Involving the military in the counternarcotics effort is proving costly to the Mexican armed forces. The combination of low pay and the temptations attached to close contact with drug-trafficking have been blamed for the high rate of desertion suffered by the army and air force.
A recent report by the defence ministry says that over the past three years (that is, since the Fox administration took office), 48,407 members of the army and airforce deserted. This, the ministry noted, is equivalent to 27% of the total combined strength of the two services.
Perhaps more to the point, the annual average of slightly more than 16,000 deserters is equivalent to 61% of the annual intake of the army and airforce.
The defence ministry said that 'most' of those who deserted in the last few years were awaiting trial by court martial.
At any given time, the ministry says, about 30,000 service personnel (17% of the army and airforce total) are tasked to counternarcotics activities. Over the past three years, they claim the credit for having prevented more than M$167bn (US$15.9bn) from 'going into organised crime'.
Low level of detection
A separate set of statistics, also released by the defence ministry, intended to illustrate the vigour with which it is cracking down on malfeasance within the military, shows that narco-related offences are low on the scale of detection.
Of the 299 courts-martial held since the beginning of the Fox administration, only 21 (7%) were for narco-related offences, a category which ranked below homicide (33 cases) and embezzlement (26).
Overall, Mexican courts-martial have a high conviction rate; in the past three years, 70%.
Elite officers switch sides
Those tempted to desert are not only the lower-paid ranks. In mid-June the chief prosecutor's office (PGR in the Spanish acronym) announced that it was offering a reward for a group of 31 deserters who had taken up employment as enforcers for the Gulf drugs cartel. The group, known as Los Zetas, is said to be composed mainly of former sublieutenants and lieutenants from the army's élite Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (airborne special forces).
They had most recently been seconded to the PGR, where they served in the Bases de Intercepción Terrestre (land interception bases).
The existence of Los Zetas was revealed on 12 June by José Luis Santiago, head of the Unidad Especializada de Delincuencia Organizada (UEDO), Mexico's force specialising in organised crime. He describes than as
'sicarios [hired killers] in charge of providing protection to the markets and extortion operations, as well as of the transport of drugs.'
Los Zetas are suspected of having been responsible for 42 killings in the northern states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas in the past year-and-a-half. They are also suspected of having installed and operated a clandestine communications network in Tamaulipas, discovered as a result of a tipoff in late June.
PGR agents raided the headquarters of this network in Nuevo Laredo, seizing recordings which showed that the group had been intercepting communications between government agencies, as well as a list of 182 officials who had been taking bribes from the cartel.
The first great defector
The migration of military personnel towards the drugs cartels became noticeable in the late 1990s, when General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, as head of the Instituto Nacional del Combate a las Drogas (INCD), was briefly Mexico's 'antidrugs czar'. Appointed in December 1996, Gutiérrez Rebollo was dismissed (and jailed) in February 1997, when it was discovered that he was in the pay of the Juárez cartel (led by Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who died that year of heart failure during his second cosmetic surgery operation).
The general was later tried and sentenced on charges of transporting cocaine, gunrunning, racketeering and bribery.
Successes against the Gulf cartel
The Mexican authorities have been enjoying considerable success in their campaign against the Gulf cartel, the country's biggest (it is estimated to be about 300 strong). Founded by Juan García Abrego, its reach extends from Tamaulipas in the north to Yucatán in the south, embracing the Gulf of Mexico. García Abrego was captured in 1996 and extradited to the US. Leadership passed on to Osiel Cárdenas, who ran the cartel until 14 March this year, when he was captured after a gunfight with an army-airforce unit in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Control of the cartel then reputedly passed on to Manuel Vázquez Mireles (aka El Meme), but he was caught in April.
This last double decapitation, though, has not put the cartel out of business. It continues to operate in its traditional territory, in the north and east of the country.
After the crackdown
At the end of last year the PGR admitted that, despite the 15,000 arrests recorded since the beginning of the Fox administration, the big four cartels continued to operate in the country: those of the Gulf, Juárez, Colima and Tijuana. The latter suffered a big blow in March last year, when police arrested Benjamín López Arellano, the remaining founding leader of the cartel (his brother and confederate Ramón had been shot decade a month earlier).
Prosecutor José Santiago Vasconcelos, whose remit is organised crime, has said that the successive coups against the Tijuana and Gulf cartels has created a situation that has favoured the direct penetration of the Mexican market by Colombian narcos:
'The arrests have triggered a crisis in the narco-trafficking organisations, because their dealings are mainly based on personal contacts and trust. When [the Colombians' Mexican] counterparts started disappearing, their routes to the markets, shipments and movements of money were seriously disrupted.'
At the top of Vasconcelos's watch list is Juan Diego Espinoza (aka Tigre), who reputedly already runs in Mexico his own money-laundering network -- which relies heavily on women -- and paid informants who help him keep ahead of the police. Espinoza is believed to have set himself up as a middleman for several groups of traffickers.
The local press have reported that Espinoza's chief local partner is Sandra Avila Beltrán (aka Reina del Pacífico), who is reckoned to have helped recruited the female mules and money movers.
Another consequence of the recent police successes, according to Vasconcelos, is that the traffickers have, if not gone completely underground, at least drastically lowered their profiles, eschewing the ostentation that made many of them locally recognised figures.
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