Latinnews Archive
Mexico & Nafta - 11 November 1997
Cartel de Juarez killings go on; Even after Carrillo's death
The police are finding grisly evidence that somebody is avenging the strange death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the head of the Cartel de Juarez. He died on 4 July in Mexico City while, apparently, undergoing plastic surgery.
Although the evidence of his death seemed conclusive, Chilean newspapers claimed that he was in fact still alive and giving information to the US Drug Enforcement Agency.
At the end of October bodies started to turn up in cement drums on routes out of Mexico City. The first to be found was that of Fernando Pascual Velez, a former director of the Policia Judicial Federal in Chihuahua. His former colleagues said that he was now working for a firm of investigators, trying to track down assets belonging to Carrillo Fuentes. Pascual Velez's body was found in a drum on the road to Cuernavaca.
Another three. Another three drums, each containing a body, were found on 1 November on the road to Acapulco. One of the bodies has since been identified as that of Jaime Godoy Singh, a doctor. He may have been involved in the operation on Carrillo Fuentes.
Gutierrez Rebollo. Carrillo Fuentes's great coup was in corrupting General Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo. This soldier first entered Carrillo Fuentes' pay when he took command in Guadalajara. Gutierrez Rebollo then rose to become head of the Instituto Nacional para el Combate a los Drogas. He was arrested in February this year.
The authorities determined to keep the general in prison. He is now facing three charges which are designed to keep in him prison until the Procuraduria General de la Republica is sure that it can convince the courts to sentence him to a long stretch behind bars.
The three charges Gutierrez faces are: crimes against health and taking part in an organised criminal enterprise; storing and supplying weapons and thirdly, abuse of authority. This charge relates to Gutierrez's behaviour as drug's 'czar' when he apparently used public money earmarked for the INCD to pay people working for his previous command, the Fifth Military region in Guadalajara.
* US help: The government has denied that it used US personnel to try and intercept a ship which was carrying 2.3t of cocaine. The ship was eventually stopped off Acapulco in August, but only after it had dumped 200 bags of cocaine into the sea. Officials said that the Mexican navy recovered 2.3t of cocaine. The Mexican government did admit that a helicopter from the US coastguard helped in this phase of the operation.
The government was responding to a story in La Jornada which claimed that the US Coastguards had found the ship in the zona exclusiva economica (which Mexico allows other countries to traverse but not to exploit) and had chased it while the drugs were dumped. The Mexican navy had then stepped in to arrest the five crew members when the ship was finally stopped.
* DEA: The DEA issued a report at the end of October in which it said that the Mexican drugs gangs were a greater threat than their Colombian counterparts because of their readiness to use force. The DEA claimed that the Mexican gangs had recently started to hire mercenaries. There is also growing evidence that the Mexicans are moving upstream, taking over the purchasing and processing of coca leaf which was previously a Colombian preserve.
* The West: The government claims that its drive against the Cartel de Tijuana, headed by Ramon and Benjamin Arellano Felix has been so successful that other groups are trying to muscle in on the cartel's business. At the end of October it launched a major operation against a gang operating in the Mexicali valley in Baja Calfornia and San Luis Rio Colorado in Sonora.
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