Mexican Transnational Trafficking Organizations' Terrorist Like Characteristics 1 of 4.
Figure: a wall
mural inside “Fortress of Anunnaki,” of
the underworld—a remote stronghold of the Knights Templar cartel in western
Mexico’s Tierra Caliente valley, named by ‘El Mas
Loco’, after the Sumerian gods. El
Mas Loco was a Knights Templar
capo, his name loosely translates in English to, The Craziest One.
Daurius Figueria an eminent Trinidad professor
elucidated on the presence of Mexican cartels in the Caribbean here is some of
his analysis, including quoted material from the Daily Beast and US
intelligence.
The
fort itself was once the home of notorious Templar capo named Nazario “El Mas
Loco” Moreno—who, according to federal indictments in the U.S., was responsible
for shipping millions of dollars’ worth of high-grade crystal meth across the
border.
Moreno
also set up a vast criminal empire here in Tierra Caliente, in the Mexican
state of Michoacán, where he controlled everything from open-pit mining to lime
harvests.
Under
Moreno the Knights cartel became famous for its cult-like behavior. Members
dressed up like their medieval namesakes and carried out strange rites meant to
inspire loyalty and cohesion—including dining on the raw flesh of their
victims.
Eventually
the sheer power of the Knights cartel led to their downfall—as Moreno’s
death-grip on the state finally inspired a massive vigilante uprising.
The
Templars’ boss himself was killed under disputed circumstances in March of
2014, and many of his top lieutenants were also arrested or shot dead around
the same time. With their forces scattered and weakened, Mexican officials
proclaimed the Templars to be finished. (Quoted from The
Daily Beast).
The manufactured myth of El Chapo.
El
Chapo supposedly created the largest illicit trafficking transnational
organisation today whilst he was boxed in Mexico supposedly on the run from
Mexican state agencies and prosecuting a war for hegemony within the Sinaloa
Federation in his quest to be El Don then against the Gulf and Los Zetas
organisations. That El Chapo was able according to the manufactured myth to
successfully complete all of these agendas simultaneously whilst never leaving
Mexico speaks to his genius. El Chapo should be running the capitalist world
and lecturing in every Ivy League business school in the capitalist world.
Imagine a go-for in the Sinaloa Federation with a minimal primary education
rises to the top and creates a multi-billion trafficking enterprise. To believe
this then you must believe in the tooth fairy and know very little of 21st
century capitalism.
The Mexican journalist Anabel Hernandez in her book
“Narcoland” expresses the reality of El Chapo most succinctly as follows:
“Semi-illiterate peasants like El Principe, Don Neto, El Azul, El Mayo, and El
Chapo would not have gotten far without the collusion of businessmen,
politicians, and policemen, and all those who exercise everyday power from
behind a false halo of legality. All these are the true godfathers of Narcoland,
the true lords of the drug world.” . “There will always be substitute
candidates for support to continue the criminal enterprise. Many have seen
their time come in this way: Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Rafael Caro Quintero,
Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, Joaquin Guzman Loera alone
will quit when he feels like it, not when the authorities choose. Some say he
is already preparing his exit.” Anabel Hernandez’s paradigm is them
premised on the position that drug trafficking in Mexico is a state and
oligarchic enterprise. Those who read Mexican history know that the Mexican
oligarchy pre-dates the Mexican illicit drug trade. How then can the peasants
of Sinaloa supplant an oligarchy that dominates Mexico up to today? Please My
question from a Caribbean perspective is this: where is the so-called war
between cartels that is going on in Mexico in the Caribbean Basin? There is
Mexican trafficking hegemony but no cartel war.
The following is from Daurius Figueria.
The product mix offered
under the Mexican cartels has also changed; their illicit drug of choice is
methamphetamine, known as "meth", "ice",
"crystal" and "glass". It is manufactured in offshore
factories in Africa and Central America, eventually ending up in the Caribbean
island chain. The Mexican cartels control their own cocaine production units in
Peru and Bolivia and move cocaine from there to North America, Europe and Asia
via the Caribbean Basin and other trafficking routes.
