Mexico's Drug War - Page 64

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has seized approximately one million pills laced with fentanyl allegedly linked to the Sinaloa Cartel in what authorities say is the biggest bust for the drug in California history.

The seizure happened earlier this month in Inglewood, California, after the DEA’s Los Angeles Field Division High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Group 48, along with the DEA New York Division Tactical Diversion Squad and Hawthorne Police Department, had been investigating a Los Angeles-area drug trafficking organization since May that authorities believed was linked to the Sinaloa Cartel.

“DEA agents identified Southern California narcotic couriers and stash house managers who were responsible for distributing narcotics to other drug distributors in the area,” the DEA said in a press release regarding the seizure.

Authorities subsequently obtained a federal search warrant and executed the drug bust on July 5 at a residence in Inglewood which resulted in the seizure of approximately one million fake pills laced with fentanyl that were intended for retail distribution with an estimated street value of between $15 to $20 million.

“This massive seizure disrupted the flow of dangerous amounts of fentanyl into our streets and probably saved many lives,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge Bill Bodner. “The deceptive marketing coupled with the ease of accessibility makes these small and seemingly innocuous pills a significant threat to the health and safety of all our communities. A staggering number of teens and young adults are unaware that they are ingesting fentanyl in these fake pills and are being poisoned.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and is a synthetic opioid that is approved for treating severe pain but can often be diverted for abuse and misuse.

“Most recent cases of fentanyl-related harm, overdose, and death in the U.S. are linked to illegally made fentanyl,” the CDC warns on their website. “It is sold through illegal drug markets for its heroin-like effect. It is often mixed with heroin and/or cocaine as a combination product -- with or without the user’s knowledge -- to increase its euphoric effects.”

More than 107,000 Americans have died as a result of fentanyl overdose or poisoning, according to the CDC.

“Criminal drug networks in Mexico are mass-producing illicit fentanyl and fake pills pressed with fentanyl in filthy, clandestine, unregulated labs,” the DEA warned in their statement. “These fake pills are designed to look like real prescription pills right down to the size, shape, color and stamping. These fake pills typically replicate real prescription opioid medications such as oxycodone (Oxycontin, Percocet), hydrocodone (Vicodin), and alprazolam (Xanax); or stimulants like amphetamines (Adderall).”

According to the DEA, Los Angeles is a major transport and shipment hub for illegal drugs coming from the U.S.-Mexico border and are often stored in warehouses, storage units and residential properties in the region.

“The bulk shipments of drugs are usually broken down into smaller quantities and transported to other states or distributed to local dealers,” the DEA said. “The greater Los Angeles area has many international airports, freeways, and bus and train lines that make it easy for shipments to be smuggled to other destinations.

The DEA, however, has been getting more successful year on year at stopping and seizing drug shipments. The DEA offices in Los Angeles seized approximately three million fentanyl pills in 2021 -- close to three times the amount seized in 2020. And, in the first four months alone of 2022, DEA Los Angeles have seized an estimated 1.5 million of the pills -- a 64% increase over the same period in 2021.

This investigation into the drug trafficking organization is ongoing.

MEXICO CITY, July 15 (Reuters) - Mexican military have captured notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, convicted for the murder and torture of a U.S. anti-narcotics agent in 1985, two sources said on Friday, a major coup for both Mexican and U.S. law enforcement agencies.

The kingpin rose to prominence as a co-founder of the Guadalajara cartel, one of Latin America's most powerful drug trafficking organizations during the 1980s, and had been among the most prized targets for U.S. officials.

Caro Quintero spent 28 years in prison for the brutal murder of former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, one of the most notorious murders in Mexico's bloody narco wars that led to a nadir in U.S.-Mexico co-operation in the five-decade long 'war on drugs.' The events were dramatized in the 2018 Netflix series "Narcos: Mexico."

Caro Quintero has previously denied involvement in the killing of Camarena.

In 2013, Caro Quintero was released on a technicality by a Mexican judge. He quickly went underground and returned to trafficking, according to U.S. officials, who placed him on the FBI's Top 10 most wanted fugitives list and put a $20 million bounty on his head, a record for a drug trafficker.

