NOTE: The stories at the web pages below are in a 12page colorfilled
special section of the
Sunday Houston Chronicle.

http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/world/colombia/index.html
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/world/colombia/exterminate.html
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/world/colombia/medellin.html
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/world/colombia/boring.html
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/world/colombia/cleansing.html
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/world/colombia/exiles.html
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/world/colombia/brakes.html
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/world/colombia/litany.html
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/world/colombia/cattle.html
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/world/colombia/justice.html
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/world/colombia/night.html

Fearful of Colombia's example, Mexico, U.S. fight rising drug trade

By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau

MEXICO CITY With control of much of the cocaine trade shifting from
Colombian to Mexican gangs, policymakers here and in Washington are
wringing their hands over what some see as the "Colombianization" of Mexico.

Over the past two decades, the cocaine industry and U.S. promoted efforts
to curtail it have fomented corruption, violence and social collapse in
Colombia.

Though its major narcotics organizations have been dismantled in recent
years, Colombia remains the leading producer of cocaine. The country still
wrestles with the havoc enhanced by its drugtrafficking heyday, making it
one of the world's most violent societies.

Many analysts believe social and political differences between the South
American nation and Mexico make it unlikely the drug trade will unchain
chaos similar to Colombia's in this country that shares a 2,000mile border
with the United States.

Still, drug violence and common crime have escalated in Mexico,
contributing to a growing sense of unease.

As they consider their options, U.S. and Mexican policy makers look to
Colombia as a harbinger of just how badly things could unravel.

Mexico's "top leadership is extremely scared of what they've seen in the
drug trade," says a U.S. official involved in managing the United States'
relationship with Mexico.

"They don't want to become a Colombia. It would mean the criminalization of
their country, and it would guarantee them an extremely hostile
relationship with the United States."

President Clinton and Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo plan to discuss
narcotics issues among other matters at a meeting in Washington next month.

Last week, senior officials from the United States and Mexico met in the
U.S. capital to further define the two countries' growing antidrug
cooperation.

Their joint effort this year already has included U.S. training of Mexican
drug agents, U.S. support of the Mexican military's heightened role in the
drug war and exchange of moneylaundering information. The extradition of
suspected Mexican narcotics traffickers to the United States continues to
be discussed.

But despite the tough talk surrounding the Mexican drug trade, analysts
say, the United States will scramble to prevent Mexico from becoming a
second Colombia, even if that means tolerating a continued flow of cocaine.

"Mexico can cause (the United States) a lot of problems if you destabilize
it," says Jorge Chabat, a policy analyst at a governmentfunded think tank
in Mexico City who studies narcotics issues. "If you do nothing, you have a
narcostate on the border. If you push too hard (for effective drug
enforcement), you have instability.

"The U.S. government doesn't care if Colombia is peaceful," Chabat says.
"It is too far away."

The narcotics trade is nothing new in Mexico, which has long supplied the
U.S. market with much of its marijuana and heroin. For nearly a decade,
Mexico has served as the transit point for up to 70 percent of South
American cocaine reaching U.S. users.

But the decline of Colombia's most powerful cocaine trafficking
organizations during the past five years has allowed Mexican smugglers to
wield greater influence over the industry.

A lot more cocaine money now lies in Mexican hands, creating the potential
for more corruption and violence, analysts say.

Already, Mexico has seen a surge of violence. Some of it is linked to the
drug trade, but much of it stems from the economic crisis engendered by a
1994 currency devaluation.

Murders, kidnappings, robberies and assaults have become increasingly
frequent in Mexican cities and rural communities. Shootouts between rival
gangs have grown common in drug trafficking centers along the U.S. border.

Drug corruption scandals have reached the highest levels of government, and
law enforcement officials have become assassination targets of vengeful gangs.

Comparisons between Mexico and Colombia seem obvious.

Both are developing countries that suffer widespread poverty and yawning
chasms between rich and poor. Both have limping judicial systems that
seemingly provide little justice to their citizens. Both have military and
police forces frequently accused of human rights abuses.

In both nations, the threat of kidnapping terrorizes people of even modest
means. Ordinary citizens lynch suspected criminals. Bands of leftist
guerrillas and rightwing gunmen plague the countryside. In both countries,
journalists are murdered for what they report.

But the differences between the two countries are as dramatic as the
resemblances.

"Other than the fact they both speak Spanish, the similarities end," says
one U.S. official. "The overriding theme in Colombia is the violence, and
the overriding theme in Mexico is the corruption.

"Violence in Colombia seems to be more pragmatic, more mafialike," he
says. "The violence (in Mexico) is more emotional."

Long a more murderous country than its neighbors, Colombia exploded in
violence in the mid1980s, when its government moved amid U.S. pressure to
crack down on cocainesmuggling organizations in Medellin, Cali and other
cities and to extradite its top gangsters to the United States.

Colombia's murder rate more than tripled in less than 10 years, as the
government first went after Pablo Escobar and other leaders of the Medellin
cartel and then against the heads of Cali's cocaine organization.

The gangsters retaliated with bloodshed. Shopping centers and busy streets
became bombing targets. Prominent citizens were kidnapped and held hostage
to apply pressure on the government. Police, judges and politicians were
assassinated with abandon.

Today, the country remains embroiled in a civil war. A breakdown in the
justice system has meant that many murders go unpunished. Scores of
government officials and members of congress have been jailed in a
developing corruption scandal.

Following the dismantling of the Medellin gangs, which culminated in
Escobar's death in a 1993 shootout with police, and the arrest of top Cali
gangsters two years ago, Mexico's smugglers emerged as among the most
powerful in the business.

