Trolling for Coke: Narcopolitics and the Tuna

Mexican tuna is certified dolphinsafe, and Cali couldn't be happier

by John Ross

EL SAUZAL, BAJA CALIFORNIA The oxidizing hull of the General Zapata, one
of the last great tuna boats homeported in this oncethriving cannery
enclave just north of Ensenada, creaks uneasily at anchor under the blazing
Baja sun. Dockside, a desultory seaman coils hawsers while others mend
miles of nets. These are signs that the General Zapata will be going back
to work soon.

With a stroke of his pen on August 15, Bill Clinton terminated the
sevenyearlong boycott on the importation of Mexican tuna, imposed by
Congress in 1990 to halt the slaughter of dolphins in Pacific waters off
Latin America. By mid1998, tens of thousands of tons of Mexican tuna may
well be flowing north again, exults Mexican National Fishing Industry
spokesperson Alfonso Rosinol.

Ending the tuna embargo represents a benchmark diplomatic achievement for a
number of important constituencies in the U.S. and beyond. For Senator
Barbara Boxer (DCalifornia), the key legislative architect of the tuna
boycott, the deal marks her skill in forging compromises; environmentalists
can hail stipulations that Mexico and other Latin countries introduce new
dolphin protections; and freemarket zealots can celebrate another trade
barrier crumbled.

There's another constituency toasting Clinton's signature on the tuna deal,
but they're keeping their good cheer to themselves. If past performance is
any indication, the surge of imported tuna will be attended by a
commensurate rise in the volume of "atun blanco" ("white tuna"), a the
sobriquet applied to Colombian cocaine that has found the tunafishing
industry a helpful host in getting its goods into U.S. markets.

By all appearances, the Clinton administration is well aware of the
drugtrafficking implications inherent to a revitalized Latin tuna trade.
But with the president and Wall Street committed to free trade, even
the nation's top drug authorities are willing to overlook a rising tide of
atun blanco.

For unknown reasons, tuna schools swim under schools of dolphins in what
fishery officials designate the Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP). Class 6
"purse seiners" and "longliners" such as the General Zapata utilize the
porpoises to locate catches and encircle them with enormous nets the
cause of the wholesale dolphin slaughter that first led Congress to impose
the boycott as an attachment to the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In the
years since the ban went into effect, dolphin mortality in the ETP has
declined by 97 percent, to less than 4,000 in 1996.

But while the dolphins thrived, the Mexican tuna industry once the giant
in the Latin American tuna derby, hauling in 38 percent of the catch with a
fleet that totaled 85 boats, 39 of them Class 6'ers took a near mortal
dive. In the early 1980s, many of the tuna boats then tied up in Ensenada
were "redflagged" from San Diego to avoid U.S. environmental restrictions;
American owners would sell their vessels to Mexican outfits, including that
of Captain Manuel Rodriguez (see below), across the peninsula in La Paz.
Then the boycott took the big profits out of tuna. During seven years of
embargo, the fishing industry counted 6,000 onboard jobs and at least
20,000 cannery slots lost. Exports plummeted from 83,000 tons in
preprohibition days to 15,000 in 1994, with a consequent $350 million
loss, according to Mexican fisheries undersecretary Carlos Camacho Gaos.

The boycott raised nationalist hackles; charges of protectionism and
"Yanqui imperialism" flew. Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo called the
embargo "unjust and inconsistent." For El Sauzal and Ensenada, the boycott
proved devastating. Most of the fleet moved south to Mazatlan, refocused on
national markets and was hit by a severe economic recession that dropped
the domestic demand for tuna by 20 percent. Three of the seven canneries
operating in El Sauzal shuttered their doors. Boats like the General Zapata
tied up and never went back to work, or else converted to anchovy fishing.

As the boycott dragged on through the '90s, Clinton's Commerce Department
and freetrade Republicans in Congress pressed for some resolution. In
1995, 12 of the largest fishing nations in the Americas signed the
Declaration of Panama, which committed them to new practices designed to
limit combined annual dolphin kills to less than 5,000. Many
environmentalists objected that there were too many loopholes in the
treaty, but in May 1997 the House of Representatives passed a measure to
grant the Latin signatories "dolphinsafe" status. In the Senate, however,
Boxer held out for close study of the new methods (primarily involving
setting out small boats to free dolphins from the seines) before new labels
could be affixed. Her bill, having won the support of several major
environmental groups, passed unanimously.

If the Great Tuna Boycott was bad for business, fishing for atun blanco has
emerged as a viable economic alternative for Latin American fishing fleets
in the 1990s. According to U.S. Coast Guard estimates, 180 to 200 tons of
cocaine 70 percent of the 300 tons consumed each year in the U.S. is
shipped north through the ETP aboard vessels putting in largely at Mexican
Pacific Coast ports. Not just a few of these vessels are tuna boats.

A Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) intelligenceservice bulletin, issued last
April, described "maritime shipments" as "the biggest threat in terms of
volume" and cited an unidentified Mexican cartel as having imported 10 tons
in 1994 in four major shipments through Pacific ports. To prove the point,
a metric ton was taken off a vessel chartered by TMM, Mexico's largest
ocean shipper, in early August.

With 8,000 kilometers of coastline and 76 working ports to cover, the
Mexican navy has not had much success stemming the tide in the last year,
only seven tons of Colombian alkaloid were taken in maritime seizures, much
of it aboard the Viva Sinaloa, a Mazatlanported fishing boat, in January
1997. The U.S. Coast Guard, which is empowered by Congress to make stops on
the high seas if the drugs presumed aboard are suspected of being destined
for the U.S., has done a bit better. Twelve tons taken in July 1995 aboard
the Class 6 purse seiner Nataly 1, reportedly cached in boxes labeled
"tuna" (U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey denies this detail), set a new
record for seizures. In October 1996, the Coast Guard scored an additional
two tons off a rusty tuna longliner, the Don Celso, in waters off Ecuador;
the Don Celso had put in at the West Coast Mexican port of Manzanillo three
times in 1996. Two and a half metric tons were taken off a third tuna boat,
the Oyster, in Honduran waters, concedes McCaffrey, who, notwithstanding
the use of the tuna fleets to move drugs north, lobbied for an end to the
boycott.

The Nataly 1's trajectory is instructive. According to San Diego trial
testimony, cocainehauling Class 6 clippers, cavernous ships with carrying
capacities of up to 1,200 tons and cruising ranges of 5,000 ocean miles,
load the drugs at ports such as Buenaventura, Colombia, and Guayaquil,
Ecuador, head for fishing grounds near the Galapagos Islands to throw off
authorities, then steam north to Clipperton Island, a onetime pirate
sanctuary approximately 700 miles southwest of Baja California, where the
drugs are offloaded onto smaller craft and taken to Baja ports such as
Ensenada and La Paz. Lawenforcement officials speculate that the Tijuana
cartel, under the direction of the mayhemminded Arellano Felix brothers,
take possession of the cocaine for distribution north of the border.

Ownership of the Nataly 1 traces as intriguing a trajectory as its ocean
voyages. The Nataly 1 was one of six tuna boats registered to Pesquera
Azteca, a front corporation organized by Jose Castrillon Henao, "maritime
director" of the Cali cartel's "cocaine navy." Castrillon, reportedly, had
over 100 fishing vessels, tuna and otherwise, under his command
registered to such entities as "Tuna Pesca Pacifica" and "Pacific Squid,"
Panamabased Castrillon, known as "The Admiral," was imprisoned during the
regime of Manuel Noriega when one of his tuna boats, the Juiliana, was
pulled in for transporting drugs, netted off Contadora Island in the
company of alleged associates of Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, but
was freed months later, after the U.S. invasion that carried off Noriega
for alleged drug crimes. Castrillon's lawyer was subsequently appointed
Panama's attorney general and freed his client.

Castrillon resurfaced in the 1995 Panamanian election when President
Ernesto Perez Baladeros tearfully confessed that he had cashed checks
totaling $51,000 in campaign contributions from the Admiral. In April 1996,
Castrillon was rearrested by a combined U.S.Panamanian strike force as
coordinated captures were made in Mexico and France. Curiously, the U.S.,
so eager to have Noriega in its hands, has made no move to institute
extradition proceedings against Castrillon.

The Admiral's arrest closed down the Mexican tunacocaine connection, at
least temporarily, when drug agents snapped up Captain Manuel Rodriguez at
his palatial La Paz estate. With half a dozen Class 6 purse seiners on the
high seas, Captain Manuel, a.k.a. "El Compadre," was known in environmental
circles as a "dolphinsafe" fisher i.e., he did not use nets to encircle
the dolphins. Rodriguez was only briefly jailed, although his partnership
with Castrillon had been amply documented. Sixteen months after his
detention, Captain Rodriguez remains under house arrest in La Paz, where he
is charged with laundering millions in Castrillon cocainenavy moneys.
Rodriguez had access to luxury yachts and helicopters, and maintained a
halfmilliondollar home in San Diego. Three of his confiscated cruisers,
one of them bearing the name El Sauzal, are tied up under government guard
in Ensenada slated to be sold and, with the end of the U.S. boycott,
expected to be fishing again soon for tuna of all stripes.

The CastrillonRodriguez connection to Mexico's largest tuna packer,
Mazatlanbased PINSA Industries, is unclear. The Mexican fishing sector was
privatized during the presidency of Carlos Salinas, whose nowimprisoned
brother, Raul, is said to have charged large commissions for the sale of
governmentowned enterprises and who is suspected of having laundered
millions in drug profits through European banks. Several commentators link
Raul Salinas to PINSA, a tie vehemently denied by company officials.
Synchronistically, PINSA is the parent company of Pesquera Azteca,
apparently a distinct entity from Castrillon's Panamanian operation. The
Mexican Pesquera Azteca runs 10 Class 6 purse seiners, all named the Aztec,
out of Mazatlan, Sinaloa, the home state of most Mexican drug cartels.

