Michael Lauderdale
| O |
ne of the great features of the close of the Twentieth Century was the expansion of world trade along with the collapse of alignments of nations posed for war. Out of the collapse emerged major trading blocs. The foremost became the European Common Market that tied the highly educated and stable states of northern Europe such as Germany and France to states with populations with less education but cheaper manpower such as Italy, Spain, Turkey, Greece, etc. Products were envisioned, designed and engineered in the north and then manufactured in the cheap labor regions of the south. Asia followed a similar path with Japan and Taiwan as the designers and South Korea and China as the manufacturers. Watching this emerging alignment with an expansion of world trade, the leaders of Canada, Mexico and the United States began taking similar steps in the 1970’s leading to the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. Following diplomatic negotiations dating back to 1986 among the three nations, the leaders met in San Antonio, Texas, on December 17, 1992, to sign NAFTA. U.S. President George H. W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas, each responsible for spearheading and promoting the agreement, ceremonially signed it. The agreement then needed to be ratified by each nation’s legislative or parliamentary branch. It was ratified in the United States during the Bill Clinton Administration on January 1, 1994.
The intent of the legislation was to remove trade barriers such as tariffs between the three countries, facilitate the flow of trade in North America and leverage the inherent advantages of each country to create growth and prosperity. Highways and railroads were improved. Utilities and communications infrastructure expanded and banking arrangements for credit and payments created. Using the Common Market and the patterns of Japan and Taiwan, the United States and, to a lesser degree Canada, become the design centers and much of the labor-intensive manufacturing developed in or was moved to Mexico. Raw agricultural flows expanded with grains from Canada and the central United States exported to Mexico and tropical fruits and vegetables flowed from Central America and Mexico north. Manufacturing expanded greatly in Mexico with automobile assembly plants being among the more visible. Ford has made recently more than a billion dollar investment in its plant in Puebla and General Motors and Volkswagen have substantial manufacturing in Mexico for domestic sales and exports. Jobs were created in Mexico but less substantially in Canada or the United States but products were cheaper.
The growth of NAFTA has required transportation platforms to move product and spurred urban developments at crossing points along the Mexico-United States border and created one of the largest land ports in the world at Laredo-Nuevo Laredo. Traffic there moves across 4 international bridges with 8,500 trucks a day and 3/4ths of all Mexican exports flowing through the port. This averages about 1 truck every 3 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!
Import-export trade at other border points such as Tijuana-San Diego or Juarez-El Paso pales to insignificant to the flows that have developed in the last two decades where IH 35 ends at the Mexican border. Part of the reason for the growth of this trade corridor is that it reflects the fact that the major portions of the populations and manufacturing areas of Mexico and the United States are along the corridor and to the east not areas farther to the west. Texas is far and away the exchange, the pivot point for NAFTA.
Trade and Cartels
Trade is always both legal and illegal and borders are important. Clearing borders for NAFTA has a similar impact on illegal trade. These NAFTA facts then make the Texas border area the most attractive in North America for organized crime groups to establish a strong presence for contraband headed into either country. Until twelve years ago crime groups throughout Mexico and on the border built local franchises by seeking arrangements with the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution, the PRI. But in 2000 with the election of a PAN President and the first time that the President of Mexico did not come from the PRI since the Party’s creation about 1929, this relationship was upended. Mexico had a public face that it was a democracy and that ordinary citizens controlled all levels of the government. But that was never true and the individual Mexican had no doubts. There was little trust and faith in the government. Every Mexican suspected that the local cop was likely crooked and the requirement of mordita proved the point. Every Mexican suspected that each President served first his interests and those of his circle and rarely the needs of the citizen. But in 2000 with the election of a PAN President and the first time that the President of Mexico did not come from the PRI since the Party’s creation about 1929, this relationship was upended. In the new Century Mexicans saw a glimmer of hope that the authoritarian old ways may be changing. But as the top-down controls of the Mexican state weakened and the possibility of a civic culture appeared; there came a paradox as well. That election essentially created a free-for-all in controlling crime venues across Mexico.
The most lucrative venues were always at the border between Mexico and the United States. Efforts to secure these venues, the plazas, saw the development and rise of strongly organized and armed groups, the Cartels. One emerged in a marijuana and heroin-producing region of Sinaloa and came to be dominant at the San Diego crossing. Another became visible in Juarez, the Juarez Cartel. A third was the Gulf Cartel in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas that borders Texas cities like Brownsville and McAllen. The Gulf Cartel began to recruit Mexican Army members of its special forces some trained by the American Army for urban warfare as “muscle” to intimidate and control local, state and federal police and to keep other Cartels out. This unit was called the Zetas for the call letter of the leader when he was with the Mexican Army. In a few short years the Zetas broke from the Gulf Cartel and became a separate and competing group. In a few years the Zetas became the dominant organized crime gang in Nuevo Laredo.
Today at least four Mexican Cartels compete to control the plazas of the Mexican cities that lead into the United States. They are the Sinaloa, Juarez, Gulf and Zetas. Their conflicts appear elsewhere in Mexico and there are other groups such as la Familia centered in Michoacán but these four are the most powerful, brutal and wealthy. And the most important prize for which they compete is the busiest crossing along the border, Nuevo Laredo-Laredo.
The Probabilities of Smuggling
Smuggling is a game of probabilities and subterfuge. Smugglers spread the product across several carriers and time crossings when detection is most unlikely. Ideally it is placed with persons and vehicles to avoid drawing attention. Open, empty areas along the border are ready targets for sophisticated detection. Small towns betray unusual and heavy traffic. It works best in conditions of high normal traffic and Nuevo Laredo-Laredo is ideal. Other crossings have a fraction of the volume of traffic. Remote areas are readily observed by American authorities using technology. The evolving Cartel business strategy is to move contraband in the flow of legit goods and the higher the traffic area, the more the appeal for the Cartels.
For these and likely other reasons, Nuevo Laredo has become a prize fought over by the Cartels. In the past the Gulf and Sinaloa have contested the Zetas for the control of Nuevo Laredo. The Zetas have proven the stronger. There are other contest points among the Cartels including Veracruz, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Juarez, Acapulco, etc. Reports by Dudley Althaus and Dane Schiller on the Nuevo Laredo violence suggest pieces are moving into play on the chessboard to contest the control of this greatest prize of the plazas. The murders three weeks ago in Nuevo Laredo and then with 23 on Friday, May 4, 2012 are signs of gang warfare, Cartel warfare to control that plaza. The hanging of 9 bodies from bridges is a Cartel tactic, psychological warfare with warning declarations to other Cartels
Perhaps members of the Mexican Cartels suspect that the PRI will secure the Mexican Presidency and revert to the concession arrangements of the past. Thus Laredo becomes the most valuable prize and one to be secured this year. Whoever is dominant there is in the best position to seal the deal with the PRI, if it wins the election and reverts to its patterns of old.
That is why Nuevo Laredo may well become this year, Mexico’s most dangerous city! Two hundred and 40 miles south, a 4-hour drive down IH 35. This shift may have well begun. The seizures of record amounts of contraband by the Austin Police in March of 2012 and the fact that the smugglers were all Mexicans citizens is proof of this shifting strategy to IH 35.
[i] Michael Lauderdale is Professor of Social Work, The University of Texas at Austin, Board Member of the Greater Austin Crime Commission and Chairs the City of Austin’s Public Safety Commission.
The Prime Minister of Canada and the Presidents of Mexico and the United States in 2009
[i] Michael Lauderdale is Professor of Social Work, Board Member of the Greater Austin Crime Commission and Chairs the City of Austin’s Public Safety Commission.