Pubdate: Mon, 06 Dec 2004
Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
Copyright: 2004 Lexington Herald-Leader
Contact:  http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240
Author: Mark Stevenson, Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

MEXICAN RESORT SEES CORRUPTION, VIOLENCE RESUME

CANCUN, Mexico - Behind the glitzy playgrounds of Cancun is a growing drug 
war, fueled by widespread police corruption, the partial disruption of 
once-popular trafficking routes through Haiti, and a sudden turf battle 
between two of the country's main drug gangs.

Three years after authorities thought they broke up the cocaine trade in 
Cancun, nine people have turned up dead. Investigators found a smuggling 
ring involving corruption at all levels of government, and it took even 
federal investigators by surprise.

The discovery brings back memories of the dark days of the 1990s, when one 
gang -- the Juarez cartel -- moved huge amounts of cocaine along Mexico's 
Carib-bean coast, allegedly with the protection of the state's former 
governor, Mario Villa-nueva, arrested in 2001 on drug charges.

But now, a shadowy chain of events involving several gangs has led to the 
killing of three federal agents and two police informants, the kidnapping 
and wounding of two federal investigators, and the discovery of four as yet 
unidentified bodies in the trunk of a burned car.

More than a dozen local and federal police agents have been arrested -- 
including the wounded pair. That adds to evidence that police, business and 
local power figures are linked to the drug trade.

"It's like a little game to see who can get the drugs first" between the 
army, the navy, or traffickers in speedboats, said Donald Morgan, a 
fisherman and tour guide who moved to the coast from Washington state in 1976.

Describing shipments of drugs dumped from passing aircraft into the sea, he 
said: "It goes on all the time."

The drugs are destined for the United States, not for the millions of 
Americans who visit Cancun annually.

The trade revolves around plastic-wrapped bales of Colombian cocaine tossed 
from small planes to waiting speedboats. Once ashore, the cocaine is put 
aboard trucks or airplanes for the trip north.

Mainly the victims and players have been Mexican police and police 
informants -- though exactly why they were killed remains unclear.

Federal prosecutors say only that "the drug traffickers reacted violently, 
and began looking for something they thought the federal agents had."

Local officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said traffickers 
thought police had stolen a shipment of 11 pounds of heroin during a Nov. 9 
raid on a house in Cancun.

A local columnist, Renan Castro, said the drug gangs wanted a computer disk 
police seized during the raid that allegedly contained the names of 
businessmen who launder money for the cartels. Prosecutors say they have no 
evidence such a list exists.

The two wounded agents said they were kidnapped -- and apparently 
interrogated -- by traffickers looking for whatever they had lost. But 
Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha said prosecutors have found 
inconsistencies between the two accounts.

Similar crackdowns in the past apparently shifted trafficking patterns only 
temporarily. Mexico's top organized crime prosecutor, Jose Luis Santiago 
Vasconcelos, said that after Villa-nueva's arrest in 2001, traffickers 
began running cocaine through Haiti, as they had in the 1970s.

Perhaps 10 percent to 15 percent of shipments went to the Caribbean nation 
until political upheavals and a devastating tropical storm forced some of 
those shipments back to Mexico this year.

Bruce Bagley, professor of International Studies at the University of 
Miami, said the defeat of Mexico's ruling party in national elections four 
years ago also broke up old, well-established lines of corruption.

Mexican officials estimate that as many as three drug gangs may be 
operating around Cancun, including two that have fought bloody battles for 
control of the northern border.

The Cancun area is attractive to traffickers because it's easy for them to 
work and live there. It's a transportation hub, with many opportunities to 
move drugs and money, as well as lots of businesses to launder that money.

Something similar may be happening in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco, 
where at least eight execution-style killings have occurred in the last two 
months.

Given the natural advantages of coastal resorts, the drug trade seems 
likely to continue in such spots.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D