Mexico’s Law Enforcement Challenge: The Case Study of Ciudad Juarez

By

Ricardo Ainslie, Ph.D.

 

Introduction

With respect to Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs), there is a long-standing history of corruption and collusion within Mexican law enforcement that goes back to the 1970s when Rafael Aguilar, the head of the Federal Security Directorate (DFS by it’s Mexican acronym) in the state of Chihuahua, became one of the founders of the Juarez Cartel. Until his death in 1997, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who rose to take over the Juarez Cartel, was known to have highly placed contacts within Mexican law enforcement, beginning with the Mexican Federal Judicial Police, which controlled the highways and the airports, to state and municipal police forces which he controlled outright in the states that were of importance to the Juarez Cartel’s operations.   The same is true of the other powerful Mexican drug cartels – historically they have had a firm grip on the law enforcement agencies in the states where they operate and, at times, at the federal level as well.  For this reason, there have been many efforts to clean up Mexico’s various police forces, and most have met with mixed results at best.  Yet, effectively combating DTOs requires effective law enforcement.

 

Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, launched the war on drugs in December of 2006 immediately upon assuming office. It was well established at the time that Mexico’s five most important cartels (the Sinaloa/Pacifico Cartel, Juarez Cartel, Tijuana Cartel, Gulf Cartel, and La Familia) effectively controlled substantial swaths of Mexican territory.   In the view of the Mexican government, the cartels had become more than a crime problem, they had become a threat to the Mexican state.[1] It is clear that the Mexican government believed it had reached the point of no return. Either they took on the DTOs or they lost control of significant areas within many states.  It was already established that municipal and state ministerial police forces in states like Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Baja California, Tamaulipas, Sonora, and Michoacán, to name some of the more important ones, were for all intents and purposes already under the control of the DTOs. Officers who posed obstacles to the cartels’ interests were routinely executed.  Police officers who were not colluding with the cartels were threatened and intimidated into silence and thus effectively neutralized.  These facts on the ground made it evident that the Mexican government had few law enforcement tools at its disposal for achieving the task it had laid out for itself.

 

The Calderón government embarked on a two-pronged strategy[2].  First, it would use the Mexican army (a force of approximately 240,000 troops) to carry its campaign into the areas where the Mexican drug cartels had the strongest footholds.  Second, it would embark on a massive effort to re-shape and build the force that would become the Mexican Federal Police.  It was believed that the latter force could be both the spearhead in the efforts against the DTOs and, eventually, become the model for cleaning up and reforming state and local police forces. However, at the beginning of the Calderón administration there were but 6500 Federal Preventive Police[3] (the Federal Preventive Police became the Federal Police in 2009 when the role of the Federal Preventive Police was expanded to include investigation and analysis, however, for purposes of clarity of exposition, I use “Federal Police” throughout the rest of this contribution since the PFP and the PF are one and the same organization).[4] In the interim, the Mexican government deployed approximately 45,000 troops to the nation’s most violent cities and states.  In other words, the Mexican military became the boots on the ground as a short-term strategy until the Federal Police could be recruited, trained, and deployed.

 

Ciudad Juarez

Throughout 2007, Mexican cartel violence was centered in places like Michoacán, Baja California (Tijuana), and Tamaulipas (Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros). Although other communities were affected to a lesser extent, these were the cities where the greatest violence was taking place.  Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, had 301 executions that year[5].  Even though the number was record setting, the Mexican government’s attention was on places like Michoacán (where there were dramatic beheadings and grenade attacks against the general population), Nuevo Laredo (where municipal police ambushed a column of Federal Police arriving in the city after the execution of the local police chief), and Tijuana (where violence had been chronic).

 

In December of 2007, federal intelligence officials notified the mayor of Ciudad Juarez, José Reyes Ferriz, that they had evidence that the Sinaloa Cartel was poised to launch a major effort to wrest control of the city (and its lucrative smuggling route into El Paso and points beyond in the United States) from the Juarez Cartel.[6] That war started in January of 2008.

 

Municipal Police Collusion with Juarez Cartel

Perhaps the most infamous example of corruption within the Juarez Municipal Police is the fact that in January of 2008 the force’s former Director of Operations, Saulo Reyes, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in El Paso for smuggling nearly a ton of marijuana and attempting to bribe a Federal agent.  Reyes had only left the Juarez Municipal Police (where he was the most important official after the chief of police) three months prior, when the term of then-mayor Hector Murguía expired.[7]  Murguía had appointed Reyes to the sensitive law enforcement post despite significant opposition from people who were concerned about Reyes’ alleged links to the Juarez Cartel.

 

In the spring of 2008, as the war between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Juarez Cartel erupted, the Juarez Municipal Police became a highly contested strategic asset that each of the cartels sought to control. The result was the execution of scores of municipal and state police officers the spring and summer of 2008 (see Table 1).

 

Table 1: Police Executions in Juarez 2007-2010[8]

Juarez Municipal Police    Other Police           Total Police Killed

2007                           4                     7                                  11

2008                           38                               33                              71

2009                           25                               42                                67

2010                           67                               82                               149

134                             164                             298

The execution of police officers was a symptom of the conflict that was now raging in the city between the Sinaloa and the Juarez Cartels. The clearest indication of this is a poster that was left at the Monument to Fallen Police in Ciudad Juarez at the end of January 2008 in which the Sinaloa Cartel listed the names of five Municipal Police officers who had been assassinated. It labeled those five officers as “Those who did not believe.” Below that list was a second list of seventeen names of current Juarez Municipal Police Officers under the heading “For those who still do not believe.” The list was an obvious death threat against those officers.  The prevailing wisdom is that the officers on the “still do not believe” list were either officers aligned with the Juarez Cartel or officers who had resisted Sinaloa Cartel efforts to enlist them. Within a year, all of the officers on the “Still do not believe” list were either dead or they had resigned from the police force.

 

In May 2008, ten police were executed, including one policeman who was decapitated and left with a new list of police who were targeted for execution.  One of the executed was a commander of an elite strike force within the Municipal Police who was killed in his office, evidence that the killers were operating within the police department. By June and July 2008 there was massive panic within the Juarez Municipal Police, leading to work stoppages.   Relatedly, the city was victimized by the outbreak of a serious crime wave.

 

The budget for the Juarez Municipal Police was approximately 60 million dollars a year.[9] Mayor José Reyes Ferriz estimated that the cost of neutralizing the entire force cost the cartels approximately $300,000 dollars.  “For $50,000 pesos a month (less than $5,000 dollars) they could own a commander, and that person controlled what went on within his area.  Operations people they could buy for anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 pesos a month, depending on what they did.”[10] An interview with a Juarez Cartel sicario (hit man) similarly describes the mechanisms via which the Juarez Cartel controlled state and municipal police forces.  The sicario worked within the Chihuahua state Ministerial Police. In his training class, there were 200 recruits, of which he alleged that one-quarter were employed by the cartel[11].  Whether or not the specific figures are accurate, the interview supports the idea that the cartels do not need to own all of the police, just key people who are strategically placed.

 

Operación Conjunto Chihuahua

In March of 2008, the Mexican government launched Operación Conjunto Chihuahua, in an effort to stem the violence in Ciudad Juarez. 2,500 army troops were sent to support law enforcement efforts.  Initially, the army refused to patrol with the Municipal Police because of the extensive penetration of the police by the cartels. An additional problem was that the army troops, most of whom were from central and southern Mexico, did not know their way around Juarez’ neighborhoods (many of which, because they were established as un-regulated settlements, are labyrinth-like patchworks), a fact that complicated their response to criminal activity and emergencies.  Eventually, this was addressed by having a single Municipal Police officer attached to each military patrol.

 

A systematic attempt to clean up the 1500 member Municipal Police force was launched at the same time, with the Federal Police administering a battery of tests, known as “Confidence Tests,” that included drug testing, polygraphs, voice biometrics, personality tests, background checks, and finger prints that were checked on the national data base known as Plataforma Mexico[12].  The testing resulted in the firing of approximately 400 officers in October of 2008.  Another 70 had resigned prior to the results and another 17 had been fired in the preceding six months.  Adding the 38 officers that were assassinated in 2008, over a third of the Juarez Municipal Police force was fired, resigned, or killed in the course of 2008.

 

The police who remained were sent to a military-style boot camp at a Chihuahua military installation called Santa Gertrudis. There, the received training in the use of assault weapons (at that juncture in Mexico no other state or municipal police force was equipped with assault weapons or trained in their use).  In addition, police chief Roberto Orduña, a former army major, and the mayor set out to recruit and train a new police force. They travelled to military installations in Mexican states as far away as Oaxaca and Veracruz in search of new recruits who had a military background because it was thought that they might be more disciplined and more able to resist threats and corruption than local civilian recruits would be, especially given the extensive influence of the cartels and their gangs in the Juarez neighborhoods. However, the continued violence led to a massive attempt to recruit and train a force, mostly recruited in Juarez, that was called the “New Police.”  In September of 2009 a force of 3,000 “New Police” were commissioned. The Mexican army trained the “New Police” recruits who began patrolling the city along side the army units.

 

Juarez experienced a five-fold increase in drug cartel-related executions between 2007 and 2008, when executions reached a record setting 1606 for the year (see Table 2).  In February 2009, the cartels threatened to kill a policeman every 48 hours until the then Chief of Police, Roberto Orduña, resigned.  Orduña, a former army major, had held the post less than a year and had been spearheading the efforts to clean up the Juarez Municipal Police.  When the cartels made good on the threat, launching a new wave of police executions, the Chief resigned, prompting the federal government to activate extraordinary measures.  In March of 2009, control of the Juarez Municipal Police was essentially transferred to the army under a unique agreement in which the army permitted more than 30 retired or active duty army officers to assume command positions. The army began patrolling alongside the police at this juncture. In addition, 10,000 army and 2,000 Federal Police arrived to reinforce policing functions within the city.

 

Table 2: Juarez Executions 2007-2010 (Source: El Diario de Cd. Juarez)      

2007                            301

2008                           1,606

2009                           2,754

2010                           3,111

Total Executions   7,772

 

There were significant problems associated with the strategy of using the army as an interim force while a new police force for Ciudad Juarez was recruited and trained.  The most obvious was that the military was not trained for civilian law enforcement work.  In addition, there were no mechanisms in place for a smooth interface between the military and the civil judicial process.  The military was not efficient at collecting and analyzing evidence, nor was it efficient at preparing such evidence for criminal proceedings in the courts where suspects were formally charged with crimes and trials were undertaken.  In addition, complaints of human rights abuses took a precipitous jump, with citizens alleging that they were being picked up by the military and tortured for information.  There were also many complaints that the military was entering homes without search warrants.  In addition to these substantive problems, there were also logistical problems in terms of housing and feeding that many troops (the city rented out five enormous maquiladora -assembly plant- warehouses for this purpose).

