DrugSense FOCUS Alert #149 Saturday December 12, 1999 Juarez Graves Show How The Drug War Kills TO SUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE, DONATE, VOLUNTEER TO HELP OR UPDATE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS PLEASE SEE THE INFORMATION AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS FOCUS ALERT PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE DrugSense FOCUS Alert #149 Saturday December 12, 1999 A couple weeks after the announcement that the graves of more 100 people killed by a powerful drug cartel may have been found in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the story is still being uncovered. It now looks as if more of the bodies will be found elsewhere around the city, but the importance of the story has not diminished. All the major news magazines are covering it this week. The article from Time Magazine (below) illustrates how the drug trade has evolved to stay ahead of those trying to enforce prohibition. While violence and corruption have always played a part in drug prohibition, it seems the violence is becoming more ruthless, while the corruption is becoming more endemic. For all the coverage this story has received, very few commentators have dared to state the obvious truth: this whole situation is the result of the drug war, and there is nothing that the drug war establishment can do to stop the carnage. Please write to Time Magazine, or another major weekly news magazine, to explain how the drug war gives the drug cartels their terrible power and to say that ending the drug is the only way to end the type of violence being uncovered in Juarez. Thanks for your effort and support. WRITE A LETTER TODAY It's not what others do it's what YOU do PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER OR TELL US WHAT YOU DID (Letter,Phone, fax etc.) Please post a copy your letter or report your action to the sent letter list () if you are subscribed, or by E-mailing a copy directly to Your letter will then be forwarded to the list so others can learn from your efforts and be motivated to follow suit This is VERY IMPORTANT as it is the only way we have of gauging our impact and effectiveness. CONTACT INFO Source: Time Magzine Contact: Please note: Time and the other news weeklies tend to print much shorter letters than most newspapers. Please try to keep your letter concise. EXTRA CREDIT - Send a letter to Newsweek, which has also published a story on Juarez (available at http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99.n1338.a08.html) Source: Newsweek Contact: EXTRA EXTRA CREDIT Send your letter to U.S. News and World Reports, which also published a story on Juarez, though it hasn't made it to the MAP news archive yet. Source: U.S. News and World Reports Contact: URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1325/a12.html Pubdate: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 Source: Time Magazine (US) Copyright: 1999 Time Inc. Page: 62 Contact: Address: Time Magazine Letters, Time & Life Bldg., Rockefeller Center, NY, NY 10020 Fax: (212) 522-8949 Website: http://www.time.com/ Author: Elaine Shannon, Washington And Tim Padgett, Miami MEXICO: BATTLES ALONG THE BORDER How Arrogance And Violence Bred A Massive Drug-War Slaughter IF YOU DON'T LIVE IN THE BORDER Region between the U.S. and Mexico, it is hard to understand how totally the drug business has come to dominate life there. But last week, as FBI and Mexican backhoes began digging into what may be mass graves containing dozens of victims of the region's drug cartels, it was suddenly a lot easier. FBI sources say the grave uncovered last week is probably the first of many; they will continue exploring for more this week. "In law-enforcement circles, there have been rumors of these for a long time," says a senior Drug Enforcement Administration agent. "Hell, there are bodies [from drug-related killings] buried all over the place down here." The carnage is a sign of an epic shift in the drug business. From the early 1970s until a couple of years ago, if you went out on the streets of New York City to score cocaine, you'd look for a Colombian trafficker or a Dominican who dealt with a Colombian. Nowadays, you're just as likely to find yourself face-to-face with a Mexican. Your dealer's ethnic roots probably won't matter to you so long as the product is as advertised. But to DEA agents, the decline and fall of Colombia's once impregnable Cali cartel is a sensational development surpassed only by the meteoric rise of the Juarez Cartel now headed by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. As the U.S. has cracked down on drug cartels in Colombia in the past decade, the business has shifted north and into the hands of Mexican traffickers, who play by the same bloody rules that characterized the lethal reign of the Colombians. Mexico's narco-industry is now a $30 billion-a-year business. "The flow of drugs through Mexico to the U.S. is not slowing down," says a U.S. official. "If anything, it's increasing." The Juarez cartel has risen faster than most tech stocks, thanks to the vision of its late founder, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, and the ruthlessness of his dumber but meaner younger brother Vicente. For a long time, Mexican criminals were simply subcontractors whom the Colombians paid a set fee, usually $1,500 to $2,000 per kilogram, to truck cocaine over the U.S. border and to warehouses in California or Texas. There, Cali cartel employees would reclaim the goods, move them to major retailing hubs like Manhattan and Los Angeles and wholesale them to distributors. The Colombians pocketed a chunk of the wholesale and retail markups. The Mexicans risked their necks for chump change. But kingpins like Amado changed all that. He fancied himself the Bill Gates of Mexican drug traffickers, a visionary who earned the nickname "Lord of the Skies" for the multi ton shipments of Colombian cocaine he received in Boeing 727s. When he died in 1997 after botched plastic surgery, DEA agents were skeptical that his brother Vicente would last as the successor head of the Juarez syndicate. But in Vicente's favor, says a U.S. agent, "he's vicious." After a two-year-long war against factional leaders, notably Rafael Mufloz Talavera, found shot to death in his jeep in Juarez in September 1998, Vicente secured his bid to succeed his brother. He has since been indicted in El Paso, Texas, and in Mexico on drug-trafficking charges. any of the bodies being unearthed south of Juarez are believed to be victims in that war, as are any Americans who Mexican officials say might be among the dead. U.S. agents believe the war has subsided, but they admit they don't have good intelligence on the inner workings of the Juarez cartel or on Vicente himself. "We don't really know where he is," admits a top U.S. official. "He could be anywhere. We assume he's somewhere in Mexico, probably Chihuahua." Still, Vicente is no Amado, a fact that emboldens his rivals, especially the recklessly homicidal Arellano Felix brothers, who run the Tijuana cartel. Shortly after Amado Carrillo's death, Mexican officials told TIME, the Arellanos phoned in a death threat against U.S. anti drug czar General Barry McCaffrey as he toured the border. Specifically, they threatened a rocket-propelled grenade attack. The arrogant brutality wasn't a surprise: the brothers reportedly once sent the severed head of the wife of a rival to him in a box of dry ice. But U.S. officials do know this: the Juarez cartel and the other Mexican syndicates control an ever larger slice of the illegal drug market in the U.S. They still transport cocaine for Colombian gangs, but they also move their own cocaine onto the street through retail-distribution established decades ago to sell Mexican marijuana to middle-class Americans. These networks have become one-stop shopping outlets for Mexican marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin. The Mexican move into retailing is bad news for U.S. law enforcement because the Mexicans are even harder to track than Colombians. Mexican gangsters have ready-made support structures in most cities in the U.S., large extended families who put down roots in the U.S. years ago. U.S. drug agents complain that, unlike the Colombians, who tend to stand out by the way they dress and speak, Mexican criminals are practically invisible even in non-Hispanic neighborhoods. They cross the border at will, indistinguishable from the millions of U.S. and Mexican citizens who present themselves at border checkpoints daily. When they're in Mexico, as demonstrated by the Juarez killing fields discovered last week, they can do just about anything they want often with the help of Mexican police. What most angers families of those presumed buried near Juarez is the alleged involvement of local, state and possibly federal police in the narco-murders. Recent studies by U.S. and Mexican researchers have shown that many Mexican police recruits are actually convicted criminals; they join police forces to get a piece of the narcotics action, usually as cartel enforcers. A state-police commander in Tijuana told TIME last year that he quit when cops under him killed an honest anti-drug detective in 1996. "I realized I was working with police more vicious than the traffickers who pay them off," he said. Vicious, perhaps, but also well paid to ignore and even abet what goes on in the borderlands. U.S. DEA and other law-enforcement agents often refer to the corrupt, usually low-paid Mexican police as "lafamiliafeliz" the happy family, always smiling and never enforcing the law. Last Friday, when Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo and FBI Director Louis Freeh visited the first Juarez grave site, called Rancho de La Campana, Madrazo insisted that police were being investigated. "We're not going to cover up for anybody," he said. Mexico, with multi-million-dollar U.S. help, has tried to create more professional, better-paid and less corrupt anti drug units. But even the new, vetted squads have been tainted - two Tijuana agents were charged last year with kidnapping - or have balked at pursuing targets like the Arellanos, who still freely frequent clubs and boxing matches on both sides of the border. During the `90s, only one Mexican drug-cartel leader Juan Garcia Abrego has been arrested. As a result, exasperated U.S. officials are increasingly declining Mexican cooperation. For example, in a major sting that netted Mexican drug-money launderers last year, called "Operation Casablanca," the gringos didn't even consult their cross-border counterparts. Americans, however, shouldn't get too righteous about the Mexicans' failings: the drug crisis, after all, is fueled by the insatiable Yanqui appetite for snorting, shooting and smoking what grows in Latin America. And the U.S. even plays a role in the violence: of the estimated 4,000 illegal guns seized in Mexico since 1994, more than 75% were traced back to U.S. smugglers as were the rocket-propelled grenades the Arellanos threatened to fire at McCaffrey. It's something else to consider in the coming weeks while peering into the death pits outside Juarez. SAMPLE LETTER (sent) While many are expressing shock over the discovery of humans killed by a drug cartel in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, it is a surprise to no one who has followed the history of prohibition. Violence and corruption are crucial tools for those who operate in black markets; those who employ violence with the most ruthlessness and those who seek corruption on the broadest scale will always control black markets. The drug war has created the incentive to commit the atrocities being uncovered in Juarez. Attempts to get "tougher" on drugs will only lead to more brutality and graft. Stephen Young IMPORTANT: Always include your address and telephone number Please note: Time and the other news weeklies tend to print much shorter letters than most newspapers. Please try to keep your letter concise. Please note: If you choose to use this letter as a model please modify it at least somewhat so that the paper does not receive numerous copies of the same letter and so that the original author receives credit for his/her work. ADDITIONAL INFO to help you in your letter writing efforts 3 Tips for Letter Writers http://www.mapinc.org/3tips.htm Letter Writers Style Guide http://www.mapinc.org/style.htm Prepared by Stephen Young - http://home.att.net/~theyoungfamily Focus Alert Specialist

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