The Buffer between Mexican Drug Cartels and the U.S. Government
By Scott
Stewart
It is summer in Juarez, and again this year we find the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization (VCF),
also known as the Juarez cartel, under pressure and making threats. At this time in 2010, La Linea, the VCF’s enforcer
arm, detonated a small improvised explosive device (IED) inside a car in Juarez and killed two federal agents, one municipal
police officer and an emergency medical technician and wounded nine other people. La Linea threatened to employ a far larger
IED (100 kilograms, or 220 pounds) if the FBI and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) did not investigate the head
of Chihuahua State Police intelligence, whom the VCF claimed was working for the Sinaloa Federation.
La Linea did attempt
to employ another IED on Sept. 10, 2010, but this device, which failed to detonate, contained only 16 kilograms of explosives,
far less than the 100 kilograms that the group had threatened to use.
Fast-forward a year, and we see the VCF still
under unrelenting pressure from the Sinaloa Federation and still making threats. On July 15, the U.S. Consulate in Juarez
released a message warning that, according to intelligence it had in hand, a cartel may be targeting the consulate or points
of entry into the United States. On July 27, “narcomantas” — banners inscribed with messages from drug cartels
— appeared in Juarez and Chihuahua signed by La Linea and including explicit threats against the DEA and employees of
the U.S. Consulate in Juarez. Two days after the narcomantas appeared, Jose Antonio “El Diego” Acosta Hernandez, a senior La Linea leader whose name was mentioned in the messages, was arrested
by Mexican authorities aided by intelligence from the U.S. government. Acosta is also believed to have been responsible for
planning La Linea’s past IED attacks.
As we have discussed in our coverage of the drug war in Mexico, Mexican cartels including the VCF, clearly possess the capability to construct and employ large vehicle-borne improvised
explosive devices (VBIEDs) — truck bombs — and yet they have chosen not to. These groups are not averse to bloodshed,
or even outright barbarity, when they believe it is useful. Their decision to abstain from certain activities, such as employing
truck bombs or targeting a U.S. Consulate, indicates that there must be compelling strategic reasons for doing so. After all,
groups in Lebanon, Pakistan and Iraq have demonstrated that truck bombs are a very effective means of killing perceived enemies
and of sending strong messages.
Perhaps the most compelling reason for the Mexican cartels to abstain from such activities
is that they do not consider them to be in their best interest. One important part of their calculation is that such activities
would remove the main buffer that is currently insulating them from the full force of the U.S. government: the Mexican government.
The Buffer
Despite their public manifestations of machismo, the cartel leaders clearly fear and
respect the strength of the world’s only superpower. This is evidenced by the distinct change in cartel activities along the U.S.-Mexico border, where a certain operational downshift routinely occurs. In Mexico, the cartels
have the freedom to operate far more brazenly than they can in the United States, in terms of both drug trafficking and acts
of violence. Shipments of narcotics traveling through Mexico tend to be far larger than shipments moving into and through
the United States. When these large shipments reach the border they are taken to stash houses on the Mexican side, where they
are typically divided into smaller quantities for transport into and through the United States.
As for violence,
while the cartels do kill people on the U.S. side of the border, their use of violence there tends to be far more discreet;
it has certainly not yet incorporated the dramatic flair that is frequently seen on the Mexican side, where bodies are often
dismembered or hung from pedestrian bridges over major thoroughfares. The cartels are also careful not to assassinate high-profile
public figures such as police chiefs, mayors and reporters in the United States, as they frequently do in Mexico.
The
border does more than just alter the activities of the cartels, however. It also constrains the activities of U.S. law enforcement
and intelligence agencies. These agencies cannot pursue cartels on the Mexican side of the border with the same vigor that
they exercise on the U.S. side. Occasionally, the U.S. government will succeed in luring a wanted Mexican cartel leader outside
of Mexico, as it did in the August 2006 arrest of Javier Arellano Felix, or catch one operating in the United States like Javier’s oldest brother,
Francisco Arellano Felix. By and large, however, most wanted cartel figures remain in Mexico, out of the reach of U.S. law.
One facet of this buffer is corruption, which is endemic in Mexico, reaching all the way from the lowest municipal police officer to the presidential
palace. Over the years several senior Mexican anti-drug officials, including the nation’s drug czar, have been arrested and charged with
corruption.
However, the money generated by the Mexican cartels has far greater effects than just promoting
corruption. The billions of dollars that come into the Mexican economy via the drug trade are important to the Mexican banking
sector and to the industries in which the funds are laundered, such as construction. Because of this, there are many powerful
Mexican businessmen who profit either directly or indirectly from the narcotics trade, and it would not be in their best interest
for the billions of drug dollars to stop flowing into Mexico. Such people can place heavy pressure on the political system
by either supporting or withholding support from particular candidates or parties.
Because of this, sources in Mexico
have been telling STRATFOR that they believe that Mexican politicians like President Felipe Calderon are far more interested in stopping drug violence than they are in stopping
the flow of narcotics. This is a pragmatic approach. Clearly, as long as there is demand for drugs in the United States there
will be people who will find ways to meet that demand. It is impossible to totally stop the flow of narcotics into the U.S.
market.
In addition to corruption and the economic benefits Mexico realizes from the drug trade, there is another
important element that causes the Mexican government to act as a buffer between the Mexican cartels and the U.S. government— geopolitics. The Mexico-U.S. relationship
is a long one that has involved considerable competition and conflict. The United States has long meddled in the affairs of
Mexico and other countries in Latin America. And from the Mexican perspective, American imperialist aggression, via the Texas
War of Independence and the Mexican-American War, resulted in Mexico losing nearly half of its territory to its powerful northern
neighbor. Less than a century ago, U.S. troops invaded northern Mexico in response to Pancho Villa’s incursions into
the United States.
