[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 60 (Friday, May 3, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4678-S4681]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

                                 ______


                            MEXICO AND DRUGS

 Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, next week Secretary Christopher 
will attend the Annual Bi-National Commission

[[Page S4679]]

meeting in Mexico City. Secretary Christopher should use this meeting 
to convey the United States' deep concern over the pervasive and 
consistent flow of narcotics from Mexico into the United States. The 
administration must insist that the Mexican Government make real and 
substantial efforts to stop the flow of illegal drugs into our country.
  Yesterday, the Administrator of the DEA, Thomas Constantine and 
Attorney General Janet Reno announced the successful completion of law-
enforcement operation Zorro II which resulted in the arrest of members 
of a major Mexican drug cartel. In Zorro II, 130 individuals were 
arrested for their involvement in a cocaine smuggling and distribution 
network that had been operating, and flourishing, in the United States. 
This successful law enforcement initiative is a major victory in the 
war against the drugs and narcotics-related crimes which are ravaging 
our cities.
  Mr. President, there are daily news reports of rampant corruption and 
abuse within the Mexican Government involving members of its law 
enforcement. I will ask to have printed in the Record an article from 
last Sunday's Washington Post, entitled ``The Drug Fiefdom of Northern 
Mexico.'' According to this April 28 article, ``The four main Mexican 
drug mafias--all headquartered along the 2,000 mile U.S.-Mexico 
border--now supply more than 70% of the cocaine and half of all the 
marijuana sold in the U.S. The drugs funnel as much as $30 billion a 
year in illegal proceeds back into Mexico--more than the country's top 
two legitimate exports combined.''
  Maybe the administration and the Mexican Government are finally 
willing to acknowledge the severity and impact of the drug problem. 
According to other news reports, Mexican narcotics organizations rely 
on protection from members of the government, police, and judiciary for 
their continued success and growth. These drug syndicates then turn to 
the Mexican banks and exchange houses to launder their dirty money. 
This incredible expansion of the Mexican narcotics trade and the 
alleged corruption of Mexican Government officials and business leaders 
is unprecedented. Unfortunately, Mexico's drug problems are not 
confined to the south side of our shared border.
  Mr. President, I was encouraged to learn that the Mexican Government 
finally took a long-overdue first step with its enactment earlier this 
week of an anti-money-laundering bill, but this is only the first step. 
The true test will be whether, and how, the law is actually enforced. 
One thing is certain, the defensiveness and reluctance of Mexican 
officials to acknowledge the severity of the money laundering problem 
is very disturbing. I am in full support of the recent, and valid, 
statements made by Thomas Constantine, Administrator for the U.S. Drug 
Enforcement Agency regarding this money laundering epidemic. Mr. 
Constantine's leadership in this war on drugs is exemplified by 
Operation Zorro II's success.
  Mr. President, I sincerely hope that strong and decisive action 
against Mexican drug traffickers is a fundamental part of the 
administration's recently released 1996 National Drug Control Strategy. 
On behalf of the administration, and with the support of this Senator, 
Secretary Christopher should forcefully urge the Mexican Government to 
cooperate with United States requests for extraditions of Mexican 
narcotics traffickers and other criminals who have committed heinous 
acts of violence in the United States. It is a fact that to date, 
Mexico still has not extradited a single Mexican national convicted of 
drug trafficking in the United States.
  At the Banking Committee's recent hearing, perhaps the most 
compelling, and disturbing testimony came from T. J. Bonner, a border 
patrol agent. Mr. Bonner testified about his first hand views of life 
on the firing lines in this war on drugs. He also provided a disturbing 
account of the January 1996 killing of Border Patrol Agent Jefferson 
Barr. Mr. Barr was shot and killed while intercepting a group of 
Mexican drug smugglers in Eagle Pass, TX. One of Mr. Barr's murderers 
was identified and located by the FBI in a hospital in Mexico. This 
killer was charged with murder and the United States is seeking his 
extradition. But the Government of Mexico has failed to honor this 
request. This is an outrage and a tragedy. The United States 
administration must get tough with the Mexican Government and demand 
their full cooperation in dealing with these criminals.
  Mr. President, the flood of narcotics being sent from Mexico to the 
United States is tearing apart the social fabric of our country. 
Senator Feinstein and I recently introduced a bill, S. 1547, which 
would prevent the administration from wasting more taxpayer dollars on 
the Mexican bailout unless concerted measures are taken to stop the 
massive flow of narcotics from Mexico into the United States. I urge my 
colleagues to support this bill.
  Mr. President, the administration must continue to open their eyes to 
these problems. We cannot pretend as if they do not exist and simply 
hope they will disappear. As a result of the administration's past 
neglect and unwillingness to confront the drug problem, the narcotics 
crisis in this country has escalated in the last 3 years. The 
administration's charade in declaring Mexico as ``fully cooperative'' 
under the Foreign Assistance Act must end. If the Mexican Government 
wants to pretend there are no problems and feign indignation when 
confronted with these issues, then they should not expect United States 
financial support in any form. The future of our country and our 
children is at stake.
  Mr. President, Secretary Christopher should take a strong antidrug 
message to Mexico. We must employ every weapon in our arsenal in this 
war on drugs--diplomatic, financial, enforcement, and education. Every 
high-level U.S. official must be recruited in our battle with the drug 
epidemic waging war on this country.
  I ask that the Washington Post article, to which I earlier referred, 
be printed in the Record.
  The article follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 28, 1996]

