Drug Trafficing Organizations Move Operations to the Pacific

June 20, 2009 12:00
The beaches on the Southern Pacifc Coast of Mexiso have become the new transfer point for cartels bringing in drugs from The South.

-Federico Gochoa

SALINA CRUZ, Mexico - If you know what's good for you, fisherman Teodoro Contreras says, you stay away from certain places after the sun sets on the beaches of Mexico's southern coast. From the resort city of Acapulco to the Guatemalan border, this is Mexico's "Cocaine Coast," the main destination for drug-carrying speedboats, airplanes and even submarines that are switching to the Pacific Ocean to avoid increasingly numerous patrols in the Caribbean Sea.

"There are boats out there, trucks, people doing things they shouldn't be doing," Contreras said, waving at the curving shoreline near Salina Cruz. "People coming right up on the beach and catching rides to who-knows-where. You mind your own business at night."


The rise of this Pacific route shows how smugglers continue to evade and adapt, even as the Mexican government pours resources into an unprecedented crackdown on the major cartels. More than 10,000 people have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón launched the offensive in late 2006.

The trafficking has spilled into some resort cities, leading to shootouts in Acapulco and the appearance of "narco-banners" with threatening messages in Huatulco. The violence has not targeted tourists, however, and no tourists have been hurt.
About 69 percent of cocaine shipments moved through the eastern Pacific in 2007, up from 50 percent in 2005, the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center said in a report released in December.

The traffic has only increased since then, leading to some spectacular busts of boats in the 300-mile stretch between Acapulco and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, near Guatemala. Much of that shoreline looks like the edge of a postage stamp: scalloped, with coves that are perfect for smuggling.

Police say they are also catching more members of the rival Gulf Cartel, including its elite enforcers known as the "Zetas," as they shift to the southwestern coast from their traditional turf on the eastern coast.

On Wednesday, federal agents arrested three Zeta suspects and freed a businessman kidnapped in the town of Juchitán.

• "Most of the cocaine is now going through the Pacific side, so that (coast) has become a point of attraction for all kinds of criminal groups," said Carlos Antonio Flores, a crime expert at the Center for Economic, Administrative and Social Research, a Mexico City think tank.
  
• Military checkpoints and navy trucks full of heavily armed troops have become a common sight in the 130-mile-wide Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
  
• On one recent afternoon, cars, trucks and motorcycles drove slowly through a mobile X-ray machine manned by federal police on Highway 190. The machine looked like a crane with a boom that arced over the highway.
  
• A few miles down the road, Mexican immigration agents were searching northbound buses, looking for Central American migrants and drug couriers.
• At another checkpoint farther on, stone-faced soldiers questioned motorists about their destinations and used mirrors with long handles to check under cars.
  
• Last year, the Mexican navy caught a submersible boat as it approached the area carrying 5.8 tons of cocaine.
• A shrimp boat was caught with 3.3 tons of coke, and in January, the navy caught a fishing vessel with a 7 tons on board.
• On June 8, Mexican forces near the resort of Huatulco caught a "go-fast" boat with traces of cocaine on board and four new 250-horsepower engines apparently destined for outfitting other smuggling boats.
• Two other suspected drug boats were seized from a warehouse near Salina Cruz last month.

In Acapulco, 16 drug traffickers and two soldiers died in a shootout on June 7. Investigators suspect the traffickers were a cell directing smuggling operations along the coast for the Sinaloa Cartel.

Part of the change in routes is due to production patterns, Flores said. Coca-leaf cultivation in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia increased 16 percent from 2006 to 2007, but the biggest increase was in the Pacific and central regions of Colombia, the United Nations said in its latest World Drug Report.

Meanwhile, better radar coverage, more patrolling by Caribbean countries and better cooperation with the United States have made it harder to get drugs through the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, said Scott Stewart, vice president of Stratfor, a global intelligence-consulting firm in Austin.

Smugglers have adapted by bringing the drugs to Central America, then using light airplanes or go-fast boats to race across the Mexican border and drop their bundles into the water, where they are picked up.

"It's smaller shipments making smaller jumps," Stewart said. "They'll take smaller boats to pop around the isthmus. They can take short-range aviation. . . . They're really quite resourceful."

To help fight the traffickers, the Mexican Senate took the dramatic step of allowing Mexico's military to participate in an April 19-May 7 naval exercise with the United States. Mexico has avoided joint exercises with the United States ever since the 1846-48 Mexican-American War.

"It was the first time we have ever allowed that, and it was precisely because of this threat," said Felipe González, chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Safety. "Our navy needs to get more knowledge so they can detect and stop these criminals."

Reach the reporter at chris.hawley@arizonarepublic.com.

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