THE BORDER REPORT

This story’s a few months old but I like it because it shows nicely to what extent the U.S. simply doesn’t invest in punishing high-end drug traffickers. The United States has entered into a plea agreement with one of Mexico’s most famed drug lords that ensures the man will not spend more than a few years behind bars despite having moved more than an average of 15 tons of marijuana across the border every year of his ... illustrious ... career. Miguel Angel Caro Quintero, who headed the Sonora Cartel in the 1980s, is accused of moving nearly fifteen tons of marijuana and cocaine into the U.S. for years. His brother, Rafael Caro Quintero, is serving a 40-year sentence in Mexico for the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena. Miguel was captured in Sinaloa in late 2001 and served eight years in that country before he was extradited to Colorado last winter to stand trial on indictments filed by the U.S. The Feds worked a suspect named Harold Allen Hughes, a Cessna pilot and smuggler dating back to 1967, recorded deals of upwards of 80-ton loads of pot moving through Sonora. Hughes, who worked with El Azul Juan Esparragoza as far back as 1973, was also in the growing business, raising some 30 tons of pot every year in Sonora, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua. Court documents show that he went to work with Miguel Caro Quintero after Rafael's arrest, moving loads into Tucson and Phoenix then driving half-ton loads up to Colorado. Cash was coming back at a rate of $300K a week in those heady days of the late eighties and nineties before a source fingered Hughes and Caro Quintero in 2001. The evidence seems a bit shady; according to court documents, the snitch "identified a photograph of Miguel Angel Caro-Quintero as the person that Hughes obtained his marijuana from ..." between 1985 and 1989. For his part, Caro Quintero has always proclaimed his innocence, saying that the Feds were simply retributing the murder of Kiki Camarena and that he's simply a cattlerancher. Nevertheless, last October, he pleaded guilty to two counts of drug trafficking in Colorado and Arizona. Here's where it gets a little sketchy. Sentencing won't be held until February but I'm told that he will serve his five-year Arizona sentence concurrently with that of Colorado where he faces 10-20. However, I'm told that he's really facing the lower end of the larger sentence minus the eight years he's already served in Mexico. Bottom line: maximum seven years for a drug lord career that spanned nearly two decades. Possibly two years if he gets the ten and the court accepts the eight years he's served in Mexico. That's what a great lawyer will do for you. I don't even know what to think about the federal prosecutors ...

