Drug War Capitalism

by Dawn Paley

  Problems related to police deployments are not limited to urban areas. The mountain town of Madera, Chihuahua, lies a couple hours’ bus ride west of the state capital. What happened after 10,000 federal police and soldiers arrived in Chihuahua state, in 2008, shows that an increase in police and soldiers in an area can prove beneficial to transnational corporate interests. Increased policing can precipitate the breakdown of community structures, in this case, of an ejido or community landholders group, who exercise legal title over their lands through assemblies and communal decision making. On an August afternoon in 2008, Dante Váldez Jimenez was giving a teacher training class in an elementary school in Madera, but before he finished his lecture, he was interrupted by a group of thirty men, some of them armed. In the minutes that followed, Váldez was savagely beaten in front of his students. While they beat him, his attackers yelled that he should keep his nose out of other people’s business. Váldez was lucky to escape with his life. Five days later, Amnesty International put out an alert expressing concern for Váldez’s safety, as well as that of members of a nearby community. The attack was political: Váldez is known for his work against Pan American Silver Corporation, a Vancouver-based company that operates an open-pit gold mine near Madera. Amnesty indicated that among the attackers were employees of the mining company. “There isn’t a single authority in any of the three levels of government that is looking out for the people who are displaced, for people who have been mistreated or beaten,” Váldez told me, his voice quiet and low. He pointed out that there was a classroom full of witnesses to the incident, but there was never an investigation. His attack wasn’t an isolated incident, but a brazen reminder of the repression meted out to those who organized against the company, which began operating in Mexico in 1994 after NAFTA was signed. In 2007, Pan American Silver started construction on a low-grade, cyanide-leaching gold and silver mine near the town. Madera, which means “wood” in Spanish, is situated high in the Sierra Madre mountain range and has the air of a logging town, but the area is anything but tranquil: at that time, the dominant story was that in the Sierra Madre, the Sinaloa Cartel—Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel—was battling it out with La Linea, the armed wing of the Juárez Cartel.

  According to the official story, at stake were trafficking routes, as well as vast fields where peasant and Indigenous farmers cultivate marijuana and opium poppies. Certainly the region is home to illicit crop production and trafficking but there are other interests at play. Before construction of the Pan American Silver mine could begin, the historic town of Dolores had to be relocated to make way for the project, affecting more than sixty families. Locals were not ardently anti-mining, but many felt that Ejido Huizopa, the body that represents communal landholders in the area, was not getting a fair shake. By 2008, as construction gave way to gold production, tensions between the company and members of the ejido reached a breaking point. That May, after reaching a majority decision in an assembly, members of the ejido erected a blockade at the mine access route, demanding meaningful negotiations and a better agreement with the company. People working for the mining company were prevented from passing, but soldiers were allowed through the barricades.

  The mining company soon found a way around the protesters, one that didn’t involve sitting at a negotiating table. “At the blockade, there was always, permanently, soldiers traveling in the company trucks, dressed like civilians, [and] as many as eight company trucks watching the demonstrations, the blockade,” said Váldez. Blockaders were intimidated by the soldiers’ presence, and the company continued to access the mine, with workers passing through the blockade because they had soldiers in their trucks. After armed commandos linked to narcotraffickers attacked civilians in a neighboring village, police maintained a continuous presence at the blockade. The blockade lasted one year and five months, during which time residents say the company co-opted members of Ejido Huizopa through financial incentives and intimidation. “When the mining company saw that we had a majority of [communal land owners] supporting us, they began to manipulate in a certain way, using the same people from the ejido to manipulate other compañeros, to ensure that we didn’t have a majority in decision making,” said Luis Peña Amaya, a member of the ejido, who helped organize the blockade.

  As on the blockades, the militarization of the region factored into the company’s ability to win support for its open-pit mine. “The federal police had a presence and intimidated people on many occasions. In the decisive assembly, they took control and surrounded the inside of the hall where we held our assembly,” said Peña Amaya. The intrusion of police into communal decision making is unconstitutional in Mexico. “When things turned against the other group, which was the group preferred by the mining company, [federal police] intervened to ensure that we didn’t exercise our rights.”