                  The Drug Fiefdom of Northern Mexico

                (By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson)

       Nueva Casas Grandes, Mexico.--The only sign of prosperity 
     in this bleak desert city, 75 miles south of El Paso, is a 
     gigantic, fake medieval castle rising like a strange mirage 
     above cactus and scrub brush, abandoned houses and closed 
     shops.
       Camelot, as the ostentatious, slate-blue disco and concert 
     hall is known, stands as a stark reminder of how the culture 
     of narcotics trafficking can ravage cities as well as people. 
     Bountiful narco-dollars--brought in by drug lords who used 
     clandestine airstrips outside of town for cocaine shipments 
     to the United States--built the castle and fueled an economic 
     boom in the city.
       Then, as quickly as the narco-dollars poured in, they 
     suddenly evaporated when the new boss of Mexico's most 
     powerful drug mafia started using Boeing 727 cargo planes to 
     bypass Nueva Casas Grandes and similar cities, transforming 
     their narco booms into recessionary busts.
       ``The drug dealers brought shoes in by the boxes, but now 
     the money is not coming this way,'' complained Ricardo 
     Contreras, 24, who shines shoes in the town square.
       His is not the only ruined city along the U.S.-Mexican 
     border. The rise and demise of Nueva Casas Grandes reflects 
     how drug trafficking has reshaped the economic, social and 
     political landscape of northern Mexico in the last five 
     years. Shifting dynamics in the international drug trade, as 
     well as growing pressure on traffickers in Colombia, where 
     cocaine largely is produced, have turned this region known 
     for its booming manufacturing industry, burgeoning consumer 
     class and progressive politics into a land of laundered drug 
     money, riddled with corruption and violence.
       Northern Mexico's slide toward becoming a new Latin fiefdom 
     for the movement of drugs is a major problem for the United 
     States, long accustomed to viewing the region as a model of 
     development. The four main Mexican drug mafias--all 
     headquartered along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border--now 
     supply more than 70 percent of the cocaine and half of all 
     the marijuana sold in the United States, in addition to large 
     quantities of heroin and methamphetamine. The drugs funnel as 
     much as $30 billion a year in illegal proceeds back into 
     Mexico--more than the country's top two legitimate exports 
     combined.
       For a decade, northern Mexico has been the embodiment of 
     American hopes about where its southern neighbor was going. 
     It has been the region where private enterprise and export-
     oriented manufacturing flourishes, where peasants move up 
     from poverty, where the North American Free Trade Agreement 
     is gospel, and where pluralism and the beginnings of real 
     democracy in Mexico have taken root. Now it is threatening to 
     become an enormous menace--an empire of drug lords who 
     smuggle cocaine and weapons across the border, corrupt 
     officials on both sides of the border and terrorize border 
     cities with assassinations.
       Here, where the money first arrives from the United States 
     in car trunks, by wire

