Day 2 - Part 1: South Texas Trafficking - Anatomy Of A Pipeline

REBIRTH OF THE GULF CARTEL

Ring Gains New Head, Narcotics Power Again

As the blistering June sun beat down on downtown Matamoros, more than a
dozen men wearing black masks and carrying submachine guns surrounded the
Tamaulipas State Prison.

They ordered the handful of state police officers to hand over their guns
and lay on the floor. From within the compound they took Jose Ramon Davila,
an accused kidnapper with links to drug trafficking, and fled in getaway
trucks after exchanging gunfire with frustrated officers.

The raid lasted just minutes, but its significance is still echoing in
Matamoros. For some observers, it signaled the rebirth of Matamoros'
notorious Gulf Cartel, once considered the most powerful drug smuggling
group along the U.S.-Mexico Border.

Headquartered just 150 miles from Corpus Christi, drug agents say the Gulf
Cartel is responsible for much, but not all, of the cocaine and marijuana
smuggled through the area to points north. The Drug Enforcement
Administration reported in 1999 that 64 percent of the drugs seized within
the country came from South Texas.

Fittingly enough, the raid came just a month after authorities referred to
cartel members as remnants.

Official Influence

Since the early 1990's, the cartel had gradually been losing power to
better known cartels in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, and was almost ruined
following the arrest and sentencing of its leader Juan Garcia Abrego,
according to law enforcement officials.

But in its prime, the Gulf Cartel was responsible for a third of the
cocaine entering the United States, officials have estimated. It gained its
power and reputation largely from Abrego's ability to bribe and influence
military, police and government officials at a level above his drug
smuggling peers.

"Abrego had connections at the highest levels of the Mexican government,"
said Phil Jordan, a retired DEA agent and former chief of the El Paso
Intelligence Center, a multi-agency effort to track the border and drug
trafficking. "In his heyday, he had indirect connection to Los Pinos (The
Mexican White House).

"Abrego was considered one of the most powerful godfathers of the drug
trade, whether Colombian or Mexican."

$20 Billion A Year

As the cartel hit its stride, the organization grossed $20 billion a year
and extended its reach of corruption across the Rio Grande. Immigration and
Naturalization Service employees and buses were used to move cocaine, two
Texas National Guardsmen were used to smuggle drugs and there were
unsubstantiated allegations that Border Patrol agents at the checkpoint in
Sarita had been bribed to let shipments pass, according to published
reports from Abrego's trial.

During Abrego's 1996 drug trafficking and money laundering trial in
Houston, it was revealed that Abrego paid $1.5 million a month to the man
in charge of bringing down the cartel, Javier Coello Trejo, Mexico's deputy
attorney general. The federal police commander in Matamoros was responsible
for collecting the money.

The drug lord's greatest contribution to Mexican smuggling was the creation
of an arrangement with the Cali Cartel in Colombia to move their cocaine
anywhere in the United States in exchange for 50 percent of the load.

New Business Model

Previously, Mexican drug lords had smuggled Colombian cocaine for a set fee
as Colombians distributed the drugs once inside the United States. The new
arrangement gave Abrego more risk, more responsibility and ballooning profits.

Within a few years, Abrego's deal became the norm in Colombian-Mexican
relations, and the power and wealth of Mexican cartels mushroomed.

Abrego's decline began in earnest when he became the first drug trafficker
ever named to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list in 1995. After his face went
up on the list, Abrego spent much of his time eluding capture as Colombian
associates became wary of dealing with a wanted fugitive, according to
published reports.

Following Abrego's arrest on a ranch outside of Monterrey in 1996, and his
extradition to Houston to stand trial, the cartel was laid low, law
enforcement officials said. Members battled over leadership and the Juarez
Cartel nipped at its edges, claiming its territory along the border.

"(Abrego's arrest) had a significant impact on the Abrego organization, but
it did not stop other organizations from operating in the South Texas
area," said Ken Magidson, Chief of the Drug Task Force and Organized Crime
Drug Enforcement Task Force with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Houston.

A New Leader

In Abrego's absence, the Gulf Cartel was left weak, but alive, despite U.S.
and Mexican claims that arrests had killed any remnants of the group. Jorge
Chabat, a Mexico City political analyst and expert on drug trafficking,
said that most of the arrests had little impact because they were of
mid-level members who are easy to replace.

"The Gulf Cartel supposedly suffered a bad blow with the capture of
Abrego," Chabat said. "They've had a low profile, but it seems they never
stopped functioning."

In August 1997, six months after Abrego was sentenced, a shootout in
Matamoros over control of the headless Gulf Cartel left three dead.

When the dust had cleared two years later, a new leader was christened by
American law enforcement: Oziel Cardenas-Guillen.

$2 Million Bounty

Like they did with Abrego before him, the State Department has placed a $2
million bounty on Oziel Cardenas-Guillen's head.

Cardenas-Guillen, nicknamed the "friend-killer," is not unknown to U.S. law
enforcement. In 1992 he was arrested on drug smuggling charges along with
two other men at a Bonanza restaurant in Brownsville. After coming to a
plea agreement with prosecutors, Cardenas-Guillen testified at the trial of
his co-conspirators, who both were found guilty and received 78-month
sentences, according to court records.

Cardenas-Guillen, the alleged ringleader of the attempt to sell two
kilograms of cocaine, served just a fraction of his 63-month sentence time
at a federal prison in Hinton, Okla. before he was returned to Mexico as
part of a prisoner exchange.

Today, the organization appears re-energized under Cardenas-Guillen.
According to the Mexican Attorney General's office, the Gulf Cartel is now
the fourth most powerful cartel in Mexico, operating in 10 Mexican states
and as far south as the Yucatan. And law enforcement agents in the United
States say that while not omnipotent, the cartel is responsible for a
majority of the drugs coming across the South Texas border.

Propped Up By Lawmen

But despite the cartel's renewed notoriety, several observers in Mexico say
Cardenas-Guillen has been propped up by law enforcement as "We are looking
for specific people," said Francisco Cayuela Villarreal. "We have two or
three suspects, but we need to capture them."

No Hope

The suspects, says Cayuela, have fled Matamoros and Tamaulipas and he needs
the help of other Mexican states and possibly the United States to find them.

As for Cardenas, he says he doubts he is walking around with impunity. "I
understand his pain," he said of Silva.

Silva says he is just rolling the dice with his outspokenness, to see what
shakes out. He says he's not exactly afraid, but that he knows how risky
what he's doing is.

But, perhaps paradoxically, he says he harbors no hope for things getting
better in Matamoros. The situation he has known most of his professional
life won't change, he says.

"I don't hope for anything," he said emphatically. "We talk in the vacuum,
in the air."