The Mexican cartels are
exercising hegemonic control over the illicit drug trade of the Caribbean
island chain and changes to the order of the illicit trade in the Caribbean
Basin are evident, mainly: (a) the embrace of Caribbean "gangland" by
the Mexican cartels and the evolution of gangs of young men from
underprivileged areas that resulted, (b) the evolution of other illicit trades
such as human smuggling and small arms trafficking has been impacted (c) the social
order of narco-trafficking states has been usurped by the Mexicans' use of
drugs to pay locals for their services and as "currency".
Caribbean gangland must be
noted for its unique operational characteristics, i.e. Caribbean gangland does
not wear ink, colours, represent or tag as North American gangland is not Caribbean
gangland. In addition Caribbean gangland has an order/hierarchy and the
apex/players are rooted in illicit drug trafficking. Caribbean gangland has now
been embraced by the Mexican cartels; in exchange for services to the cartels
Caribbean gangland are given franchises to traffic product to consumer markets
in Europe and North America and be involved in the wholesaling and retailing of
Mexican-sourced product. The Mexican cartels are deliberately creating a new
division of labour and a new social order in the illicit trades of the
Caribbean Basin. The "law lords" of Caribbean gangland are, as a
result, becoming globalised players in the illicit trades, cemented in their
alliance to the Mexican cartels. This reality is impacting the lowest echelons
of Caribbean gangland as the feeding frenzy spreads and intensifies, driven by
the quest to get in on the new action unleashed by the Mexican cartels
throughout the Caribbean Basin. All vacancies are filled in this new illicit
enterprise and the wannabes prey on each other and launch ill-conceived
predatory attempts to topple the "dons", which evoke acts of graphic
violence with the intent of sending messages, which are never heard or internalised.
Hence the cycle of graphic gun violence.
This is as clear an
indicator of the impotence of narcotrafficking states of the Caribbean Basin as
any. The State is powerless against this level of organised crime. Caribbean
gangland, in its operational alliance with the Mexican cartels, has now evolved
to being a global player in a number of illicit trades ranging from drug
trafficking, human smuggling, small arms trafficking, identity theft and lotto
scams to the smuggling of counterfeit goods. The lucrative nature of the
illicit trades of the Caribbean Basin is illustrated by the operational
presence of gangs formed in the US, such as Mara Salvatrucha, Los Trinitarios
and Zoe Pound. They have linked their US operations to Caribbean Basin
activities – all in service to the Mexican cartels.
What Caribbean gangland is
today, in its evolutionary stage brought about by the nexus with the Mexican
cartels, will not be eradicated by draconian, knee-jerk anti-gang legislation
premised on US models. US reality has no relevance to Caribbean gangland; it is
part of the problem – not the solution. Draconian, knee-jerk anti-gang
legislation will fill the prisons, thereby ensuring that Caribbean gangland
takes control of these same prisons, where foot soldiers can be recruited and
schooled in the hard discipline of prison gang life, then unleashed on the
unarmed public. The most powerful organisation in Caribbean gangland today,
Association Neta, was formed in the prisons of Puerto Rico then spread to the
US. Today, Association Neta is an apex player in the illicit drug trade of
Puerto Rico, the murder capital of the Caribbean island chain. Learn well from
this reality. The abiding reality today is that Caribbean gangland is the foot
soldiers and enforcers of the Mexican cartels in the Caribbean Basin.