In recent years, officials say, the Mexicans have dictated terms to their
Colombian suppliers and taken over cocaine distribution in many areas of
the United States.

Colombian organizations still smuggle large quantities of cocaine, but the
decline of the drug trade's influence is palpable in Medellin and Cali, law
enforcement officials say.

Though the violence has eased in recent years, blood continues to spill
throughout Colombia in alarming quantities, especially in its drug centers.

The murder rate last year in Medellin stood at 228 per 100,000 people,
according to the Colombian government. In contrast, the homicide rate in
Houston last year was 14.7 per 100,000, according to the FBI.

Analysts cite several reasons why drugrelated bloodshed in Mexico will
never reach Colombian levels.

First, as bad as social conditions sometimes seem in Mexico, they pale in
comparison to Colombia's. The South American country continues to struggle
with a decadeslong civil war in which both guerrillas and rightwing
paramilitary fighters get at least some financing from the drug trade.

The leftist rebellions in Mexico remain at such a small scale that they are
almost unnoticeable.

In Mexico, says one U.S. official, "you don't have 15,000 armed guerrillas
who have turned to drugs."

Secondly, analysts say, Mexico's government is unlikely to crack down hard
enough on its politically wellprotected drug gangs to ignite a violent
backlash like that unleashed in Colombia.

"The political classes in Mexico were not corrupted by drug trafficking.
They have always been part of the game," says an official with an
international agency working with narcotics issues in Mexico City.

"There won't be a crackdown" in Mexico, says the official, who also has
worked in Colombia. "It will be a much more gradual approach. That's why
the (Colombianstyle) violence won't come."

In addition, the United States appears unlikely to push for severe
measures, analysts say. Drug corruption has become so entrenched in Mexico,
these experts say, that attempts to crack down on trafficking could spark
political instability and violence that would send shudders through
Washington.

"The Americans say they are pushing them, but it remains a big question
whether they will," says John Bailey, a political scientist at Georgetown
University who is leading a study on the relationship between the drug
trade and politics in Mexico.

In reality, narcotics issues remain a secondary element in a U.S.Mexico
relationship dominated by concern over trade and immigration.

U.S. policymakers have long held the Colombian government accountable for
its cocaine industry but have been willing to make exceptions for Mexico.

The double standard is apparent each year when the White House certifies to
Congress whether countries are fully cooperating with the U.S. war on drugs.

Colombia has been decertified for the past two years on grounds of official
corruption despite the dismantling of trafficking gangs, the record
seizures of drugs, the ongoing destruction of cocaine laboratories and the
eradication of coca crops.

Mexico was certified as "fully cooperating" again last March, as it always
has been, despite the arrest of the country's drug czar on corruption
charges just days earlier and accusations of highlevel narcotics
corruption in the administration of former President Carlos Salinas de
Gortari.

Still, drugrelated violent crime has grown to worrisome levels in Mexico.

Gang wars erupted last summer following the death of Amado Carillo Fuentes,
at the time considered Mexico's most powerful trafficker.

Shootouts and massacres rocked Ciudad Juarez, the city across the Rio
Grande where Carrillo headquartered his criminal activities, as people
hoping to succeed him tried to eliminate the competition. In one
particularly jarring incident, four physicians were beaten and strangled to
death, their bodies dumped on a city street.

Other murders have taken place in Tijuana, Guadalajara and across the
drugproducing state of Sinaloa, as smuggling gangs and benefactors
adjusted to a narcotics industry without Carrillo.

Though some innocent people have been killed, there has been little of the
indiscriminate violence for which Colombia is known, analysts say.

"So far the violence has been contained mostly to wars between trafficking
groups," says Luis Astorga, a sociologist at the National University in
Mexico City who writes frequently about the narcotics trade.

The increasing importance of the cocaine industry in Mexico comes as the
country enters an unprecedented era of democratic powersharing.

Analysts say the Institutional Revolutionary Party's 68year hold on power
in Mexico facilitated drug corruption at every level of government. The
ruling party lost control of the national congress in elections last July.
Opposition parties now control most large cities as well as key drug
trafficking states.

Experts point out, however, that Colombia's 40year experience with
civilian government and elections has had little impact on either its drug
trade or its civil war. Guerrillas have hobbled the local and regional
elections being held today by kidnapping or killing candidates and forcing
many to withdraw from races.

While more democratic government in Mexico could over time break the ruling
party's hold on power, it could also create public expectations for justice
that the corrupt legal system cannot fulfill, Astorga and other analysts say.

With many experts writing off Mexico's federal anti narcotics police as
hopelessly corrupt, the Mexican military has been given a greater role in
drug interdiction and enforcement.

Military officers now staff narcotics police offices at key border transit
points and coordinate antidrug intelligence operations.

"We have been quite encouraged by the military's growing participation" in
drug enforcement, one senior U.S. official says. "We feel confident they
are being effective."

Such optimism seems to ignore embarrassing setbacks.

Army Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, for instance, was arrested last February
two months after being appointed Mexico's top antinarcotics official
on charges of protecting a major drug trafficker. Since the military joined
the antinarcotics effort, there has been no noticeable drop in the amount
of cocaine crossing the U.S. Mexico border.

Some critics say the militarization of Mexico's drug war only will increase
human rights violations and corruption within the military without
dramatically affecting the flow of narcotics.

"If you send in the army and even the army is corrupted, that means the
problem has no solution," Chabat says. "The Mexican government is using its
reserves, and the problem persists.

"It's a matter of supply and demand," Chabat says. "It's a fight between
the invisible hand of the market and the long arm of the law. And the
market wins."