THE BORDER REPORT

He looks damned good for 62 years old; chesty, thick working man arms, that haughty look, the upturned chin. Life must be pretty good for a man supposedly on the run. Pablo Escobar was burning piles of money to keep warm; he was over-weight, out-of-shape, paranoid and thoroughly spooked when he went down. Ismael El Mayo Zambada? Not so much. By now I’ve had a chance to re-read Mayo's interview a few times, I’m sure you have, too. He reveals little; or rather, the interview reveals little. He denies that Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán ever married that beauty queen. He denies the importance of Chapo’s placement on Forbes’ list of billionaires. He even denies that he himself is a drug lord, let alone one of Mexico’s most powerful. The old man’s been running circles around the Justice Department since the Reagan Administration, after all. There is little in terms of the braggadocio you might expect from a man of his stature in the world of organized crime. Instead, he claims he is a cattle rancher and a farmer but if he can open a business in the United States, he’d like to do so (that can also be interpreted as if he can open a “negotiation with” the United States, he’d like to do so … ) Oh, and the war on drugs is lost. In fact, his interview with Proceso Magazine's Julio Scherer reads much like the interviews conducted with Eduardo Arellano Felix in 2002 ("No ganaron. Estoy aquí, y nada ha cambiado,"), Sandra Avíla Beltrán in 2009 ("La violencia está en el propio Gobierno." also with Scherer, now that I think about it) and the wife of Vicente Carrillo Leyva, Celia Karina, (Yo digo que el Gobierno debería agarrar a las personas que realmente hacen cosas. Pero agarrar inocentes para decir que están trabajando en el narcotráfico) eso es una injusticia.) Also with Proceso. The only question I have is why now? Mayo approached Proceso with the interview offer, because, he says, he's always wanted to meet Scherer. And it's been taken up on this site and in many Mexican media, that this was an individual decision perhaps done so for personal reasons. Because his son is in prison, maybe because he's sick, maybe just old and tired and his perspective has changed. I disagree. Mayo Zambada is part of a syndicate, he is not a lone operator. This is not El Viceroy Vicente Carrillo or Fernando Sanchez Arellano. This is a senior member of a powerful cartel protected, whether through neglect or complicity, by the government of Mexico. Mayo Zambada did not wake up one day in February and decide he wanted to meet Julio Scherer. This was calculated, the question is, by whom? The Sinaloa Federation or the Mexican government? Start with the publication. Proceso has become an odd little magazine over the years. Started in 1976, the magazine had a near-vendetta for the PAN political party, attacking Pres. Vicente Fox Quesada nearly every chance they had. They invented quotes putting Fox in a negative light; went after Marta Sahagún, Fox's wife, and publicly declared that her son was meeting with representatives of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán. Then in 2008, they went after Sonora Gov. Eduardo Bours Castelo. I'll never forget that particular story for this sentence (recall that Bours' family owns Bachoco, the largest poultry company in Mexico):

"Y avicultores de Ciudad Obregón y de Hermosillo comentan al reportero que la empresa Bachoco opera, con licencias oficiales, la importación de efedrina. Esta sustancia –comúnmente utilizada para la elaboración de medicamentos (entre ellos los antigripales) y por cuyo manejo discrecional saltó a la fama el empresario chino Zhenli Ye Gon– sirve para mezclarla con el alimento que consumen los pollos criados por Bachoco. El consumo de efedrina permite que los pollos no duerman en un lapso de al menos ocho semanas. De esa manera, el pollito 'se la pasa comiendo de día y de noche', según relata a Proceso un empresario avícola."

Translation: Growers from Obregón and Hermosillo tell the reporter that Bachoco conducts, under official license, the importation of ephedrine. This substance, commonly produced for cold medicine – and other discretionary uses like that leading to the fame of Zhenli Ye Gon – is also served in the food consumed by the poultry grown by Bachoco. The consumption ensures that the chickens don't sleep for at least eight weeks. In this manner, 'the fowl keeps eating day and night ... "

What do Bours and Fox have in common? Or rather, what did they have in common? Bours served as the governor's representative to the Security Committee; the committee that in 2005, agreed to Operation México Seguro. Remember that one? That's the federal operation that started the militarization fiasco now over-taking Juárez, Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon. In 2006, Bours backed Felipe Calderón for the presidency, pulling away from his own party, the PRI. His backing, one of only three PRI governors to do so, but also one of the most powerful, ensured Calderón's victory against Andres Lopez Obradór in an otherwise very tight election. And now El Mayo surfaces. I can nearly understand why he would be chosen as the consiglierie. Historically, he's been the calmest of the crowd; he's no Chapo, he was only tangentially connected to the Guadalajara Cartel blamed for the murder of the DEA agent in the 1980s. He's never done anything outlandish like introduce the Zetas into the political theater of Mexico's narcotics business. He's as good a diplomat as the Mexican cartel figures could hope for. In many ways, and it's been pointed out by readers of this site already, he's also a good front-man for a certain character sketch of Mexican drug lords. Humble, independent, rugged; born of the Sierra, with his wife and his daughters, and he cries for his incarcerated son and drops beautiful quotes about the freedom offered by the heavens. Very much a public relations move. But was it one conducted by the Sinaloa Federation or the government of Mexico? And that is the question we should be asking.

