The Mexico Connection : Cocaine Cuts New Routes to the North

For more than a decade, drug enforcement officials had stalked the man they called “the godfather” of Mexican cocaine trafficking, but Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo routinely eluded them through a network of secret ranches and urban safehouses, hidden telephone lines and police protection.

Just last month, what were intended as surprise raids on three of the reputed drug lord’s houses in Guadalajara came an hour too late and ended in another failure for U.S. and Mexican officials. Instead of hauling in Felix Gallardo, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had to pull its own agents out of Guadalajara for several days to ensure their safety.

In their absence, or perhaps because of it, Felix Gallardo grew complacent. He remained in one house for three days, unaware that Mexican police officers posing as newlyweds had rented an apartment across the street.

Saw Their Chance

“Each morning, his bodyguards went out for breakfast,” a drug official recounted. “The pattern repeated itself for two days, so we said, ‘If it’s the same tomorrow, that’s our chance.’ That’s exactly what happened.”

The capture of Felix Gallardo last Saturday seems an unquestionable success. U.S. and Mexican officials charge that he ran a multibillion-dollar drug ring employing about 3,000 people, including police and politicians. He owned hotels, a small fleet of aircraft and 250 houses and ranches in several states.

But his dramatic arrest highlights a new and more disturbing dynamic in the decades-long fight against illegal cocaine smuggling into the United States.

Overcoming repeated assaults on their production and determined efforts to block their traditional transportation routes, the drug kingpins of South America have blazed new trails through Mexico, Central America and their own continent that make the international drug war in some ways more daunting than ever.

In Mexico’s case, a massive U.S. interdiction program throughout the Caribbean in recent years has increasingly shifted traffickers away from their usual routes to south Florida and made this country a growing transshipment point for South American cocaine headed for the United States.

Although no coca is grown in Mexico--an inhospitable climate for the highland plant whose dried leaves are the source of cocaine--Mexican officials now estimate that 15% of the refined cocaine consumed in the United States passes through here. U.S. officials put the estimate far higher, saying that as much a third of the U.S.-bound cocaine may now come through America’s southern neighbor.

Regardless of which figure is accurate now, a scant four years ago the total was only 1% or 2%.

“The traffickers have an infinity of routes,” said Hernan Vargas, a narcotics officer with Costa Rica’s judicial police force. “They are gamblers. They spread their bets all over the board. For every route we cut off, they get through on 10 others.”

So many are those options, in fact, that enforcement officials fear a crackdown in Mexico could simply push the traffickers deeper into Central America or, as it has in the past, draw Colombians north in their place.

The last major assault on Mexican drug organizations came in 1985, after the kidnaping and torture-death of Guadalajara-based DEA agent Enrique S. Camarena and his Mexican pilot. Drug lords Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo were jailed and Felix Gallardo, suspected of ordering the killing, went into hiding.

No Longer Off Limits

The arrests opened the way for Colombian traffickers to move into territory previously off limits to them. Until then, the Mexican drug organizations had jealously controlled the Mexico leg of the cocaine journey, insisting on picking up the narcotics in South America and delivering them to Americans at the U.S. border.

But now, Colombian traffickers, who dominate the world cocaine market, have begun cutting out Mexican middlemen and hauling the refined white powder themselves, in Colombian planes with Colombian pilots.

In many cases, the traffickers make pit stops in Central America. They refuel or change airplanes at isolated airstrips in the coastal lowlands of Belize, western Costa Rica, southern Guatemala and northern Honduras. Then they take off again for Mexico, where they aim to land as close as possible to the U.S. border.

“The Colombians came in like jackals over a dead zebra. And there was no lion there to shoo them away,” one U.S. drug enforcement official recalled.

4 Tons Shipped Each Month

Although Felix Gallardo denies all charges against him, officials say he trafficked for Pablo Escobar, a kingpin of Colombia’s Medellin cartel and one of the world’s richest cocaine traders. They say Felix Gallardo shipped an estimated four tons of cocaine across the U.S.-Mexico border each month, controlling supplies to the West Coast. Even traffickers who did not work for him reportedly had to seek his permission to operate along the border with California and Arizona.

“He controlled everything, and other people can’t easily jump into that position,” said a drug enforcement official who, like many of those interviewed, declined to be identified for security reasons.

