El Narco

by Ioan Grillo

  That deduction is highly questionable. The most concrete source, seizures, shows that tons of Mexican cartel grass go directly into California. Mexico made its biggest marijuana seize since the eighties right over the California border, in Tijuana, in 2010 (two weeks before the Prop 19 vote). It was 134 metric tons, or 295,000 pounds of the psychedelic leaves! It is so much grass, it was carried in a whole convoy of trucks and soldiers filled a parking lot with it. The pressure-packed bundles in yellow, red, green, gray, and white reached the sky. It made a hell of a bonfire. The grass would have been worth about $100 million on California streets. In apparent reaction to the loss, a cartel massacred thirteen addicts in a rehab center. It was one life for each ten tons of ganja.6

  If cartels murder over the marijuana traffic into California, it is obviously a serious market. And that was only one seizure. California’s border patrol and customs also seize hundreds of tons of cannabis every year.

  Mexican marijuana heading into California also moves on to other American states. If California did legalize the herb, there would be a perplexing patchwork: you would have grass produced legally in Cali sold illegally in other states; Mexican weed imported unlawfully into San Diego and selling over the counter in Los Angeles; and a whole array of other confused combinations. And it would be bizarre for Mexican soldiers to seize a truck of ganja in Tijuana if it was openly being sold in dispensaries a few miles over the border.

  Policy-reform advocates, of course, see California as a first step. Once it is shown to work there, the policy could be followed in New Mexico or Washington State. Eventually, the whole union might legalize. And if the United States legalized marijuana, Mexico would inevitably legalize its own farmers and transporters. Campesinos in the Sierra Madre could get out of the drug trade and into a legitimate business; it would be one more Mexican crop such as coffee, tequila agave, or avocados.

  You can argue forever with fuzzy figures about the size of this industry. But even if you believe the lowest estimates, Mexico’s marijuana trade to the United States is in the billions. If it was legalized, this would take these billions away every year from organized crime. That is more financial damage than the DEA or Mexican armed forces have achieved in a decade.

  Taking Mexico’s marijuana business out of the black market would clearly mean less money spent on Kalashnikovs and paying child assassins. But whatever happens in drug-policy reform, cartel militias are not going to disappear overnight. Gangs such as the Zetas and Familia will keep fighting over any illegal drugs on the market as well as going on with their extortion, kidnapping, human smuggling, and their portfolio of other crimes. They are a threat that Mexico must confront.

  Some analysts fear calling these groups insurgents because they fear counterinsurgency tactics. Armies battling rebel groups have caused human rights tragedies from Algeria to Afghanistan. Mexican soldiers have already committed widespread human rights abuses, and if they get schooled in a real anti-insurgency campaign, their record could get even worse. This is a real fear.

  But the Mexican Drug War is already completely militarized. While the Mexican government refuses to concede it is fighting an insurgency, it uses a completely military strategy against cartel militias, battling them with the army, marines, and units of federal paramilitary police. Protesters march to condemn the abuses of soldiers; but they also protest how the government is failing to protect them from gangsters. Often these two points are protested in the same marches. That is the central problem for Calderón and whoever follows him. He is damned if he uses the army; and he is damned if he doesn’t.

  Realistically, no president is going to completely withdraw the military while groups such as the Zetas maintain their current strength. How can any government permit squads of fifty men with automatic rifles, RPGs, and belt-driven machine guns to steam through villages? It has to challenge them. And only the military has the capacity to go toe-to-toe with Zetas black commandos.

  However, the government could certainly refine this strategy. The army, or particularly the marines, have been successful in strikes on cartel bosses such as when they blew away Arturo “the Beard” Beltrán Leyva in the apartment block. But soldiers also waste a lot of time raiding random houses without intelligence, harassing civilians on the street, and manning checkpoints on dark country roads. Nervous soldiers have shot dead many of their innocent victims at these checkpoints. The military needs to be used for the heavy stuff. The intelligence has to be gathered by civilian agents who really know how to collect it, or the American desperado agents who collect much of it anyway; and daily policing has to be handled by police.

  The marines are already being reorganized as the elite strike force for these type of operations. As WikiLeaks cables show, they are the Mexican force most respected by American officials. In a December 2009 cable, then American ambassador Carlos Pascual praised the marines for their work killing the Beard and some Zetas leaders, while scolding the army, who, he said, had failed to act on American intel.

