Just how much the Honduran government knows about the presence of Mexican cartels in its territory is being called into question following the March discovery of the first cocaine processing lab in the Merendón hills of the north-western department of Cortés, which borders on Guatemala. Security Minister Oscar Alvarez first ventured that the lab could belong to the Sinaloa cartel, but a little over a week later, following evidence collected at the lab which led them to another location, the police concluded that the lab was run by Los Zetas. The police used what they discovered in the Merendón hills to locate a depot in San Pedro Sula where they found a large arsenal and cocaine base similar to that found near the lab in Cortés. Evidence at this depot clearly indicated that it belonged to Los Zetas, not the Sinaloa cartel.

Only days before the discovery of the lab in Cortés, Alvarez had publicly confirmed that the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas were active in Honduras, particularly in the western departments of Ocotepeque and Copán, which border on Guatemala, and the northern ones of Atlántida and Colón, on the Caribbean coast. However, said Alvarez, these organisations had not established themselves permanently in Honduras, but rather operated through local trafficking organisations.

This does not match the findings of the comprehensive 2010 study of the spreading influence of Mexican cartels in Central America, ‘Drug Trafficking Organizations in Central America: Transportistas, Mexican cartels and Maras', by the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

This study notes that both the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas have been purchasing real estate in Honduras, the former along the Pacific coast and the border between Honduras and Guatemala, the latter along the northern Caribbean coast, linking up with Guatemala via Copán-Zacapa. The study also points out that while the Sinaloa cartel tends to operate through local gangs, Los Zetas displaces the locals by force.

Cortés, where the cocaine processing lab was found, lies along the ‘fault line' between the areas of influence of the two Mexican cartels. The discovery of a big Los Zetas arsenal in San Pedro Sula, capital of Cortés, suggests that Los Zetas may have been preparing to contest this territory by force, replicating in Honduras the wars raging between them and the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico.

Cocaine processing labs have been cropping up outside the coca producing countries in South America, but never so far north in Central America. This had been explained on two grounds. The first is that in the refining process the ratio of cocaine base to cocaine hydrochloride is roughly 2:1, which means that transporting base is a weightier and hence riskier proposition than moving HCl. The second is that while coca growing has been spreading into Ecuador and Argentina, there has been no evidence that it has gone into Central America. When the lab was discovered in Cortés, Alvarez ruled out any possibility of local cultivation (while not ruling out the possibility that there might be more processing labs).

This might merit closer examination. It is not so long ago that Colombia was not considered apt for coca cultivation. Similarly it is worth recalling the fact that before Peru and Bolivia were found to be ideal for large-scale coca cultivation, colonial powers grew coca commercially in Sri Lanka and Indonesia.