“What about protection? Who’s going to go in and say it’s business as usual? You’ve got to have the boss. It’s the Latin American way of doing things. People like to talk to the boss,” he said.

Felix Gallardo held on to shipping to the West Coast of the United States--including the lucrative Southern California market--but the Colombians have taken over shipping to the Midwest and East Coast and now control two-thirds of the cocaine traffic through Mexico.

At least 158 Colombians have been arrested in Mexico on drug charges over the last six years, Mexican officials say. They admit concern about the Colombian infiltration into their country, noting the extent to which drug cartels have subverted national institutions in Colombia--in particular, the justice system.

“The Colombians are more bloodthirsty delinquents,” one Mexican official said.

Officials hesitate to speculate on the long-term effect of the Felix Gallardo arrest on cocaine supplies in the United States, but Ed Heath, DEA chief for Mexico, told reporters that it would have “a significant impact” on the market.

Privately, however, drug officials wonder how long that will last. “The demand is still there,” according to one source, who added that “there is a serious user problem in the United States”--still the biggest, most lucrative cocaine market in the world.

Cocaine seizures in Mexico have increased steadily, from about five metric tons in 1986 to 15 metric tons last year. U.S. and Mexican officials consider the increase to be a barometer indicating how much more cocaine is getting through.

“We seized 2.7 (metric) tons of cocaine in three months, but I am sure a lot more than that passed by,” said Javier Coello Trejo, Mexico’s deputy attorney general in charge of narcotics investigations.

One Cache Was Almost 5 Tons

“It used to be that we’d seize 300 kilos tops and think it was a lot,” he added. “Last year we found a cache of almost five tons. That says there is more production (in South America) and more consumption in the United States.” A kilo is 2.2 pounds.

The volume of traffic can be seen in U.S. seizures as well. In 1988, U.S. authorities confiscated 37.6 metric tons of cocaine, officials in Washington said. Of that, 28.4 tons were seized in Florida and 8.1 tons were intercepted near the Mexican border, with the rest being stopped elsewhere in the South.

Several of the seizures along the Mexican border were sizable:

-- March 9, 1988. Agents found 895 kilos on an 18-wheeler tractor-trailer crossing the border at McAllen, Tex.

-- Aug. 29, 1988. Another 1,232 kilos were found on a tractor-trailer at McAllen.

-- Dec. 15, 1988. Authorities found 857 kilos on vehicles crossing at El Paso.

Much of Mexico’s new prominence as a “trampoline” to the United States is due to the U.S. interception program in the Caribbean. According to U.S. officials, cocaine shipments moved relatively freely through south Florida until the mid-1980s.

“Most of it moved by private plane direct from Colombia, or with a refueling stop in the Bahamas,” said John McGee, assistant special agent in charge of U.S. Customs in Miami. “They used to land right in our municipal airports.”

Customs officials responded in 1981 and 1982 with two executive jets fitted with sophisticated radar and a radar blimp called “Fat Albert” near Key West. Officials later launched a second blimp at Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Under pressure in Florida airspace, the traffickers changed routes between 1983 and 1984, flying to airstrips in the Bahamas, where they moved their cargo to high-speed boats. They particularly liked Bimini, 49 miles off Florida, and Norman’s Cay, where Medellin drug lord Carlos Lehder reportedly had established a refueling station for traffickers.

The break in the Caribbean came in 1986, after authorities had further tightened their radar net. When charges of corruption reached as high as Prime Minister Lynden Pindling, the Bahamian government bowed to U.S. pressure and agreed to an extraordinary surrender of sovereignty that permits U.S. Customs, DEA and Coast Guard aircraft and vessels to use the islands as a base to pursue traffickers.

Since then, the United States has launched a third blimp on Grand Bahama Island and plans to put a fourth in operation this fall at Georgetown, Great Exuma. Two more, one in Puerto Rico and another on Great Inagua Island, will complete the radar fence.

The surveillance net forced traffickers to adopt another series of changes. Some planes moved to more remote islands, where the cocaine was transferred to long-range cabin cruisers. Haiti, with its extremely impoverished population and ineffective police force, has become a preferred landing spot. A few planes fly around the western tip of Cuba and land on the Florida Gulf Coast.

Airdropping Loads of Drugs

In addition, traffickers have revived a marijuana smugglers’ trick of airdropping loads of drugs to mother ships at sea, DEA special agent Jack Hook said in Miami. He said the traffickers fly across central Cuba, drop the cocaine to a ship at a rendezvous point and fly nonstop back to Colombia.

