International Narcotics Review
5
In Search of an Endgame in Mexico
Mexican traffickers are able to organize quick and secure air transshipment offloads, move cocaine within Mexico with relative ease, successfully transport the drugs across the border into the United States, and collect and move large sums of money back to ColombtaJ^
By emphasing cohesion and adaptability, the major Mexican narcoticsorganizations have been able toationwide transshipment, cultivation, processing, and smuggling network capable of exporting vast quantities of South American cocaine and Mexican heroin and marijuana. Several factors enable the Mexican organizations to thrive:
Binding, long-term relationships or kinship ties among an organization'! lop-level members in Mexico. These bonds make it easy for trafficking organizations to maintain loyalty and discipline at the leadership level and to shield whatever decisionmaking process may exist from law enforcement investigation. In addition, it is quite common for the major
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traffickers to employ front men orwell-established and knownhide true ownership ofand properties.
Extended family relationships throughout an organization's workingin Mexico and the Untied States. Family bonds provide strong, wide-ranging lines of communication and influence that the Mexican kingpins can readily exploit.
Complex operational structures and methods thai defy simplyThe extensive toterconnecting and overlapping structure ofcapable of wonVing separately, jointly, or interchangeably enables them to minimize the effects of government antidrug efforts. Depending on the situation, the organization can be made to appear and to functiononfederation of separate but closely alignedightof mutually dependent franchises,ingle large networkto one man. |
In addition to their use of corruption and versatile organizational makeup. Mexican trafficking organizations have not hesitated to resort to violence to protect their activities from law enforcement or from rivals. For example. Arnado Carrillo Fuentes's relatively swift rise to prominence was based largely on family connections, his ability to exploit opportunities created by the deaths and arrests of rival traffickers, and willingness to use violence.
In our view, seizures of multiton drug shipments into Mexico by large jet aircraft will alone not cause significant disruption to the cocaine pipeline into the United Stales because the traffickers will adapt by using different
routes and methods]
Original document.
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