 

Mexican Federal Police

From the outset of the Mexican federal government’s strategy in Ciudad Juarez and elsewhere, the intent was for the Federal Police to eventually replace the army units that were deployed to fight the DTOs.  At the beginning of the Calderón administration, the Policía Federal Preventiva, the precursor to the Policía Federal, only had 6,500 agents.  The Policía Federal Preventiva became the Policía Federal with the passage of the Ley de la Policia Federal in the Mexican congress that went into effect on July 2, 2009. The former organization, under the so-called “preventive” framework, was limited in its investigative capacities.  The new legislation allowed for the Federal Police to both investigate federal crimes and take a more proactive role in its law enforcement efforts. Over the course of the last four years, the Federal Police has increased to the present force of 35,000 agents.

 

The Policía Federal Preventiva was created in 1999. It was originally under the Secretaría de Gobernación (Mexico’s Secretary of the Interior) and it drew from the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional (CISEN, Mexico’s federal intelligence agency), the Policia Federal de Caminos (which was within the Secretaría de Comerico y Tansporte), as well as the 3^rd Brigade of the Military Police. It was Mexico’s initial effort at creating a single, unified federal police force.[13]

 

The Federal Judicial Police (PJF), a separate law enforcement agency that was rife with allegations of corruption, disappeared in 2001-2002 and replaced by the Agencia Federal de Investigación (AFI). The aim of the AFI was to create a more professionalized and modern federal law enforcement agency.  There were significant efforts to create a clean force.  Unlike the PJF, where commanders were appointed by legislators and influential businessmen and were permitted to hire and fire officers at will, within the AFI officers were recruited as a professional corps that was not as subject to political whims.  The training was systematic and many officers were recruited from universities and had college degrees.   Much of the AFI leadership also received training in investigative techniques and analysis of evidence from international law enforcement agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Scotland Yard, and the French police.  These were the first efforts to create a truly modern federal police agency in Mexico and, while the AFI was not immune to the corruption of some officers, it was head and shoulders above anything the country had known previously.

 

The current Federal Police, under the auspices of the Secretariat for Public Security (who’s director, Genaro García Luna, was the man who spearheaded much of the modernization efforts within the AFI) has continued to build on the framework first established within the AFI (the AFI is now a small force within the Federal Attorney General’s office).  Seven thousand of the 35,000 officers that make up the Federal Police are university graduates, and the force is much better trained in modern law enforcement techniques than anything Mexico has known in the past.   The Federal Police runs a national database (Plataforma Mexico) whereby police in every state may check suspects’ fingerprints and criminal backgrounds, for example[14].  Every law enforcement officer is also part of the database, thereby facilitating the ferreting out of errant officers who move to another state in order to continue their criminal activity.  The Federal Police has an operational wing as well as an investigative and intelligence wing.[15]

 

Federal Police in Ciudad Juarez

In Ciudad Juarez, the Federal Police that were initially dispatched at the time that the military units were first deployed primarily had an administrative and intelligence role. They also set up the city’s Emergency Response Center. (Until then, the center was staffed by Municipal Police in the pay of the Juarez Cartel and they routinely shared vital information with the cartel, including who it was that was reporting on their activities. This fact was widely known and made citizens understandably fearful of calling the Emergency Response Center to report crimes).

 

Despite the presence of Ciudad Juarez’ “New Police,” the levels of violence continued unabated, with executions continuing at a record-setting pace, including the executions of police officers.  The month of August 2009, for example, registered 320 executions in the city, thus averaging more than ten per day and making it the bloodiest month since the start of the war between the Sinaloa and the Juarez cartels. For this reason, the federal government decided to again reinforce the presence of Federal Police in the city.  In September 2009, the second phase of Operativo Conjunto Chihuahua was launched. The army stopped patrolling the streets of Ciudad Juarez and switched to a supportive role, although they continued to be nominally in charge of policing activity within the city.  1,400 Federal Police agents, 400 of them specializing in intelligence, were added to the law enforcement efforts in the city and again, in January of 2010, the federal government announced that 2,000 more Federal Police would be sent to Ciudad Juarez.  At present there are approximately 5,000 Federal Police agents assigned to Ciudad Juarez, including 412 patrol vehicles, 8 armored vehicles, 90 motorcycles, and 4 aircraft (three helicopters and one fixed-wing airplane).[16]

 

The profile of Federal Police activity in Ciudad Juarez had grown steadily since the launch of Operación Conjunto Chihuahua in the spring of 2009. For example, in July 2010, the Federal Police arrested Jesús Armando Acosta Guerrero, alias “El 35.” Acosta Guerrero was an important operational leader of the Juarez Cartel’s armed wing “La Linea” (he received orders directly from “El Diego,” the second in command within “La Linea”).  In retaliation, members of “La Linea” set a trap in which a man whom they’d severely wounded was left in the street next to a Ford Focus loaded with explosives.  A call was then placed to the city’s Emergency Response Center (CERI) indicating that there was a wounded man at that location. When the Federal Police arrived, “La Linea” operatives detonated the car bomb, killing one Federal Police officer, an emergency responder, a physician who had attempted to render aide and a bystander. The car bomb attack was the first time such a terrorist strategy had been used in Ciudad Juarez.  A second and more powerful car bomb was defused in a similar attempt shortly thereafter.  In addition, there have been numerous ambushes of Federal Police agents and convoys in the course of the last year, all new tactics.

 

There appears to be significant tension and mistrust between the current administration of Ciudad Juarez mayor Hector Murguía and the Federal Police.  There have been at least two armed confrontations between the Federal Police and the mayor’s security detail. In one of these, one of the mayor’s bodyguards was killed.

 

In April 2010 the Federal Police formally assumed security responsibility for Ciudad Juarez, taking over all policing functions from the Mexican army.  The international bridges as well as airports and highways remain under the control of the Mexican army, as well as the rural areas around Ciudad Juarez, in particular the area known as the Valle de Juarez, to the southeast of the city, long a stronghold of the Juarez Cartel and now a highly contested area between the cartels because its communities run along the U.S.-Mexico border, making them a strategic transit point for smuggling drugs and people into the United States.

 

In addition to operations against the DTOs, the Federal Police are placing special emphasis on combating the wave of kidnappings (120 of the newly deployed agents are specialists in hostage negotiation and other kidnapping-related law enforcement work) and extortion, crimes that have become epidemic and are increasingly affecting the population as well as commerce.  Tactical analysis and field intelligence have become priorities and there are daily meetings with federal, state, and municipal law enforcement as well as weekly meetings with the army, the federal attorney general’s representative, and the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional.

 

The Federal Police created a new approach to covering the city. Out of the historic six police sectors, they divided the city up into nine sectors, breaking these up into 156 quadrants, with 24-hour response teams and air surveillance.  This meant a more effective distribution of forces in relation to the city’s demographics. In addition, they have instituted a “secure corridors” program, identifying 39 stretches of streets and thoroughfares that have additional patrols and checkpoints in an effort to reduce the incidence of criminal activity are create safe zones within the city.  The Federal Police also continued to man the city’s Emergency Response Center (the CERI has received 1,869,234 calls to date, 81 percent of which are hang-ups or prank calls).[17]  The CERI was also upgraded, with up-to-date computerized workstations for each of the city’s sectors where calls were received and locations identified as well as the locations of Federal Police units via GPS technology.  A citywide computerized map along one of the CERI’s walls permits the contextualization of activity within each of the city sectors in relation to the others. A new command center has been built to house the Federal Police, which indicates that the Mexican government intends to keep the Federal Police in Ciudad Juarez for the long haul. The command center has 100 workstations, 40 of which are dedicated to working kidnapping and extortion cases (these fall under the federal purview).[18]

 

Conclusion

The continuing violence in Ciudad Juarez altered the federal government’s original strategy.  The “New Police,” inaugurated in the fall of 2009 continued to have problems and their limited effectiveness has required the emergence of an approach that includes a longer-term presence of the Federal Police in the city.  This became especially evident once the shift was completed away from the Mexican army as the primary law enforcement tool in Ciudad Juarez.

 

There have been episodic accusations that some elements of the Federal Police were involved in the extortion of businesses.  In August 2010, there was a mutiny within one of the command groups (the “3^rd Group” or regiment) after agents accused their commanders of pressing them to participate in extortions and pocketing their per diem payments. Four Federal Police commanders who were part of the “3^rd Group” in Ciudad Juarez were relieved of their commands and all have been prosecuted.

 

There is some evidence to suggest cautious optimism that the federal government’s strategy is having an impact on the violence in Ciudad Juarez.  The average number of executions for the first six months of 2011 has dropped to185 per month, or close to 2008 levels (134 per month)[19].  By contrast, in 2009 the average monthly toll in Ciudad Juarez was 229 and it was 259 in 2010.  Hopefully, such trends can be sustained, although they still translate into six executions per day on average. Similarly, drawing from their own data (which sometimes differ slightly from El Diario’s numbers) the Federal Police reports a 32-percent drop in executions in the first five months of 2011 as compared to the first five months of 2010.[20]

 

The long-term goals for Ciudad Juarez are to continue efforts to establish the Juarez Municipal Police as a viable force.  In addition, the government plans to continue strengthening of the Federal Police on a national level beyond its current 35,000 agents.  Finally, the federal government is intent on developing a single police force within each state which would be modeled after the Federal Police. Such a force would be better trained and equipped than are current state police forces and they would work in greater coordination with the Federal Police. Finally, the federal government continues its efforts to improve the Mexican judicial system, presently a weak link in the efforts to control the levels of criminal activity in the country.

 

Mexican Drug Cartel Influence in Austin, Texas

Presented at the GACC-LBJ Library Security Summit

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Prepared July 25, 2011

Gregory Thrash

 

A DIFFERENT VIEWPOINT

 

Austin, Texas, known for the foothills of the Texas hill country, the University of Texas, live music and night life, and in recent years, tech savvy entrepreneurs, start-ups and tech expansions; some deeming Austin as the silicon valley of the south. It is home to many major corporations and, although enduring it’s share of suffering during the recent recession and economic downturn, the Austin area’s technical industry not only survived, but there are good signs that the future of the industry in Austin looks very bright. The Austin area is consistently ranked high as one of America’s top cities to reside. As seen from the U.S. Census perspective, the Austin area makes up what is known as the Austin Metropolitan Statistical Area consisting of approximately 1.7 million people, a 37% increase from the 2000 census. Austin has a very vibrant economy, large student population and a transportation infrastructure that rivals any large metropolitan area, (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). Austin has emerged from a small city focused on college life and state government to a large metropolis with major international influence.