[[Page S4680]]

     transfers and--in recent months--through huge third-party 
     check-buying networks, the influence of billions of narco-
     dollars has become embedded in the culture of the frontier, 
     transcending the usual symbols of drug trafficking: the 
     ostentatious pink mansions of the newly wealthy, the crude 
     graffiti of the multiplying street gangs in border slums, the 
     frequent shootouts between feuding drug factions and the wars 
     between corrupt police units.
       The money is financing the businesses where residents eat, 
     play, work, shop and invest. It is altering the lives and 
     health of their children and families, leading to 
     skyrocketing homicide and overdose rates. It is greasing the 
     governments that run the cities, states and nation.
       ``It is part of everyday life in northern Mexico,'' said 
     Luis Astorga, a sociologist who has written extensively about 
     the social and cultural impact of the drug trade in his 
     native frontier region. ``It cannot be separated from the 
     legitimate economy or the authorities in power.''
       Northern Mexico has been a major smuggling route since 
     early in this century, when cattle rustler-turned-guerrilla 
     Pancho Villa stormed across the desert frontier fomenting the 
     revolutionary fervor of 1917. It is a vast territory of dry 
     lake beds ideal for landing cocaine-packed jets, scrub desert 
     perfect for eluding border guards, industrial areas with 
     numerous warehouses for stockpiling tons of illegal drugs and 
     border stations where customs officials check barely 5 
     percent of the 87 million vehicles that cross each year.
       The cities of northern Mexico have diverse economies, 
     developed from decades of legitimate cross-border trade and 
     tourism with their richer northern neighbor. The border was 
     crossed last year by about 232 million people, making it the 
     world's busiest international boundary.
       It is Mexico's most prosperous and industrialized region, 
     stretching from Tijuana--the country's most visited tourist 
     destination--through dusty desert villages, past grimy Cuidad 
     Juarez on the border and eastward toward the high-rises and 
     belching industries of Monterrey, dubbed the Pittsburgh of 
     Mexico. Despite the country's deepest economic recession in 
     60 years, northern Mexico's border cities continue to boom, 
     adding jobs in a year of record unemployment nationally and 
     building new industries during a period of unprecedented 
     bankruptcies and collapsing businesses.
       But now the underground economy built from decades of 
     smuggling contraband, people and drugs to the United States 
     has become so intertwined with the region's legitimate wealth 
     that the two are almost indistinguishable, according to 
     investigators. The constantly flowing river of people and 
     money--magnified by the North American Free Trade Agreement 
     among the United States, Mexico and Canada--is a perfect 
     disguise for moving drugs in a narco-dollars out of the 
     United States, investigators say.
       One highly audible indication of how drug culture has 
     penetrated the north of Mexico is found on the radio 
     airwaves, where the most popular songs are ``narco-ballads'' 
     about daring trafficking escapades with drug lords as the 
     heroes and police as the bad guys. The songs belt out the 
     tales of mafia rivalries and hapless U.S. drug agents with 
     extraordinarily accurate details of the constantly changing 
     drug world. ``Mess with the mafia and pay with your hide,'' 
     one warns.
       While the exact amount of narcotics money flowing back to 
     Mexico is impossible to calculate, Mexican Assistant Attorney 
     General Moises Moreno Hernandez, speaking at a conference 
     last August, estimated that $30 billion was returned to 
     Mexico in 1994. The U.S. Treasury's Financial Crime 
     Enforcement Network estimates it at $10 billion to $30 
     billion.
       Nowhere are the effects of the drug trade more evident than 
     in booming border cities such as Ciudad Juarez, a roiling 
     metropolis of 1.3 million that is joined by five bridges to 
     El Paso, Tex. Authorities say it is the home of Mexico's most 
     powerful drug cartel.
       Despite the nationwide recession, Juarez--along with many 
     of its sister cities along the border--is growing, if not 
     prospering. Employment is up, glitzy new office buildings are 
     under construction, and its bars and restaurants are packed. 
     While much of the city's economic success is the result of 
     legitimate business, a strong industrial base and cross-
     border tourism from El Paso, city residents from all walks of 
     life say drug money has become so entwined in their local 
     economy that above-board businesses and those financed by 
     narco-dollars are difficult to separate.
       The influx of drug money has helped shape the city, from 
     seedy discos and bars that run along the underbelly of 
     downtown Juarez to ritzy country club estates clustered 
     around a green oasis of golf courses in newly developing 
     suburbs.
       The Juarez Cartel and the many local organizations that are 
     its subcontractors for transporting the drugs have bought 
     heavily into trucking businesses and car dealerships for 
     their operations. One major trafficking family owns a 
     petroleum company and is said to use its tanker truckers for 
     smuggling drugs, according to U.S. and Mexican law 
     enforcement officials. And the boss of the Juarez cartel, 
     Amado Carrillo Fuentes, allegedly owns several small 
     airlines.
       In Tijuana, the Arellano-Felix brothers--leaders of the 
     violent Tijuana Cartel--are suspected of using a local 
     racetrack to launder their drug money. Juan Garcia Abrego, 