In the Caribbean Basin the
illicit drug traffickers dominate the illicit trade in small arms and human
smuggling. The dominance of the Mexican cartels has diametrically changed the
expanse and nature of the trafficking of small arms and human smuggling in the
Caribbean Basin. Mexican human smuggling organisations have set up shop on the
island of Hispaniola, other islands in the Caribbean and in several Central
American nations, moving migrants such as Cubans and extra-Caribbean migrants
to the US, and Haitians to Brazil. Small arms shipments supplied by Mexican
cartels are now leaving Honduras for sale in the Caribbean island chain, in
response to the drying up of the traditionally abundant supply from Venezuela.
Mexican cartels have
indicated a preference for two operational strategies for the narco-trafficking
states in which they have chosen to locate their trafficking operations. One
strategy calls for the recruiting of members of the military of the state by extending
trafficking franchises to recruited military personnel. In this strategy there
is a preference for members of elite units of the military establishment.
Mexican cartels prefer to corrupt and recruit members of the military as
politicians are transitory. Secondly, Mexican cartels enter a narcotrafficking
state by forming alliances with the narcotrafficking elites of the said state.
They offer these elites lucrative deals that are much better than those offered
by the Colombians and Venezuelans. Some members of these elites have made the
fatal mistake of treating the Mexicans as inferiors. The Mexican cartels, once
they have established their links with gangland and others, then move to
physically eliminate the local elites with deliberate violence (one can
literally lose one's head). This is how the Mexican cartels radically change
the social order of the illicit trades in a narco-trafficking state, instilling
a new order in which the State is forced to perpetually battle for its survival
because it has lost its capacity to maintain law and order.
Daurius Figueira is a lecturer in sociology at the
University of the West Indies, St Augustine. His latest book, 'Cocaine Trafficking in the Caribbean and
West Africa in the Era of the Mexican Cartels' (released November 2012), is
now available at leading bookshops and online at amazon.com. He is also the
author of 'Cocaine and Heroin Trafficking
in the Caribbean: The Case of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Guyana Vol.1'
(2004) and 'Cocaine and Heroin Trafficking
in the Caribbean: The Case of Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela Vol.2'
(2006).
The same year of the 9/11 catastrophe, the Bush
administration released the following statement on drug interdiction efforts of
the US government: “Hundreds of tons of
cocaine enter the US every year, by land, air and sea despite stringent USG
control measures. Even the 200 metric tons or so of Cocaine that the USG and
it’s western hemisphere partners typically seize in a year have little
discernible effect on price or availability “. (INCSR 2001)
Daurius Figueira wrote in his 'Cocaine and Heroin Trafficking in the Caribbean: The Case of Trinidad
and Tobago, Jamaica and Guyana Vol.1' (2004) that: “from 1996 to 2003 the price of cocaine and heroin have in fact fallen
and the purity of the retail product has risen. More importantly the network of
illicit drug trafficking has expanded in the Caribbean and drug prices on the
wholesale and retail markets of the Caribbean have fallen. Extradition has failed to impact upon the
structure of the trafficking enterprises and endeavours to result in a collapse
of the trafficking enterprise. Drug trafficking is now a sustainable globalised
capitalist enterprise. In fact trafficking in drugs, guns, and humans is an
integrated enterprise with a multi-product mix that ensures its
sustainability”. These trafficking
enterprises now dwarf state policing agencies with resolve, material and
organizational acumen”. Figueira further wrote that: “Two illicit drug trafficking hot spots are just a short run across the
gulf of Paria and the Columbus Channel to Trinidad’s coastline Sucre and Delta
Amacuro and it is from both states that the cocaine, guns, ammunition, heroin
and wild animals are smuggled into Trinidad and now Tobago.
