Spill Over from Decades-Long North American War on Drugs Is Devastating Mexico Brian Saady - openDemocracy
go to original October 31, 2017

The Drug War: A Trillion Dollar Con Game by Brian Saady Check it out on Amazon.com

Even if the drug war were to end today, there would still be street crime and gangs in the far-distant future. However, these issues would be on a dramatically smaller scale. Mexico’s street gangs could never ascend to the level of an organized crime outfit without the massive profits from illegal drugs to pay for the necessary weaponry, hitmen, political protection, etc.

By the same token, drug money evokes a vicious cycle of rampant criminality that goes far beyond drug trafficking. In other words, Mexico’s cartels are diversified criminal organizations that don’t limit themselves to drug smuggling.

Petroleum theft is a major problem in several countries benefitting crime and terrorist organizations, particularly ISIS. This crime has also rapidly expanded into the most lucrative non-drug-related illegal racket in Mexico. Fuel thieves or “huachicoleros” tap into pipelines and then sell the fuel at highly discounted rates in the black market.

Much of this fuel is sold on the backs of trucks in small water jugs.

A large portion is also sold to directly to gas station owners. This has always been a problem for the Mexican government, but it used to be on a much smaller scale. However, this illegal activity has increased by over 2,000% in the last ten years after the cartels became the primary participants. Most huachicoleros are either working directly for the cartels or independently while paying extortion fees.

Every day, roughly 20,000 barrels are stolen from Mexico’s state-owned oil company, PEMEX. This crime resulted in $1.5 billion in losses for the company last year, a sizeable blow to public funding. Fuel theft occurs in various parts of the country, but an area with numerous pipelines known as the “Red Triangle” is where most of this crime occurs. The Red Triangle is in the state of Puebla, which hadn’t historically been a hotbed of cartel activity until this black market expanded. Now, cartel violence is on the rise even though this area is not a focal point for drug trafficking.

A few cartels are competing for control of this flourishing illegal trade, i.e. Los Zetas, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and the Gulf Cartel. Los Zetas is the leading crime group with roughly 40% of the illegal market share. In fact, an ally of Los Zetas, the Meza Flores drug gang, once owned a major gasoline distribution company that received government contracts. Therefore, it appears that Los Zetas actually double-dipped with their criminal endeavors by developing a sophisticated money laundering network that actually sold stolen fuel back to the government.

In response to the fuel theft crisis, approximately 2,000 troops from the Mexican military have been deployed in key regions. Their presence hasn’t decreased the number of barrels stolen, but it has led to several armed conflicts with the huachicoleros. While the Mexican government dedicates massive resources to protect its oil reserves, the average Mexican citizen has to fend for themselves against the terror inflicted by the cartels.

After battling to establish territory, several cartels view many other crimes as the spoils of war, such as rape, murder-for-hire, robbery, extortion, kidnapping, etc. Arguably no cartel terrorizes the residents of its territory more than Los Zetas. The DEA once described them as “the most technologically advanced, sophisticated and violent” cartel.

This cartel has a militaristic culture and structure. In fact, it was the first cartel to consistently recruit former members of the military and that has to do with the roots of the organization. Most of the original Zetas had been part of an elite Mexican special forces unit, GAFE, which was known for committing mass atrocities against citizens in their own country.

Ironically, the formation of Los Zetas came about indirectly from America’s intervention in the drug war. The first members of Los Zetas created their organization not long after receiving counternarcotics training in Fort Benning, GA. The training was through the infamous School of the Americas program, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

As mentioned earlier, Los Zetas began in 1997 as the enforcement wing of the Gulf Cartel. However, the group branched out on their own and rival cartels took note of their modus operandi. Los Zetas raised the bar for the requisite standard of violence that is necessary to protect a cartel’s business model. Eventually, all major cartels began hiring former government-trained killers.

Read the rest at openDemocracy

(This is an excerpt of Brian Saady's new free ebook, America's Drug War is Devastating Mexico, which is available on his website, Kindle, Apple, and all major digital stores.)

Related: The War on Drugs: The Narco States of North America (The National Interest)

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