     the recently arrested head of the Gulf Cartel, reportedly 
     owned more than a dozen used-car and automotive parts stores 
     along the south Texas-Mexican border.
       But law enforcement officials and local business leaders 
     say it has become difficult to track the investments of the 
     cartels and their associates. ``They're getting much 
     smarter,'' said a Juarez businessman. ``You can't drive down 
     the street anymore and say that and that and that was built 
     by the drug lords. Now they're using middlemen to buy 
     buildings.''
       For many residents, the map of northern Mexico is 
     determined not by highways and state lines but by the 
     frequently changing territories controlled by drug-
     trafficking organizations. The areas shift each time a 
     kingpin is assassinated or jailed.
       Today, two mafias dominate the region--the Juarez and the 
     Tijuana cartels--and two other powerful groups, the Sonora 
     and Gulf cartels, operate variously at odds or in concert 
     with them. The major trafficking organizations are known by 
     several names, but generally are associated with their areas 
     of geographic control. They, in turn, subcontract the 
     logistics of transporting their drugs among an estimated 250 
     families and gangs that work specific smuggling routes across 
     the frontier.
       The Juarez Cartel, headed by Carrillo, today is 
     undisputedly the most powerful mafia, controlling the central 
     trafficking corridor between Juarez and El Paso. In recent 
     months Carrillo also has begun expanding east into the 
     territory of the Gulf Cartel, which is in disarray after the 
     arrest earlier this year of its alleged kingpin, Garcia 
     Abrego.
       Carrillo, who took over the Juarez Cartel after his rival 
     for the leadership was gunned down on a Cancun beach three 
     years ago, is considered the pioneer of the new breed of 
     shrewder, more corporate cartel bosses who shun the 
     limelight.
       With many more billions of dollars at risk, Carrillo and 
     his competitors are seldom seen in the restaurants and discos 
     they have built across northern Mexico. They have not given 
     up their lavish lifestyles, but now they entertain in private 
     while threatening local newspaper editors to keep away their 
     photographers. Often traffickers invite well-known music 
     stars to sing for select guests inside well-guarded ranches 
     near their northern Mexico headquarters and lavish compounds 
     in more glamorous parts of the country, such as Guadalajara, 
     Acapulco and other resort areas.
       But Carrillo and his counterparts are no less brutal than 
     those before them. Shootouts between rival groups often occur 
     along the border; in some major cities, drug assassinations 
     are nearly a daily occurrence. The victims' bodies are left 
     with the telltale mafia signatures: hands tied and a single 
     bullet in the head.
       Last year, the largest cities along the border recorded 
     more than 1,000 slayings, more than half of them drug-related 
     and unsolved. In Tijuana, for example, there were 121 
     homicides in the last six months, and officials say at least 
     half involved drugs.
       Last year in Juarez, homicides were up 25 percent to 295, 
     of which police estimate 70 percent were drug-related. Two 
     years ago, the tortured bodies of the city's newly retired 
     police chief and two of his sons were found in the trunk of 
     their car, which had been parked on one of the busy bridges 
     connecting Juarez and El Paso. Family members said they 
     believed the three were murdered by drug lords who suspected 
     the 26-year veteran policeman of being an informant for U.S. 
     law enforcement officials.
       City officials say much of the sharp rise in homicides and 
     other crimes in Juarez is a side effect of the Juarez 
     Cartel's practice of subcontracting its transportation and 
     distribution needs to numerous smaller organizations along 
     the border. Those groups in turn often hire local smuggling 
     families on street gang members to carry the drugs into the 
     United Sates in the trunks of cars, on the backs of mules in 
     more remote desert areas, or hidden in boxes of tennis shoes, 
     tomatoes or other legitimate commercial items hauled by 18-
     wheel trucks.
       As a result, hundreds of newly created ganps--put at 450 
     today, up from 120 five years ago--are battling for control 
     of the street sale of drugs in Juarez. In many parts of 
     downtown Juarez, gangs with names such as Los Gatos (The 
     Cats) or El Puente Negro (The Black Bridge gang), the city's 
     most notorious, rule the night and mark their territory with 
     bold spray-painted graffiti.
       With so much cocaine entering northern Mexico, an 
     increasing amount never leaves. The Mexican drug cartels 
     often take payment from their Colombian cocaine suppliers in 
     the form of drugs rather than cash--a portion of which they 
     sell locally. Juarez last year reported that drug ``shooting 
     galleries'' multiplied faster than police could track them.
       So while Mexico's national leaders are fond of saying drugs 
     merely pass through Mexico en route to the world's largest 
     consumer market of illegal narcotics, the outspoken mayor of 
     Juarez, Ramon Galindo Noriega, says that is no longer the 
     case. Last year, 90 people died of overdoses--up from four or 
     five the previous year, according to the major.
       According to court testimony in the United States and U.S. 
     and Mexican law enforcement officials, the cartels pay as 
     much as $500 million a year in protection money to Mexican 
     police, politicians and government officials--from the lowest 
     border guard to the highest reaches of the federal 
     government. Just this month, the governor of the

[[Page S4681]]

     border state of Nuevo Leon was forced to resign following 
     accusations of mismanagement and drug-related corruption.
       In some respects, northern Mexico should have had the best 
     chance of any region of the nation to shake off decades of 
     political corruption and offer tough resistance to the rise 
     of the drug kingpins.
       It was the first region of the country where members of the 
     conservative opposition National Action Party (PAN) broke the 
     stranglehold of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party 
     (PRI), winning governorships, mayoralties and municipal seats 
     with promises of fighting entrenched corruption.
       Instead, the drug cartels are more powerful than ever.
       One of the first PAN governors in the north, Ernesto Ruffo 
     Appel, former governor of Baja California, said he found 
     drug-based corruption too institutionalized to clean up from 
     the governor's office.
       ``The system doesn't work,'' said Ruffo, who works at the 
     national party level. ``Everybody's on the take. There's just 
     too much money.''
       According to many law enforcement officials and political 
     specialists, the institutionalization of corruption is a key 
     milestone in northern Mexico's journey toward becoming a drug 
     fiefdom.
       ``In the past, you had specific protection rackets that 
     were between particular people,'' said a U.S. law enforcement 
     official who monitors drug trafficking on the border. ``Now 
     you increasingly have protection [for the cartels] regardless 
     of who sits in a particular law enforcement job.''
       At the low end, police, because of their poor pay, 
     traditionally have been thoroughly corrupted by drug cartels. 
     Police frequently act as bodyguards and assassins for the 
     kingpins, and raging gun battles among local, state and 
     federal police units--some in the pay of the cartels, the 
     others trying to arrest them--are commonplace.
       Late one night a few weeks ago, a Wild West-style shootout 
     exploded on the streets of Juarez--police were fighting it 
     out with police.
       Carloads of federal police surrounded city police 
     headquarters and within minutes shooting broke out, leaving 
     one federal officer dead on the bloodied pavement and several 
     city police wounded in what many officials described as an 
     outgrowth of simmering tensions between rival drug protection 
     rackets.
       ``I know I have policemen who are paid by the drug 
     dealers,'' said Mayor Galindo. ``I pay 2,200 pesos [$297] a 
     month. A drug dealer can give $1,000 a week for protection. I 
     can't compete. When I listen to the politicians in Mexico 
     City talk about the drug struggle, they don't know what 
     they're talking about. Where can I hire police I can trust?''
       A few months before the shootout, Juarez city police--
     frustrated that their federal counterparts, charged with 
     enforcing drug laws, were taking no action to stop the 
     proliferation of drug shooting galleries in the city--leaked 
     the addresses of 90 known drug houses to a local newspaper. 
     The paper published the list and confronted the federal 
     police, who said they had never been given the list. ``We 
     published the list as proof that they'd received it,'' said 
     an editor. ``And they did nothing.''
       Ruffo and others say even the judicial system has become 
     co-opted, by money or fear. ``Judges are afraid they might be 
     killed. It's very risky to confront this,'' Ruffo said. On 
     that, he shares the pessimism of many in northern Mexico: 
     ``If we can't even trust the judicial system, we have 
     nothing.''