"It is probably one of the most important captures of the last decade in terms of importance to the DEA," said Mike Vigil, the DEA's former chief of international operations.

While Caro Quintero is no longer considered a major player in the international drug trafficking world, the symbolic impact of his capture is likely to be significant on both sides of the U.S-Mexico border.

"This will hopefully start to mend the frayed relationship between the United States and Mexico in terms of combating drug trafficking," said Vigil.

Mexico's unwillingness to extradite Caro Quintero to the United States prior to his release from prison had always been a source of tension between the two countries and Washington is likely to demand his extradition once again.

Last year, Caro Quintero lost a final appeal against extradition to the United States.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — As Mexican marines closed in on infamous drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero deep in the mountains of his native state of Sinaloa, it was a 6-year-old bloodhound named “Max” who rousted from the undergrowth the man allegedly responsible for the murder of a U.S. DEA agent more than three decades ago.

While the United States’ motivation to find Caro Quintero was never in doubt — hence the $20 million reward for information leading to his capture — there was less certainty about the commitment of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had made clear his disinterest in pursuing drug lords.

Yet on Friday, three days after López Obrador and U.S. President Joe Biden met in the White House, the most wanted target of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was in Mexican custody.

Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said in a statement late Friday that Caro Quintero was arrested for extradition to the U.S. and he would be held at the maximum security Altiplano prison about 50 miles west of Mexico City.

“It seems to me that in the private talks between President Joe Biden and Andrés Manuel (López Obrador) they surely agreed to turning over high-profile drug traffickers again, which had been suspended,” said security analyst David Saucedo.

Cooperation between the DEA and Mexico’s marines had led to some of the highest-profile captures during previous administrations, but not under López Obrador, Saucedo noted.

Both presidents face domestic pressure to do more against drug traffickers. With Caro Quintero’s arrest, “Narcos are being captured again and I believe that clearly it was what was in fact needed,” Saucedo said.

Samuel González, who founded the organized crime office in Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office and now a security analyst, said the capture may not have a major effect on the map of organized crime in Mexico, as Caro Quintero was not as powerful as decades ago, and it might even generate more violence in territories such as Sonora, at the US border.

But he said that to López Obrador’s benefit, the arrest “shows evidence that there’s no protection of capos” from his administration.

González believes Caro Quintero has long been a thorn in the bilateral relationship, but said that “without doubt” his capture was fruit of the recent negotiations in Washington.

“The Americans never stopped pressing for his arrest,” González said.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar both expressed gratitude for Mexico’s efforts to catch the man blamed for the brutal torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in 1985 — a case that brought a low point in U.S.-Mexico relations.

“This achievement is a testament to Mexico’s determination to bring to justice someone who terrorized and destabilized Mexico during his time in the Guadalajara Cartel; and is implicated in the kidnapping, torture, and murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena,” Salazar said in a statement late Friday.

Garland said the U.S. government would seek his immediate extradition.

“My hope is that with the capture of Caro Quintero, that that will mend a lot of tensions between the DEA and Mexico”, said Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations.

Mexico’s navy and Attorney’s General Office led the operation deep in the mountains that straddle the border between Sinaloa and Chihuahua states, many miles from any paved road. They found Caro Quintero, with help of “Max,” hiding in brush in a place in Sinaloa called San Simon.

A navy Blackhawk helicopter carrying 15 people crashed near the coastal city of Los Mochis during the operation, killing 14 of those aboard. The navy said in a statement that it appeared to have been an accident, with the cause still under investigation.

López Obrador said Friday night that the marines had been providing support to the forces who captured Caro Quintero.

Caro Quintero came from Badiraguato, Sinaloa, the same township as Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, which came later. Caro Quintero was one of the founders of the Guadalajara cartel and according to the DEA was one of the primary suppliers of heroin, cocaine and marijuana to the United States in the late 1970s and 1980s.

