Pubdate: Sat, 21 Feb 2015
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Jo Tuckman

LIFE AFTER EL CHAPO: A YEAR ON FROM DRUG KINGPIN'S CAPTURE, BUSINESS 
IS BLOOMING

It Was Supposed to Be One of the Biggest Blows to Cartels in Decades, 
So Why, Asks Jo Tuckman in Culiacan, Has Little Apparently Changed

The fortune-teller smiled as she gazed towards the distant peaks of 
the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range.

"The mountains are glowing red, and it will be a good harvest," she 
predicted. The forecast was not based on second sight, however, but 
on conversations with local farmers looking forward to a bumper crop 
of marijuana.

This is Mexico's own golden triangle. Straddling the northern states 
of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua, the Sierra has been a stronghold 
of the country's drug trade for as long as anyone can remember: its 
deep canyons and dense pine forests have harboured generations of 
narcos and hidden plantations of marijuana and opium poppies.

It's a world the fortune-teller knows well: over the years, she said 
she had often used her gift to help locals - locating a lost kilo of 
opium paste or comforting the girlfriends of slain traffickers.

The arrest of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman on 22 February 2014 was 
hailed by Mexican and US officials as the one of the biggest blows to 
the drug trade in decades. But a year on, the core business of his 
Sinaloa cartel seems hardly affected. "As long as there are people 
who want the drugs this will never stop, whoever goes to prison," the 
seer said.

Overall seizures of drugs from Mexico heading into the US are much as 
they were before Guzman's arrest. The Drug Enforcement Administration 
has publicly reported only small changes in the way the cartel 
operates. And after a brief burst of triumphalism in the days after 
Guzman's arrest, the Mexican government rarely mentions the Sinaloa cartel.

"Chapo's capture has not produced any major changes here," said 
Ismael Bojorquez, the director of the Sinaloa investigative weekly 
Rio Doce. "The cartel structure continues to work just as before."

Not that everybody in Sinaloa accepts that view. "Things are calm, 
yes, but it feels like the calm before the storm," said a music 
producer who specialises in narcocorridos - accordion-driven ballads 
often commissioned by traffickers to glorify their exploits. Like the 
psychic - and others interviewed for this article - he was wary of 
being identified, because his work often brings him into contact with 
members of the underworld.

Over the past year, such unease has been magnified by the lack of 
clarity over the cartel's reconfiguration.

For all his mythical status - forged by a dramatic prison escape in 
2001 and the cartel's subsequent bid to take over territories from 
other cartels - El Chapo was not so much the boss of bosses as the 
highest profile figure in a triumvirate of veterans. The others were 
Juan Jose Esparragoza, known as "El Azul", who reportedly died in 
June, and Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, who is still at large.

Many assumed El Chapo's arrest would prompt a seamless succession for 
Zambada, but the 67-year-old narco has apparently come under intense 
pressure in recent months; several close collaborators, including one 
of his sons, have been arrested, and he has reportedly come close to 
capture several times. Even in the state capital, Culiacan - once his 
undisputed territory - El Mayo has appeared unable to respond to an 
incursion by a former El Chapo protege, Damaso Lopez, who is said to 
have made inroads into street-level dealing.

In Culiacan, some believe El Chapo could eventually be replaced by 
one of his sons, Ivan Archivaldo Guzman, but others say he is too 
inexperienced. Analysts, law enforcement sources and cartel contacts 
agree that generational change is a contributing factor to the 
unease: traditionalists often point to the hotheaded and 
exhibitionist tendencies of narco "juniors", whose inherited power 
and wealth contrast with the rags-to-riches struggles of their fathers.

Then there is the wild card of Rafael Caro Quintero. A founder of the 
now-defunct Guadalajara cartel, Quintero spent 28 years in jail for 
the 1985 murder of a DEA agent, but was freed in 2013 and 
disappeared. He is said to be hiding in the golden triangle, intent 
on reimposing old school narco order in Sinaloa.

"There is no logic to what is happening," the producer said."The 
sense I get is of an atmosphere of pending war."