The propensity of Latin tuna fleets to move Colombian cocaine is
appreciated by drug authorities. Sicilian Mafia investors bought up
Venezuelan canneries in the 1970s to cover cocainesmuggling routes to
Europe and according to tunaboycott gadfly Craig Van Nolte, Washington,
D.C., representative for the boycottinitiating Earth Island Institute
the Russian Mafia is involved in Vanuatuflagged tuna boats homeported in
Colombia. (Both Venezuela and the far Pacific island of Vanuatu were on the
U.S. boycott list because of high dolphin kills.) Reported to be second
only to Castrillon in Panama's whitetuna trade is Colombian Alvaro
Butraco, who, tuna fishery observers report, operates three Class 6 ships
and sells to a "dolphinsafe" canner in Buenaventura, in the heart of
Colombia's cocaine zone.

Despite the increasingly public connections between Latin tuna fishers and
Colombian cocaine cartels, U.S. drug czar McCaffrey wholeheartedly backed
Clinton administration efforts to end the boycott. In a letter to Senator
John Breaux (DLouisiana), who cosponsored the whitetuna bill in the
Senate, General McCaffrey insisted that international observers placed
aboard tuna boats by the 1995 Panama Convention were adequate safeguards
against cocaine smuggling by the huge tuna clippers. However, in letters to
the Earth Island Institute, the observers themselves affirm they are only
onboard tuna ships when they are fishing, and are removed during loading,
unloading and transport operations, the most opportune moments in which to
stash contraband cocaine.

McCaffrey's defense of the Latin tuna fleets seems out of sync with both
his drugwar responsibilities and his curriculum vitae. As commander of the
U.S. Southern Command from 1993 through 1995, his offices were just up the
hill from where the Castrillon drug fleet rode at anchor one Castrillon
drug deal was struck only blocks from the U.S. Embassy, recalls Gustavo
Gorriti, former editor of Panama City's La Prensa. Gorriti, a Peruvian who
broke the Castrillon story, was stripped of his Panamanian work permit just
days before the whitetuna bill carried the U.S. Senate. In an electronic
message to this reporter in July, Gorriti expressed the belief that the
Colombian cartels would be delighted by the relaxation of the U.S. tuna
boycott.

Clinton administration myopia on the Latin whitetuna trade appears to obey
a higher power: free trade. The tuna boycott has stirred Mexico to appeal
to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, where it has won several
condemnations of the U.S. tuna policy as inhibiting free trade, and
Zedillo's secretary of natural resources, Julia Carrabias, recently
threatened that if the boycott was not lifted, Mexico would take the
embargo issue to the World Trade Organization, where the U.S. has been
buffeted by unfavorable decisions.

During Bill Clinton's visit to Mexico City in May, he reportedly pledged an
end to the boycott in private conversations with Zedillo. Determined to
keep the freetrade engine chugging during his second term, Clinton has set
his sights upon achieving a Western Hemisphere freetrade pact before he
leaves office. Nonetheless, opening up the gates to ColombianMexican white
tuna points a phosphorescent finger at the dark side of freetrade treaties
like NAFTA and the cartels' enthusiastic support for such pacts, which
greatly facilitate efforts to funnel their products into the U.S. with 13
million habitual users, the largest drugbuying club in the known universe.

Item: A 1993 U.S. Mexico City Embassy document, declassified by the
independent National Security Archive, disclosed that the Colombian cartels
and their Mexican associates were seeking to set up factories and build
truck fleets in the Ciudad Juarez area, across the river from El Paso, Texas.

Item: A San Diego DEA spokesperson recently revealed that the Arellano
Felix syndicate is being counseled by legitimate business advisers on how
best to take advantage of NAFTA. The revelation represents a significant
departure from DEA strategies: Former agent Phil Jordan, with years of
experience along the Texas border, confessed on ABC's Nightline that, in
the months leading up to the 1993 NAFTA ratification, agents were
prohibited from publicly discussing the treaty's impact on drug smuggling.
"This has been a painfully obvious problem from the beginning," adds Gary
Huffbauer, a fellow at the Institute for International Economics and one of
NAFTA's earliest supporters.

Item: The prospect of opening up the U.S. door to Latin tuna has Ensenada
businessman Alfonso Rosinol, the national fishing industry's spokesman,
talking about reopening shuttered canneries and even setting up a
processing plant in the Otay Mesa maquiladora zone to take full advantage
of NAFTA access. Meanwhile, 700,000 trucks come annually through the Otay
border station, a key smuggling pipeline, and the DEA has confirmed the
existence of "narco tunnels" burrowed between the zone and unincorporated
parts of San Diego County.

So brace yourselves, amigos. With the infrastructure back in place, it is
just a matter of months before the atun blanco washes up on U.S. shores.

Copyright (c) 1997, Los Angeles Weekly, Inc. All rights reserved.