Lord of the Skies

June 16, 1997

By ANITA SNOW

The Associated Press

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – (AP) _ Once they were merely "mules" for Colombia's powerful cocaine cartels. Now, Mexico's narcotics traffickers have grown into drug lords in their own right, and the front line of the drug war has shifted from the Andean jungles to the United States' front door.

Mexican gangs run their own distribution networks in the United States, and they produce most of the methamphetamine used north of the border. They have even bypassed the Colombians several times to buy cocaine directly from producers in Bolivia and Peru.

"These sophisticated drug syndicate groups from Mexico have eclipsed organized crime groups from Colombia as the premier law enforcement threat facing the United States today," Thomas Constantine, director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told a congressional committee this year.

Because of the power shift, drug-related violence and corruption regularly spills over the U.S.-Mexican border, threatening historically sensitive bilateral relations.

"They still haven't reached the sophistication of the Colombian networks of old," Errol Chavez, DEA special agent in charge in San Diego, told The Associated Press. "But unless we stop this new threat, we are going to have a big problem next door. "

In El Paso, across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juarez, a U.S. Customs Service inspector was convicted last year of accepting $ 1 million to let a ton of cocaine cross the border.

In San Diego, U.S. agents blamed Mexican traffickers for the December slaying of a man who was shot while driving his white Mercedes along a seaside highway. They said the shooting stemmed from a soured business deal.

Mexico's drug gangs have tainted high government posts in a developing nation of about 93 million people that has recently teetered on the edge of political and economic crisis.

Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, Mexico's drug czar, was arrested in February on charges of accepting bribes from Amado Carrillo Fuentes, considered the country's No. 1 cocaine trafficker.

Gutierrez denied the charges in court documents obtained by the Mexico City newspaper Reforma. He accused other military officials of protecting Carrillo, even tipping him off about a 1996 raid that narrowly missed capturing him.

American lawmakers cited that corruption in an unsuccessful fight December slaying of a man who was shot while driving his white Mercedes along a seaside highway. They said the shooting stemmed from a soured business deal.

Mexico's drug gangs have tainted high government posts in a developing nation of about 93 million people that has recently teetered on the edge of political and economic crisis.

Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, Mexico's drug czar, was arrested in February on charges of accepting bribes from Amado Carrillo Fuentes, considered the country's No. 1 cocaine trafficker.

Gutierrez denied the charges in court documents obtained by the Mexico City newspaper Reforma. He accused other military officials of protecting Carrillo, even tipping him off about a 1996 raid that narrowly missed capturing him.

American lawmakers cited that corruption in an unsuccessful fight to block certification of Mexico as a cooperating partner in anti-narcotics efforts.

When President Clinton visited Mexico in May, he and President Ernesto Zedillo agreed the two countries share responsibility for the drug problem and vowed a common strategy. But the task won't be easy.

From heavily guarded homes south of the border, the Mexican kingpins use beepers, encrypted phones and fax machines to operate new distribution networks in America's heartland, U.S. intelligence analysts say.

Documents filed in a federal trial under way in Miami against four people accused of managing the Cali cocaine cartel and two of its lawyers map the growth of the Mexicans' role in the drug trade.

An affidavit offered recently to support an extradition request for Carrillo says the Colombians shifted their routes from the Caribbean and Florida to Mexico after the cartel's top representative in Miami was arrested in 1992. It says the Cali cartel worked out adeal to use Carrillo as a middleman for smuggling cocaine into the United States.

Carrillo's "Juarez cartel" is said to handle cocaine shipments that ostensibly generate tens of millions of dollars weekly.

The man known as the "Lord of the Skies" for his use of large aircraft reportedly persuaded several less-powerful bosses to join him in what U.S. drug agents dubbed the "Mexican Federation. "

But the agents say the federation began splitting in the last year as the violent Arellano Felix brothers of Tijuana - Carrillo's top competitors - increasingly refused to cooperate, raising fears of a turf war.

There is growing evidence that the Carrillo and Arellano Felix gangs are employing corrupt officials to attack rivals.

Fifteen people suspected of having drug ties disappeared in January in Juarez. Witnesses said the kidnappers had "INCD" on their black uniforms - the Spanish acronym for the now-defunct federal anti-drug agency that Gutierrez headed until his arrest.

Nevertheless, many traffickers still work together on big shipments, taking advantage of the porous 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border and increased commercial traffic under the North American Free Trade Agreement to ship hundreds of tons into the United States every year.

U.S. drug officials say that as much as 70 percent of cocaine entering the United States comes through Mexico. U.S. officials can search only about one of every 10 vehicles crossing the border and just a fraction of cargo containers.

In the United States, the Mexicans are staying away from the Colombians' East Coast strongholds, instead creating their own distribution networks in the West and Midwest.

"It's a symbiotic relationship," Colombian journalist Fabio Castillo, an expert on South American trafficking, said about the Mexican and Colombian gangs. "They work together, but neither is really more powerful than the other. "

The Mexicans' move toward independence began several years ago when the Colombians began paying Mexican gang leader Juan Garcia Abrego with cocaine to smuggle loads of the drug for them, authorities say. Convicted in Texas of trafficking and money laundering, he is now serving 11 life prison terms.

Other Mexican traffickers are now routinely paid with cocaine, which they distribute in the United States and in Mexico. They also produce and market their own marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine.

Carrillo has bypassed the Colombians several times to buy cocaine from producers in Bolivia and Peru, U.S. intelligence analysts say.

Although the Mexicans will never match the Colombians' ability to produce cocaine, they can compete for overall profits.

"To some degree, the Mexicans will always need the Colombians to monopolize the cocaine market, " said Phil Jordan, a former DEA agent and retired director of a government center that tracks the kingpins.

"But profit wise, they could totally eliminate the Colombian connection without suffering too much. "