Written by César Morales Oyarvide   

A lot has been said about the historical link between drug traffic and the State in Mexico. Nevertheless, there have been few attempts dedicated to study this phenomenon in a rigorous way.

This link has been real, without a doubt, and goes beyond famous cases such as Mario Villanueva, the “narco” governor (currently imprisoned in the United States) or former antidrug czar General Gutiérrez Rebollo (imprisoned in Mexico). It has been, in order to synthesize, one more of the edges of the Mexican authoritarian regime under the PRI (Party of the Institutionalized Revolution), who held the presidency until 2000. It is, however, a problem that extends itself beyond the democratic transition of the country.

How was this link born? What have been its development and changes during its long existence?

For the sociologist of the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) Luis Astorga (whose work on the history of drug traffic in Mexico is perhaps the best) there have been at least four great moments in the history of the field of drug traffic in Mexico that allow us to observe their relations with the political field and its transformations: 1914-1947, 1947-1985, 1985 to 2000, and the one that begins in July 2, 2000 (when Vicente Fox, a candidate from a non-PRI political party, took office).

1) The first moment was characterized by the birth of the field of drug traffic in a position of subordination towards political power in general and to the most important political figure in the northern states in particular: the governors. Politicians of the Baja California like Esteban Cantú (with a minor role in the Mexican Revolution, he controlled the opium traffic and, at the same time, decreed a law that prohibited it) or Abelardo Rodriguez (temporary president in 1932 and soon prosperous businessman), were the pioneers in the business.

For Astorga, although the dealers belonged informally to the general arrangement of the regime emanated from the 1910 revolution, they were formally excluded from politics. From their subordinate position, their capability to establish its own rules was very limited: they knew that without political protection they had few probabilities of success or survival. Although laws that prohibited the production and commerce of marijuana and opium were emitted, several governors followed the steps of Cantú and Rodriguez: the business was too big to be left only to the drug dealers.

2) The second moment in the relation between politics, State and drug traffic in Mexico was the one in which the structural mediations between the political power and the dealers were created, represented mainly by police and security corporations with extralegal attributions that could carry on two simultaneous actions: to protect and to contain drug dealers.

The academics devoted to the study of this subject consider that one of the institutions by means of which the political control of the dealers was achieved was the Mexican political police: the DFS (Federal Direction of Security). Even though there were, almost from the very birth of the DFS, reports of intelligence from the United States that showed the involvement of the main leaders of DFS in drug traffic, the silence prevailed. An example: the case of a car loaded with opium that was confiscated in Texas and belonged to Colonel Carlos Serrano, a PRI Senator, friend of President Miguel Alemán (1946-52), and creator of the DFS.

The 60’s arrive and with them a boom in the marijuana consumption in the United States. The demand grew, and with that the business, the violence, and the pressures from the American Government to Mexico. The state of Sinaloa and its governor (Leopoldo Sanchez Célis) begin to stand out. Also did Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, a former police officer that soon was going to be known as “the Godfather” in the world of drug traffic. One of the founders of the Sinaloa Cartel, he was at some point a bodyguard of the Sanchez Célis family, who offered him and his “bussines” political protection.

In the 70’s the nexus with Colombia and the cocaine begin. Its first protagonist was Ramón Matta, a Honduran chemist that, once caught its Cuban partner and former lord of the cocaine business in Mexico (Alberto Sicilia Falcón), associated with Felix Gallardo. Felix Gallardo used Matta as a bridge and started to make contact with Colombian dealers such as Pablo Escobar.

In 1977 the “Operación Cóndor” was implemented. It was the biggest antidrug campaign ever carried on in the country, in which the Mexican army and the DEA participated. It had a high social cost, but no druglord was captured. After that, the most important leaders of the business in Sinaloa move to the south, to Guadalajara. The moving was far from being a punishment: the change of location gave benefits to the drug gang in terms of infrastructure, investment and money laundering. It also extended the business.

In that city something happened in 1985 that is referred as a milestone in the history of the fight against drug traffic: the torture and murder of the DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena by orders of kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero.

3) The third stage would begin, in which the State party regime of the PRI, with a monopoly of the political power, starts to show incapacity signs to control effectively its own institutions of mediation, which, like the dealer organizations, acquire major autonomy with respect to the political power.

Simultaneously, the political pressures of the United States are felt with greater force. Luis Astorga considers that for the DEA, the nexus between the DFS, the Policía Judicial Federal (PJF), and the drug traffic organizations was clear (for example, the DEA thought that the DFS was the brain behind the reorganization of the dealers to Guadalajara), but the DEA knew that these corporations were considered beneficial for U.S. governments within the framework of the Cold War. Nevertheless, the murder of Camarena was too much and it caused a maintained and open pressure of the United States towards Mexican government demanding its deeper collaboration in the “war against drugs”, already a hemispherical priority for the White House, as El Colegio de Mexico Professor Maria Celia Toro indicates. The pressure was so intense that President Miguel de la Madrid had to dissolve the DFS in 1987. Part of the attributions of this corporation were concentrated in the PJF but, in spite of its efforts, the capacity of political and police control over the field of drug traffic and its agents was never the same.

On the side of the trafficking organizations, the group of Sinaloa underwent a great division causes by the fall of Felix Gallardo, captured in Guadalajara in 1989 by his “compadre”, commander of the PJF González Calderoni. From this division arose the druglords that controlled the new organizations in the 90’s and nowadays: AmadoCarillo, the Arellano Felix brothers, Joaquín Guzmán, etc.

The only organization that did not emerge from Sinaloa was the Gulf of Mexico Cartel. Commanded by Juan García Ábrego, who enjoyed the protection (according to information of the FBI) of González Calderoni. The close relationship between the latter and the brother of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Raúl (for whom Calderoni had spied political opponents), combined with the fact that in the presidential term of Salinas the Gulf Cartel had a meteoric and atypical success, make suspect that this criminal organization had political protection of the highest level.

4) The fourth moment began with the displacement of the PRI from the Presidency, its loss of the absolute majority in the legislative cameras, and the access of other political parties to the highest positions of power. With the crisis of the PRI regime and the loss of many of its informal agreements, the dealing organizations and the police corporations won more autonomy and the faculty of the regime to act like a referee in the drug business was lost.

The result of the 2000 elections was a fragmentation and weakening of the political power that worsened its position to face the challenges of the criminal groups, which in many cases changed their position from political subordination to direct confrontation. The transition benefitted the organized crime, summarizes Professor Sergio Aguayo Quezada. Some organizations added to their strategy the territorial expansion of their activities, the attempt of territorial control and the diversification of the criminal rent, as Astorga indicates.

The nexus between drug trafficking and State in Mexico is centennial and has followed a certain path. Nevertheless, it has lately undergone several important changes result from the economic globalization, the alterations in the world-wide drug market, and the peculiar process of Mexican democratization. To that situation we have to add the absence of a vision shared by all the political forces in the matter of security. At this point, we are all hostages of a punitive paradigm (imported from the United States) that reproduces what it tries to solve: the violence. This is where we are now.

Article by César Morales Oyarvide
@DonGPeregrino