 

What separates Austin from other cities is not simple demographics, geography, or even economic indicators. What separates Austin is the fullness of its diverse culture. Favorable landscapes, natural beauty, a mild climate, and a bustling assortment of independently minded people thriving on diversity.  The level of diversity is illustrated in not only the attraction of artists, musicians, and film enthusiasts, but in the attraction of big business, professional sports, and one recent notable addition, the creation of the Austin Formula One race track, putting Austin in the company of cities such as Monte Carlo, Singapore, Sao Paulo, and Istanbul. Residing beneath the charm and attraction of Austin however, is an underworld that many never see. It is one that in recent years has firmly embedded itself in the make-up of the city. This underworld is that of major Mexican drug trafficking organizations that we have come to know as the cartels. There is definitely a different side to Austin, Texas.

 

Along with the exceptional growth and associated demographics, important to note is the geographical location of the area. Austin sits approximately four hours from the busiest point of entry, of drug importation than arguably any other point along the southwest border –  Laredo – as well as only four hours from the points of entry of Eagle Pass and Del Rio; important entry points for methamphetamine and marijuana for the San Antonio and Austin areas. The Austin area, therefore, is demographically, geographically and strategically situated to be one of the prime locations along the southwest border to play host to command and control cells of the Mexican drug cartels.

 

Although Austin has always played a role in international drug trafficking, it has emerged as a major player in the game in recent years. The effects of drug trafficking, distribution, and the subsequent abuse cannot be stated enough in the Austin area. Consequent to this emergence, law enforcement and other civic authorities have identified these threats and have proactively responded.

 

As with any large metropolitan area, especially one that has experienced the drastic growth that Austin has seen, the area has its share of crime including drug trafficking.  What is unsettling however is the role Austin now plays in the globally scoped, highly compartmentalized, and unusually disciplined underworld of the Mexican drug cartels. Mexican drug cartel leaders operate from a shroud of secrecy, and to some degree security, in Mexico while leveraging generational and familial ties in cities across the United States to carry out orders and conduct business on behalf of these Mexico based bosses.

 

Mexican superiors order tasks which are generally carried out by very compartmentalized and distinct cells that operate anonymously from one another. Responsibilities such as receiving drug loads, driving loads, storing, stockpiling, selling, and ultimately carrying out the day-to-day duties to sustain the organization. The tasks are accomplished anonymously in a very compartmentalized manner so the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing necessarily. This is done for obvious reasons of insulating cell heads and mitigating risks to the organization. As the Mexican cartels have evolved into the behemoth they are today, their capabilities within the United States of chameleon type meandering lifestyles, and disciplined operations have far exceeded in terms of effectiveness and longevity other criminal organizations of the past.

 

What has made Austin, and other similar cities, a haven for these Mexican cells and cell heads? Answering this is somewhat more layered, and goes beyond simple demographics, logistics, and geography. There are numerous factors outside the purview of Austin that all have significant influence on what Austin has become in terms of importance to the Mexican cartels.  One must consider the sheer enormity and openness of the southwest border, the true significance of Mexico’s evolved role in the worldwide drug trade, as well as what factors led to the Mexican trafficker’s meteoric rise to power. Although seemingly disassociated with day to day life in Austin, Texas, the factors that have led to the prominence of the Mexican cartels, congruently affected the role that cities across the U.S. began to play in the domestic drug trade. The role that many Austin drug traffickers play illustrates this point perfectly in recent years.

 

The gradual shift from dominance of the Colombian traffickers to the Mexican organizations controlling wholesale distribution outlets in U.S. cities leads to many challenges and policy implications for the United States on a national scale. On the other hand, these same challenges and implications exist on the local front for the city of Austin. As an analogy, compare the implications of the illegal immigration issue to the issue of the Mexican drug cartel influence in American cities. As far as these affected U.S. cities and states are concerned, these implications are more personal, close to home, and in many cases insurmountable in the pursuit of maintaining a rule of law. As such, these challenges that face America as a nation are many times multi multiplied when faced on a local level.

 

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MEXICO

 

Significance of Mexico to the Worldwide Drug Trade. Consider the significance of the portion of the U.S. – Mexico border that directly impacts Austin, Texas. The permeable border that separates Mexico and the United States spans almost 2,000 miles from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego, California. The state of Texas comprises some 60% or 1,200 of those miles. Compare these to the piece of the border that directly impacts Austin, which runs from Brownsville, Texas past Del Rio, Texas revealing that Austin is impacted by approximately 600 miles or 30% of the southwest border. These effects are seen due to where Austin sits geographically and logistically, and the web of highways leading to and from the border cities that serve as gateways for the flood of illicit contraband into and out of Mexico through Austin.

 

The southwest border  of the United States and principally Texas is the primary arrival zone for most of the illicit drugs smuggled into the United States, as well as the chief staging area for the consequent distribution throughout the country. Cities such as Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, and Austin, are favored by Mexican kingpins due to their second tier status of being one-step removed from the border. In these cities illicit drugs are shipped and stored until further movement to other markets around the U.S, not unlike legitimate industry utilizing distribution hubs for goods to be sold around the country.

 

Most Powerful Criminal Organization in the World. The question is posed frequently in law enforcement circles; are the Mexican cartels the most powerful criminal organizations in the world? According to the National Drug Intelligence Center’s 2009 National Drug Threat Assessment, the Mexican drug trafficking organizations represent the “greatest organized crime threat to the United States,”… Mexican and Colombian drug trafficking organizations generate, remove and launder between $18 billion and $39 billion in wholesale drug proceeds in the United States annually, most of which is smuggled into Mexico, (National Drug Intelligence Center, 2009).  Examining this objectively, simply consider the following;

 

• Approximately 93% of the U.S cocaine supply transits Mexico,

 

• Approximately 80% of all methamphetamine in the United States is manufactured in Mexico,

 

• Afghanistan produced more opium than any other country; Mexico ranked 2^nd with increases in opium production; 2010 was a record-breaking year for heroin seizures along the southwest border including Texas,

 

• And consider that anywhere from $18 billion to $39 billion in U.S. currency is smuggled out of the U.S. and into the hands of these cartels,

 

• And lastly, consider that most of the U.S. market for illicit drugs is controlled entirely by these Mexican drug trafficking organizations – from entry into the U.S.  to final distribution. It is estimated there is cartel activity in approximately 230 U.S. cities, (DEA Public Affairs, May, 2011).

 

The structure of these organizations is dynamic and fluid, particularly with the ongoing violence in Mexico. DEA, however, recognizes seven major cartels or trafficking organizations in Mexico. The map below depicts the general structure and general areas of influence.

 

 

The Mexican organizations have evolved to such prominence and power and continue to regenerate due to many aspects including the vast smuggling routes and distribution outlets which have been perfected over time. Additionally, they excel at smuggling and transportation, whereby virtually every available method has been seen of secreting and transporting drugs from inside Mexico to points beyond domestically.  They have used sophisticated underground tunnels, false compartments and natural voids in automobiles, as well as sophisticated transit methods in tractor trailers; Mexican traffickers are very innovative and skilled in terms of their smuggling expertise.

 

Advanced communications technology also plays a role in their strength when one considers the myriad of ways in which one can communicate today; from simple two-way radios to Skype, to various forms of social media, to underground Internet capabilities. Couple advanced technology with the very disciplined nature and compartmentalization of their U.S. operations, and one is faced with a very formidable opponent. Moreover, intimidation tactics that continue to plague the interior of Mexico also has effects within the U.S. These tactics are used effectively to recruit and sustain personnel, as other members are coerced into the trade where in past eras one could simply walk away. Moreover, a very definite desired outcome by the traffickers, individuals are extremely reluctant to provide information to authorities where these traffickers are concerned. Lastly, the sheer amount of bulk currency being funneled into Mexico to the tune of about $18-$39 billion, lends itself to the continual regeneration of these illicit organizations. The significance of Mexico to the worldwide illicit drug trade cannot be overstated. In fact without Mexico’s cartels, the state of drug trafficking in the United States would be unrecognizable in today’s world.

 

THE RISE OF THE MEXICAN CARTELS

 

The reasons for the rise to power of the cartels are many, but have as a foundation three primary pillars. In fact, when examining the history of the last century specific to the drug trade, the shift to Mexico as a central focus from Colombia actually makes sense. First, the restructuring of the Colombian cartels from the late 1980’s and into the 2000’s; second, the knowledge the Mexican traffickers have of the United States, the border, and long established smuggling routes; and third, the change in the political climate with the defeat of the longstanding PRI political party in 2000. All three of these factors had key influence on the power shift from Colombia traffickers to the Mexican cartels.

 

Colombian Cartels. The Colombian cartels dominated the worldwide wholesale markets for cocaine up until the 1980’s to the early 1990’s. During these times Colombian organizations controlled not only most of the production, but virtually all of the cocaine smuggling and wholesale distribution in large and mid-sized U.S. cities.  During the 1980’s and into the mid 1990’s it was not uncommon to find Colombian organizations operating their networks in Texas cities such as Houston and Dallas. This all changed with the Mexican organization’s willingness and ability to establish their own transportation and distribution networks all over the U.S. With the downfall of the former Medellin Cartel and the disintegration of the Cali Cartel, the Colombian organizations restructured and formed alliances with the Mexican traffickers. Once started, these same Mexican organizations essentially took over the cocaine trade in America – start to finish – with the desired smuggling route being Mexico in lieu of the once favored Caribbean corridor. Former DEA Administrator Robert Bonner observed that at first the Mexicans acted primarily as transporters, but quickly led to the Mexicans creating autonomous networks throughout the U.S.,  (Bonner, 2010). He added, “They are headquartered in Mexico, but they have distribution arms in over 200 cities throughout the United States…” (Bonner, 2010, p. 37).

 

The ground gained against the Colombian organizations of the 1980’s and early 1990’s actually had an effect of boosting the fledgling Mexican cocaine effort.  In his journal article concerning the Colombian and Mexican cocaine transition, Gootenberg suggests that successes made in shutting down Colombian cocaine trafficking in Florida, actually provided a powerful blowback enhancement to the newly created Mexican kingpins. He suggests the blowback actually was a prologue to today’s showdown in Mexico, (Gootenberg, 2010).

 

Knowledge of the United States and Established Routes. Mexican traffickers have long smuggled contraband into the United States through historical routes, and many Mexican citizens have great knowledge of the United States due to the legal and illegal migration to America. As such, through generational and familial ties, many Mexican citizens, including traffickers, know and share in U.S. cultures, traditions, and means, thereby easily wafting through day-to-day life in America. Couple this with the Mexican trafficker’s historical smuggling routes and expertise, and one sees the existence of an illicit distribution network that the Colombian traffickers could never replicate. As such, the Colombians succumbed to the knowledge and abilities of the Mexican traffickers and took the role of supplier.  Observed in the journal article, U.S. – Mexico Relations: What’s Next?, Shannon O’Neil suggests, “crime-related violence in Mexico is not new. Mexico has always been a supplier of illegal markets in the United States, from alcohol in the prohibition era, heroin during World War II, marijuana throughout the 1960s, and in recent decades, a variety of drugs including cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamines” (O’Neil, 2010, p. 69).

