Pubdate: Thu, 17 Aug 2006
Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
Copyright: 2006 Lexington Herald-Leader
Contact:  http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240
Author: Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers

IMMIGRATION GRABS THE HEADLINES, BUT DRUG WAR RAGES ON

RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas - At a Circle K convenience store in this 
desolate border town, where drugs and illicit earnings flow back and 
forth almost freely, a man parks his black Ford pickup with tinted 
windows and begins hawking a live zebra.

The animal, bleeding and abused, usually is found on the African 
Serengeti. But in this poor town in one of the poorest counties in 
the United States, the asking price is $6,000 cash - no questions asked.

Welcome to the U.S.-Mexico border, where just about anything can and 
does happen. The zebra salesman is a grim reminder of the Wild West 
atmosphere that prevails along much of the 2,000-mile border, where 
drugs, aliens and money are smuggled 24-7.

Before the arrest earlier this week of Javier Arellano Felix, the 
alleged leader of Mexico's ruthless Tijuana drug cartel, the national 
debate over illegal immigrants crossing the border drove the drug war 
off the front pages.

But make no mistake about it, America's drug war rages on. Here in 
the Rio Grande Valley sector, cocaine seizures by Border Patrol 
agents have more than doubled so far this fiscal year and now account 
for more than half of all Border Patrol seizures along the southern border.

Halting the flow of illicit drugs here, much like the flow of illegal 
immigrants, is nearly impossible. There are about 1,400 Border Patrol 
agents assigned to cover an area that spans 18,584 square miles, 
including along the Rio Grande river and the Gulf of Mexico. That's 
about one agent for every 13.2 square miles.

On any given day, traffickers smuggle cocaine into and around border 
towns such as Roma and Rio Grande City, where 60 percent of the 
children live in poverty and only 6 percent of the population has 
attended college.

Go west of McAllen and walk along the banks of the Rio Grande - 
called the Rio Bravo, or Angry River, in Mexico - and evidence of 
illicit activity abounds. On the Mexican side of the river, smugglers 
and would-be undocumented workers loiter, waiting for night to fall. 
Several have established camps in what appears to be the middle of nowhere.

On the U.S. side, discarded tires, clothes and assorted trash litter 
the most remote riverbanks - the byproduct of drug and immigrant smuggling.

"We see a steady flow throughout the whole Rio Grande Valley sector," 
Jose Vicente Rodriguez, a Border Patrol agent and spokesman, said 
during a tour of an inland highway checkpoint in Falfurrias.

The vast open spaces and proximity to major U.S. highways make South 
Texas a point of preference for the powerful Mexican drug cartels.

"The infrastructure in both Mexico and the United States, mainly the 
highway system, allows traffickers quick access for getting their 
product through Mexico and into destination cities in the United 
States," said Will Glaspy, the head of operations in South Texas for 
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. "Here we have highways, so 
it's easy for drug loads to be hidden in with normal traffic on the 
highways to get out of Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley."

Highway access is what drug cartels are fighting over a few hours to 
the west in Laredo. Drug violence there is spilling over from Mexico 
as the Gulf and Juarez cartels, and the Sinaloa cartel, run by 
violent fugitive Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, battle for dominance of a 
route that feeds into U.S. Interstate 35 and the American heartland.

In the Rio Grande Valley, such violence is rare. The Gulf cartel is 
thought to dominate, and its competitors are willing to pay for 
access to the collection of ranch state roads that feed into the 
interstates that spread out from Houston to the East Coast.

"The Gulf cartel doesn't care if Chapo Guzman is moving a load of 
drugs through here, as long as he pays," said a senior U.S. 
law-enforcement official, who requested anonymity because of his 
ongoing work in the drug war.

For years, Mexicans thought the drug trade was a U.S. problem that 
needed to be tackled by quelling the demand of addicts and 
recreational drug users.

Today, Mexico is experiencing its own drug plague. It's wrestling 
with an alarming increase in drug use among its youth and an 
explosion of violence deep in its interior. Existing and 
up-and-coming drug gangs are gunning it out for control of entry 
routes in the south and domestic distribution.

U.S. officials say Mexico's outgoing president, Vicente Fox, has done 
more than any other leader in Mexican history to cooperate in the 
drug war. After Dec. 1, the task falls to the country's apparent 
president-elect, conservative Felipe Calderon, to reverse the 
mounting drug violence and distribution.

"Relations with Mexico have never been better. We're getting 
(intelligence) from Mexico that we've never gotten before," said the 
law enforcement official, referring to federal-level cooperation. 
"Six years ago, we would have gotten, 'You're going to do what with 
Mexico?' We're hopeful that we'll be able to build on the progress 
we've made with the Fox administration."

During Fox's six-year term, Benjamin Arellano Felix, the alleged 
former leader of the Tijuana cartel, was arrested, as was Osiel 
Cardenas, the leader of the Juarez cartel.

Calderon has acknowledged that Fox's success in disrupting the 
cartels has come with a price: escalating violence within Mexico and 
along both sides of the border. On the campaign trail, Calderon has 
discussed the idea of a new super-agency to combat drug trafficking.

That sounds a bit like reinventing the wheel to some U.S. officials, 
who prefer to see Calderon focus on legal revisions that would make 
it easier to prosecute and extradite trafficking suspects.