Calderon calls on Mexico to 'close ranks' against border gangs

MEXICO CITY — With drug violence raging unchecked along the Texas border and deep into Mexico's heartland, President Felipe Calderon called for security forces and citizens to "close ranks" against the powerful criminal gangs.

"It's indeed possible to win the battle," Calderon said Wednesday at meeting with Cabinet ministers involved in law enforcement. "But to achieve that we must remain united. We must close ranks against criminality."

Calderon has made the crackdown on Mexico's crime lords a cornerstone of his 13-month-old administration. But while the campaign has scored some notable successes — including the seizure of more than 40 tons of U.S.-bound cocaine and other narcotics — it has so far failed to stanch the bloodshed.

Two federal police officers were killed Tuesday night in an ambush by suspected drug traffickers in Reynosa, on the Rio Grande near McAllen, Texas. On Monday, soldiers and police killed three suspected narco-gunmen in Rio Bravo, a small city 12 miles down river from Reynosa.

Despite the dispatch of thousands of police and soldiers to several violence-plagued areas last year, underworld rivalries killed more than 2,500 people across Mexico, about the same as in prior years.

"These events show us that the battle, as we predicted, has not been easy and that much remains to be done," Calderon said.

The Bush administration has proposed giving Mexico $1.4 billion in aid over the next two or three years for additional military helicopters, drug-sniffing dogs and telecommunications equipment. It also would pay for training Mexican police and troops involved in intercepting drug shipments. Congress is deliberating the proposal and is expected to vote on it sometime in the summer.

Perhaps with an eye on that aid, Calderon called Wednesday for better training of police at the local, state and federal levels; increased cooperation between the country's police forces and the creation of a trustworthy system for citizens to inform on drug gang members operating in their communities.

Traffickers control some local governments and receive protection from politicians. Local and state police have ranked high among the casualties in the recent bloodshed.

Scores of policemen were killed last year alone. While some of those officers died in the line of duty, others were targeted by the gangsters because of their ties to rival trafficking gangs.

The blood has been flowing wherever narcotics gangs operate. But much of the violence has occurred in Tamaulipas state, bordering South Texas from Laredo to the Gulf of Mexico.

This is the territory of the Gulf drug-trafficking cartel and the assassins working for it known as the Zetas.

Osiel Cardenas, the organization's reputed head, is jailed in Houston awaiting federal trial on narcotics charges. Calderon ordered him extradited to the United States last year.

Founded by deserting special forces soldiers, the Zetas served as bodyguards and assassins for cartel bosses, but a few have become kingpins themselves.

Officials say the three gunmen killed Monday in Rio Bravo belonged to a gang loyal to Heriberto Lazcano, nicknamed El Lazcas, who in Cardenas's absence has become one of several top cartel chieftains.

"The assassins have assumed control of the criminal organizations, which has spawned greater violence," Genaro Garcia Luna, Calderon's secretary of public security, said at the Wednesday Cabinet meeting.

Calderon ordered 3,500 troops and paramilitary federal police to the border following the assassination nearly six weeks ago in Rio Bravo of politician Juan Guajardo. The former mayor and federal lawmaker was gunned down along with four federal agents acting as his bodyguards.

The federal forces have been operating checkpoints on highways, patrolling Rio Bravo and nearby cities and conducting searches of suspected cartel safe houses.

Monday's shootout in Rio Bravo, in which at least 10 policemen and soldiers were also wounded, began when the alleged gunmen flashed their weapons at one of those checkpoints. A firefight ensued, at the checkpoint and again near the municipal police offices downtown.

Following the shootout, officials arrested 10 other alleged gunmen — including two men from Detroit and another from Texas — and confiscated a large cache of automatic weapons, grenades and grenade launchers.

The Tuesday attack on the police patrol in Reynosa — the federal police are patrolling that and other cities in pickup trucks — was retaliation for the Rio Bravo gunfight, officials said Wednesday.

There are a number of ways drugs come in. They come in in big trucks, in shipping containers, through tunnels, in submarines, they’re flown in, etc. Drugs are also brought over by smugglers who are just walking or driving over in remote patches of border land. I don’t know what percentage of drug come over that way. I don’t think the government knows either. I will say this though, when they stop big 18 wheelers with loads of dope at border crossing, or find it in shipping containers, or find those submarines with loads of cocaine or whatever, these tend to be huge seizures, often many tons. My bet is that a lot more of the drugs that are coming over are coming over in through these channels that would not be affected by a fence than come over where we would build a fence. I honestly believe that all that would happen if we built a fence is that more drugs would come over by sea or through border crossings in trucks (and passenger vehicles) or by air, and of course with tunnels and submarines and all that. I doubt we’d see much if any slowing of the flow of drugs.

Even if there was a slowing of the flow of drugs, my bet we’d just see a shift in what people are smuggling so that no one ever goes without drugs like cocaine and heroin and meth that are very expensive. Those who are still able to smuggle marijuana after the fence will shift the harder more expensive stuff take up the slack and fill any demand that wasn’t being met because of the fence.

Thousands of tons of drugs are smuggled into this country every year from or through Mexico. The biggest part of these thousands of tons is marijuana because it is the most widely consumed illegal drug in America, with more marijuana being consumed in this country than all other illegal drugs combined. Right now, according to the DEA, the vast majority of the marijuana on the market in this country is coming up from Mexico. Other drugs like cocaine are worth a lot more though and easier in a way to smuggle because a drug like cocaine is a lot more dense than marijuana. A pound or a ton of marijuana will take up a lot more space than a pound or a ton of cocaine. So, if the government starts making a dent in smuggling we’ll see marijuana smugglers who are still able to operate shifting to drugs like cocaine to take up the slack.

Would this shift then mean there would be less marijuana on the market here? Not really. The demand for marijuana would remain, as would the profit potential for those who would supply it. They’ll just have to grow more here, outdoors in our national forests or wherever, and indoors. Organized crime would step up and fill the need. We’d see Mexicans growing outdoors a lot more and probably see an increase in indoor growing operations from them as well. Asian organized crime would no doubt get in the game more as well. They are already huge in Canada’s indoor grown marijuana industry and according to the DEA increasing their presence here. These are businessmen and if they see an opportunity, a demand going unsatisfied and lots of money to be made satisfying that demand, they’ll jump right on it.

And guess what bringing marijuana production here does? It increases the potency of the marijuana. Mexicans growing it here instead of Mexico have to focus more on quality rather than quantity because it’s harder to get away with growing huge fields here. They can keep their profits up by growing product that will command a higher price. Growing indoors takes this to an extreme. The area they have to grow in shrinks dramatically, but they go from a crop worth a few hundred a pound to one worth thousands a pound. THC levels in this indoor grown pot tend to be considerably higher than that grown outdoors. The price is much higher too, but what we’ve seen in Canada is that as more and more of this stuff is produced the market becomes saturated and price plummets. Super potent pot is no longer such an exotic novelty. It becomes much cheaper, and since it takes a lot less of the really powerful stuff to get high, in the long run it won’t really be much more expensive than crappy Mexican if at all.

Building a fence I think would cut down on the number of people walking across the border looking for work. We’d probably see a big drop in the number of people doing that. It wouldn’t really slow the flow of drugs though. I doubt it would keep terrorists out either. When the stakes are really high and people really want to get in or get something in, they get in or get it in, fence or no fence. A fence can only do so much. It’s not going to be the cure all a lot of people seem to think it will be.

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