Latin America's Narco-Traffickers Diversify, Again: Part II
Sean Goforth - 08 Apr 2011
This is the second of a two-part series examining diversification efforts by Latin American drug-trafficking networks. Part I examined the FARC's illegal gold-mining operations in Colombia. Part II examines Mexican drug traffickers' use of oil-tapping to generate revenues.
Mexico's crime syndicates are well-known as exporters of heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines, importers of firearms, and perpetrators of violence. Their business has produced bloody internecine turf wars, with rival gangs battling it out for control over distribution routes mainly within the drug-producing states of northern Mexico. But over the past five years the drug trade has been squeezed between the pincers of Mexican President Felipe Calderón's avowed "war on drugs" on one side and shifts in the global economy on the other.
As the government crackdown gathered steam beginning in 2007, many of the routes used by the gangs for moving drugs into the United States were pushed onto the territory used for Mexico's other infamous illicit trafficking endeavor, human smuggling. So-called coyotes, who had charged $5,000 to $10,000 a head to smuggle migrants in search of work across the desert into the U.S., increasingly found their desolate treks being held up by gangsters seeking a payoff. The aim of the encroachment is extortion, especially of migrants who already have relatives in the U.S.
Thousands have been victimized as a result. Mexico's National Human Rights Commission calculates that drug gangs kidnapped 9,758 immigrants from Mexico and Central America between September 2008 and February 2009 alone. When things go smoothly, the U.S.-based relatives pay the ransom set by the gang, and the hostage is delivered to a flophouse in the United States. (The downturn in the real estate market in Arizona and California has conveniently left whole neighborhoods vacant for just this purpose.)
All too often things don't go that well. Human rights groups and a variety of media outlets have reported that untold numbers of migrants disappear every year in Mexico. Last August a group of 72 migrants were shot on a ranch in the state of Tamaulipas; the sole survivor was a 19-year-old Ecuadorian who played dead after being shot twice. He told authorities that before pulling the trigger on the U.S.-bound migrants, the murderers first tried to recruit them into the drug gang known as the Zetas, offering to pay them $2,000 a month.
The rising pressure on migrants is as much an act of desperation for some drug gangs as it is a tactic to diversify revenue. Like the FARC in Colombia, Mexico's criminal gangs have been pushed out of their traditional sources of illicit income and are seeking to coopt an otherwise legal trade. Whereas the FARC has moved into illegal gold mining as a new source of revenue, Mexico's criminal gangs have been increasingly linked to thefts of Mexico's key export, oil. In general, oil is pilfered by tapping an unprotected pipeline in the desert. Last year Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly, detected 712 pipeline taps, a five-fold increase since 2005.
Here, too, the Zetas have left their mark. In 2009 the Mexican government broke up an operation linked to the Zetas suspected of stealing $46 million worth of oil in the previous two years. A U.S.-Mexican probe in 2010 put the amount of income generated by the Zetas from stolen oil at $42 million over the past two years, on par with the group's estimated revenue from drug sales.
Broader estimates of Mexico's stolen oil vary widely. Pemex puts its losses at less than 1 percent of its total oil production. But given that it exported more than $100 billion in oil to the United States alone in 2010, that could still amount to more than a billion dollars. Private energy analysts, meanwhile, put the figure between $2 billion and $4 billion annually. They point out that the government has been slow to come to grips with the extent of pipeline tapping given the pressing demands of the raging drug war. Whatever the figure, few doubt the conclusion of the Mexican attorney general's office: Hundreds of millions of dollars from oil theft are going toward the wrong side in the drug war.
In one important way, pipeline tapping in Mexico resembles illegal gold mining by the FARC and other groups in Colombia: Oil and gold are legally traded commodities, so illicitly procured supplies are virtually indistinguishable from legally generated production once they are reintroduced into the market. But while it is easy to sell flecks, nuggets or even bars of gold without rousing suspicion, hawking gas is more of a chore. For this reason, bandits are suspected of unloading much of their oil at half-price within Mexico. Selling the tapped oil to Pemex franchise stations is another tactic. Most ambitious of all are attempts by some to broker deals to transfer the gas to the U.S. Since 2009, a handful of American businessmen have been indicted for buying stolen gas condensate from Mexico for resale in the States.
Recently, signs have emerged of a new frontier in revenue diversification: stolen foodstuffs. Surging global food prices are encouraging the theft of grain and vegetables by Mexico's crime gangs, as they are easily sold at market or to food suppliers. Two weeks ago, a warehouse in the state of Sinaloa was robbed of 250 tons of grain after bandits locked the facility's owner in a storage room. Sinaloa state police count five such thefts so far in 2011, though they admit many others have likely gone unreported. The head of Sinaloa's agricultural producers association told Reuters, "They come in groups of 20 to 30 masked men with their own trailers. It's very well organized." While the perpetrators' identity is still unknown, suspicions fall on the powerful Sinaloa Cartel.
How should these attempts to diversify revenue be read? Colombian, Mexican and U.S. officials insist that attempts by organized crime to expand into new arenas, be it gold mining or oil tapping, prove that the groups are under pressure and that their income from drugs is declining. Others worry that it means the groups are growing more nimble in their illicit entrepreneurship. If the latter, the supply and demand equation of the drug trade that held for so long may need revision: U.S. demand is no longer the only cause of drug gangs' existence in Latin America; global commodity prices now also play a role.
