Throwback: Cartels Clash for Deadly Reign

Fort Worth Star-Telegram - 10/02/2002

MONTERREY, Mexico — Hundreds of special anti-drug forces have converged on northern Mexico to patrol what has become a bloody battleground in a war between powerful drug cartels just south of the Texas border.

Members of the Mexican Federal Preventive Police Force — Mexico's version of the U.S. National Guard — began arriving from Mexico City about a week ago in response to 67 gangland-style killings in Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas states since January.

The victims were workers and employees, group leaders and financiers of the drug cartels, police said.

The power play ricochets almost daily between the region's two key trade cities, Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo, in Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, both of which border Texas.

Police say gangs from Juarez and Matamoros are pushing into Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo, and smaller groups from those Mexican cities are pushing back.

That, officials say, has led to the largest escalation of violence in the region in years.

To combat it, almost 200 armed federal soldiers and intelligence agents are patrolling the streets of Nuevo Laredo across the Rio Grande from Laredo. The city has seen 45 killings attributed to the cartel wars since January.

About 130 miles to the south, 300 more soldiers are in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo Leon — where 10 men were assassinated in August and at least 22 have been slain since January.

The two cities have taken on the look of police states. Soldiers in gray fatigues and black vests stand guard on corners and ride in the backs of pickups, armed with assault rifles.

Federal intelligence officers pull on black ski masks before raiding houses in search of marijuana, heroin and cocaine operations.

The Mexican officers are working with U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents, officials said.

"One thing that we're doing better now than we ever have before is working jointly with our Mexican counterparts," said Will Glaspy, spokesman for the DEA in Washington, D.C.

Authorities expect the soldiers to stay in Nuevo Laredo and Monterrey at least for a month.

"It's starting to calm down a little," said Martin Gutierrez Gomez, who heads the federal prosecutor's office in Nuevo Laredo. "They're working directly with us, and they are everywhere."

One Nuevo Laredo curio-shop owner, a lifelong resident who asked not to be named, said the feeling of battle in the air is palpable.

"There have been a lot of things happening here lately," he said. "But it's between them. If you're not involved, you're not in any real danger."

Three-way fight

The main aggressor, according to Mexican and U.S. agents, is a group led by Osiel Cardenas, known as the Gulf Coast Cartel, based in Matamoros across the Rio Grande from Brownsville.

The DEA has put a $2 million bounty on Cardenas, who faces federal drug and assault charges in both countries and is on Mexico's 10 most wanted list.

Experts say Cardenas is moving into Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo because the cities are in strategic locations and have yet to be taken over by larger cartels.

"Monterrey is a lower-profile place than Matamoros, Juarez, Tijuana," said Luis Astorga, who has studied cartels for 17 years at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City. "And Nuevo Laredo hasn't been as exploited as much as those three cities."

The Juarez Cartel, based across the river from El Paso, is also pushing for more territory in Monterrey, officials say.

One of the cartel's main financial officers, who laundered money through two money-exchange houses, was among the targets of a DEA operation earlier this year, according to news reports.

In March, he was found executed in his car in downtown Monterrey.

Nuevo Leon Gov. Fernando Canales Clariond and federal investigators said recently that the violence in his state can be attributed to a three-way battle between the cartels of Monterrey, Juarez and Matamoros.

To a lesser degree, Astorga said, the Tijuana Cartel run by the notorious Arellano Felix family might be trying to gain a stronger footing in Monterrey as well.

The February arrest of cartel leader Benjamin Arellano Felix and the death of his brother, Ramon, led experts to speculate whether that cartel — the oldest and most violently aggressive in Mexico — would seek new territory.

The Arellano Felix family operates its billion-dollar cocaine and marijuana operation across the border from San Diego, Calif. It is spending most of its time fending off local intruders, not expanding, DEA agents said.

In spite of official denials, however, the Tijuana Cartel is far from absent in the conflict.