  Then there’s the case of Vasco Gil, a tiny ranching hamlet in the mountains of Durango. In the summer of 2009, approximately thirty soldiers showed up and began surveilling and harassing residents. A few days later, another ten or fifteen soldiers arrived, and twelve men from the area were kidnapped. “In a direct statement to Riodoce, [residents] commented that the soldiers showed up to the mountainous region approximately one month ago and began carrying out surveillance, then they began asking where the armed groups were, and especially if [locals] had any knowledge about suspected narcotraffickers Ismael El Mayo Zambada and Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán,” reads an article printed in Riodoce, an independent weekly based in Culiacán, Sonora.[73] The criminalization and terrorizing of residents of Vasco Gil and nearby hamlets by soldiers was carried out in the name of the fight against drug cartels. Closer inspection reveals that there is a much larger interest in the region.

  Vancouver-based mining company Chesapeake Gold Corporation has plans to build an open-pit mine in the area, removing 821 million tons of ore over nineteen years of mining operations. These plans would necessitate the displacement of all residents of Vasco Gil.[74] “The living conditions are primitive in this isolated, mountainous area, where the roads are sometimes impassable during the rainy season,” according to the company’s economic feasibility report on the mine, which proceeds to wrongfully characterize the local economy as based on ranching, rather than forestry, which is actually the predominant economic activity. The stakes in the area surrounding Vasco Gil are high: the company will need to invest about $487 million to operate the mine, and believes that the proposed Metates mine “project is one of the largest, undeveloped disseminated gold and silver deposits in the world.”[75] For Chesapeake Gold Corporation, residents of Vasco Gil and the surrounding area are potential barriers to profit maximization. Chesapeake owns 5,776 hectares of concessions in the area, and actively drilled core samples for exploration in March and April of 2009.[76] Maybe it is a coincidence that almost four dozen soldiers arrived in the town months after a round of exploration drilling around Vasco Gil. Maybe not. But it seems useful to consider factors other than drugs (in this case, transnational mining interests) as potentially influencing violence aimed at local populations in resource-rich areas.

  Territory, Community Police, and Self-defense Groups

  In Mexico’s Guerrero state, community members have prevented the army from entering their territories because they believe that where the army goes, transnational companies will follow. Guerrero’s distinct history has meant that the drug war has differently impacted the state, which has long experienced violence and militarization at levels unknown in the rest of the country before the drug war began in 2006. “The war on drugs is no less than continuing to use military force to contain nonconformist, disruptive movements, groups in resistance, and collectives who raise their voices,” said Abel Barrera, director of Tlachinollan, a human rights group based in Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero. Poppy growing in the region gives soldiers and state authorities a pretext to enter into community lands, but according to Barrera, it does even more than that. “What we’ve seen up until now is that the militarizati
on is not only a way to enter into the territories, but that it serves to impose megaprojects. [The police and army] are the offensive front that goes and enters into territories in order to guarantee that transnational capital can be established there, and install itself via mines, megaprojects, dams, and ecotourism projects. Regardless of the fact that they are in their own lands, a village cannot go against a mine or a multinational company. Companies need a guarantee that capital is worth more than the lives of the peasants that are blocking it,” said Barrera, emphasizing that the role of state forces in Guerrero is to provide that guarantee. Barrera, who is from Tlapa, dresses casually and his language is easy and informal, punctuated by local vernacular and street slang. A photo to his right shows him receiving the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for Human Rights, which he was awarded in 2010 for his work at Tlachinollan, and to his left is a heavy bust of RFK, sitting on a shelf beside dozens of reports produced by the human rights group.

