Do the United States and Mexico Really Want the Drug War to Succeed? by Robert Joe Stout
Article
Prepared by: Mary H. Maguire, California State University, Sacramento Kim Schnurbush, California State University,Sacramento
Psychology of Drugs and Abuse
Do the United States and Mexico Really Want the Drug War to Succeed?
Robert Joe Stout
Learning Outcomes
After reading this article, you will be able to:
• Discuss the history of the narco-war on the Mexico–United States border.
• Discuss the contributing factors and barriers to ending the “war on drugs.”
• Discuss policy reforms that affect the current state of drug trafficking.
Until 1914 laudanum and morphine were legally sold and distributed in the United States, heroin was pre- scribed as a cough medicine, and coca and cocaine were mixed with wine and cola drinks. Although most of the opium came from the Orient, Chinese settlers on Mexico’s west coast, particularly in the state of Sinaloa, began cultivat- ing adormidera (opium gum) during the 1870s and gradually developed an export trade.
Even after the use of opium-based products was declared illegal in the United States the exportations from Sinaloa con- tinued; prosecution of offenders, if it happened at all, was benign. The adormidera crossed into the United States through places like Tijuana, a dusty little frontier town until the mid- twentieth century; San Luis Rio Colorado, across the border from Yuma, Arizona; Nogales, also on the Arizona border; and Ojinaga, across the Rio Grande River from Presidio in Texas’s isolated Big Bend country. Customs agents on both sides of the border, but particularly in Mexico, cooperated with the export- ers and the flow of drugs, though not large by 1960s or ’70s standards, went through virtually unimpeded.
The majority of those involved were locals who spent the cash they acquired in the areas in which they operated. They hired
local residents for construction, transportation, ranching, and other sidelines in which they invested their earnings. As far as most of their neighbors were concerned they were good citizens whose business was no better or worse from that of any other.
Prohibition changed this genial and basically cooperative landscape. Large amounts of liquor were harder to conceal than adormidera or marijuana, making it necessary for exporters to bribe—or form partnerships—with those in charge of customs. Politicians ranging from local councilmen to state governors became involved, forcing the local exporters either to join them or evade them as well as evade law enforcement.
The end of Prohibition wounded but did not slay the golden calf of liquor exportation. The politically connected entrepre- neurs that controlled the aduanas (customs inspection stations) also controlled prostitution and a percentage of drug exporta- tions. They financed the construction and operation of luxuri- ous night clubs, gourmet restaurants, and gambling activities that attracted large numbers of U.S. residents. Both politically affiliated and independent drug exporters invested in these enterprises as Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and other border cit- ies became brightly lit tourist meccas surrounded by desolate slums packed with new arrivals, deportees, addicts, beggars, and petty criminals.
By 1948 the volume of Sinaloa adormidera crossing the bor- der triggered harsh recriminations from representatives of the U.S. federal government. Mexico’s Attorney General responded with equally acerbic suggestions that officials north of the bor- der deal with those who were purchasing the drugs since the market attracting the exports was in the United States. Mexican federal and state law enforcement did arrest a few farmers and mulas (mules, i.e., those hired to transport contraband) but did not prosecute any leading political or business figures.
Despite cinema and television depictions of drug runners as gun-toting, Pancho Villa-like gangsters, the truth was that
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Do the United States and Mexico Really Want the Drug War to Succeed? by Robert Joe Stout
many well-attired and well-educated governors, bankers, and businessmen considered the business of growing and exporting adormidera as natural (and as profitable) as growing cotton or corn. The income from drug exportations filtered through the economies of the states involved and was attributed to “sale of agricultural products” if the source was questioned.
As marijuana and cocaine use increased exponentially dur- ing the 1960s in the United States, Sinaloa drug exporters expanded into other areas, particularly Tamaulipas in northeast- ern Mexico, where they clashed with exporters who had greater access to delivery points across the border. They also competed for connections with the major Colombian “cartels.”