A small Tijuana-linked faction, known as La Banda de los Chachos in Nuevo Laredo, has been fighting with another small group for several years, local officials said.

Los Chachos, according to Mexican reporters who have covered cartels for two decades, was the Tijuana Cartel's largest group operating in the Nuevo Laredo region.

The leader of the smaller group was arrested in 2001. Then in May, the leader of Los Chachos, Dionicio Ramon Garcia, known as "El Chacho," was executed by gunmen who police say were connected to Cardenas' Gulf Cartel.

Unclaimed Territory

In spite of its size and the amount of marijuana that gets shipped across the border into the United States, Nuevo Laredo is presumably the last of the large border cities that has yet to be consumed by a major cartel.

The death of El Chacho and the arrest of his rival created an open season in the city.

On Thursday, gangsters sprayed more than 80 bullets at a state police commander in Nuevo Laredo as he went into a gym with bodyguards. He called it a sign that gangsters were retaliating against him for fighting them in his five months on the job.

In September, at least 10 masked gunmen stormed a hospital at 3 a.m. and killed a man identified by police as a drug trafficker in the cartel. Ismael Flores Godines was shot as he lay in his hospital bed. His bodyguard was also slain, and Mexican police have connected the assassins to the Gulf Coast Cartel.

U.S. authorities said that although it is not known as a cartel headquarters, Nuevo Laredo is still a major crossing for drugs. U.S. Border Patrol agents in Nuevo Laredo seized 190,000 pounds of marijuana in the past eight months.

"There are truckloads of drugs coming across every day," Glaspy said. "There are other organized groups who have set up shop in the area. You may not be hearing the big-name traffickers like you did in Tijuana, Matamoros and Juarez, but that doesn't take away from the point that traffickers are utilizing Laredo, and other points upriver to get their stuff across."

A New Center

Monterrey, a sprawling city of 4 million, is known as Mexico's most "Americanized" city.

A few years ago, the government built a tollway connecting Monterrey with Nuevo Laredo. It extends south from where U.S. Interstate 35, the so-called NAFTA Superhighway, hits the border in Laredo.

The drive takes less than three hours.

The Monterrey Cartel, a smaller operation that has been growing in recent years, is apparently fighting back against the larger cartels from Juarez and Matamoros.

On Aug. 31, Ricardo Ruben Puente, 46, was fatally shot in front of his home in San Pedro, a wealthy suburban community near Monterrey that is home to several cartel leaders. Puente was head of the federal judicial police until 1994 when he joined the Gulf Cartel, police said.

Since then, three more men with ties to local cartels have been slain near Monterrey.

The city is home to manufacturing plants for many U.S. companies, as well as the Mexican company Vitro, the world's largest glass maker.

Monterrey's healthy business atmosphere creates opportunities for money laundering, experts say.

The city also has Mexico's highest per-capita income, meaning that someone driving a new BMW does not draw much attention, said Roberto Benavides, a cartel expert at Monterrey's National Technological University.

"There is the real possibility of living here in secrecy — of hiding," Benavides said.

Shortly after Puente's death, Canales Clariond, the governor of Nuevo Leon, announced a special organized-crime task force to combat the violence.

It was the first time that officials acknowledged the presence of cartels in Monterrey, known as the safest of Mexico's large cities.

"It's a step forward," Benavides said. "They have no other explanation for this series of crimes, other than it is problems with narcotics trafficking. Before they refused to admit that they are here. Now they've accepted it and are taking steps to confront it."

Note from Armadillo: This October 2002 report now reads as a prelude to the larger cartel wars that would engulf Mexico in the years to come. Within months of this article's publication, two key figures would meet their fates: Adelio Lopez Falcón "El Yeyo" would be killed in Guadalajara in May 2003, and Gulf Cartel boss Osiel Cárdenas Guillén would be arrested in March 2003.

Photo I took at the grave of "El Yeyo"