  According to Barrera, the re-militarization taking place as part of the drug war is a pretext to destroy community control over land and resources. “The other [role of militarization] is to not allow the community police and self-defense groups, which are controlling territory—this is another issue, the issue is that the people have understood that with the reforms and with all the privatizations, and with the mining companies, what do the people say? ‘Well then we’re going to protect ourselves, we are in our own territory, so how are we going to protect it?’ And that’s where the self-defense groups and the community police begin to take on a more proactive role, in saying, ‘We’re not going to allow the mining companies to come in.’” The places where community police and self-defense groups are active have been increasingly militarized since the war on drugs was declared and the Mérida Initiative launched. Barrera insists, though, that the suite of armed actors in the region be understood within a context where local armed groups are defending their territories while being faced down by state militarization at the service of transnational capital. “What we see is that there is a process of remilitarization, but it is with the intention of re-conquering territories and reinforcing a strategy of counterinsurgency, but also as an armed front of the state to re-conquer and impose projects, to help mega-projects set up in these regions.”

  Barrera is interrupted by a call on his old Nokia, and he takes it, signaling the end to the interview. He is a man known for having his finger on the pulse of social movements in Guerrero state, and for going out to a community gathering on a moment’s notice if invited.

  Unlike the self-defense groups in Michoacán, the community police in Guerrero didn’t surge up from movements against drug cartels. According to Francisco López Barcenas, an Indigenous lawyer and human rights activist, community policing groups have a history that traces back to pre-colonial times in states throughout Mexico. “What we can see today is communities reorganizing,” he said in an interview with Vice. “On the one hand, they are doing it to stop the violence, and on the other hand, to defend their natural resources.”[77] Community policing experienced a revival in Guerrero in 1995 when the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities (CRAC) was created to form a regional structure that incorporated numerous towns and included training and processes for trying and rehabilitating those deemed criminals through community service. “Officers of the CRAC community police are appointed by the Assembly. We don’t cover our faces. The weapons used by the CRAC’s officers are bought by the community,” according to Pablo Guzmán Hernández, who previously coordinated the CRAC.[78]

  Territorial control and the threat they pose to transnational capital is a crucial and oft-ignored role of these groups. “If we allow the army to enter communal territory, they will never leave. The government has its sights on exploiting the mines; they want us to fight amongst ourselves, so that they can come in and militarize the territory. That’s the bottom line here,” said Claudio Carrasco, former coordinator of the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities-Community Police (CRAC-PC).[79] There are three producing mines in Guerrero state, a host of exploration projects, and vast expanses of mountainous land that has not yet been granted in mining concessions.

  In his early days as president, Peña Nieto announced the creation of a gendarmerie, a heavily armed police force that would primarily patrol rural areas.[80] “Although falling under the Ministry of the Interior, the National Gendarmerie will mostly consist of soldiers who will remain under military/naval command. These troops will be heavily armed, uniquely trained in rapid assault tactics (rather than more standard evidentiary procedures) and specifically authorized to operate above force levels that typically apply to the police.”[81] The national gendarmerie will increase police presence in resource-rich rural areas in Mexico, creating another layer of protection for mining companies and others active in these so-called under-policed areas. A 5,000 member gendarmerie was launched in August of 2014, and according to The Economist, “it will have special responsibility for protecting Mexico’s economic assets—oil, mines, farms and so forth—from organised crime.”[82]

  The snapshots presented in this chapter are an initial attempt to look at how the deployment of police and soldiers has not brought security to the communities they patrol. Rather, these deployments act as a guarantee to investors seeking to insure their installations will be protected from community resistance, at great cost to men and women throughout the region. In addition, they’ve done little to stop the flow of drugs, but rather have contributed to shifting the flows to other regions. In the future, these other regions could also be militarized in the name of fighting the flow of drugs, extending into a kind of perpetual war.