 

Emergence of Democracy – Loss of the PRI.  The emergence of democracy and the integration of a middle class played a large part in the development of the cartels. In the journal article, The Real War in Mexico, O’Neil opines that the reversal from the one-party system dominated by the PRI for seventy years facilitated a more democratic system which in effect upset the balance of power within the underworld of the Mexican drug traffickers, (O’Neil, 2010). This political swing facilitated the development of the cartels as we know them today by allowing access to markets and smuggling routes once closed under the long-standing one party system that dominated Mexico for over seventy years.   Bonner concludes, “A major turning point came in 2000, when the PRI lost power and Vicente Fox of the National Action Party, or PAN, became president. The end of the one-party rule was profoundly important for Mexico’s evolution toward true democracy, and it signaled a new era for the drug cartels” (Bonner, 2010).

 

CARTEL INFLUENCE IN AUSTIN, TEXAS

 

Dr. Michael Lauderdale, Ph.D., a Centennial Professor of Criminal Justice within the School of Social Work at the University of Texas,  suggests the influence and manipulation of characteristics comprising the U.S. – Mexico border are more of a zone which actually spans a distance of 200 miles either way; stretching from Monterrey to the south, and into Austin to the north.  Lauderdale concludes that within the international border zone, “Events travel fast. What happens in Monterrey soon has consequences for Houston, San Antonio and Austin!” (M. Lauderdale, personal communication, email, June 19, 2011).  This is particularly true today in light of technology and communication advances.

 

The greater Austin area has been singled out in recent years as being a haven for the Mexican drug cartels utilizing the area as a command and control center for the distribution and transit of illicit drugs and U.S. currency. Law enforcement agencies report an increasing stream of arrests in the area for drug trafficking involving Mexican based trafficking organizations. The drug threat facing the greater Austin area is clear and distinct; (1) the importation and distribution of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine by cells of the Mexican cartels, utilizing the city of Austin and surrounding areas as a base of operations for transshipment and distribution; and (2) the potential for increased drug abuse and violence resulting from the such, all impacting severely on the quality of life in Austin.

 

Moreover, Austin proper is not alone in experiencing the overwhelming effects these traffickers bring. Authorities in the surrounding counties of Austin attest that although their areas may not always be used directly for command and control, they in fact receive the fall-out or residual effects from the conduct of these traffickers and the consequent distribution groups that are spawned accordingly. The fall-out comes in the form of drug stash house operations, increased drug sales, and a consequent increase in drug use resulting in a significant decrease in the quality of life, as well as an increased negative impact on already limited enforcement resources.

 

Logistics and Demographics. Austin, Texas has a very vibrant economy, large student population and a transportation infrastructure that rivals any large metropolitan area. As noted, by U.S. Bureau of Census definition, Travis County and the greater Austin area are considered a standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). The geographical area of most MSA’s extend well beyond the central city/county as does the Austin MSA. The Austin MSA comprises a population of approximately 1.7 million and includes the counties of Travis, Hays, Bastrop, Williamson, and to a some extent Burnet.  The Austin MSA ranks 35^th among the 366 MSA’s designated by the Office of Management and Budget, and only seven MSA’s nationwide had a larger percentage increase in population growth since the 2000 census, (U.S. Census, 2010).

 

Complimenting the demographics of the area is the geographic location and the transportation infrastructure that exists. As eluded to previously, Austin is an easy drive to prime points of entry from Mexico along the southwest border. In addition to demographics, the area is served by a world-class interstate highway system connecting Austin to close proximity of the large metropolitan areas of San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas, as well as a large international airport. These factors facilitate the fact that Austin is in a position to host not only legitimate business ventures, but also the underworld of organized crime and drug trafficking organizations.

 

As noted, points of entry along the border that affect Austin include approximately 30% of the entire southwest border. With that being said, what is interesting to note is that the Austin area has been poised to serve as a mooring point for contraband originated from or destined for each of the major points of entry within the aforementioned 30% of the border. These servicing points of entry along the border towns of Texas-Mexico are; Brownsville-Matamoras, McAllen-Reynosa, Laredo-Nuevo Laredo, Eagle Pass-Piedras Negras, and Del Rio-Acuna.

 

Familial Ties with Mexican Traffickers. The proliferation of Mexican drug cartel influence into the heartland of America has been predicated on factors previously mentioned. One factor, however, cannot be overstated which is one of familial influence. As is the case in any endeavor, personal references play a paramount role in who we hire and who we choose to associate with. The Mexican drug traffickers are no different.

 

Over the last thirty or so years, the Mexican population migration spread from the traditional Southwest border cities into interior American cities. This occurred due in large part to legitimate job searches and migrant farm pursuits of the Mexican citizens.  Unfortunately, the forces that were making the cartels powerful in Mexico were also pressuring for outlets in an effort to finalize their closed-end smuggling and distribution network. What the Mexico-based traffickers desired was to have on the other end, a trusted family member, even if an extended one, to set-up shop and close the loop so to speak on their distribution network.

 

The trusted family member would have contact with the Mexican bosses and would recruit his own network domestically. Although the organizational structure of the Mexican trafficking organizations operating from within Mexico tends to be almost vertical, the structure domestically has a tendency to simulate a pyramid structure or multi-level marking strategy. The Mexican based leaders, by using this approach, are insulated from exposure due to the very nature of the strategy. No other criminal organization has utilized this structure or generational and familial connections to spread their cause as effectively as the Mexican traffickers have during the prolific propagation of the cartels. This is well illustrated in Austin, Texas.

 

Successful Law Enforcement Ventures. As many other major U.S. cities have, Austin, Texas has always played a role in international drug trafficking due to geography, demographics, and familial connections. In recent years, however, due to the promulgation of the Mexican drug cartels into the interior of the U.S., Austin has received a large portion of this spread. With that being said, law enforcement and civic authorities have responded accordingly and timely in challenge to the clear threat posed by these criminal elements.

 

Austin area law enforcement authorities have recognized this clear threat and in 2008 requested the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to designate the Austin area as a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA). The designation of the area as a HIDTA allows additional potential resources, as well as creating a level playing field for information sharing among all levels of law enforcement. In March of 2010 ONDCP approved the petition and the Austin area was designated a HIDTA.  The designation spawned a coordinated coalition whereby multiple federal, state and local agencies combine resources day-to-day in an effort to thwart and contain the drug trafficking threat in Austin that these cartels have produced.

 

Over the last several years DEA has coordinated nationwide enforcement operations targeting domestic surrogates of the Mexican cartels. Of the four most prominent and successful of these nationwide efforts since 2008, the city of Austin has played a large role in two of them, Project Coronado and Project Deliverance. These two enforcement projects showcase the concerted efforts by federal, state, and local law enforcement resulting in significant blows to the infrastructure of cartel cells operating in the Austin area.

 

Since 2008, DEA Austin along with local authorities publicly announced the culmination of four major enforcement operations targeting factions of Mexican cartels; as noted, two of these operations were a part of a coordinated, large-scale, nationwide attack;

 

• Project Coronado: October 2009; Austin law enforcement participated in the nationwide coordinated Operation Coronado that arrested over 1,100 persons nationwide with several members of the La Familia Michoacán cartel operating in the Austin area. Coronado involved 35 cities and proved to hit the La Familia organization hard with the total seizures of approximately one ton of illicit drugs,

 

• Operation Kumbaya: February 2010.  Austin law enforcement culminated a long-term investigation with the arrests of eighteen persons operating a local distribution hub responsible for the sales of hundreds of kilograms of cocaine annually in Austin and Houston, Texas. The local cell was linked to a faction of the Gulf Cartel in Mexico.

 

• Project Deliverance: June 2010. Project Deliverance was a coordinated nationwide effort that targeted the transportation infrastructure of Mexican drug trafficking organizations in the United States, especially along the southwest border. Austin law enforcement targeted a transportation cell using the Austin area to transit drugs from Mexico to the east coast of the United States on behalf of the La Familia cartel. The nationwide project as a whole netted over 2,000 arrests and led to the seizure of tons of illicit drugs. DEA Administrator Michelle Leonhart applauded the nationwide effort by commenting, “Project Deliverance inflicted a debilitating blow to the network of shadow facilitators and transportation cells controlled by the major Mexican drug cartels. Deliverance continues a deliberate and strategic effort to cut off and shut down the supply of drugs entering our country, and the flow of drug profits and guns to Mexico.  The stakes are extraordinarily high, and this massive operation is a milestone in our tireless assault on these violent drug cartels” (Leonhart, 2010).

 

• Operation Blue Ice: February 2011. The culmination of Operation Blue Ice illustrated how factions of the Gulf Cartel were utilizing local members of the Texas Syndicate prison gang to not only distribute methamphetamine locally in the Austin area, but also transport drug loads from border cities to other cities around the U.S.

 

These achievements represent only publicly identified outcomes. The intelligence sharing among Austin area drug law enforcement is strong and distinct. There are no issues with connecting the dots concerning drug trafficking intelligence in the Austin area. The aforementioned success stories are a tribute to the professionalism of law enforcement in the area.

 

CHALLENGES AND IMPLICATIONS

 

The challenges the cartels pose to U.S. law enforcement are obvious and many.  The challenges and implications to other aspects of U.S. Mexico relations are not so transparent, but possibly more pertinent than a military or law enforcement response. Four implications rise to the top when discussing cartel influence and the corresponding effects on the social fabric of Austin, as well as law enforcement; technology, the need of strong local law enforcement coalitions, an alliance with Mexico politically and economically, and a strong rule of law exerted by law enforcement.  Simply put, what affects the United States as a whole, congruently affects our individual cities. The United States can’t face one challenge without Austin facing the identical challenge, or some derivative thereof. The same is true the other way around.

 

Technology. Although drug law enforcement boils down to fundamentals, technological issues and advances may in fact have a great effect on the way law enforcement conducts business.  Technological advances are occurring at record levels. One just needs to look at the advancement of cellular telephone technology in the last decade. We have progressed from simple cellular technology, to push-to-talk technology, to now where many users never speak, simply texting their coded message. Couple that with encryption technology, email, the underworld internet, Skype communications, Wi-Fi advances, and it is definite that technological advances are a major challenge. Keeping up with these advances, as well as modifying departmental regulations and policies, are paramount in using technology to the benefit of law enforcement and to the detriment of the drug traffickers.

 

Local Scope. Aggressive Intelligence Sharing and Investigations. As noted in earlier discussion, Austin area law enforcement enjoys coordination and cooperation not seen in every domestic locale. Embedded turf battles and parochial cultures many times clouds the view of investigative agencies and for the most part lends them less effective.  The previously mentioned creation of the HIDTA coalition allows for a platform of law enforcement entities in Austin to set aside differences and focus on investigative goals and objectives. Currently, the HIDTA partnership in Austin is managed by DEA and consists of four federal agencies, the Texas DPS, and numerous additional local agencies, all working in daily concert with one another targeting criminal organizations in Austin. Collaboration among all levels of law enforcement has always been important to successful investigations and ventures; however, it is a challenge that is paramount in today’s age of globalization and technology. The implications of true coordination and information sharing among all levels of law enforcement will immediately reap benefits, and the results will be seen for years to come.

 

National Scope – Alliance With Mexico. Not only is it in the best interest of the U.S. to help Mexico in their showdown with the cartels, it is also in the best interest to support their democracy and growing middle class. Furthering the development of a democracy not only facilitates a rule of law, but enables economic and political structures to flourish. Strive toward dealing with the cartels as more of a crime problem to be contained, making it our objective to help Mexico make the cartel issue a “manageable crime and drug problem, allowing basic public security and safety in the streets. This will require an approach that recognizes and combats the economic and social factors behind the violence” (O’Neil, 2010). This can be done when Mexico’s struggles become the struggles of the United States. President Obama said on March 31, 2011,  “The battle President Calderon is fighting inside of Mexico is not just his battle: it’s also ours.  We have to take responsibility, just as he’s taking responsibility… And the United States will support him in any way we can in order to help him achieve his goals, because his goals are our goals as well…”,  (B. Obama, speech delivered on March 31, 2011).

 

Culture and Rule of Law. Trend or anomaly? In contrast to the violence targeted at law enforcement in Mexico by the traffickers, U.S. law enforcement officers experience a much more secure environment. The Mexican traffickers themselves argue that unlike the day of the Colombian cartels directly taking on the government, most law enforcement casualties in Mexico are collateral damage for the most part, not necessarily targets of assassination. Domestically, the year 2011 is shaping up to be the deadliest year ever for American law enforcement, particularly at the hands of firearms. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial declares that 2011 thus far is the deadliest year for law enforcement; refer to the chart below, (National Law Enforcement Memorial, 2011).  The figures depict a disturbing 38% increase over 2010 at this point in time in the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty by gunfire.

 

Law Enforcement Officer Fatalities
Preliminary 2011 Numbers
July 1, 2011

 

Why is this important to note in context to the cartel influence in Austin and rule of law? Is law enforcement in general experiencing an uptick in violence directed at them? One can argue this is the case as evidenced by the aforementioned. Additionally, consider that assaults against Border Patrol agents increased 46% since 2006; consider the ruthless May 2011 unprovoked attack on Bexar County, Texas Deputy Kenneth Vann who was ambushed and killed while sitting in a marked patrol car while on duty.

It is rare to see such brazen attacks directed at American law enforcement, and in fact one can argue that we have not experienced such brutal targeted attacks since 1985, as we recall DEA Special Agent Enrique Camarena who was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by Mexican traffickers while on official assignment in Mexico. This act alone turned the tables on the way in which U.S. law enforcement began to look at what Mexico’s role was, and would become in the worldwide drug trade, and its impact on America (Bonner, 2010).

The conclusion here is not to suggest that blatant attacks on law enforcement officers, or the increase in law enforcement deaths by firearms, are a by-product of the cartel wars in Mexico. It can be surmised, however that the same culture of lawless attitudes that exists in Mexico is permeating the attitudes and behavior of the criminal element domestically, and in turn the attitudes and behaviors of all of society of this generation. Law enforcement officers at every level – from the patrol officer working a beat to the federal agent or detective working white-collar crime – can attest that attitudes toward authority have changed in the last decade or so. There appears to exist an increasing lack of deference when dealing with certain sections of the populace that the general public rarely, if ever sees. This deference is a definite culture swing and a challenge that law enforcement must acknowledge and address.

For many years law enforcement officers carried with them an air of confidence and invincibility. A feeling that the badge was a shield so to speak; protecting them from being a target of the evil of the criminal element as a whole. The Camarena incident completely changed that mindset – at least for awhile. Former DEA Administrator Bonner suggests that not only did this act alone change the way the U.S. perceived the Mexican traffickers; it created a platform for the United States to illustrate America’s solidarity concerning brutality against one of its own. The Mexican traffickers where met with swift and decisive action by U.S. authorities, (Bonner, 2010).

CONCLUDING REMARKS

It is obvious the Austin area has seen remarkable changes in population growth, demographic swings, and a sheer increase in the quality of living due to technological advances and a favorable business and educational environment. Although these positive factors all point to Austin’s desirability for family life, business expansion and educational pursuits, Austin is not immune from the plague that has permeated America for the last two decades; the expansion of the Mexican drug cartels within the U.S. The many forces that changed the international drug trade on a global scale were also at work changing Austin. What is encouraging to note is that the same foresight and culture that has made the city of Austin such a vibrant, progressive community, also have enacted a proactive civic structure to proactively address the expansion of Mexico’s underworld in Austin.

Austin, Texas is not alone in being used by Mexican drug traffickers to facilitate their illicit business. The various factors that made this possible are in fact the same that have assisted hundreds of other cities to become the same thing; a haven for traffickers to operate on behalf of the Mexican cartels.  Although aggressive law enforcement exits throughout the U.S., the cooperation among all levels of Austin area law enforcement is superb and achievements speak for themselves. Not only does first class law enforcement exist, the rule of law is supported by very active coalitions consisting of educators, business and community leaders, as well as politicians. These entities strive to support every aspect of making the quality of life in Austin one to be admired and envied. The rule of law that Americans have come to cherish cannot exist without the collaborations among all facets of the community.  Austin, Texas illustrates this collaboration as well as any other city in America.

 

References

Bonner, R. C. (2010). The new cocaine cowboys. Foreign Affairs, 89(4), 35-35-47. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/577071448?accountid=8289

Gootenberg, P. (2010). Blowback: The Mexican drug crisis. NACLA Report on the Americas, 43(6), 7-7-12,44. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/846991611?accountid=8289

O’Neil, S. (2009). The real war in Mexico. Foreign Affairs, 88(4), 63-63-0_7. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/214296206?accountid=8289

O’Neil, S. (2010). Mexico-U.S. relations: What’s next? Americas Quarterly, 4(2), 68-68-72. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/852928734?accountid=8289

Leonhart, M. (2010). DEA-Led Operation Delivers Over 2,000 Arrests, Press release dated June 10, 2010, retrieved from DEA’s website, http://www.dea.gov,

National Drug Intelligence Center. (2009). NDIC website, http://www.justice.gov/ndic

National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. (2011). NLEM website, http://www.nleomf.com

U.S. Census Bureau. (2010). United States census bureau website, http://www.2010.census.gov/2010census

Why A Dying Elephant?
For decades the nation of Mexico has been barely on the radar screen of the United States. But in recent years attention has begun to be paid to the border of Mexico. Part of the reason for the attention is the cascading violence that began in the northern cities of Mexico and now has clearly spread throughout Mexico. Less recognized is the “fall out or spillover” occurring in the United States from conditions in Mexico. The violence has reached such a crescendo that discussions have begun about whether or not Mexico is a failing state or, most serious, a failed state. Failed states exist when the control of the central government collapses and smaller units such as tribes, regions and families become the paramount in-stitutions. Current illustrations are Somalia on the Horn of Africa and Yemen near the oil fiefdoms. His-tory is filled with examples as in time all states failed and among the prominent in our intellectual histo-ry is France in the late 1770’s, the Chinese under Chaing Kai-shek when faced with the Maoist Revolu-tion and the Soviet Union in 1991.

We examine the conditions that exist that lead to state failure as well as the markers of a failed state in Mexico.

The title of the presentation, “The Dying Elephant”, comes from conversations held over the years by Americans that work with Mexico, most frequently from the State Department. When relations with Mexico would reach a frustrating extreme, a seasoned employee, “an old hand” would caution walking away and would note that the alternative is a “dying elephant” left on the American doorstep. That is the consequence of a failed state in Mexico for the United States.

Prospects For Mexico
The purpose of this narrative is fourfold. The first is to provide some facts about the border as well in the two nations. The second is to examine aspects of their relations and activity that give rise to con-cerns along the border as well as frequent misperceptions on both parts. Third, is to forecast likely con-ditions along the border as well as to define forces within each country that manifest themselves in each country and configure border relations. Fourth is to estimate the conditions and the degree that Mexico is tending toward a failed state. A separate article will examine steps that can be taken by each individ-ual country, Mexico and the United States, jointly and separately that could reverse this progression to-ward a failed state.

Several facts at the start will help to understand each country and why tensions arise. America is the world’s largest economy both in terms of production and consumption. Its economic activity affects the whole globe and its interests and military presence have become those of an empire. Mexico has grown into a large economy, as well, ranking as the 12th or 13th largest in the world and in the whole of North and South America. The United States, Mexico and Brazil are far and away the largest economies with the most advanced communications and transportation systems. Canada and Argentina are equally ad-vanced but far smaller in terms of population.

Understanding The Border
The United States and Mexico share a 2000 mile border with more than half, about 1200 miles, between Texas and Mexico. There are four Mexican Border States across from Texas: Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nue-va Leon and Tamaulipas. Both nations are among the world’s most populous with Mexico having about 115,000,000 and the United States, 310,000,000 people. America’s population is substantially older with a median age of about 36.2 years and, by contrast, Mexico has a median age of 26.1 years. Ameri-ca is wealthy and well-educated while Mexico is relatively poor, less educated and needing education resources.

An understanding of the border between United States and Mexico is advanced by examining a map of the two countries along the region where they meet. From the far western edge in California where San Diego and Tijuana are about 20 miles apart, the border extends eastward until one reaches the Gulf of Mexico and the cities of Brownsville and Matamoros separated only by a narrow band of water, the Rio Grande. It is useful to use the metaphor of geology and think of two large tectonic plates that are collid-ing at the Texas-Mexico border. The northern plate is the United States and the southern plate is Mexi-co with the Rio Grande as the subduction zone where the two plates collide. Energies from this collision then radiate both north and south for at least 200 miles. Such a metaphor helps us to understand that cities like Houston, San Antonio and Austin in the United States and Matamoros, Monterrey, Durango and Chihuahua in Mexico experience the perturbations from these collisions.

The land, itself, is a high arid desert ecology that does not permit intensive agriculture but rather is best used for grazing sheep and cattle. The one exception is the region along the Gulf Coast that can have heavy rainfall and is often exposed to hurricane- based storms. Because of the ecology, historically, the population has been sparse but the pull of the markets of the States has changed that centuries-old real-ity of large ranches and small villages in the last 30 years. The entire 200 miles zone on either side today has approximately 20,000,000 people with almost all in urban areas. Far higher wages exist on the Unit-ed States side incurring continual Mexican migrations to the north. Indeed more than ever in its history northern Mexico is oriented toward the United States like the needle of a compass to its north pole!