THE BORDER REPORT

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THE BORDER REPORT

I first met Margarito Montes Parra two years ago, spring 2007 or so; his son had just been murdered in the little town of Cocorít, near Cd. Obregón, Sonora. It was a strange murder in a town notorious for its power structure and its involucrations to the world’s richest drug lords. Former Sonora Gov. Eduardo Bours hails from here. Keeps a beautiful ranch with rolling green pastures fueled by the Yaqui River Valley's expansive canals, expensive horses, gazebos of intricate lattice. His nemesis, PRI powerhouse Manlio Fabio Beltrones, is also from here. Nacho Coronel and Joaquín Chapo Guzman keep homes here. So does Adan Salazar. Rigoberto Gaxiola, Amado Carrillo’s money-launderer, kept three businesses in Obregón. The NAFTA dollars are strong here, as well. Israeli and German geneticists work alongside their Mexican counterparts designing new ways to grow crops. Semi-trucks rumble through on Highway 15, rushing product north into Arizona. The staunchest of the Yaqui blood natives insist on referring to the city by its Yaqui chief name, Cajéme (an unfortunate play on the accents which I had to train myself out of switching and embarrassing myself by referring to it as Cájeme). For myself, Obregon and its neighboring small towns virtually define what’s become my favorite Mexican phrase: secretos a voz. Things just … happen in a city like Obregón; movements and agreements and backroom dealings that are invariably more interesting in the context of the politics of Mexico’s drug war than the simple carnages of the border wars. When someone dies here, you can bet it's important. When 15 people die here, it's not just a message, it's a testament. (Photo courtesy, Sonora State Police.) Juárez and Tijuana carry the headlines of the bodycounts and those are simple to understand. One dead here, eight at a drug rehab there, a baby caught in a crossfire on Revolucíon, twelve here or there. So many that the numbers and the atrocities themselves have become meaningless. My general rule of thumb these days is that unless it’s somebody important who is whacked, or they die in an interesting fashion, I no longer care. Murder is easily understood; something that the writer James Ellroy refers to as all choices that are left to a man reduced to one. Then Friday happened. And old questions and doubts come rushing back full-force, fueling the obsession. (Photo courtesy, Sonora State Police.) Montes Parra was in his truck, a caravan of some three vehicles, when the killers came. They fired more than 350 rounds, killing the 56-year-old labor organizer, his wife, his daughter, a son, 11 others. Nine other people followed in a third truck, they survived, say they saw nothing. Maybe they didn't. The suspicions have been cast as far down as Veracruz, where Montes worked. And perhaps that's true as well. But he had other stories to tell. Couple years ago, I was coming up through Obregón when the call came early in the morning from a source in Hermosillo, two hours away. Four men were dead at a cockfight. Maybe more. Quien sabe. Montes’ son,  Jorge Adrián Montes Vega, was one of those who died. The version of events went something like: two cocks fighting and the winner runs away. In cockfighting, the bird who runs, loses. In this case, the bird who ran killed the first cock and then ran away. A thousand dollar bet had been made, tempers were short and someone pulled a gun. And perhaps that version is true as well, I don't know. But the bloodstains on the ground of the palenque clearly show a mass of men off to the side from the fight pit. Neighbors tell a different story from the official version. Yes, there was a cockfight, they say; then some men pulled up and walked in, held the small crowd at gunpoint then pulled four men to the side, Montes' son was one of them. They lined them up and executed them. No arrest was ever made. Two hundred people were at the cockfight; the lone cop ran away to get help. The blood was hours old, coagulating in the dust when I arrived. Nobody saw a thing. I went to talk to Montes about his son's murder, following this theme of secretos. Myself and a colleague were escorted in to his hacienda with marvelous walls of cut stone and an airy hall with an enormous oak table inside. "Where were the police?" he yelled. "Where was anybody? We don't know what happened there but we have a good idea! This governor, (Bours at the time), is involved in themes that are despicable." Nothing he could prove, like always, like anything involving organized crime investigations in Mexico. But Montes had it out for former Gov. Bours. In early 2008, he and his people colllaborated with a popular Mexican magazine, showing reporters this man that the mag then portrayed as "El Narco-Gobernador." It was a fairly irresponsible piece, in many ways. Lots of speculation, lots of tenuous connections between the Bours family's dollars and the Sinaloa Federation that fell apart upon closer examination. Yet, the day that issue of Proceso Magazine hit the stands, state employees from Nogales to Navajoa bought up every copy. Here in Arizona, the official word from the FBI was that Montes' son was murdered in some shady transaction. And perhaps that is true as well. I certainly would never accuse a man of murder without definite proof. And that's proof I don't have. I just have a dead man's words, thankfully recorded in audio. Let's see what the investigation concludes. We'll do well to remember that Montes paid for a criminal investigation of his own son's murder; the alleged killers, whom he claimed Bours was protecting, were set free.

THE BORDER REPORT

For the second time in a month, a high level border official has been indicted, this time accused of shredding evidence for the Stanford Financial Group, a group busted by the Feds last year for bilking investors out of nearly $7 billion. Lesser known but arguably more profound, the investment group had been laundering money for Amado Carrillo Fuentes' Juárez Cartel.

Tom Raffanello was the Special Agent in Charge for Arizona between 1996 and 2002 when he then headed the DEA's Miami office before retiring five years ago.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Assuming everyone was in on the job, you can imagine the back-end dealings that went into this quiet negotiation. The Space Shuttle Discovery that's set to launch will be carrying at least two flags onboard, the green, blue and yellow of the U.S. Border Patrol and the red, white and green of México.

The Border Patrol, that golden-haired child of the American federal law enforcement agencies, is riding high, shipping its colors off into outer space onboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, then sending the returning flag to the Border Patrol museum.

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