                         the mexican federation

       Four organizations dominate the international drug trade in 
     northern Mexico. Together with about a dozen smaller groups, 
     they have been dubbed The Mexican Federation by the U.S. Drug 
     Enforcement Administration and gross an estimated $10 billion 
     to $30 billion annually in narcotics sales in the United 
     States. Family ties are important to the groups, most of 
     which can trace their lineage back decades to the cross-
     border smuggling of contraband such as stolen cars.


                           the tijuana cartel

       Currently the second most powerful cartel. Considered the 
     most violent of the Mexican organizations. Best known for the 
     ambush of Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo at 
     Guadalajara Airport in May 1993.
       Leaders: Arellano-Felix brothers--Benjamin, Ramon, Javier 
     and Francisco (currently jailed in Mexico)--who are the 
     nephews of Guadalajara Cartel co-founder Miguel Angel Felix 
     Gallardo.
       Activities: Controls most of drug smuggling across the 
     California border; has recently diversified to become one of 
     the main suppliers of methamphetamine, consolidating its 
     position through a violent turf war in San Diego.


                           the sonora cartel

       Also known as the Caro Quintero organization; made up of 
     remnants of the old Guadalajara Cartel, best known for the 
     brutal 1985 torture and killing of DEA agent Enrique 
     Camarena.
       Leaders/co-founders: Rafael Caro Quintero, under arrest. 
     Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, arrested in 1989, remains a 
     major player from prison.
       Acting leader: Miguel Caro Quintero, brother of Rafael.
       Activities: Among the first Mexican organizations to 
     transport drugs for the Colombian kingpins. Main trafficking 
     routes through Arizona border area known as ``cocaine alley'' 
     with movements also coordinated through the Juarez Cartel in 
     the territory controlled by that organization.


                           the juarez cartel

       Currently the most powerful of the Mexican cartels.
       Leader: Amado Carrillo Fuentes, about 40; took over in 
     1993. Shuns flamboyant lifestyle of his competitors, and is 
     said to represent a new breed of kingpin who believes in 
     compromising with rivals.
       Activities: Carrillo Fuentes pioneered the use of Boeing 
     727s for bulk shipments of as much as 15 tons of cocaine 
     between South America and northern Mexico. Cartel operates 
     primarily through Juarez-El Paso and surrounding desert along 
     the west Texas and New Mexico borders.


                            the gulf cartel

       Once undisputed champ of the Mexican organizations. 
     Cartel's fortunes began to fade about a year ago after its 
     alleged kingpin, Juan Garcia Abrego, 51, had to go 
     underground. He was arrested in January and deported to the 
     United States, where he is standing trial in Houston.
       Leader: Oscar Malherve, one of Abrego's top lieutenants and 
     money-launderers.
       Activities: Moves drugs primarily through the Texas border 
     region, particularly Matamoros-Brownsville, and along the 
     Gulf coastal shores.

                          ____________________