Just a few months over three years ago the chief anti-drug
officer of Mexico, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, was arrested for
providing aid to two of the most powerful figures in the Sinaloa
cartel. Reportedly Ramirez Mandujano was paid nearly half a million
dollars a month for his assistance. This type of corruption that
extends from the local cop to the highest security officers is the
reason today why it is possible to maintain the vast drug
trafficking empire that is Mexico.
This payoff/bribery system, however, is backed up by
physical intimidation. The choice of which method to use has more
to do with the background of the leadership than it does the
perceived tactical requirements. Some of the organizations running
the drug traffic have been in existence for many years. The Sinaloa
umbrella of organized crime traces its existence to the days when
the “Mafia” bosses from the U.S. Northeast and Midwest States moved
a portion of their operations to the West during and after World
War II.
It was the connection of American crime syndicates with
Mexican, Cuban and Central American governmental authorities that
provided the supplier/distributor nexus on which the current
immense traffic is based. The old “families” on both sides of the
border have been replaced by new generations of criminals, some
more business than strong-arm oriented. Mexican government sources
have made a point of characterizing the current rivalry between the
two most powerful illicit drug enterprises, Los Zetas and Sinaloa
Federation, in terms of the difference in their methods of
operation.
The idea that the use of bribery rather than violence is a
less dangerous or even less criminal methodology is a very
convenient public relations device for the Sinaloa connections in
particular. A business that grosses billions of dollars annually
eventually will develop a tendency to want to be viewed with a
certain sense of benevolence. It’s quite valuable in suborning
government officials on the state and federal level that they are
encouraged to believe their cooperation is contributory to reducing
violence — especially when that mayhem could be directed at
them.
The classification of pro-bribery versus pro-violence is
played out currently in an effort to characterize the Sinaloa
alliance’s rivalry with Los Zetas as personified by the latter’s
preference for quick violent action as their method of persuasion.
By contrast, the Sinaloa leadership supposedly takes a longer and
less murderous view of its ambition — an image of the Sinaloa
contrived to gain it public and political support. Members of the
Zetas and their affiliates tend to view the Sinaloa groupings that
follow these principles as weak and even cowardly. That, too, is a
convenient characterization.
Machismo plays a large part
throughout the entire breadth of illicit drug trafficking, and the
Sinaloa consider Los Zetas to be comparatively unsophisticated —
which is a pretentious way of saying they think their rivals are
dumb. It is true that Los Zetas were created from former Mexican
Army special forces cadre and that may be why they have gained the
reputation of “maim and kill first — gain cooperation after.” In
reality the Sinaloa alliances of northwest Mexico are just as
capable of brutal action but find cooperation in their part of the
country over the years has been gained more easily through
carefully applied corruption. Operations against aggressive rivals,
however, are as bloody as required.
Violence in drug trafficking sometimes rises to the point
of clear-cut paramilitary activity. When this occurs it is
virtually always based initially on revenge or what might be
referred to as “market maintenance and/or expansion.” In less
benign terms it would be called carving out a hunk of the other
guy’s business by killing off the competition. An example is the
current war between the Gulf Cartel (though traditionally
eastern-based, now affiliated with the Sinaloa Federation) and Los
Zetas for control of the Monterrey region.
In the instances where Zeta members
have been caught and successfully interrogated, the story is
usually the same: A Zetas lieutenant approaches a target and
demands cooperation. The target refuses to help as desired and is
killed and perhaps mutilated along with some relatives and friends.
If the target cooperates properly, he may be financially rewarded.
Sometimes the cooperating target is killed after the cooperation is
accomplished. Such action is usually for personal reasons, but the
word is put out that the his cooperation was somehow inadequate.
Retaliation begins and everything escalates.
The Zetas show a greater insecurity in their control of
the northeast than the Sinaloa Federation does in its turf in the
northwest. This along with Los Zetas’ personal psychological and/or
organizational proclivity for violence as a method of intimidation
and dominance influences their style of operation. In the end, the
result is the same between the Sinaloa Federation and Los Zetas.
The only real operational difference is that the Sinaloa mobsters
play the bribery card before killing and the Zetas shoot first in
order to gain cooperation afterward.
The Mexican banking, real estate, and construction
industries benefit in any case, as the illegal cash from the drug
traffic must be cleansed no matter how it was obtained. Reportedly
the Mexican Marines and Naval Special Operations have offered to
take on the responsibility of “cleaning out” northern Mexico.
Unfortunately that would have to include punishing most of the Army
and police there. Neither President Calderon’s party (PAN) nor his
political rival (PRI) is willing to go that far.