On Haiti Figueira said the following: “The civil war in Haiti that was used to
remove President Aristide was among other things a war for drug turf funded by
drug money. The militias that engaged with Aristide’s with Aristides militia’s
for hegemony were led by drug traffickers displaced by Aristides’ elite
wielding state power who took over the trafficking enterprises in joint
ventures with agents of the Colombian cartels resident in Haiti. The best kept
secret of the Haitian illicit drug trade is the involvement of the non-African
elite, especially the Syrian Arabs in the illicit drug trade in Haiti and the
wider Caribbean. Figueira further noted that in the case of Trinidad: “Successive governments had within their cabinet’s
minions and vassals of the illicit drug trade. The NAR government of 1986 to
1991 would be the first government in the history of Trinbago in which members
of the government would not only be involved in illicit drug running, providing
services to the drug lords but would utilise the state to intervene in the war
between the Syrian/Lebanese cartel and it’s perceived enemies, firstly the
Jamaat al Muslimeen and then the Zimmern Beharry/Dole Chadee gang. This action
would not only pave the way for the attempted coup d’etat of July 27th
1990, but would also precipitate a war between cartels in the 1990’s that would
be the catalyst in the formation of an economy of crime predicated on gun
violence, murder and kidnappings. Figueira
further drew linkage, between the global trade in illicit narcotics and how it
impacts western states and in particular the Caribbean. He also elucidated the
clear and present threat of al-Qaeda to western interest’s, using the
geographic area of the Caribbean, as a means of aiding the organisation in it’s
bid to launch terrorist attacks on western soil: “Possibly one weapon in the arsenal of the war with the west is cheap,
abundant, high purity Opium base to be processed into Heroine for consumption
in the West, particularly Europe. The single potent reality for the West is that
the desire of the West for illicit drugs and the complicity of the powered
elites of the West with the illicit drug trade has afforded the al-Qaeda
network access to the finances, material and the means to penetrate the borders
of the West, in order to execute their military engagement with the West. The
Madrid bombings of 2004 bear salient, potent testimony to this reality. Since
the events of 9/11 the complicity of the illicit drug trade in Colombia,
Venezuela and Trinbago with al-Qaeda is now being granted voice in the western
media. Over the years proponents of the discourse of the greater kufr have won
adherents in the Indo-Muslim communities in Trinidad and Guyana. Males sent to
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for schooling return as bearers of the discourse for its
propagation. In addition Pakistani males have migrated to Trinidad marrying
Trinidadian Muslim wives and are residents of Trinidad. Al-Qaeda operatives and
sympathizers in Trinidad and Guyana are involved in the illicit drug trade and
the trafficking of guns, ammunition, explosives and detonators from Venezuela. Multi
product shipments now regularly cross the Gulf of Paria, the Columbus Channel
and the Atlantic Ocean to Trinidad. Al-Qaeda operatives have well developed
links to Colombian illicit drug suppliers. The al-Qaeda attack in Madrid Spain
was facilitated by Spain’s central importance to drug trafficking across the
Caribbean to Europe. Riding, these trafficking networks are al-Qaeda operatives
who profit from the trade, source material from the illicit trade, and utilise
operational bases of the illegal trade. The al-Qaeda sleeping assets in
Trinidad with their coven of sympathisers are in Trinidad only to amass wealth
and material via the illicit drug trade. But as the largest single supplier of
LNG to the US is Atlantic LNG at point Fortin, Trinidad how can Trinbagonian
political elites and state agencies in complicity with the drug trade protect
US interest’s in Trinidad? A military strike at Atlantic LNG is the most potent
strike against US interests in the western hemisphere outside of the USA. The
untrammelled trade in precursor chemicals between Trinidad, Venezuela and
Colombia is but another indication of the porosity of the borders of Trinidad
and the high propensity of an attack on US interests in Trinidad. Equally
disturbing is the announced intention of a Syrian owned Caribbean conglomerate
to manufacture urea ammonium nitrate in Trinidad for the export market. Ammonium
nitrate is the poor man’s weapon of mass destruction used in the bombing of the
Federal Building in Oklahoma City, USA. To manufacture urea ammonium nitrate in
Trinidad ammonium nitrate has to be manufactured and then combined with urea.