It is not known whether the drug flights have official Cuban approval, but Hook contended that Cuban officials must know about them because so many planes fly across the waist of their country.

At the same time, smugglers also switched to cargo ships. “The trend is to larger shipments in cargo containers,” Hook said. “They’re doing a very good job of disguising it.”

Cocaine stashes have been found in shipments of hollowed-out pineapples, cut flowers, frozen fish and other perishables, which are prime vehicles because they must be cleared quickly through customs to avoid spoilage.

Sesame Seeds, Auto Parts

“We’ve found dope in sesame seeds, auto parts, airplane engines, brown sugar, candy, cans of barbecued green beans, frozen fruit juice--you name it,” McGee said.

Among the most clever ruses, Hook recalled, was pure, liquefied cocaine contained in clear plastic bags tucked inside water-filled plastic sacks of live tropical fish. From the outside, all that could be seen was fish and water.

“One of the bags in a big shipment leaked and killed all the fish, or we wouldn’t have discovered it,” he said. “Who knows how much moved that way before we caught it?”

To date, the biggest cocaine hauls from cargo boats were two shipments hidden among pallets of Brazilian cedar boards. Dozens of the 12-foot-by-4-inch planks had been hollowed out, stuffed with cocaine and then meticulously sealed so they looked as solid as the other boards. One batch, seized by the DEA at Port Everglades, Fla., on Nov. 17, 1987, yielded 8,968 pounds of cocaine; the second, seized by customs in Tampa, Fla., last May, contained 7,211 pounds.

But even as they used greater ingenuity in the Caribbean, the smugglers shifted much of their traffic westward.

DEA officials believe Guatemala is now the favored transshipment point in Central America, followed by Honduras and Costa Rica.

El Salvador’s uses are limited by civil war and a lack of extensive lowlands. Officials have little information on Nicaragua but believe the war has limited its role, too. Tiny Belize, meanwhile, has begun handling more and more cocaine traffic as its marijuana fortunes have dropped.

The largest cocaine seizure in Central America to date occurred in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, in 1987. Three Turbo Commander 1000 airplanes from Colombia made drops of 800 kilos each on a jungle strip several miles inland. From there, the 2,400-kilo shipment was taken to port on a banana train and loaded onto a Miami-bound container ship with Panamanian registry.

“This was not a one-shot, fluke thing,” one DEA official said. “We’re lucky if we seize 1% of the cocaine going through Guatemala.”

Guatemalan officials seized 850 kilos in all of 1988 and one 349-kilo shipment so far this year. Former Interior Minister Juan Jose Rodil said his country offers “ideal conditions” as a staging area for traffickers.

“There is an absolute lack of internal controls. Drug planes come and go at will. Half of the 50,000 trucks crossing our borders each year are not inspected. The customs agency is corrupt from top to bottom,” Rodil said.

High-Level Corruption

Indeed, high-level corruption is a problem throughout Central America. Last year two U.S. grand juries indicted Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega on charges of narcotics trafficking, and U.S. officials have long charged that his country is a center for laundering drug money.

Last year U.S. officials accused the Honduran military chief, Gen. Humberto Regalado Hernandez, of allowing Colombian traffickers to transship through Honduras for pay. Also last year, however, Honduran authorities arrested Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, a major drug figure working for the Medellin cartel, and turned him over to U.S. marshals, who brought him back to the United States.

In Guatemala, some authorities suspect former Foreign Minister Alfonso Cabrera Hidalgo of ties to trafficking. In a case that broke last July, officials seized Erico Alfonso Ralda Batres as he claimed 54 pounds of cocaine in suitcases at Aurora International Airport. Waiting for Ralda in a jeep outside the terminal building was Carlos Cabrera, brother of the former foreign minister. The incident led to a flurry of newspaper speculation that Cabrera Hidalgo, now a Christian Democratic Party candidate for president, was involved in trafficking.

Although traffickers like to stop over in Central America, they can fly directly from South America to Mexico with extra fuel--but the trade-off is that the more fuel they carry, the less room they have for cocaine.

Many planes that once flew to the Bahamas now land on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and unload onto trucks. More commonly, Mexican officials say, the planes fly nonstop from Colombia up the Pacific and Gulf coasts of Mexico, then cut inland to isolated landing strips in the states of Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, Sonora, Sinaloa and Baja California.