Because of this history, Mexico — as with most of the rest of Latin America —
regards the United States as a threat to its sovereignty. The result of this perception is that the Mexican government and
the Mexican people in general are very reluctant to allow the United States to become too involved in Mexican affairs. The
idea of American troops or law enforcement agents with boots on the ground in Mexico is considered especially threatening
from the Mexican perspective.
A Thin Barrier
While Mexican sovereignty and international
law combine with corruption and economics to create a barrier to assertive U.S. intervention in Mexico’s drug war, this
barrier is not inviolable. There are two distinct ways this type of barrier has been breached in the past: by force and by
consent.
An example of the first was seen following the
1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of U.S. DEA special agent Enrique Camarena. The DEA was not able to get what it viewed
as satisfactory assistance from the Mexican government in pursuing the case despite the tremendous pressure applied by the
U.S. government. This prompted the DEA to unilaterally enter Mexico and snatch two Mexican citizens connected to the case.
Because of his involvement in the Camarena case, Honduran drug kingpin Juan Matta-Ballesteros was also rendered from his home
in Honduras by U.S. government agents.
As a result of the U.S. reaction to
the Camarena murder, the Guadalajara Cartel, Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization at the time, was decapitated,
its leaders — Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Rafael Caro Quintero — all arrested and
convicted for their part in ordering the killing. The tremendous pressure applied to Mexican authorities by the U.S. government
to arrest the trio, coupled with the fear that they too might be rendered, ultimately led to their detention, although they
did maintain sufficient influence to ensure that they were not extradited to the United States.
The Guadalajara
Cartel also lost its primary connection to the Medellin cartel (Matta-Ballesteros) as a result of the Camarena case, and the
cartel was eventually fractured into smaller units that would become today’s Sinaloa, Juarez, Gulf and Tijuana cartels.
The Camarena case taught the Mexican cartel bosses to be careful not to provoke the Americans to the point where it will bring
the full power of the U.S. government to bear upon their organizations (a lesson recently demonstrated by the unilateral U.S.
operation to kill Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan).
But in addition to unilateral force, sometimes
the U.S. government can be invited into a country despite concerns about sovereignty. This happens when the population has
something it fears more than U.S. involvement, and this is what happened in Colombia in the late 1980s. In an effort to influence
the Colombian government not to cooperate with the U.S. government and extradite him to the United States, Colombian drug
lord Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellin Cartel, resorted to terrorism. In 1989 he launched a string of terrorist attacks
that included the assassination of one presidential candidate, the bombing a civilian airliner in an attempt to kill a second
presidential candidate and several large VBIED attacks, including the detonation of a 450-kilogram truck bomb in December
1989 targeting the Colombian Administrative Department of Security (DAS, Colombia’s primary national intelligence and
security service) that caused massive damage in the area around the DAS building in downtown Bogota. These attacks had a powerful
impact on the Colombian government and Colombian people and caused them to reach out to the United States for increased assistance
despite their concern about U.S. power. The increased U.S. assistance eventually led to the death of Escobar and the systematic
dismantling of his organization.
The lesson in the Escobar case was: Do not push your own government or population too
far or they will turn on you and invite the Americans in.
Full Circle
So, in looking
at the situation in Mexico today, there are indeed cartel organizations that have been hit hard. Over the past few years,
we have seen groups such as the Beltran Leyva Organization, the Arellano Felix Organization, the VCF and Los Zetas heavily
damaged. Many of these groups, particularly the VCF, the Arellano Felix Organization and Los Zetas, have been forced to resort
to other criminal activity such as kidnapping, extortion and human trafficking to fund their operations. However, they have
not yet undertaken large-scale terrorist attacks. The VCF tiptoed along that line last year, with La Linea’s small-scale
IED attacks, as did the Gulf cartel, but these groups were careful not to use IEDs that were too large, and La Linea never
employed the huge IED it threatened to. In fact, the overall use of IEDs is down dramatically in 2011 compared to the same
period last year — despite the fact that explosives are readily available in Mexico and the cartels have the demonstrated
capability to manufacture and employ them.
It is also important to recognize that in the past couple of years, when the United
States has become heavily interested in attacks linked to the Mexican cartels, the cartel figures believed to be responsible
for these actions have been arrested or killed. This has happened in cases such as the March 2010 murders of three people with ties to the U.S. Consulate
in Juarez, the September 2010 murder of David Hartley on Falcon Lake, the February 2011 murder of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Special Agent Jaime Zapata, and even the previously mentioned July 27 threats against U.S. interests in
Juarez. This means that the chances of a cartel such as the VCF getting the United States directly involved without the cartel
being directly impacted are probably quite slim. In other words, if the VCF attacks the U.S. Consulate in Juarez, it can expect
to be targeted directly by the U.S. and Mexican governments, instead of the governments focusing on other cartel players in
the city, such as the VCF’s rival, the Sinaloa Federation.
As noted in our last cartel update, we anticipate that in the coming months the Mexican government campaign against
Los Zetas will continue to affect the group, as will the attacks against Los Zetas by the Gulf cartel and its criminal allies.
We also anticipate that the aforementioned Sinaloa pressure against the VCF in Juarez will not diminish. Nor will Mexican
government pressure: We have seen reports that Luis Antonio Flores (also known as El Comen 2 or El Tarzan), El Diego’s
replacement as the leader of La Linea, was arrested Aug. 16. However, we have seen nothing that would indicate that this pressure
will cause these groups to lash out in the form of large-scale terrorist attacks like those associated with Pablo Escobar.
Even when wounded, these Mexican organizations have shown that they seek to maintain the buffer protecting them from the full
power of the U.S. government.