Sean Goforth teaches international political economy at Coastal Carolina University and blogs on Latin America for the Foreign Policy Association.
Mexico's crime syndicates are well-known as exporters of heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines, importers of firearms, and perpetrators of violence. Their business has produced bloody internecine turf wars, with rival gangs battling it out for control over distribution routes mainly within the drug-producing states of northern Mexico. But over the past five years the drug trade has been squeezed between the pincers of Mexican President Felipe Calderón's avowed "war on drugs" on one side and shifts in the global economy on the other.
As the government crackdown gathered steam beginning in 2007, many of the routes used by the gangs for moving drugs into the United States were pushed onto the territory used for Mexico's other infamous illicit trafficking endeavor, human smuggling. So-called coyotes, who had charged $5,000 to $10,000 a head to smuggle migrants in search of work across the desert into the U.S., increasingly found their desolate treks being held up by gangsters seeking a payoff. The aim of the encroachment is extortion, especially of migrants who already have relatives in the U.S.
All too often things don't go that well. Human rights groups and a variety of media outlets have reported that untold numbers of migrants disappear every year in Mexico. Last August a group of 72 migrants were shot on a ranch in the state of Tamaulipas; the sole survivor was a 19-year-old Ecuadorian who played dead after being shot twice. He told authorities that before pulling the trigger on the U.S.-bound migrants, the murderers first tried to recruit them into the drug gang known as the Zetas, offering to pay them $2,000 a month.
The rising pressure on migrants is as much an act of desperation for some drug gangs as it is a tactic to diversify revenue. Like the FARC in Colombia, Mexico's criminal gangs have been pushed out of their traditional sources of illicit income and are seeking to coopt an otherwise legal trade. Whereas the FARC has moved into illegal gold mining as a new source of revenue, Mexico's criminal gangs have been increasingly linked to thefts of Mexico's key export, oil. In general, oil is pilfered by tapping an unprotected pipeline in the desert. Last year Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly, detected 712 pipeline taps, a five-fold increase since 2005.
Here, too, the Zetas have left their mark. In 2009 the Mexican government broke up an operation linked to the Zetas suspected of stealing $46 million worth of oil in the previous two years. A U.S.-Mexican probe in 2010 put the amount of income generated by the Zetas from stolen oil at $42 million over the past two years, on par with the group's estimated revenue from drug sales.
Broader estimates of Mexico's stolen oil vary widely. Pemex puts its losses at less than 1 percent of its total oil production. But given that it exported more than $100 billion in oil to the United States alone in 2010, that could still amount to more than a billion dollars. Private energy analysts, meanwhile, put the figure between $2 billion and $4 billion annually. They point out that the government has been slow to come to grips with the extent of pipeline tapping given the pressing demands of the raging drug war. Whatever the figure, few doubt the conclusion of the Mexican attorney general's office: Hundreds of millions of dollars from oil theft are going toward the wrong side in the drug war.
In one important way, pipeline tapping in Mexico resembles illegal gold mining by the FARC and other groups in Colombia: Oil and gold are legally traded commodities, so illicitly procured supplies are virtually indistinguishable from legally generated production once they are reintroduced into the market. But while it is easy to sell flecks, nuggets or even bars of gold without rousing suspicion, hawking gas is more of a chore. For this reason, bandits are suspected of unloading much of their oil at half-price within Mexico. Selling the tapped oil to Pemex franchise stations is another tactic. Most ambitious of all are attempts by some to broker deals to transfer the gas to the U.S. Since 2009, a handful of American businessmen have been indicted for buying stolen gas condensate from Mexico for resale in the States.
Recently, signs have emerged of a new frontier in revenue diversification: stolen foodstuffs. Surging global food prices are encouraging the theft of grain and vegetables by Mexico's crime gangs, as they are easily sold at market or to food suppliers. Two weeks ago, a warehouse in the state of Sinaloa was robbed of 250 tons of grain after bandits locked the facility's owner in a storage room. Sinaloa state police count five such thefts so far in 2011, though they admit many others have likely gone unreported. The head of Sinaloa's agricultural producers association told Reuters, "They come in groups of 20 to 30 masked men with their own trailers. It's very well organized." While the perpetrators' identity is still unknown, suspicions fall on the powerful Sinaloa Cartel.
How should these attempts to diversify revenue be read? Colombian, Mexican and U.S. officials insist that attempts by organized crime to expand into new arenas, be it gold mining or oil tapping, prove that the groups are under pressure and that their income from drugs is declining. Others worry that it means the groups are growing more nimble in their illicit entrepreneurship. If the latter, the supply and demand equation of the drug trade that held for so long may need revision: U.S. demand is no longer the only cause of drug gangs' existence in Latin America; global commodity prices now also play a role.
Sean Goforth teaches international political economy at Coastal Carolina University and blogs on Latin America for the Foreign Policy Association.
FUENTE: http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/8461/latin-americas-narco-traffickers-diversify-again-part-ii
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