Mexican drug lords take new approach to illegal business

By Will Weissert ~ The Associated Press

MEXICO CITY -- A new breed of crime leaders seems to be taking over Mexico's drug trade as the country's biggest gang reorganizes itself, U.S. and Mexican investigators say.

In contrast to the brutal and flamboyant kingpins of the past, the new bosses are said to be keen on building alliances among gangs, delegating some of their organizations' responsibilities to key underlings and staying out of the limelight.

The result likely will be a multibillion-dollar illicit industry that's less violent -- but more efficient and even harder to stop, officials say.

"The era of the big drug lord is over," said Mario Estuardo Bermudez, Mexico's top anti-drug prosecutor. "Instead of one leader, they now build an automated organization with regional managers who can cover more territory and create zones of influence in practically the whole country."

The White House estimates that about half of the $65 billion in narcotics that Americans buy each year come through Mexico.

Until recently, the world of Mexican drugs was dominated by the Arellano Felix brothers, known for their lavish lifestyles and fierce tempers. But in February, police in the resort city of Mazatlan gunned down the gang's feared enforcer, Ramon Arellano Felix. A month later, authorities captured his brother Benjamin, the gang's operations chief.

As the Arellano Felix gang tries to overcome those blows, other smugglers are moving to seize a piece of the action in the first major shake-up in the drug business since 1997.

U.S. and Mexican investigators predict no one man will rise to fill the void. Instead, a number of bosses -- all at least loosely affiliated with the Juarez cartel -- are stepping to the forefront.

Based just across the border from El Paso, Texas, the Juarez organization was once so powerful that it paid Colombian suppliers up to $30 million per cocaine shipment, then transported enormous amounts of narcotics from Mexico to a small army of distributors in New York, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles.

Botched plastic surgery

Drug agents had thought the group might collapse after the death of its leader, Amado Carillo Fuentes, following botched plastic surgery in July 1997. Instead, control fell to his brother, Vicente, who expanded the organization's operations, opening a control center in the eastern border city of Reynosa to supplement the Ciudad Juarez headquarters.

Bermudez said Carillo Fuentes also has formed a strong alliance with the leader of the Gulf cartel, Osiel Cardenas, which has allowed his family to gain control of key smuggling posts on the Yucatan Peninsula, including the resort city of Cancun.

"Several arrests have put the Gulf cartel in a difficult position," Bermudez said in an interview at his heavily guarded Mexico City office. "It needs alliances with the Carillo Fuentes organization."

Luis Astorga, a sociologist at the National Autonomous University who studies the drug trade, said Carillo Fuentes has become the most powerful man in modern Mexican trafficking.

"After his brother died, he built a cartel that is very rich and that works with other drug organizations instead of fighting with them," Astorga said.

Another rising leader is Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, who was a low-ranking enforcer in the Juarez cartel but now heads a group of free-lance smugglers based in Mazatlan, in the western state of Sinaloa.

Heroin production

A former farmer with extensive agricultural and botanical knowledge, Zambada has worked to increase his gang's production of heroin, U.S. officials say.

Known as an accomplished alliance-builder, Zambada has remained close to the Carillo Fuentes family while maintaining independent ties to Colombian cocaine smugglers. U.S. officials say Zambada helped the Arellano Felix organization set up its headquarters in the border city of Tijuana before a disagreement over drug payments made Zambada a chief Arellano Felix target.

Bermudez said Zambada has an informal nonaggression pact with Joaquin Guzman, who controls another Sinaloa-based drug gang once headed by the now jailed Hector Luis Palma.

U.S. and Mexican agents are also watching Juan Esparragoza, an important adviser to Carillo Fuentes who they say acts as a "narco-diplomat" in smoothing over problems between the gangs.

Donald Thornhill of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's San Diego field office said authorities are expecting the rising crop of bosses to "sit back and quietly get rich."

"Whoever is next in line we expect to keep a much lower profile," Thornhill said. "They understand that having a lot of heat on them is not a good thing."

Last year, all the major drug smugglers except the Arellano Felix gang gathered at least twice to forge a working truce, according to one participant, other associates of smugglers and government officials, all of whom agreed to discuss the matter only if given anonymity.

Bermudez denied knowledge of the meeting, but said the new group of drug lords "has determined that it is more convenient to exchange information and provide support to one another."

"In the grand scheme of things, the cartels have realized that violence doesn't have many benefits," he said.

Some bloodshed

But the shift in Mexico's drug-smuggling leadership won't pass entirely without bloodshed, officials say. Bermudez said Zambada and other drug lords are trying to shoot their way into the Arellano Felixes' lesser strongholds in Sinaloa, Jalisco and Michoacan states, all key areas for growing marijuana and opium poppies.

Bermudez also said police have seen violence as a number of drug gangs try to develop smuggling routes in Nezahualcoyotl, a city on the western outskirts of Mexico City.

Investigators say that decentralized gangs will be harder to stop because authorities will have to split their resources among dozens of major suspects.

Bermudez said Zambada and others have safe houses across Mexico and can fly one coast-to-coast or abroad at a moment's notice. He said gang leaders rely heavily on plastic surgery to disguise their identities, with some going under the knife every few years.

"There is now no such thing as an untouchable drug lord," Bermudez said. "But that doesn't mean that they are easy to catch."

ON THE NET

Drug Enforcement Administration: www.dea.org

White House drug office: www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov