By Megan Breckenridge, Staff Writer
SULLO & SULLO, LLP
HOUSTON—Although
Mexico has long been a source of production and transit for illegal drugs, the country now finds itself embattled with powerful and
well-financed drug cartels. An upsurge in drug-related violence can be
traced to the end of 2006 when President Felipe Calderón launched an
aggressive assault on drug trafficking organizations by deploying tens
of thousands of federal police and soldiers to reign them in. But his
initiative has been largely unsuccessful to date, and there is a rising
chorus of voices on both sides of the border questioning the cost and
fallout of the attack on the cartels.
Given
its geographic location, Mexico has been used as a staging and
transshipment point for narcotics, illegal immigrants and other
contraband destined for U.S. markets from Mexico, South America and
elsewhere for decades. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Colombia’s
Pablo Escobar was the main exporter of cocaine and dealt with organized
criminal networks all over the world. When enforcement efforts
intensified in South Florida and the Caribbean, the Colombian
organizations formed partnerships with Mexico-based traffickers to
transport cocaine through Mexico into the United States.
These
new allegiances flourished, since Mexico had long been a major source
of heroin and cannabis and possessed an infrastructure that stood ready
to serve the Colombia-based traffickers. At first, the Mexican gangs
were paid in cash for their transport services, but in the late 1980s, a
settlement was reached wherein they would be compensated in product.
Payment was usually 35 to 50 percent of each cocaine shipment, which
meant that organizations from Mexico became involved in distribution as
well as transportation, and quickly morphed into formidable traffickers
in their own right.
With
the demise of Colombia’s Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s,
Mexican gangs stepped up to dominate the wholesale illicit drug market
in the United States. Arrests and deaths of key leaders in recent years
have led to increasing violence as rival cartels fight for control of
the trafficking routes into the U.S. Amid this continuous power
struggle, gang leaders often attempt to use law enforcement to their
benefit, either by bribing Mexican officials to take certain action
against an opponent, or by leaking intelligence about a rival’s
operations to the Mexican government or the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA). There is also mounting evidence of corruption amid
border security and law enforcement officers, with suspicions being
raised about agencies on both sides of the border.
To
many Mexicans, the rising count of gruesome drug-related murders is
evidence that the government’s strategy to combat the cartels has
failed. Current estimates put the death toll at close to 23,000 since
Calderón took office in December 2006, with numbers increasing
exponentially each year. The government insists that the majority of
those killed in Mexico’s drug violence were involved in the narcotics
trade. But a growing number of bystanders are dying in the crossfire,
and Americans are among them.
Tania
Lozoya, 15, of El Paso, Texas, was killed by a stray bullet at her
Aunt’s house across the border in Ciudad Juárez in May 2009, after
gunfire broke out when two men chased another man into the backyard of
the residence. In December, a California assistant school principal,
Augustin Salcedo, was killed after he was abducted from a restaurant
along with five other men while he and his wife were visiting her
hometown of Gomex Palacio, in the northern state of Durango. The motive
for the mass abduction is still unknown.
Other Americans appear to have been specifically targeted.