To avoid detection, the drug planes usually stay low and about 10 miles offshore. Some escape notice through a daring technique called “mating,” where two aircraft fly in formation--as close together as possible--to show only a single blip on radar screens.

Just before the planes reach their destination, they peel apart. One follows a legitimate flight plan and lands legally, while the other dumps the cocaine elsewhere and takes off again.

The smugglers favor Turbo Commander 1000s or Cessna 206s, which can fly nonstop from Colombia with an extra fuel tank and can land with little damage to the aircraft on the innumerable short, dirt airstrips that dot the Mexican countryside.

Tactics and technology are only partly responsible for the traffickers’ success, however. The main ingredient, U.S. officials say, is corruption: Large-scale cocaine shippers, Mexican or Colombian, could not operate in Mexico without some kind of official protection to get their planes in and out of Mexico or their trucks across the country.

Mexican officials have always bristled at such charges. But Mexican Atty. Gen. Enrique Alvarez del Castillo made his government’s first public acknowledgement of official complicity in drug trafficking this week, when he announced that six law enforcement authorities were arrested for having supplied Felix Gallardo with weapons, radio equipment and information on drug investigations.

The high-level arrests were unusual--and they included one of the attorney general’s own deputies, Gregorio Enrique Corza Marin, who not only headed drug investigations for Sinaloa state but also was a relative of the wife of Coello Trejo, the deputy attorney general.

Also arrested were the city police commander in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, the Sinaloa state Judicial Police commander and three Federal Highway Police commanders.

After the arrests, officials reported droves of desertions from the police forces of Guadalajara, Culiacan and Mazatlan--cities where Felix Gallardo maintained operations bases.

U.S. officials say the arrests send a signal to other traffickers and police officials that President Carlos Salinas de Gortari “means business.”

Salinas has called the war on drugs a national priority and raised the budget for drug enforcement by 174% over last year, to $53 million. His administration also is installing a $50-million radar system in the Gulf of Tehuantepec with the capacity to detect low-flying aircraft 30 miles out to sea. The Mexican air force will be employed to chase down the craft.

In addition to Felix Gallardo, authorities have arrested two mid-level traffickers this year.

Gilbert Ontiveros Lucero, one of the most notorious smugglers along the U.S.-Mexico border, was jailed in Chihuahua state after officials seized eight tons of marijuana believed to be his. Soon after, police jailed Giuseppe Catani Ponsiglione, a one-time heroin smuggler convicted in the United States years ago as part of the “French Connection” heroin-smuggling operation. Police seized 650 kilos of cocaine from an airplane that arrived in Chihuahua from Bogota and believed Catani was behind the deal.

Despite these advances, U.S. officials remain cautiously guarded. They recall a history of other cases that have not gone as well, such as the Mexican army’s discovery of 4.8 metric tons of cocaine in a cave in Chihuahua state last year--the largest cocaine seizure in Mexican history.

U.S. officials believe the haul was really 8 tons on 17 flights from Colombia and that the army let 3 tons go through. No one was arrested, no plane was seized and, at the time, the government played down a bust it should have been proud to flaunt, they say.

U.S. sources suspect the former Mexico defense minister, Gen. Juan Arevalo Gardoqui, of complicity in this and other drug deals. Arevalo, who reportedly is living in a costly home in Chihuahua state, is one of several officials that the Salinas administration has quietly retired.

“This government has the right approach. But there is the right approach, and there is reality. There are people who are just not going to be publicly exposed, but who will be dismissed for health or whatever reasons,” one source said.

U.S. officials initially were stunned by Salinas’ appointment as attorney general of Alvarez del Castillo, a former governor of Jalisco state who apparently ignored flourishing drug trafficking there. But his deputy, Coello Trejo, is well regarded among both U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials, who gave him the title “iron prosecutor” when he last served in the attorney general’s office, from 1971 to 1982.

The 40-year-old lawyer is seen as a man with a mandate from President Salinas, and Coello Trejo vows to use his power to make more arrests. With the removal of Felix Gallardo, he said, “there’s going to be a fight to see who takes his place, and we’re going to be there watching.”

Times staff writers Don A. Schanche in Miami, Richard Boudreaux in Managua and Ronald J. Ostrow and Douglas Jehl, both in Washington, contributed to this story.