The public and press that take notice of the drug cartels south
of the border are under the impression that these organizations,
located primarily in north and central Mexico, are powerful but of
limited number. Seven to eight named cartels, however, actually
become double that number when major operational units are counted
from within the organizations. Furthermore, even this structure is
in flux as geographical and product lines are contested.
The allegiances of smaller gangs tend to shift as the battling
for turf and power alters the criminal terrain. In recent months
the working arrangements among various cartels have shifted as
federal police and elite military forces combined with the
internecine warfare among and within the narcotics enterprises to
force the creation of new alliances. The battles among the several
interested parties — such as for control of transit centers like
Monterrey — tend to be influenced by the casualty rate sustained
in the increasingly widespread defensive campaigns protecting and
expanding area dominance. However, these manifestations have
devolved more into simple vicious “gang-banging” than strategically
calculated business feuds.
From a tactical standpoint there is also a growing problem of
product backlog. In addition to the indigenous drug cultivation and
processing, the drugs continue to flow into Mexico from Central
America and the northern tier of South America. The use of
semi-submersibles both in the Caribbean and Pacific has opened up
the possibility of foreign freighters being used as “mother-ships”
to act as floating harbors for the relatively short-range semi-subs
and their cargoes. The reliance on this form of
partial underwater shipment was highlighted just last week when one
“semi” was captured by the U.S. Coast Guard in the Caribbean
carrying seven tons of cocaine worth about $180 million. A total of
3-4 dozen semi-submersibles have been caught in the Pacific during
the last five years.
An increasing problem for the traffickers is that secure storage
facilities are becoming overburdened as product flow northward to
the United States and Canada is inhibited by border surveillance
and the drug organization conflicts. The latter is the key to the
Mexican-based narcotics trade. Cartel chiefs getting killed receive
considerable publicity upon their deaths or capture, but it is the
high casualty rate among the operational lieutenants and their
immediate subordinates that creates the most trouble. These losses
are utilized by rival groups as leverage in encouraging elements of
the opposition to shift sides and rally to the banners of former
opponents.
While the ATF was preoccupied with the sources of gun-running in
order to be able to target pressure points within the cartels, they
might have been more successful if they had pursued the real estate
market in California and the Southwestern U.S. Two of the biggest
problems in cartel operation have been investing the profits in a
secure manner and obtaining safe facilities in which to store drug
products and house illegal migrants — both thought of in the same
mercantile sense by the “wholesalers.”
A joint SWAT task force with explicit warrants recently “hit” a
formerly foreclosed middle-class home in West Phoenix as part of a
year-long program conducted against houses in heavily foreclosed
districts. Allegedly, these houses have been bought at bargain
rates by intermediaries for the cash-rich drug combines. It is
impossible to estimate how many of the current flood of foreclosed
homes has been purchased through third parties by entrepreneurs
with illicit trafficking connections, but local police obviously
have been paying attention to this aspect of the real estate
market.
In spite of the publicity that continues to be given to violence
in Mexico, in resort areas such as Acapulco, modern urban hubs such
as Monterrey and simple agricultural regions and towns, the tourist
flow into Mexico proceeds only marginally abated. U.S. and Canadian
citizens still drive their cars and RV’s across the border in
search of the usually moderately priced vacations that Mexico
affords. In spite of State Department warnings, this phenomenon
occurs even as the American Embassy in Mexico City for security
reasons no longer allows its officers and their families to travel
to the northern states of the country.
The economics of the drug trade changes with any increased
effort to inhibit transport of their products. The aggressive
effort by DEA and Customs & Border Patrol agents has created a
serious increase in “business costs” in the field of narcotics
commerce. Some of the difference in cash flow has been made up by
extortion rackets, kidnapping for profit, and, of course, human
trafficking.
The increase in intra-criminal wars has severely impacted the
efficiency of the business already under attack from the Mexican
military and law enforcement. While the latter has received
justifiable criticism at various times in the past, there is no
doubt that recent heroic work of some of their elite units has put
the cartel operations under stress.
Meanwhile, American politicians trying to take credit for the
elevated pressure on the cartels are having a field day. This is
nonsense. Any wounding of the narcotics trade is due to the many
years of hard work by operational law enforcement forces in the
field.
The truth is that the cartels’ greed and love of violence
undercuts even their insatiable desire for profit over which they
constantly battle. And while the Mexican economy is kept in the
black by this murderous battle for criminal commercial supremacy,
the North American customers do their best to cook, smoke, snort
and inject the products as fast as the supplies can be shipped to
them.
