13 May 2003
Mexican Govt.'s Arrests of Drug Barons Disrupting Colombian Drug Networks
(DEA says Colombians scrambling to find new drug contacts in Mexico) (450) By Eric Green Washington File Staff Writer Washington -- The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says the Mexican government's success in arresting the country's most powerful drug barons has caused "chaos" in cocaine-trafficking networks stretching from the U.S. border to drug laboratories in South American jungles. In a May 9 statement, Roger Guevara, DEA's chief of operations, said that because of Mexican President Vicente Fox's effective disruption of drug cartels from Tijuana to the Gulf of Mexico, Colombian drug lords are being "forced to establish new contacts in Mexico to oversee the importation of illicit drug shipments to the United States." Another DEA official, Michael Vigil, said the Colombian drug lords "are the masters of the universe in terms of violence and intimidation, and they have educated the Mexicans well." A May 8 Washington Post story quoted Vigil as saying that "a lot of major players from Colombia have moved on-scene in Mexico." Vigil, special agent for DEA's San Diego field division, said Colombians have been operating with Mexican drug traffickers in Mexico since the 1960s. Vigil said that one high-level Colombian cocaine and heroin trafficker, Juan Diego Espinoza Ramirez, had been operating in Mexico for five to eight years. Vigil called the Colombian "a major player, a kingpin in his own right." The Post reported that $8 million in cash recently confiscated from drug couriers was traced back to Espinoza. The DEA said that in the last part of 2002, an increase was discovered in the number of Colombian heroin seizures involving couriers of Mexican nationality. This suggested a trend by Colombian drug traffickers to recruit Mexican nationals to transport Colombian heroin into Mexico. The DEA also identified Mexico as the transit point for about 70 percent of the cocaine shipped into the United States from South America. The agency added that enhanced counter-drug cooperation between Mexican and U.S. federal law enforcement entities and better intelligence resulted in record-setting quantities of cocaine seizures aboard large fishing vessels in the Eastern Pacific Ocean corridor, the primary route for smuggling cocaine to Mexico for further transshipment to the United States. The White House Office of National Drug Control Strategy (ONDCP) also reported May 9 that opium poppy cultivation and potential heroin production in Mexico dropped a "striking" 40 percent between 2001 and 2001, while in Colombia, the area under coca cultivation likewise showed a steep decline during the same time period, falling 18 percent in a single year. "Taken together, we see an overall strategy against the narcotics business that is producing a powerful impact," said ONDCP. (The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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