THE BORDER REPORT

The Feds' 2010 Drug Threat Assessment has been released and its findings are representative of some cynical assumptions I've carried over the past three years: Mexican cartel wars or no cartel wars, this border is business as usual. I've long said that the best assessor of success or failure in drug law enforcement has been the market. The market doesn't lie and it doesn't spin. And what it's telling us now is that Mexico's drug cartels are busier than ever cultivating and trafficking our dope. Thousands dead or no, everyone is fat and happy.

Sixteen thousand people have died in the Mexican cartel and government wars since Pres. Felipe Calderón took office in 2006. Despite the gun battles, the beheadings, the dismemberments and the general chaos of a country under siege, drug production and trafficking into the U.S. have only improved. The U.S.'s and Mexico's efforts have had no effect. Consider these numbers: Heroin production in Mexico nearly doubled between 2007 and 2008, from 17 metric tons to 38. That led to higher purity content and cheaper prices in 2009. The Mexican Army has been too busy shooting narcos to worry much about burning  crops. As a result, marijuana eradication in Mexico dropped 48 percent. At least, that's the U.S. government's reasoning. It could be the case. My colleague, Malcolm Beith, a reporter in Mexico for many years, notes that crop burns are notoriously slow affairs. The Americans put it like this:

"The reduction is the result of the Mexican military's focus on antiviolence measures rather than illicit crop cultivation."

Which you would expect the American Feds to say, I suppose. The amount of marijuana grown in Mexico increased from an estimated 13,500 metric tons to 21,500 metric tons between 2003 and 2008. Think about that for a moment: in 2003, the border was virtually at peace; the Gulf Cartel's Zetas were just getting rolling in Nuevo Laredo; Joaquín Chapo Guzmán and El Viceroy Vicente Carrillo were at peace; the sibling killings wouldn't happen until the next year. In 2008, the Beltrán brothers had just split from the Sinaloa Federation, the Sinaloans invaded Cd. Juárez and everyone was staying away from Tamaulipas while El Teo Teodoro García had just started his vendetta against the Arellano Felix family in Tijuana. Northern Mexico was at war. Yet business continued; and flourished. Check out methamphetamine prices: From January 2007 to September 2009, meth's pure gram price dropped 13 percent while purity increased 22 percent. The only drug to see an increase in prices and a drop in availability has been cocaine. Between January 2007 and September 2009, cocaine prices increased an astonishing 75 percent while purity dropped 31 percent. Of course, between 2007 and 2009, the market crashed and the economy went down the toilet so it's possible that the cocaine consumers switched over to cheap thrills (meth), or numbed the pain (pot). The Feds' assumption is that the Colombians are seeking out global markets instead of dealing with the headache of Mexican traffickers. There's another point to consider: Colombia is slowly losing its power as a cocaine hegemon because of government forces backed by the U.S. This can be a handy line of reasoning as the U.S. increases aid to Mexico in its drug interdiction efforts. Of course, if this is the case, remember that it took them 20 years to finally get it right. One other fascinating point to consider is this footnote to the NDIC report.

No reliable estimates are available regarding the amount of domestically cultivated or processed marijuana. The amount of marijuana available in the United States--including marijuana produced both domestically and internationally--is unknown. Moreover, estimates as to the extent of domestic cannabis cultivation are not feasible because of significant variability in or nonexistence of data regarding the number of cannabis plants not eradicated during eradication seasons, cannabis eradication effectiveness, and plant-yield estimates.

Really? That's interesting. The U.S. has hard numbers on metric ton production in Mexico, including regions, individual growers and seizures, but no idea how much is produced in its borders. Boca abierta. O cerrada, as the case may be.

THE BORDER REPORT

It's been more than a week and La Linea continues to be targeted for the triple murders of people tied to the U.S. Consulate in Cd. Juárez; the Americans continuing to state they believe that it was a case of mistaken identity. Departing from my skepticism of the theory for the  moment, let's say it's true. Let's say the killers targeted the wrong people. So who were they targeting? Follow me for a moment because this is confusing.

Read the full post

THE BORDER REPORT

I'm going to take this conversation in a different direction this afternoon and I'd like your input. I'm working on a project about murder in Mexico and some of my associates seem to be of the mind that there are innocents who are dying in Mexico's wars. Collateral killings, if you will. I argue they remain the exception. The vast exception.

Read the full post

THE BORDER REPORT

The U.S. State Department has ordered its consulate employees along the border, specifically, Tijuana, Nogales, Juárez, Reynosa, Nuevo Laredo, and Matamoros to send their families out of Mexico for a month following the murders of three people, a consulate employee and her husband and the husband of a second employee this weekend in Juárez.

Leslie (or Lesley) Enriquez and her husband, Arthur H. Redelfs, were shot in a drive-by coming into Juárez. Ten minutes earlier, the body of the husband of a second consular employee, Jorge Alberto Salcido, was found by Chihuahua police.

Read the full post