Feared drug lord
Rafael Caro-Quintero, released from a Mexican prison in 2013 after serving only
twenty-eight years of a 40 year sentence for drug trafficking and the 1985 murder of
U.S. DEA Agent Enrique Camarena, as well as Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman-Loera,
head kingpin of the Sinaloa Cartel, were both born deep in the hills of Mexico’s
“Golden Triangle”.
In the mid-1970s,
when "Operation Condor" was launched, 10,000 Mexican soldiers were sent to a region
dubbed the Golden Triangle where the mountainous areas of Sinaloa, Durango and
Chihuahua meet. The operation began in 1975 under intense pressure from President
Richard Nixon's Administration that started the U.S. “War on Drugs”. It is
rumored that American advisors and DEA agents directly participated on the ground
and that American pilots took part in the spraying of chemical defoliants on illegal crops.
The commander of the
operation was hated General Jose Hernandez-Toledo who had taken part seven years earlier in a
violent massacre of college students in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco Square. To many people,
Operation Condor was just an extension of other Latin American cold war
counterinsurgency tactics that had successfully liquidated rural
guerrilla movements like “El Partido de los Pobres” led by Genaro Vasquez and
Lucio Cabañas in the Mexican state of Guerrero in the early 1970s.
The brutal repression
tactics used by the Mexican Army in the Golden Triangle left a legacy of
violence and hatred for authority and the Mexican federal government that continues to this
very day. Although widely touted as being successful in objectives of destroying vast
quantities of drugs on the ground, the operation was seen as a
overall failure in that the flow of drugs into the U.S. was not stopped. Most of the
traffickers became rich and were able to leave the region while the rural
poor left behind suffered greatly.
It also solidified
Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) in the area and throughout all of
Mexico. While the concentration of the crackdown was on the Golden Triangle
area, Mexican DTOs were forced to move their operations to other regions and
the DTOs carved Mexico up into "Plazas".
Mexican drug lords
began appearing as soon as drugs in the U.S. were first outlawed in the early 1900s. To the
traffickers it was a matter of supply and demand and a good way to make a living.
The life and death of Jesus Malverde has not
been historically verified, but according to local legend in Culiacan, Sinaloa,
Mexico, he was a “Robin Hood” type of bandit who was hanged by the authorities
in 1909. This was just prior to the
Mexican Revolution of 1910. Since
Malverde's “death,” he has been considered a hero to Sinaloa's poor highland
residents; many of whom earn a living through drug trafficking. It is from many
legends like Malverde and real life drug traffickers like Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman
that current Mexican drug lords have tried to portray themselves not as
villains but as heroes to the people. Local musicians even played
"Narco-Corridos", popular folk songs of homage to people like them.
The outlaw image caused
Malverde to be adopted as the patron saint of the region's drug trafficking
business and he was dubbed a “Narco-Santo.”
Malverde even has a shrine in Culiacan, Mexico, that attracts thousands
of people each year. The Catholic Church
does not recognize him as a saint but many of the people do. Narco-traffickers also often pray to Malverde
for safe passage of their load (narcotics) to the U.S. In addition, many drug traffickers pray to
the image of La Santisima Muerte. This translates into English as “The Saint of
Death”. Statues, alters, and other paraphernalia relating to this image are
increasingly found in Mexico and in the U.S.
To understand this fairly new phenomenon read Tony Kail’s book, “Santa
Muerte: Mexico's Mysterious Saint of Death”.
http://www.amazon.com/Santa-Muerte-Mexicos-Mysterious-Saint/dp/1453613447
The greatly feared Sinaloan Cartel was run by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman-Loera, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, and Hector “El Guero” Palma-Salazar who was arrested June 1995, in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, at the home of a police commander. Over 30 federal police officers were also arrested for providing him protection. Palma-Salazar was extradited, placed into federal custody, and put on trial in the U.S. for drug trafficking charges. He was confined at the U.S. Supermax-ADX prison in Florence, CO, with a maximum release date of July 16, 2016. Meanwhile, “El Chapo” was arrested in 1993, but escaped in 2001 from a Mexican prison in a laundry cart with inside help. This was just before he was about to be extradited to the U.S.
http://www.amazon.com/Santa-Muerte-Mexicos-Mysterious-Saint/dp/1453613447
The greatly feared Sinaloan Cartel was run by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman-Loera, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, and Hector “El Guero” Palma-Salazar who was arrested June 1995, in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, at the home of a police commander. Over 30 federal police officers were also arrested for providing him protection. Palma-Salazar was extradited, placed into federal custody, and put on trial in the U.S. for drug trafficking charges. He was confined at the U.S. Supermax-ADX prison in Florence, CO, with a maximum release date of July 16, 2016. Meanwhile, “El Chapo” was arrested in 1993, but escaped in 2001 from a Mexican prison in a laundry cart with inside help. This was just before he was about to be extradited to the U.S.
Once freed, Chapo grew his drug trafficking organization into the best in the world!
After 13 productive years of being
on the run, Chapo was captured in early
2014 by Special Forces of the Mexican Navy in the bustling seaside resort city
of Mazatlan. He was caught while asleep in the early morning hours of a modest high-rise condo with
his wife, a young former beauty queen named Emma Coronel-Aispuro.