Mexican History
When European explorers reached North and South America in the 1500’s, they encountered not empty lands but substantially populated villages and highly varied, complex cultures occurring irregularly across both continents. In the Central Highlands of Mexico, they found the Aztec culture then about 300 years old and existing as the region’s most powerful colonial entity subjugating other Indian tribes miles to the north and south and east to west from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific.

In time it was discovered that the Aztecs had been preceded by three or four other older cultures dating back probably 2000 years. The Aztecs, themselves, appeared to have migrated around 1200 AD during a great drought from the Four Corners area of the American Southwest arriving in the Valley of Mexico initially as a poor, small tribe of hunters and gathers. In about three centuries they achieved colonial domination in the Valley of Mexico using aquaculture in the great lake at the center of the Valley establishing the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan and having a population of 40,000. Thus the Aztecs were at the height of their empire about three centuries old when European contact occurred. Europeans learned of the Aztecs through the reports of Hernan Cortez, the Spanish conquistador who invaded the Aztec empire in 1519, and that Indian empire was, simply, the latest in an ancient world of conquest, migration and conquered peoples in the Americas. The war against the Aztecs by Spain lasted about 50 years resulting in a new colonial power from Europe, the complete destruction of much of the Aztec culture and a population reduction from approximately 10,000,000 in Mexico to 1,000,000 Indians by the 1700’s.

Patterns of Oppression and Revolt
Mexico then saw for the next 450 years from first European contact, oppression of the native popula-tions and successive revolts against Spain, France, large Mexican landholders and the Roman Catholic Church and as late as the 1940’s efforts to expel foreign interests, particularly American and British oil companies. Thus the history of Mexico is one of repeated wars and the imposition of one political pow-er violently over existing societies. Much of the culture and political discourse of Mexico, even today, reflects concerns of domination by foreign interests and efforts by the Mexican population to secure independence.

This history also illustrates, returning to the geological metaphor, that change in Mexico comes not smoothly and progressive but rather through sharp discontinuities, earthquakes. Indeed Mexico sus-tains a revolution about every hundred years as it betrays a brittle response to change pressures.

Aided by horses, armor, cannon and subjugated, exploited Indian tribes ready to join efforts to destroy the Aztecs, the Aztec empire fell abruptly in Mexico City and then gradually in the outlying areas over the next fifty years.

Spain then spent the next nearly 200 years consolidating the colony of Mexico seeking to extend its con-trol into South America and north from Louisiana to the Pacific Northwest. It sent armies accompanied by traders to secure wealth for Spain and Catholic priests to convert the residents to loyal subjects of Spain as well as providing vast agricultural and mining resources to Spaniards choosing to come to the New World. The years were filled with bloody conflict and prepared the stage for successive revolts in these conquered territories over five centuries.

The First Attempt At Mexican Independence
The next most significant revolt after the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico began on May 5, 1810 through the efforts of a Roman Catholic priest, Father Juan Hidalgo. Outraged at the treatment he saw of the Indians and Mestizos (the offspring of Spanish men and Indian women), he urged them along with Spaniards born in Mexico (Corriolos) to rise up against the European colonial power. Mexico like Bolivia and Venezuela to the south was moved by the forces of the Enlightenment and Reformation be-ginning in Europe that had stripped the British colonial powers of the American Colony. That American Revolution created the first full expression of those movements of a society freed of the world of the ancien regime where power was vested in hereditary royalty, landed gentry and the Roman Catholic Church. Central to the appearance of American Exceptionalism in the 1700’s is the sense of the authority of government rooted in the consent of the governed and that consent expressed through voting among other mechanism of social participation including free assembly, a free press and government structures representative of the will of the populace.

Much of Latin America sought similar freedoms and yet those lands like Mexico saw much of their revo-lutions’ promises stalled or reversed. Father Hildalgo was executed by government forces and set a pat-tern in many successive revolts with the untimely deaths of revolution heroes. But some sense of de-mocracy grew in Mexico with Spain agreeing to its independence in 1821 and reached its height in the 1860’s with the election of Benito Juarez. During the years from Mexican Independence until the 1850’s wars occurred with Texas and then the United States that severed the claimed territories of Mexico in much of North America. France attempted a re-conquest of Mexico with an invasion of Mexico City in 1863 but was repulsed by 1864. Then a brief period of elections followed. However traditional forces regrouped and installed Porfirio Diaz via election, who ruled as a dictator though formally elected as President from 1876 to 1911. The agricultural and banking reforms achieved under Juarez were com-pletely reversed and by 1910 a few land owners and once again the Catholic Church owned most of the land in Mexico leaving 90 percent of the people landless.

During most of the years of Mexico’s existence the ownership of land was crucial as little factory or trade work existed and people secured their existence by farming and animal husbandry. In many parts of the country the land was not surveyed, registered and owned but rather held as a communal proper-ty with rights to use coming from tribal membership. European activities including property rights of land ownership and associated taxation were alien to the bulk of the Mexican population and in the ear-ly 1800’s and then again after the 1860’s saw land ownership concentrated in the hands of the few, the establishment of a landless peasant class with rights less than under a feudal system.

Repeatedly in the 19th and into the 20th Century revolutions would attempt to meld the various groups in the Mexican population into a common national vision.

Cultural and Economic Fundamentals of The Modern Mexico
The most recent significant Mexican revolution was between 1910 and 1920. This revolution began not in Mexico City but in the north, particularly the state of Chihuahua led by Pancho Villa and in the south by Emiliano Zapata. There were other leaders in this revolution but these two are significant in that they were viewed as coming from the peasant class, uneducated, illiterate and from the ranks of the Indian and Mestizo population of Mexico. Though both were killed and in treachery not combat at the end of the conflict, the revolution once again broke up large land monopolies by Mexican wealthy, remaining European families and the Roman Catholic Church ushering in the modern Mexican State as it exists to-day.

A final paroxysm of the 1910 Revolution came with the Cristero War in the late 1920’s. It was an effort by conservative Catholics in states northwest of Mexico City, Jalisco and Guadalajara, to reverse Federal government actions against the Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church has long been a controver-sial institution in Mexican culture. Forced conversion by the Church of Indians began with the Spanish conquest though at other times such as the efforts by Father Hidalgo, the Church was a mechanism of efforts to better the conditions of the poor and landless. But during much of the 19th Century the Church worked hand-in-hand with the wealthy and politically powerful and, itself, became a wealthy landown-er. Thus in the 19th Century the Roman Catholic Church appeared in Mexico as a powerful and conserva-tive land and wealth monopoly much as it was viewed in the 1770’s in France, Italy and Spain. Priests and the Church, itself, were among the focus of the 1910 Revolution and resulted in a sharp reduction of wealth holdings and power by 1920. The Cristero War was an effort to reverse that situation but ended in defeat though with the loss of 90,000 lives. An aftermath of this war was an even sharper curtailment of the presence and power of the Catholic Church with the Church being forbidden to own property, run schools and for priests and nuns to appear in public in clerical garb.

In the soul of the Mexican culture and state are concerns about foreign domination and wealth concen-tration. These concerns were expressed in the 1930s and 1940s with the expropriation of American and British Oil properties in Mexico by then Mexican President, Cardenas. During those years and significant throughout the 20th century are Mexican involvements with Marxist perspectives and in many ways the monopoly of the state in much of Mexican society in the 20th Century shows Marxist as well as state-controlled monopoly capitalism.

The experiences of Mexicans across hundreds of years extending far back beyond the Spanish conquest are those of cultural contact, war and conquest. Heroism and betrayal of the hero are common themes. Revolutions succeed, heroes are assassinated and dark powers reassert their control. Social classes, ra-cial lines and exploitation are recurrent themes. Rather than building an optimistic culture with a belief in successful social engagements it is a cautious culture, often fatalistic and one where only the family exists as a true and safe harbor. Family ancestors are revered and remembered and the individual is for-ever faced with the security of family and the risks of the outside world. These cultural memories are part of the psychology of the individual Mexican and play a critical world in defining Mexico today and to varying degrees the thinking and behavior of those with Mexican heritages in the United States.

Mexico in The Popular Mind
Photographs, paintings and posters help illustrate the popular notions of Mexico, today. The reality of the Mexico we know bears a heavy imprint of the past including the means Cortez used to overthrow the Aztec state, the interplay of Indian and European cultures, the march of peasant armies for land re-form and against foreign domination, and ancient symbols of the past like Mayan Temples in the south-east of the country. The past shapes the modern including the national cathedral in Mexico City built with stones from a ruined Aztec sacrificial pyramid, the statue of the angel in Mexico City, and enduring regional flavors such as native dress in Guadalajara, bullfights, sombreros, the Day of the Day remem-brance and a welcoming poster from the government of Mexico with a saguaro cactus, sombrero, sera-pe and guitar! Beneath the mariachi band and vaqueros, is an aerial photograph of Mexico City, one of the world’s great cities of more than 25,000,000 and some of the most beautiful beaches in the world on the western coast. This is the Mexico of the popular conscience in the world and the face Mexico wants the world to see.

Mexico: The Hidden View
But there is another Mexico emerging from economic growth, more democracy and the vestiges of a middle class. It is a country of singular monopolistic institutions, powerful regressive unions, authoritari-an leaders, extremes of wealth and grinding poverty and exploding passions. Long the dominant and autocratic Mexican political party, the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution, the PRI, lost its hold on Mexico at the end of the 20th century and genuine democracy began to appear in such persons as Vicen-te Fox and the National Action Party, the PAN electing in 2000 the first Mexican President in modern times that was not a creation of the PRI.
While corruption and organized crime have long been a feature of Mexico what was less known or popularly acknowledged in the rest of the world was the complex intertwining of the corruption with the agents of the Mexican State, itself. From the local cop who required “mordita” for to fix a traffic ticket to arrangements for regulated alcohol, prostitution and drugs in certain restaurants, bars and clubs of the town to the cabal that choose the nominee for the PRI every 6 years for the Presidency were all an enduring feature of Mexico since the 1920’s.

The Soul of 20th Century Mexico: The Party of the Institionalized Revolution
However the breakdown of the control of the single national party provided an opportunity for orga-nized crime, the Mexican Cartels, to grow explosively. To understand the cartels of today we must exam-ine the history of Mexican politics. For decades the PRI maintained a vertical grip from remote villages to Los Pinos, the Mexican White House. At the local level towns would have a designated “red light district” where contraband was available including prostitutes, drugs and gambling. Operators would “license” the business through the local PRI representative or in some cases, law officer. The law and the PRI were often indistinguishable. To get almost anything accomplished in Mexico required somehow including the PRI. Larger businesses such as the telephone, television, energy and water utilities, railroads and airlines were simply government-owned enterprises. The most profitable then and still today is PEMEX, the oil production, refining and retailing monopoly. The service fields including teaching, health care, hotel and restaurant workers are controlled by unions and part of the PRI structure.

