Are Mexico's Drug Trafficking Gangs Branching Out Into Cocaine Production? Jan-Albert Hootsen - Vocativ
go to original September 14, 2014

A worker helps eradicate a coca leaf plantation as part of a government program in Colombia. (Reuters)

MEXICO CITY — Are Mexico’s drug trafficking gangs branching out into cocaine production? The discovery of a coca plantation in the country’s southern state of Chiapas suggests they’re at least willing to give it a try.

Mexico’s army reported on Sept. 9 that it had found a small coca plantation near the town of Tuxtla Chico, some 400 miles southeast of Mexico City and only a stone’s throw away from the border with Guatemala. According to Ernesto Martínez Rescalvo, who commands the 36th military zone, a total of 1,639 coca plants, covering a third of an acre, were found and then destroyed.

The find is significant because it marks the first confirmed presence of a coca plantation on Mexican soil. The plant is native to the Andes mountains in South America, where its leaves have been used by indigenous inhabitants as a mild stimulant for thousands of years. But it can also be made into coca paste, which is the base material for powdered, crack and freebase cocaine.

“There have been persistent rumors of coca production in Chiapas since at least the early 1990s,” says José Reveles, a veteran crime reporter and author of numerous books about the drug war. “But critics often thought they were meant to discredit the Zapatista rebels in the region. This is the first actual confirmation by the authorities.”

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