Pubdate: Wed, 20 Mar 2002
Source: The Post and Courier (SC)
Copyright: 2002 Evening Post Publishing Co.
Contact:   http://www.charleston.net/index.html
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/567

MEXICAN PROGRESS ON DRUGS

What a difference the change in government from virtual dictatorship to a 
committed democracy has made in Mexico. The transformation since President 
Vicente Fox took office just over a year ago was demonstrated recently with 
the arrest of Benjamin Arellano Felix, chief of the Tijuana drug gang. The 
Arellano Felix family has been notorious not just for being above the law 
but for owning Mexican law enforcement officers in the border area. It was 
an occasion for rejoicing when news reached U.S. drug enforcement agents 
that Arellano Felix had been arrested in Puebla at one of his hideaways.

As The New York Times reported, U.S. officials despaired of ever bringing 
the ruthless drug kings to justice, quoting former DEA administrator Thomas 
Constantine as saying that they had become more powerful than all the 
agencies of the Mexican government put together. The gang's tentacles 
reached far and wide. The Arellano Felix brothers began as small-time 
smugglers but went on to trade in cocaine with Vladimiro Montesinos, the 
corrupt former intelligence chief of Peru, and with the cartels in 
Colombia. Their corrupt power made the border porous for methamphetamines 
as well as cocaine and any other drug that would turn a profit on American 
streets.

Mexican police and narcotics agents were in the pay of the brothers.

Anyone standing in their way was put on their murder list. Drug smuggling 
will not come to a stop with the arrest of Benjamin Arellano Felix, who 
told agents that his brother Ramon, who shared leadership of the gang, was 
killed in a gunfight a month ago. DEA agents believe that although there 
are eight other brothers, the organization will fall apart.

However, smaller drug gangs are expected to fight to replace the Arellano 
Felix operation. Nevertheless, the arrest of the drug kingpin is a sign 
that even the most powerful of the Mexican drug lords no longer has impunity.

When President Bush visits Mexico, the two heads of state will have an 
important victory to celebrate in the war on drugs. But as Raul Ramirez 
Baena, a human rights prosecutor in Baja California, told the Times: "The 
fundamental forces of the drug trade remain intact, particularly the demand 
for drugs in the United States, and increasingly in Mexico. As long as 
there is that demand, there will be drug cartels to feed it." President Fox 
has made headway in the war against the supply side of the drug scourge.

President Bush should take up the challenge by attacking the demand side, 
where, unfortunately, there is no good news to report.
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