This control of the state began in the 1930’s and reached its zenith in the 1980’s. However several forces began to demand change and to lessen the control of the centralized Mexican government. One was simply the need to make the society more productive and innovative. A second was the increased awareness of the Mexican population, especially the emerging middle class, that the United States, Eu-rope and Japan, all with higher standards of living accomplished some of those standards via a more open marketplace of ideas than could occur than in the fixed political arrangements of Mexico. Mexico was also influenced by the collapse of the Berlin Wall and then the Soviet Union in 1991, a paradigm of a command and control economy much as Mexico was. The appearance of the PAN election, the decline of the PRI was also the beginning of an increase in private groups creating enterprises not the Mexican State, not the PRI.

The First Democratic Current Since the 1910 Revolution
Visible political change began to occur in northern Mexico in border cities like Juarez during the 1980’s and 1990’s. The city long closely tied to El Paso began to develop political practices influenced by Ameri-can thought. The mayor in 1983 Francisco Barrio was the first PAN mayor in Juarez and of any major Mexican city and later became the Governor of the state of Chihuahua. Other large landowners in bor-der cities became attracted to the changing regulatory relationships between Mexico and the United States and began to build maquilas (assembly plants) that could use cheap Mexican labor to assemble items for duty free export into the United States. Jaime Burmudez, one of those landowners became a leader in building these plants and served as Juarez Mayor after Barrio. Though he was aligned with the PRI, his ties in El Paso accelerated an electoral process in Mexico that drew from American culture of some level of competition among candidates and parties as well as a far larger private as compared to a public sector.

By 2000 the climate in Mexico had moved strongly away from the appointed Presidential candidate of ten decades of the PRI rule and for the first time an alternative party, the PAN, mounted a strong cam-paign and elected the President, Vicente Fox. This Presidency then followed by a second PAN, Presiden-cy, Felipe Calderon, would break the old arrangements of petty crime, organized crime and perhaps, in time, political ties with the wealthy oligarchy of Mexico.

The result of the PAN election was part of a civic revolution in Mexico, a revolution long delayed and thwarted. It began with the 1810 Revolution that overthrew Spanish control but failed to establish a democracy as Mexican patriots looked to the United States as a model. European powers, Spain and France, large property owners and the Roman Catholic Church thwarted the Revolution and reasserted a Mexico as powerless, peasant regime. Electoral reform came again in mid-century with the election of the only Mexican President from the indigenous population, the Indian Benito Juarez. For a few suc-ceeding elections democracy flourished but with Porfirio Diaz, it retreated into a dictatorship with the Church and a few large landowners partners again in total control. By the start of the 20th Century 90 percent of the population was in dire poverty existing as peons on lands owned generations ago by their forebears but now by less than a hundred families and the Catholic Church. The 1910 Revolution again was thwarted by the PRI that under the label of being a continuation of the Revolution restored the dic-tatorship by a few and the impoverished and control of the Mexican population.

The PAN victory in 2000 was a renewed attempt for a culture trying to break free from dictatorial con-trol. The victory inevitable came into conflict with many of the structures of the iron hand of the PRI and that included corruption in the government as well as criminal gangs in many areas of Mexico but great-ly in the northern cities near the American border.
Unintended Consequences of a Democratic Mexico: The Rise of the Cartels
The efforts to break with the past have come quickly and in many dimensions with frightening effects. In 2007 Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on the Cartels and from 2007 to 2010 there were over 35,000 violent deaths in the war against and among the Cartels.

To understand the growing waves of violence in Mexico and the implications for the United States we must look at three factors in Mexico and the United States. These are the economies, demographic fea-tures, and cultures of each, but with the focus on Mexico. Unlike in all of the decades of the past Mexi-co’s economy is integrated with the world. Thus Mexico will be affected more than ever in its history by events in the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Major Mexican Economic Engines
Mexico is the third largest economy in the Americas behind Brazil and the United States. It is rich in agri-cultural, fishing and mining potentials with a young but not highly educated workforce. There are five major engines that vary in terms of the numbers employed, gross revenues, percentage of profits and source of control of the sector. Below are the major engines and the Table below outlines the economic impact of each.

1. Export of Crude Oil Primarily from the Bay of Campeche
2. Export of Temporary Workers 10 to 30 Million
3. Tourism and Services More than 70 Percent of Employment
4. Assembly Manufacturing (Maquilas)
5. Drugs, Human Trafficking and Extortion

Probable Profits From Major Engines
Export Item Dollar Amount Profit Percentage Profit
1. Petroleum $130 billion 10% $13 B
2. Tourism $185 billion 8% $12 B
3. Visiting Workers 20 million people $300 billion 10% $30 B
4. Manufacture and Assembly $100 billion 15% $15 B
5. Narcotics $50 billion 80% $40 B

The Mexican Oil Boom
Mexico’s natural resources have long been a dominant feature of the country. Silver mines about two hundred miles north of the capital in the Sierra Oriental have been worked for more than 500 years and prominent fisheries on both coasts have supported great populations for more than a thousand years. Trading routes in turquoise, coral, gold, silver, seashells, birds and animals have been traced from the Pacific Northwest, the American Southwest, through the Valley of Mexico to Highlands of Guatemala and El Salvador since 2000 B.C. The most recent natural resource wealth was the discovery in the late 70’s of vast offshore oil deposits near Veracruz. This oil that is owned and controlled by the state mo-nopoly, PEMEX, created the first middle class in Mexico starting with the employees of PEMEX providing salaries multiples of what other sectors earned and including retirement and health benefits with free or low cost housing. The PEMEX employees set a pattern, a goal for the middle class of Mexico.

Using Oil Wealth To Grow The Population
These oil riches caused an explosion in the wealth of many Mexicans and the Mexican State. Part of the state’s response from the oil export earnings was to increase the subsidies on basic agricultural items such as beans, rice and corn. It used the earnings to lower the cost of food and enlarged a policy began in the 1930’s to encourage population growth in Mexico as well as ensuring the support of the poor for the ruling political classes.

For centuries Mexico has feared invasion and domination by an external enemy, a fear based on an event that had been repeated many times. In the 20th Century this became fear of the United States and the concern that Americans would annex the largely vacant areas of northern Mexico as part of a Manifest Destiny to expand America. The evidence was there as the United States had done that in the 1800’s. Mexico’s response was to encourage big families with the assumption that large populations in the northern states of Mexico would be a barrier to American annexations. A large and young popula-tion has become an important feature of modern Mexico.

Mexico Becomes Urban
Modern Mexico is characterized by the changing population distribution in the country. For centuries it was a rural land with only one large population center, Mexico City, always being less than 100,000 peo-ple. However, through the last 30 years the Mexican population has moved to urban areas growing the Mexican Federal District to more than 25 million and several cities along the border with the United States to a million or more. Mexico, always a rural nation, now has become one where only 20 to 30 percent of the population live on and are supported by the land!

The Mexican rural population was self-sufficient in food, housing and utilities. Housing was rudimentary; water came from streams or hand-dug wells and waste disposed in dry toilets. Gardens and domestic animals provided the food supply and maintaining all of this was the definition of work for the rural res-idents.

The Search For Jobs
Urban populations participate much more fully in specialization and an exchange economy and require jobs with food imported from the countryside. Thus, job growth became by 1980 a desperate need for Mexico in response to where the population lived. So desperate that Mexico did two things, one irre-sponsible and one heretical. The irresponsible was to urge Mexicans to leave Mexico but send money back to support families. Leave they did with more than 10 and as many as 20 million going to the Unit-ed States by late 2010. The heretical was to reverse the policy of forbidding foreign interests to own properties in Mexico as what was first a border assembly plan in Juarez became an all-out effort to get foreign manufacturers to locate plants in Mexico. These plants, at first, did not do major manufacturing but rather completed labor intensive assembly of parts manufactured elsewhere in the world and were called maquilas.

Industrialization Via The Maquilas
The maquilas provided three desperately needed resources for Mexico. One was capital investment that built physical plants, provided sophisticated manufacturing tools and created a tax base to extend utili-ties and transportation to the factories. This was an important gain for Mexico as estimates in those years was that it required a dollar capital investment of $250,000 to create each factory job. The second resource was the job, itself, and the earnings it provided for an urban worker. The job was what one must have to survive if one is not living in rural Mexico. These jobs also provided much better wages and a standard of living than was available in the rural areas. These attractive jobs would have another unan-ticipated effect and that was to accelerate the movement of rural labor to the cities. The third resource was the training and education that a foreign manufacturer brought to the Mexican worker. Workers learned how to operate and maintain a variety of mechanical and electronic machines, the routines re-quired of factory work, being supervised and learning to supervise; all of the complex of knowledge, atti-tudes and skills for successful performance in a modern workplace. For many with only about 6 years of education and environments with little technological features it was a cultural transformation.

Mexicans Working in The States
Working in the United States, where almost all of the surplus workers, went was a similar transfor-mation. Food processing, construction and service work absorbed most of these 10 to 20 million work-ers as the agricultural worker pipeline was already full. From 1980 until 2007 the United States was booming and the Mexican workers spread out far beyond Texas and California settling in cities and small towns all across the United States. Most of the workers were males and would send money back to wives and/or parents in Mexico and make treks back each year or so to visit families. While they often lived in proximity to other Mexicans they were influenced by the American culture and language and like the factory worker in the maquilas were a different sort of person than the humble, conservative, reli-gious and cautious Mexican farmer. Most developed some facility in English and increasing reluctance to return as well as fewer ties with homes and relatives in Mexico.

The females that made the journey changed more than the males. The rights of women are far less in Mexico and the young Mexican women rapidly incorporated views of American women and their rela-tive independence of males in where to live, shopping and entertainment. If they had children, they found that the American school system with children in school for 8 hours rather than 4 as would often occur in Mexico, meant the ability to create and sustain an identity beyond a mother at home. Like oth-er American women, they would develop dual identities of workplace and home.

Working in Tourism
The expanded labor force in tourism changed the worker far less than those working in oil or the middle class professions made possible by the oil wealth. Being a waiter, maid or maintenance worker in a hotel provided cash income but not the margin of income or the skills to change the worker.

Roots of the Cartels
The sixth area of significant income for Mexico is activities associated with the movement of illegal drugs increasingly controlled by organized crime, the cartels, and rapidly growing ancillary crimes of kidnap-ping, extortion, cybercrime and theft. Most of these activities had their initial greatest growth in cities near the American border.

Tijuana and Juarez were the early most prominent. The two cities, in both cases, had organized crime units that went back to the era of American alcohol prohibition and supplied illegal alcohol as legal drink in their bars and as a source of shipping alcohol into California and Texas. Heroin was also available as Chinese immigrants grew opium poppies in the western Mexican states of Sinaloa, Michoacán and Guer-rero during the 1940’s to supply American medical needs when the war in the Pacific interrupted sup-plies from south Asia. From the 1920’s until 2000’s this illegal activity existed under the control and like-ly franchise-like arrangements with the PRI including local government officials. However by the late 1990’s drug consumption in the United States was drawing greater production in Mexico and young farm workers were learning that they could undertake the risks of smuggling marijuana and cocaine and make more in a trip than in ten years of farm work. As efforts to curtail the movement of cocaine in the Caribbean succeeded, much greater opportunities emerged for Mexicans to smuggle drugs across Mexi-co and then at the key border cities into the United States.