So what does this mean
for Mexican DTOs and drug trafficking into the United States?
The Sinaloa Cartel is
characterized by many strategic alliances. Legions of young people would rather
die in Mexico fighting for Chapo than, as early 1900s Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata said,
“living on their knees”. Foreign criminal groups like Mexican-American street
gangs run drugs via Sinaloa's
distribution hubs in Chicago and Los Angeles as well as other U.S cities. When
one such large network was taken down in the “Windy City”, violence soared up
as Latino and Black gangs fought over the decreased supply and increased drug demand.
Inside U.S. penal
systems and out on the streets, prison gangs like the Mexican Mafia (EME)
have influence on neighborhoods such as
Florencia 13 near South Central L.A., telling street gangs to become more
organized, and bring less heat from the police over such little things as
putting graffiti on neighborhood walls. While law enforcement noticed a
decrease in such vandalism, they noticed an increase in Sinaloan Cowboys,
as well as homages to Jesus Malverde, and alters to La Santa Muerte.
While the Cartel has been known to kill if need be, it has preferred to buy power brokers off, than "wack them" thus creating fewer enemies. As far as their drug dealing rivals; however, they will use whatever resources at their deposal. The Cartel also wisely does not get involved in the leadership of its business partners so what affects their "headquarters" does not necessarily affect "subsidiaries" and visa-versa because there is little top to bottom control.
While the Cartel has been known to kill if need be, it has preferred to buy power brokers off, than "wack them" thus creating fewer enemies. As far as their drug dealing rivals; however, they will use whatever resources at their deposal. The Cartel also wisely does not get involved in the leadership of its business partners so what affects their "headquarters" does not necessarily affect "subsidiaries" and visa-versa because there is little top to bottom control.
In comparison, other
organizations like Zetas, a group forged by former Mexican military renegades,
have less that binds them together so their leaders must act stronger and
employ more discipline to keep all of the pieces together. They are more of a
top to bottom group so when there is change or disputes at the top it creates a
lot of chaos and confusion throughout the entire organization because there are
no automatic methods of succession. The pieces are more prone to seek
independence from each other.
This is not how the
Sinaloa Cartel is set up, while there are leaders, they are more like businessmen at the
top, the real strength of the organization is in its horizontal make-up working for
a common cause: Making lots of money!
Even with his capture, Chapo still has a large
and loyal army. Sinaloan cells like "Los Antrax" did his
bidding before his arrest and continue to do so. His partner Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada is still
on the loose even though he has given interviews to the press. His son
Vicente Zambada-Niebla was captured in April, 2009.
Speaking on the advice of his father, Vicente claimed he was previously given immunity from U.S. officials. After being extradited to Chicago in February 2010, Zambada-Niebla argued that he was "immune from arrest or prosecution" because he actively provided information to U.S. federal agents. He also alleged that failed ATF “Operation Fast and Furious” was part of an agreement to finance and arm the Cartel in exchange for information used to take down its rivals. It was previously widely rumored in Mexico, and even among some American sources, that between
the years 2000 and 2012, Mexican and U.S. governments had an arrangement with the
Cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of
dollars of drugs while the Sinaloans provided information on rivals.
Both Mexican and U.S. government officials rejected that claim, and while those alarming rumors have yet to be verified, court documents showed a close parallel between the rise
of the Sinaloa Cartel's dominance in Mexico and the DEA's frequent contact with a known top
Sinaloa lawyer.
For now, Joaquin
"El Chapo" Guzman appears set to remain in Mexico's highest-security
prison for the foreseeable future as the government will likely put off his U.S. extradition
for as long as possible in a move that could bolster President Enrique Pena-Nieto's nationalist
credentials. It also shines a bright spotlight on the country's weak judicial
system. Experts say Pena-Nieto's administration, and those of his predecessors,
have proven unable to match bold arrests like Guzman's with
complex long-term investigations and wide-spread prosecutions of deep-rooted crime
syndicates. Criminal cases stall, Cartels continued to operate, while there is victory in one corner there are set-backs in another. In 2013, one
of Guzman's closest allies, Rafael Caro-Quintero, was freed from prison where
he was known to be running drugs from behind bars with prison body guards surrounding him.
But the capture of
Chapo poses more problems than him just continuing business as usual.
A greater risk to the
Mexican government and other power brokers will become more apparent if Chapo, playing his cards as master of
Mexican politics, starts speaking to authorities about embarrassing events, exposing wide spread
corruption that protected his organization both inside and
outside of Mexico. More than problems with the Cartel, this could wreak havoc
within the political and business classes that desperately need to protect
themselves from his testimony.
The Mexican government
says with increased security there is no way that Guzman can repeat the 2001
escape that let him roam western Mexico for 13 years as he moved literally hundreds of billions of
dollars of cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin around the world. Most experts believe
Guzman will not be able to operate out in the open as freely as he did before,
but he will continue to work covertly to avoid detection with insulated
sub-cells loyal to him but not directly controlled by him.
While other Mexican DTOs may see his capture as a venerable
time to try and take over some of Chapo’s territories, the flow of drugs will continue…
Read more about Mexican
Drug Cartels in “Varrio Warfare: Violence in the Latino Community”