He blamed Camarena for a raid on a huge marijuana plantation in 1984. The next year, Camarena was kidnapped in Guadalajara, allegedly on orders from Caro Quintero. His tortured body was found a month later.

Caro Quintero was first captured in Costa Rica in 1985 and was serving a 40-year sentence in Mexico when an appeals court overturned his verdict in 2013. The Supreme Court upheld the sentence, but it was too late — Caro Quintero had been spirited off in a waiting vehicle.

Caro Quintero was added to FBI’s 10 most wanted list in 2018 with a $20 million reward for his capture.

López Obrador had previously seemed ambivalent about his case.

Last year, the president said the legal appeal that led to Caro Quintero’s release was “justified” because supposedly no verdict had been handed down against the drug lord after 27 years in jail. López Obrador also depicted a later warrant for his re-arrest as an example of U.S. pressure.

“Once he was out, they had to look for him again, because the United States demanded he shouldn’t have been released, but legally the appeal was justified,” López Obrador said.

Presidential spokesman Jesús Ramírez said at the time, “The president was just saying that it was a legal aberration that the judge had not issued a verdict on Mr. Caro Quintero after 27 years ... but he was not defending his release.”

While Caro Quintero was a fugitive, Mexican reporter Anabel Hernandez interviewed him twice in the mountains of northern Mexico without revealing the location. Caro Quintero claimed in those interviews that he was no longer involved in the drug trade.

Tijuana, Mexico (AP) -- The Mexican border cities of Tijuana and Mexicali along with Rosarito and Ensenada were hit by gang violence that included vehicles being set ablaze and road blockades.

The U.S. Consulate in Tijuana instructed its employees “to shelter in place until further notice” around midnight because of late Friday's violence.

It was the third time this week Mexican cities have seen widespread arson and shootings by drug cartels. The gangs appear to be targeting stores, vehicles and innocent bystanders in response to disputes or attempts to capture gang members.

Baja California state officials said a total of 24 vehicles had been hijacked and burned at different points throughout the state: 15 in Tijuana, three in Rosarito, and two each in Mexicali, Ensenada, and Tecate.

Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero blamed it on disputes between drug gangs and asked them to stop the violence.

Caballero issued a public appeal to “organized crime,” the term used in Mexico for drug cartels, to stop the growing trend of targeting innocent civilians.

“Today we are saying to the organized crime groups that are committing these crimes, that Tijuana is going to remain open and take care of its citizens," Caballero said in a video, “and we also ask them to settle their debts with those who didn’t pay what they owe, not with families and hard-working citizens.”

The extent of the violence was still unclear Saturday. Late Friday, the U.S. Consulate General in Tijuana said in a statement that it “is aware of reports of multiple vehicle fires, roadblocks and heavy police activity in Tijuana, Mexicali, Rosarito, Ensenada, and Tecate.”

On Saturday, few people ventured out on the streets in Tijuana and many of the bus and passenger van services stopped running, leaving some residents unable to get where they were going.

“Let them fight it out among themselves, but leave us alone,” said Tijuana resident Blanca Estela Fuentes, as she looked for some means of public transport. “So they kill each other, they can do whatever they want, but the public, why are we to blame?"

Later Saturday, Caballero, the Tijuana mayor, said some bus and van routes had resumed service.

The federal public safety department said one person was wounded in the violence and that federal, state and local forces had detained 17 suspects, including seven in Tijuana, and four each in Rosarito and Mexicali.

It said some of the suspects had been identified as members of the Jalisco cartel, the group blamed for burning stores and shooting people earlier this week in the states of Jalisco and Guanajuato.

The area around Tijuana, which borders southern California, is a lucrative drug-trafficking corridor long dominated by the Arellano Felix cartel but which has since become a battle ground between various gangs, including the Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels.

The mayor's comment about Tijuana remaining open was an apparent reference to the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, where some classes and public events were cancelled after similar violence on Thursday.

Alleged gang members killed nine people, including four employees of a radio station, in Ciudad Juarez after a fight between rival gangs at a local prison left two inmates dead.