By the 1970s importing Colombian cocaine and getting it into the United States had become an increasingly complex business. The socalled “cartels” or drug corporations included accountants, lawyers, chemists, legislators, and entire corps of police departmentalized into individual functions which included marketing, investment, press relations, and militarized units, most of which were led by experienced former Mexican Army and Navy officers. (The term “cartel” is erroneous since the drug organizations have nothing to do with medieval trade unions; instead they function like private corporations.)
As these organizations grew they brought more elements of Mexican society into their operations, particularly for launder- ing profits and transporting drugs. Tourists and businessmen and women—well dressed, affable, polite—crossed the border with false-bottomed luggage filled with cocaine. Soccer balls and bal- loons contained packets of powder. Brassieres that made small- breasted women seem much more amply endowed were padded with cocaine sewed into the garments. According to retired U.S. Air Force journalist James McGee, importers in El Paso brought thousands of colorful Mexican piñatas across the border— piñatas that never were retailed but ripped open and discarded after the cocaine packed inside them had been removed.
As happens with most corporations, junior operatives (execu- tives) began to break away and form smaller organizations of their own. Murders and assassinations between rival bands increased as they vied for portions of the lucrative trade. Breakaway groups unable to chisel a large enough portion for themselves branched into people smuggling, counterfeiting, business shake- downs, prostitution, auto theft, and kidnapping. Others paid their bribes and expenses with “merchandise” (i.e., cocaine or heroin) or, unable to push it into the United States, increased distribu- tion in Mexico, where profits were lower but easier to obtain. Gradually—first along the frontier with the United States, then in cities throughout the country—more and more Mexican nation- als, especially those under thirty years of age, became habitual drug users.
Gradually the principal criminal organizations gobbled up smaller local operatives. (“Join us or join those in the ceme- tery,” was the ultimatum usually given.) The smaller criminal
bands paid monthly “quotas” to be allowed to operate. The dominant corporations paid quotas to government officials, business executives, and military commanders, while also pur- chasing legitimate businesses like major sports franchises and investing in the stock market.
The financial fluidity of these rapidly expanding corpora- tions enabled them to establish “nations within the nation” that were functionally self-governing and absorbed or supplanted many social and communal activities. The kingpin was Juan García-Ábrego; his so-called “Cartel del Golfo” transferred thousands of tons of cocaine that had been flown from Colom- bia to clandestine landing strips in Quintana Roo and the Yuca- tán for smuggling into the United States.
When Mexican authorities arrested and extradited García- Ábrego to the United States in 1996 his organization foun- dered and its new leaders temporarily allied themselves with the Sinaloa group. Such “marriages” and subsequent breakups occurred frequently throughout the 1980s and ’90s depending upon arrests, betrayals, governmental changes, and business opportunities. But although the names and faces changed the business continued unabated.
In many aspects (investment, trade, communication, trans- portation, defense) the “nations within the nation” that the drug corporations formed paralleled the structure of Mexico’s federal government. Many who operated within the corporate systems functioned in similar capacities within federal and state law enforcement and financial entities. The capos con- tributed to local and regional political campaigns, thus assuring themselves of being able to extract needed favors and permis- sions from the many officeholders in their debt. According to a retired state employee named Pedro Enrique Martinez who chauffeured a number of Sinaloa politicians:
The capos (drug lords) realized it wasn’t cost effective to have to keep bribing those who held higher offices so they started recruiting young local candidates, helping finance them to win elections. Soon every city, every municipio (county), every state bureaucracy was infiltrated. Sometimes the capos would go years and not require anything then one day they’d say “We need this bill passed” or “We need this shipment to go through” and they’d get what they wanted.
What the leader of the so-called “Sinaloa cartel” Joaquin (“El Chapo”) Guzman wanted, he informed the government of Mexican president Felipe Calderón, was to be allowed to run his business without interference from the military. Some members of the bureaucracy and Senate and House of Depu- ties quietly supported this concept, harking back to the presi- dency of the PRI’s Carlos Salinas de Gortari between 1988 and 1994, when drug exportations enriched participating politicians without arousing bloody criminal confrontations. Nonetheless, Calderón and his administration remained committed to U.S. financed policies of militarized action.
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