The business influenced the popular culture. A new form of music developed from the country corridos or cowboy ballads in the ranch culture and was called narcocorridos. Bands appeared with popular rec-ords that recorded some of the “daring do” tales of the young smugglers, their sudden riches which they used to purchase new pickups and SUVs and the much desired silver-plated .45 ACP as well as more formidable automatic weapons. The romantic ballads and bands began to serve as a recruitment vehicle for the growing cartels that were organizing the individual entrepreneurs into more focused and skillful smuggling operations.

Open Efforts By The Mexican Government To Curtail Cartels
Figure 6 Cartel Violence Using Psychological Warfare-Acapulco Fall 2010
By the 2000 elections the environment of the cartels began to change. The franchise arrangements that existed in some areas with law enforcement and in all cases with the approval of the PRI became unpre-dictable. The PAN presidency viewed those arrangements as both law violations and as a fund flow to PRI operatives and a threat to democratic institutions. By 2006 a second PAN President, Felipe Calderon declared open war on the cartels and initially focused force on Juarez. At the same time a struggle had begun between the long dominant Juarez cartel and a new force appearing from the west, part of the Sinaloa cartel.
For the cartels, control of key cities and sites in the cities is like a fast food business such as McDonald’s or Burger King seeking a key corner location or near an exit and entry ramp on an Interstate Highway. Location is nearly everything and it is for drug smugglers, too. Drugs, unlike the five other major sources of wealth in Mexico, have an astonishing ratio of cost of product relative to what it brings on the market and to those that sell. Estimates run between 50 and 90 percent profit! This means the business includ-ing the plazas are extremely lucrative and the cartels will and can spend heavily to seize and defend them against all comers, the Mexican authorities, rival cartels and the Americans. They will use a variety of tactics including psychological warfare such as brutally torturing, murdering and dismembering oppo-nents. They offer bribes to police and judges with the bribe and the warning of death if the person re-fuses.

Since Mexico City started the effort to shut down the cartels at least 40,000 have died. Most are said to be deaths among cartel members but thousands are innocent people and those that were criminals are not enough deaths in all likelihood to deplete the cartels. More than half the Mexican population is in its earning years and jobs are difficult to find. Much of the population is young, unemployed, limited in ed-ucation and skills, and willing to take risks. That is the advantage that a large youthful age cohort, a weak economy and an urban population provide the cartels in recruiting new persons to fill their ranks.

Oil Not Cartels -The Greatest Security Risk
But the cartels are not the most major security risk to either Mexico or the United States. For the United States the greatest risk is the loss of oil imports from Mexico. America imports 70 percent or more of the petroleum consumed and the trend increases as the economy grows and in-country reserves are natu-rally depleted. The largest source for imports is Canada from its oil sands, but an expensive source. The second source is Mexico. As the following table illustrates the other major sources are countries with high stability problems or countries not friendly to the United States.

The fragility of the Mexican supply, and it is very, very fragile, is not the disruptions posed by cartel vio-lence but the fact that Mexico is suffering rapid depletion of its largest oil producer, the Cantarell field. When it was originally mapped, it was thought to be similar to one of the great Saudi Arabian fields such as Ghawar that has lasted for decades. While the Mexican oil is similar in quality to low sulfur, high qual-ity oil from Texas, the field has proven to be shallow and Mexico is thought to lose its ability to export oil by 2014 to 2015. There may be other fields especially offshore to explore but PEMEX holds the monopo-ly and is notoriously incompetent and corrupt. If oil exports stop and they seem sure to do so, it re-moves the foundation of the middle class professions: medicine, nursing, teaching and higher education that have been built since the oil boom years of the 1980’s.
This creates a two-horned dilemma for the United States. Oil prices will likely rise and Mexico will grow more unstable with much greater attempts of Mexicans to migrate to the United States and cartels will use the chaos to strengthen. Moreover without oil export earnings Mexico will lose its major source of funds to import food to feed an urban population as well as to underwrite the middle class professions. Such forces only produce a more chaotic environment for the drug cartels to ply their trade.
Major Security Risks
United States Mexico
Must Import 70 Percent of Oil History of Revolutions
Has Major Empire Interests and Attendant Ene-mies Susceptible to Fragmented Border Great Wealth Disparities with Unemployment as High as 50 percent
Needs Secure Neighbor on the South and North Potential Food Shortages in Urban Areas
Failure of Oil Exports
Cartel Violence and Breakdown of Civil Order

Pattern of Development of the Most Significant Security Risk
Not Drugs But Interruption of the Flow of Oil
Next, the Decline of Mexican Oil Fields
This causes the collapse of the Mexican middle class paid by oil exports from PEMEX
These are police, government workers, teachers, physicians and nurses

Crude Oil Imports for U.S. (Top 6 Countries)
Country (Thousand Barrels per Day) YTD 2010 YTD 2009
CANADA 1,972 1,943
MEXICO 1,140 1,092
SAUDI ARABIA 1,080 980
NIGERIA 986 776
VENEZUELA 912 951
IRAQ 414 449

Darkness Along The Border
Texas shares a 1,200-mile border with Mexico that has a dozen legal border crossing points and a thou-sand that only the locals know. Trade is an important part of the crossings and has many old patterns and several newer. Among the older patterns are cow-calf outfits that move young animals born and raised on Mexican ranches across the border to be fattened and slaughtered for urban markets in Texas and then to the West and Midwest. Cheaper land and labor costs in Mexico makes this a viable business. Mexico does not have substantial grain harvests to “fat finish” cattle thus a few months in a feedlot in the grain-growing areas of Texas and the Midwest materially improves the meat for the American mar-ket. A less known aspect of the business is the trade back into Mexico of raw hides from Texas feedlots into states such as Leon in central Mexico where large leather processing industries turn the hides into items like shoes, belts, jackets and purses for French and Italian high-dollar brands that sell in the most exclusive stores in Rome, Paris, Tokyo, New York City, Dallas and San Francisco.

Field labor, as it has for decades, crosses from Mexico in the lower Valley to work citrus, onion, peppers and tomato fields and then north into the Midwest for other agricultural harvests including berries and apples. This is seasonable labor with migrants returning to Mexican farms and villages in the winter. In-variably some stay in the United States working in meat processing, restaurants, hotels, yard care and other occupations with low skill levels or no or limited union rules to restrict immigrant employment. These are the 10 to 12 million Mexicans that become Mexican Americans.

Several factors began to change this rhythm of trade between Mexico and Texas starting in the 1980’s. One derived from the creation of OPEC in the 1970’s as the United States moved from a net oil exporter to an importer. It was the first worldwide warning of Peak Oil and the slow shift from a century of drop-ping prices for all natural resources including food and water to one of rising prices. Coupled with this awareness of growing scarcity of oil was the discovery of a very large oil field in the Bay of Campeche off Veracruz in the Gulf of Mexico. While oil had been produced in Mexico since the 1920’s, this new dis-covery was a giant and appeared to rank Mexico with Saudi Arabia in terms of promising oil reserves; reserves that could fuel prosperity in Mexico for generations.

The final change of great consequence was the opening of political process with the timid initiation of a civic space to discuss alternatives in political leaders and parties. Since the late 1920’s there has been only one political party in Mexico, The Party of the Institutionalized Revolution, the PRI. There were lo-cal, state and national elections. But at the national level the PRI candidate always won. That candidate for the Presidency and for many other offices was selected every six years in a highly opaque process within the PRI. The PRI and the state were the same and the state owned everything including large businesses such as oil production, railroads, airlines, telephones, utilities, television and controlled the unions in all sectors. The political change that occurred was the capture of the Presidency by Vicente Fox of the PAN. PAN, the National Action Party, traces back to the Christeros Revolt in the 1920’s, who sought to reverse the 1910 Revolution and long reviled by the PRI as a predatory Catholic machine in-tended to return the Mexican middle class to peasants requiring priests and caudillos to lead them. The campaign of 2000 and the loss of the Presidency from the PRI was the first experience of electoral choice in more than a hundred years!

This brewing mix of Mexican events exploded in late 2007 with the international economic collapse. Oil prices dropped but more ominously so did oil production in Mexico. The bursting of the real estate bub-ble in the United States removed a huge source of jobs for Mexican men. The recession in the United States meant both fewer tourists coming to Mexico and far fewer purchases of the assembled goods in America that had engendered the Mexican boom in factory jobs. True unemployment has surged in Mexico reaching 50 percent in many areas.

Mexico is no longer a nation of small villages and farms where people stay home and tend gardens, chickens, goats and cows providing food for themselves. This is an urban Mexico where jobs are survival. The worldwide economic collapse has created a fundamental threat to the continuation of the Mexican state.

Economic Disasters Feed The Cartels
In this growing mire there remains one source of employment and that is associated with the illegal movement of drugs and people from Mexico into the United States. Here is a source of potential wealth that does not require extensive education, ownership of arable land or expensive equipment. To get started in the illegal drug business requires daring, ingenuity, the ability to make contacts in informal networks and a willingness to use brutality against one’s competitors and the police. And here is rough and tumble capitalism at its coarsest as young men, working solo and in gangs, compete to control the trade in moving drugs and people into the United States.

There are several major dimensions of this trade in Mexico. One is either growing the drugs including marijuana and heroin poppies, or importing meth feeder chemicals from China or transporting cocaine from Columbia, Peru, Brazil and Venezuela by land and sea in Mexico and along its coasts. The second dimension is staging the drugs or people to get them into the United States, and each requires securing control and monopolies of areas (plazas) in cities like Tijuana, Juarez and Matamoros where the bulk goods are assembled, American authorities are overwhelmed, tricked or bought off and then people and drugs are smuggled across. The third dimension is securing trading partners in the United States to re-ceive these imported goods. This may be individual dealers, unscrupulous employers, street gangs and, in some instances, members of Mexican cartels that have set up shop in the United States.

This market of illegal drugs and smuggled people is a huge market and the most profitable business in all of Mexico. It likely generates, annually, 40 billion dollars of profits and the profits are used to buy law officers, military personnel, judges and politicians. With these dollars military grade weapons are pur-chased including automatic rifles, grenades and combat vehicles. The profits are used to employ gun-men to protect the supply lines and eliminate competition. Gangs, termed cartels, have developed over the last 30 years that control the corruption in each region and yet compete with each other at the points of access to the American market. That is the reason that Juarez as an example has become one of the world’s most dangerous cities with 10 people killed daily in 2010.