On Tuesday, drug cartel gunmen burned vehicles and businesses in the western states of Jalisco and Guanajuato in response to an attempt to arrest a high-ranking cartel leader of the Jalisco cartel.

Oxxo, a national chain of convenience stores owned by Femsa, the country’s largest bottling company, said 25 of its stores in Guanajuato — which borders Jalisco, home to the cartel of the same name — were either totally or partially burned Tuesday.

Speaking about the Ciudad Juarez violence Thursday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said: “They attacked the civilian, innocent population like a sort of revenge. It wasn’t just a clash between two groups, but it got to the point where they began to shoot civilians, innocent people. That is the most unfortunate thing in this affair.”

Four employees of the MegaRadio station who were broadcasting a live promotional event outside a pizza store in Ciudad Juarez were killed in the shootings.

Such random violence is not without precedent in Mexico.

In June of last year, a rival faction of the Gulf cartel entered the border city of Reynosa and killed 14 people the governor identified as “innocent citizens.” The military responded and killed four suspected gunmen.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president has begun exploring plans to sidestep congress to hand formal control of the National Guard to the army, a move that could extend the military’s control over policing in a country with high levels of violence.

That has raised concerns because President Andrés Manuel López Obrador won approval for creating the force in 2019 by pledging in the constitution that it would be under nominal civilian control and that the army would be off the streets by 2024.

Neither the National Guard nor the military have been able to lower the insecurity in the country, however. This past week, drug cartels staged widespread arson and shooting attacks, terrifying civilians in three main northwest cities in a bold challenge to the state. On Saturday, authorities sent 300 army special forces and 50 National Guard members to the border city of Tijuana.

Still, López Obrador wants to keep soldiers involved in policing, and remove civilian control over the National Guard, whose officers and commanders are mostly soldiers, with military training and pay grades.

But the president no longer has the votes in congress to amend the constitution and has suggested he may try to do it as a regulatory change with a simple majority in congress or by an executive order and see if the courts will uphold that.

López Obrador warned Friday against politicizing the issue, saying the military is needed to fight Mexico’s violent drug cartels. But then he immediately politicized it himself.

“A constitutional reform would be ideal, but we have to look for ways, because they (the opposition) instead of helping us, are blocking us, there is an intent to prevent us from doing anything,” López Obrador said.

The two main opposition parties also had a different positions when they were in power. They supported the army in public safety roles during their respective administrations beginning in 2006 and 2012.

When López Obrador was running for president, he called for taking the army off the streets. But being in power — and seeing homicides running at their highest sustained levels ever — apparently changed his mind.

He has relied heavily on the military not just for crime-fighting. He sees the army and navy as heroic, patriotic and less corruptible, and has entrusted them with building major infrastructure projects, running airports and trains, stopping migrants and overseeing customs at seaports.

Mexico’s army has been deeply involved in policing since the start of the 2006 drug war. But its presence was always understood as temporary, a stop-gap until Mexico could build trustworthy police forces.

López Obrador appears to have abandoned that plan, instead making the military and quasi-military force like the National Guard the main solution. “Their mandate has to be prolonged,” he said.

“I think the best thing is for the National Guard to be a branch of the Defense Department to give it stability over time and prevent it from being corrupted,” he said. He also wants the army and the navy to help in public safety roles beyond 2024, the current dateline established in a 2020 executive order.

The force has grown to 115,000, but almost 80% of its personnel were drawn from the ranks of the military.

The United Nations and human rights groups have long expressed reservations about having the military do police work. and Mexico’s Supreme Court has yet to decide on several appeals against what critics say are unconstitutional tasks given to the National Guard.

The U.N. Human Rights High Commissioner’s office said last week that militarizing civil institutions, such as policing, weakens democracy. Soldiers aren’t trained for that, the military by nature isn’t very open to scrutiny, it has been implicated in human rights abuses, and the presence of troops hasn’t resolved the pressing question of how to reform police, prosecutors and courts.

While López Obrador claims human rights abuses are no longer tolerated, the governmental National Human Rights Commission has received more than a thousand complaints alleging abuses by the National Guard. The agency has issued five recommendations in cases where there was evidence of excessive use of force, torture or abuse of migrants.