Given the trade in precursor chemicals what assurances are there that ammonium
nitrate manufactured at Union Estate La Brea would not be diverted to the
illicit drug trade for use as weapons of mass destruction on an LNG tanker or
LNG train at Point Fortin? A suicide
bomber breaking security at Atlantic LNG with a panel van loaded with plastic
explosives , ammonium nitrate in solution and the necessary detonators. The plastique and detonators remote
controlled or otherwise are widely available in the product mix of the illegal
drug trade at present. What about an attack on a loaded LNG tanker in the
stream or a tanker being loaded at the pier a la the attack on the USS Cole in
South Yemen? The worst case scenario
posited by Figuerira is a imminent threat that will, eventually become reality,
it might not happen in exactly the way he describes it but its inevitability is
carved in stone. Figueria further stated that: “the pressure on sustainability profitability and the drive for
maximization of profits demand therefore that a phalanx of state officilas and
politicians be on the transshippers’ payroll. Legitimate front businesses
including a presence in the financial sector is tactically necessary. The
resources to create and maintain Caribbean wide networks and alliances and the
replication of such structures in the US and Europe are fundamental, primary to
the creation of mainstream trafficking organizations throughout the Caribbean
including Jamaica.The only groupings in Caribbean society able to offer such
resources and influence to the Colombian cartels are the non-black oligarchs of
the Caribbean especially in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, and
the Netherlands Antilles. In the late 1960’s the Colombian cartels were
introduced to these families of the Caribbean non-black oligarchs. In the case
of the Chinese, Arab and Jewish members of these families in the Caribbean they
came to the Caribbean with ties to criminal organisations intact such as with
the Tongs and the families of the Bekaa Valley, Syria. Jewish families with
blood Caracas Venezuela linked to the Sicilian Mafia, the Camorra, and other
arms of the Italian organized crime syndicates. The white oligarch families of
Jamaica are linked by blood ties to other white oligarch families in Trinidad
and Tobago, Barbados and other areas of the Caribbean. This Caribbean wide
linkage was the basis of the appeal to the Colombian cartels of the white,
Chinese, Jewish and Arab oligarch families of the Caribbean. The primary drug
transhipping cartels of Jamaica have been from the late 1960’s the creation of
Jamaican non-black oligarchs: the whites, the Jews, the Chinese and the Arabs.
They brought to the table their business presence, their international trade
linkages and their financial resources. Most of all they brought their access
to state officials and the politicians of the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) and
the Peoples national Party (PNP) that the oligarchs financed and wielded
influence over. In turn the politicians brought with them the para-military
force needed to protect the product consigned to the oligarchs and the
organizational base to retail cocaine then crack in Jamaica. The militias of
the JLP and the PNP ultimately served the politicians and the overlords of the
politicians the illicit drug transhipping cartels of the oligarchs. The
political tribalism and the wars thereof ultimately suited the drug trafficking
oligarchs of Jamaica. The militias of the urban ghettoes introduced to drugs
transhipping by the oligarchs would move to replicate these structures but
under the control of the militias, out of this the Jamaican free market in
illicit drugs and guns was spawned. But the ‘posses’ would never attain the
critical mass to challenge the hegemony of the drug trafficking cartels of the
oligarchs. The posses were easily made the villians of the piece and
the fall guys for the war on drugs in the 1980’s hence the discourse of the
sensational , scale, size and reach of Vivian Blake and the Shower Posse. By
focucsing on the “posses”, the primary role of the Jamaican oligarchs in
illicit drug trafficking was effectively masked”. Figueira summed up the
Caribbean reality beautifully, few has done so as convincingly as he, in the
past and in contemporary times. He continued to elucidate on the issues of
Trinidad and Tobago or as he prefers to call it the: “Realities of Trinbagonian illicit drug trade”. Figueira
elucidated in a highly convincing manner further on the Trinbagonian reality in the following: “The UNC (a political ruling party in the government of Trinbago) has
placed within its Cabinet ministers who are active drug/crime family
members.
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