  “The successful operation against ABL [Arturo Beltrán Leyva] comes on the heels of an aggressive SEMAR [marines] effort in Monterrey against Zeta forces and highlights its emerging role as a key player in the counternarcotics fight. SEMAR is well-trained, well-equipped, and has shown itself capable of responding quickly to actionable intelligence. Its success puts the army in the difficult position of explaining why it has been reluctant to act on good intelligence and conduct operations against high-level targets.”7

  The ambassador also revealed (thanks to WikiLeaks) that the marine unit that led the operation had been “extensively trained” by the U.S. Northern Command, the Pentagon’s joint operations center in Colorado. Other cables elaborated on American doubts about the Mexican army and recommended more training with U.S. forces. John Feeley, the deputy chief of mission for the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, wrote a scathing assessment of Mexico’s military capacities in January 2010. He called the armed forces “parochial and risk averse,” said they were “incapable of processing information and evidence,” and called the defense minister, General Galvan, “a political actor.” It was quite different from America’s public line, and quite embarrassing for Feeley when it flashed up on the Internet. Feeley’s solution: more training with the United States as well as the Colombians.8

  America will invariably continue to train Mexican troops, and building up elite units that take out the worst gangsters and commandos is a good thing. But Mexico also has to work on paying these elite units decently and keeping their loyalty so they don’t desert and become more mercenaries. The modern marine core is better trained and more experienced than Arturo Guzmán Decena was when he went over to the Zetas. If a crew of marines ever deserted, it would be an awesome threat. While the U.S. trains Mexicans, the use of American forces themselves should be kept firmly off the agenda. It looms as a likely disaster, provoking nationalist resentment and pulling U.S. troops into a quagmire.

  Americans do need to step up their efforts to help improve the Mexican police. A long-term solution to Mexico’s security problems is training real cops—and not just gangsters in uniform who let criminals get away with murder. Whether it is a single national force or separate agencies, the quality of officers has to be vastly improved. This is a generational project, not something that will miraculously happen in one or five or even ten years. The police ranks have to be trained and improved and monitored and cleaned out and trained again … As well as help from American police, support of Latin American police is crucial, as these corps deal with a more similar culture and circumstances. The Colombian National Police is obviously touted, but other forces have gained respect and good clearance rates in Latin America, including police in Nicaragua—Central America’s poorest country, but one of its safest.

  Dealing with Mexico’s mountain of unsolved murders and crimes now seems an insurmountable task. So police have to prioritize. Busting small-time drug dealers is a never-ending mission that gets bodies in cells but doesn’t st
op the drug trade or violence. Meanwhile, kidnapping for ransom is the most heinous antisocial crime of all and should not be tolerated one inch. In front of Mexico’s wave of abductions, this should be the number one priority.

  The good news about kidnapping is that it can be stopped (unlike the drug trade). This point was brought home to me by former Colombian president César Gaviria. In an interview, the former premier described Colombia’s experience with the scourge of kidnapping in the nineties and what Mexico can learn from it.

  “Kidapping is a problem of bad policing. Because good police can always catch kidnappers. The bad guys have to expose themselves by getting in contact with the family and getting money from them. And that allows you to trace them. If the success rate of kidnappings goes down radically, that makes it a much less profitable business.

  “And unlike drug traffickers, there are not that many kidnappers. If you lock away a single gang of kidnappers, you can affect the amount of abductions; if you hit five gangs, you can make a real change.”9

  In Colombia, Gaviria went on, police aggressively went after abductors and drastically changed the situation. It went from the worst kidnapping rate in the world to being the ninth on the list (with Mexico being on top, followed by Iraq and India). Most of the kidnappings that still take place in Colombia are in war-wracked corners of countryside. Kidnappings for ransom in the capital, Bogotá, have been reduced to close to zero.

  Mexico needs a similar hands-on strategy to fight kidnappings. Gaviria suggested a federal antikidnapping unit to handle every case. (In the current mess, some kidnappings in Mexico are handled by federales and others by state cops, whom victims fear going to in case they are part of the gang.) If a carefully watched federal unit achieved a high clearance rate, it would inspire others to trust in them rather than to pay ransoms. Once victims start consistently turning to police rather than paying the bounties, kidnapping ceases to be a growth industry.

  Even if Mexico’s police force is transformed, bad barrios are going to keep churning out killers. When teenagers are out of school, from broken homes, in violent gangs, with no jobs, harassed by soldiers, with no hopes for the future, and struggling even to get enough to eat, they will keep turning to the mafia. Every politician promises better job opportunities, and these are easier said than delivered. But ways exist to fix broken communities even with limited resources.

  The Mexico City government instigated a scholarship program to stop kids from dropping out of high school. If they could keep up a certain grade average, they would get a token monthly allowance to help them get by. The program was wildly popular, with fifty thousand drawing from it. Mexico City authorities say this is one of the key reasons the capital has kept a violent crime rate akin to U.S. cities rather than falling to the devastating levels of Juárez or Culiacán. These fifty thousand poor kids are off the streets and not working as hawks, hustlers, or hit men. Why isn’t such a program instituted across the whole of Mexico? Sometimes a little bit of investment in teenagers is cheaper than locking them up when they go down the wrong path. (It costs 125 pesos a day to hold a prisoner, but 23 pesos a day to keep a kid in school.)10

  Sometimes all kids need is more attention. Sandra Ramirez is a social worker in Ciudad Juárez’s westside slums, home to many cartel foot soldiers. She works in the Casa center, which offers guidance as well as art, music, and computer workshops and a place to hang out. On a baking-hot day, a few dozen kids are jumping around on skateboards and sitting in the shade strumming on guitars. Sandra, who grew up in the barrio and used to work in an assembly plant, labors hard with each kid to steer him or her away from a life of crime.