  Chapter 6:

  Mexico, Paramilitarization & The Drug War

  Early in 2014, I met with Javier Sicilia, a man who is today perhaps Mexico’s most well-known peace activist, in a Starbucks in the south of Mexico City. He arrived with a friend, and though he left his trademark wide-brimmed hat and beige vest at home, he still garnered attention among the half dozen people sipping their coffees. As we chatted, one man patted Sicilia on the shoulder, telling him to keep up the struggle. The circumstances that plunged Sicilia into a life of activism are tragic. On March 28, 2011, his son Juan Francisco Sicilia Ortega was murdered along with six others in Temixco, Morelos, just south of Mexico City. The seven bodies were found inside a Honda Civic. Sicilia, a poet, vowed he would never write another verse, and began a national campaign known as the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, that carried out marches, caravans, and events throughout Mexico and the United States. Sicilia places the blame for his son’s murder squarely on the drug war strategy carried out by Felipe Calderón, and says that had drug trafficker Arturo Beltran Leyva not been murdered in 2009, his son would still be alive.[1] “I’m sure that if Beltran Leyva was still in Cuernavaca, if they hadn’t killed him, my son wouldn’t be dead,” said Sicilia. His son was killed with six others when they were kidnapped after denouncing a robbery. The owner of the house where they were being held freaked out and called a local crime boss, paying him 300,000 pesos and giving him two trucks to get the kidnapped youth off his hands. All seven of them were murdered, and stuffed into a car. Sicilia believes that the war on drugs strategy is what ratcheted up the violence in Mexico. “This is my hypothesis: there’s cartels out there, and when Calderón—with assistance from institutions that were involved in cartel activity—decides to mobilize the army, what he does is oblige the cartels to arm themselves like armies. Then he does another terrible thing as part of this strategy, he beheads the big capos, the ones who controlled those groups. So what was left were cells that cannot access drugs, which leads to the true diversification of crime.”

  The paramilitarization that has taken place in Mexico since Calderón declared war on drug cartels in December 2006 can be understood as stemming from two elements of US-promoted militarization in Mexico. Sicilia mentioned the first element in our interview above. The paramilitarization of drug cartels is an outcom
e of the police and army’s piecemeal confrontations with well-financed drug trafficking groups that have a large supply of cash and almost unfettered access to weapons. As a consequence of state attempts to militarize their trafficking routes, drug trafficking organizations recruit and arm grunts to protect their trade. This is something that has been rigorously documented in Colombia, where “military and counter-narcotics aid to Colombia, rather than enhancing the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, is diverted to empower non-state armed actors, increasing extra-legal violence with no apparent effect on its stated goal of curbing drug production,” stated economists in a peer-reviewed paper released in December 2012.[2] “Our estimates display a distinct, asymmetric pattern: when U.S. military aid increases, attacks by paramilitaries, who are known to work with the military, increase more in municipalities with bases.” Which is to say that the more the United States spends in Colombia, the more irregular forces have their way with local populations, generating terror and violence.

  The second element is that historically in Latin America the so-called professionalization of the police, explored in the last chapter, leads to paramilitarization. “Professionalization’s insistence on centralized and specialized police activities seems also to lead to the devolution (e.g. debureaucratization), as the activities of professionalized, specialized, and autonomous national police agencies increasingly diverge from the centers of authority that have produced them.… Devolution from bureaucratized militarization is often manifested in the emergence of social-control groups with less direct, more tenuous links to the state. These take the form of death squads related only in varying degree to police, or police-linked justiciero lone-wolf killers, or parts of the internal security system that have turned against other parts—as when one internal security organization spies on, or takes action against, another.”[3] Seen in this light, we can understand that police training actually increases the possibility that paramilitary groups will form. Instead of calling the armed groups that work for narcotics traffickers paramilitaries, they are referred to in the mainstream press and by government officials (and by extension the majority of the population) as drug cartels, or in some cases the “armed wing” of a given drug cartel. Many of these groups are initially formed by deserters from state security forces in the pay of crime groups. The notion that they are loyal to a particular organization (or more absurdly, to the trade of a particular commodity) is vastly overstated in hegemonic discourses about drug cartels. (The same is true of members of state security forces, who as noted above have defected with incredible frequency to work with organized crime groups.)