Luis agrees. He spent 10 years as one of El Chapo's gunmen, loading 
drugs on to US-bound planes - as well as torturing and killing cartel 
members who stepped out of line. Luis has retired now, and complains 
of flashbacks to his days as a killer, but he keeps in contact with 
the few members of his old crowd who are still alive . They tell him 
all is not well in the cartel. "Before all the cows went in one 
direction. Now there are too many cowboys," he said, sipping a beer 
and fiddling with a joint. "There will always be drugs moving, for as 
long as it is not legal, but I see a lot of weakness, a lot of 
internal disputes, and mistreatment of the local population and that 
creates problems too."

Luis said while the police were as accommodating as ever, new tactics 
being used by the federal government were causing problems. Time was, 
he said, when soldiers would help cartel members load up drug 
shipments "for a beer and a woman". Now, however, he said army units 
were rotated so often that deals with corrupt commanders had to be 
constantly renegotiated.

Worse still, he added, the government was increasingly depending on 
special operations forces, which have proved resistant to deals with 
the cartels. Naval special operations units, working with the DEA, 
have been responsible for almost all the major arrests in Sinaloa, 
including Chapo's.

Maria, a well-dressed middle-aged woman who spoke freely once assured 
of anonymity, said a relative trafficked cocaine independently but 
needed the cartel to keep order in the state. "The youngsters wanting 
to come in are more violent, they don't have what it takes," she 
said. "El Senor [El Mayo] is looking weak, but he is very astute and 
we are hoping he has an ace up his sleeve."

Memories are fresh of the all-out war in Sinaloa in 2008 after a 
split between Chapo and onetime allies in the Beltran Leyva family. 
Fears are reinforced by events elsewhere in Mexico: hardly a day goes 
by in the southern state of Guerrero without reports of atrocities in 
the turf wars between splinter groups of the once mighty Beltran Leyva cartel.

"The Sinaloa cartel is not a good thing, but it is better than the 
others," said a taxi driver. "We don't want another war."

His immediate concern, however, was a lack of cash in Culiacan linked 
by many to El Chapo's capture.

A financial adviser at a major bank in the city agreed: "The Sinaloan 
economy depends, in large part, on these guys. It's their cash and 
investments that provide the work," he said. He said Chapo's arrest 
and tighter restrictions on cash transactions had led to a notable 
contraction, though he expected this to ease once the cartel had 
found new ways to launder money. Agriculture and tourism had long 
been favoured, he said, but he expected construction projects would 
now be used. "In Sinaloa we are all betting on the good guys and the 
bad guys doing business," he said.

Javier Valdez, a reporter at Riodoce, specialises in stories about 
the way daily life in Sinaloa has become invaded by narco economics 
and culture. "The narcos have domesticated us," he said. "They are in 
our lives and we are ever more resigned to that destiny."

The DEA's 2014 national threat assessment noted a steady rise in 
heroin seizures on the US's south-west border that reached 2,200 
kilos in 2013 - more than four times the amount intercepted in 2008. 
This appears to be a response to growing US demand, but could also 
reflect opium paste's portability compared with large bricks of marijuana.

People in Sinaloa with links to the drug trade also describe a surge 
in crystal meth labs. The DEA report notes that almost all the 
methamphetamine on sale in the US was produced in Mexico, with 
seizures on the border nearly tripling between 2009 and 2013 to reach 
about 11,500kg. The report cites increasingly sophisticated 
techniques, which include dissolving the drug in solvents to smuggle 
it across the border disguised as flavoured drinks or hidden in 
windshield wiper reservoirs.

Marijuana seizures dropped suddenly in 2013. Some newspaper reports 
ascribed this to the legalisation of the drug in some US states, but 
local producers say it has more to do with years of falling prices 
and greater vigilance by the army, which complicates the transport of 
large shipments.

All of which leads local journalists such as the director of Riodoce 
to conclude the Sinaloa cartel is on the way to completing its 
reformation for the post-Chapo era. "It is a period of transition and 
there will always be bumps along the way," Bojorquez said. "But this 
is a business group with a worldwide reach, and it is looking pretty strong."

Bojorquez speculated that its resilience might owe something to 
backroom negotiations with politicians who he believes are desperate 
to find a way to shut down the drug wars, which have killed about 
100,000 people in Mexico.

At least one Sinaloan politician from the governing Institutional 
Revolutionary party appeared to agree. "The only way to do this is 
for the big boys to sit down with the big boys and make a deal," he said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom