidentZedillo replied it was a violation of bilateral agreements and sovereignty(89), and added that he would try to have the U.S.A.agents extradited for trial in Mexico. Trent Lott, the U.S.A. Senate majorityleader, sent a tough letter to Zedillo criticising his position and intention(90). Rosario Green, Secretary of International Relationssaid confidence and co-operation were damaged. She urged the parties totalk and re-establish confidence and co-operation (91).Diplomatic notes and protests from different social groups did not changeanything. The U.S.A. government maintained its position and would not assurethat no further undercover operations would be launched again. Drugseizure, destruction and useBased on PGR, Army and Navy figures, it has always been easier to calculatedrug destruction than production. Eradication of marijuana since the latesixties can be estimated at more than one thousand hectares per year between1970 and 1983, more than ten thousand in 1984, 1986, 1987, 1989 (92),and more than twenty thousand in 1995 when cultivated hectares were estimatedto 21,573, and 9,498 the total amount of the harvested area (93).For the same period, eradication of opium poppy plants were more than athousand hectares since 1967 with some peaks of more than ten thousandduring Operation Condor (1975-1977), in the aftermath of Camarena’s murder(1985-1986) (94), and continuing in 1995e -
Regional -
Science -
Shopping -
Society -
Sports -
World
Miss Gallery
- Top Anime Hentai
- DVD rental by mail
- Dutch Bodybuilding Forums - Cheap Loan - Loans - Deals On Products - Mortgage Calculator
|
2008-10-12 01:55:41
Copyright 2005, 2006 by Webmaster
|