  “One boy I am working with is fourteen years old and just studied in elementary school. His mother uses drugs and he doesn’t live with her. He told me that a car came by with some guys he hadn’t seen before. And they offered him five hundred pesos [$40] a week, a cell phone, and work. And all he had to do is to stand at a post and keep watch. And there are hundreds of cases like this in Juárez, hundreds. Nobody else has come to offer him anything. Nobody but them.”

  The young boy is on a knife edge, and Sandra and the Casa social center are all that is keeping him from falling. Another older teenager at the center shows off his art, a painting of his neighborhood in surreal form, the people blurred, immersed in fog. On one side is a sanguine depiction of mafia bosses, on the other a sadistic-looking soldier. The barrio kids are stuck in the middle. It is a grim image, but the artist says he got rid of a lot of stress painting it—and discovered a bright artistic talent. When people start finding something of worth in themsleves, they are pulled away from the street and crime.

  Sandra and Casa have saved the lives of dozens of kids, but only a couple of centers like that exist, while miles more westside slums have nothing. The Casa center, which relies on donations from NGOs or the government, has actually lost funding during the very time the drug war has exploded and it is most needed. Perhaps more of the Mexican budget that gives politicians some of the highest salaries in the world—or even a tiny fraction of the $1.6 billion of the Mérida Initiative giving Mexico Black Hawks—could be used to fund centers in the slums. Social workers are better than soldiers at helping neglected teenagers.

  In other countries, two mafia capitals have been regenerated by inspired leadership. One is Palermo, Sicily, home of the most famous mafia of all. The city was long notorious for cutthroats and thieves. However, when former university professor Leoluca Orlando saved two terms as mayor in the eighties and nineties, he oversaw a renaissance, restoring 150 endangered buildings, constructing parks, and lighting dark streets. Crucially, he instigated programs to engage citizens, including schoolchildren, to help maintain these assets and take pride in their community. These may not be traditional crime-fighting methods, but the crime rate went down drastically.11

  Over the pond in Medellín, Colombia, long-haired mathematician Sergio Fajardo took over as mayor in 2004 and took the ideas of Orlando further. He poured city resources into building high-tech cable cars up the mountains into the Medellín slums (comunas) and hired world-famous architects to construct public buildings, including an eccentric-shaped library and the best music conservatory in the city. It made the middle class travel into the comunas, many for the first time. During his term in office, homicides went down drastically. Visiting Medellín, I asked Fajardo if such regeneration could possibly take place in a city as ugly as Juárez.

  He replied swiftly, “It has to be done. We have no other options. The government has a responsibility to do it. I see it like a mathematical problem. How can you readdress the social inequalities? It is simple. The most beautiful buildings have to be in the poorest areas.”

  Critics point out that Fajardo was not the only reason for the decline in Medellín’s murder rate. He also benefited from a strong mafia godfather, Diego Murillo, alias Don Berna, who kept assassins in check through his Office of Envigado. Anyone who wanted to kill had to get permission or be killed themselves. Even from prison, Don Berna could broker peace in his empire. But when he was extradited to the United States in 2008, the office broke into two and a turf war pushed Medellín’s murder rate back up.

  In 2010, civic leaders, including a well-known priest and a former guerrilla, went to meet with mafia leaders in a Medellín prison and brokered a new truce between them. It was a controversial move, talking to gangsters. But it seemed to have an immediate result in the lowering of deaths on the street. The civic leaders did not have the official backing of the government and did not offer the mafia anything in return. It was simply a plea: “For the good of the community, can you stop murdering each other in broad daylight?”

  Calls for truces could also bring relief to Mexico’s murder capitals. Asking for peace is not sanctioning organized crime, it is just appealing to gang leaders to stop killing. The United States uses such tactics in its penitentiaries, actively working with prison gangs to broker truces. Some gang leaders will listen to these pleas—they
themselves do not want to see their own family murdered. You don’t need to talk to the mafia godfathers in their palaces, but the low-level street-gang affiliates have an interest in their community. The bloody turf wars and sky-high murder rates do not help defeat the mafia; they just create an insecure atmosphere in which crime prevails.

  Mexico also has a challenge to heal the wounds of the many who have lost family in the bloodshed. The increasing number of drug-war orphans need help or they will turn into an even more lost generation seeking bloody revenge. Other conflict-scarred countries have created national programs for victims. In some cases orphans or widows need financial help; but in many cases the need is psychological.

  Families of victims help themselves now by sharing their pain. In Culiacán, a group of men and women meet to talk about the suffering from losing their loved ones. Many are mothers. They can never let go of burying their sons, but can at least feel that others suffer like them.

  Alma Herrera, the mother whose son was shot in the car shop, takes me to meet a grieving friend one evening. We go to a park in the center of Culiacán, where old men rest their weary feet, children play by fountains, and young couples flirt on benches, sowing the seeds of their own marriages and families. The light in Sinaloa just before dusk looks beautiful, a rich, bright blue filling the streets.