“The problem with using the military in civilian roles is that we don’t have any control of what goes on inside” the forces, said Ana Lorena Delgadillo, director of the civic group Foundation For Justice.

Delgadillo said that placing the National Guard under the Defense Department, despite constitutional language defining it as a civilian-commanded force, is “authoritarian,” will be challenged in court and will not help to pacify the country.

The Mexican Employers’ Association, Coparmex, said in a statement that the capabilities of state police should instead be strengthened. “It is them and the (state prosecutors’ offices) that are authorized to interact with the civilian population,” the group said.

Perhaps more to the point, the quasi-military National Guard has not been able to bring down Mexico’s stubbornly high homicide rate.

Sofía de Robina, a lawyer for the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, said the National Guard “has not been able to decrease violence,” in part because of its military-style strategy of “occupying territory.”

While that strategy — of building barracks and conducting regular patrols — may be helpful in remote or rural areas, it has proved less useful and even drawn opposition in urban areas.

Police, who are from the towns they serve and live among the inhabitants, would be more effective, experts say. Yet widespread corruption, poor pay and threats by cartels against police officers have weakened local and state police forces.

Over 15 years of experience with the military in policing roles has shown “the falseness of the paradigm that the army was going to solve the problems,” Delgadillo said.

De Robina added that López Obrador’s latest move means trying to keep the military in policing indefinitely, “completely defying the obligation that public safety be civil” with no limits on time or strategy.

Gunmen allegedly affiliated with a drug gang have killed 20 people, including a mayor, in an attack in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, local officials said.

According to security officials, gunmen burst into a meeting between the mayor and city officials on Wednesday in the town of San Miguel Totolapan and left the building riddled with bullet holes.

“This act occurred in the context of a dispute between criminal gangs,” Ricardo Mejia, Mexico’s assistant secretary of public safety, said on Thursday.

The town has had a history of disputes between criminal organisations, and Mejia said a group known as the Tequileros have been locked in a dispute with the Familia Michoacana gang.

“The Tequileros dominated the region for some time,” Mejia said. “It was a group that mainly smuggled and distributed opium but also engaged in kidnapping, extortion and several killings in the region.”

Widespread violence has left President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador struggling to establish security. He’s resorted to methods that include the use of the Mexican military for a wide range of duties.

In a post on social media on Wednesday, men claiming to be members of the Tequileros gang claimed responsibility for the attack. Mejia said the video’s authenticity was still being verified.

Among those killed in the attack were Mayor Conrado Mendoza and his father, Juan Mendoza Acosta, a former mayor.

The elder Mendoza appeared in a video drinking alcohol with the boss of the Tequilero gang when he was mayor in 2015 although it was unclear if he was meeting with him voluntarily or under threat.

Most of the other victims in Wednesday’s attack are also believed to be local officials.

The killing of Mendoza brought to 18 the number of mayors slain during Lopez Obrador’s administration, according to data from Etellekt Consultores. Eight state lawmakers have been killed.

Lopez Obrador has defended his reliance on the military, including for public safety responsibilities that would usually fall to the civilian police force.

Lopez Obrador was criticised by civil society and human rights groups last month for giving the military control over the civilian National Guard.

Journalists and environmental activists have been targeted by the violence in Mexico and have chastised the president for what his critics see as a lacklustre commitment to protecting such groups.

More than 1,700 land-defence advocates have been killed in Mexico in the past decade, and at least 15 media workers have been killed so far this year.

Mexico has said US firearms manufacturers are partly to blame for a flood of weapons that have been smuggled into Mexico and contributed to the violence across the country.

In a lawsuit filed against US gun manufacturers, Mexico had claimed that more than two percent of the nearly 40 million guns made each year in the US are smuggled into Mexico.

In the lawsuit, Mexico said that in 2019, about 17,000 homicides in Mexico were connected to firearms smuggled from the US.

A US judge dismissed the $10bn lawsuit on September 30, saying that while “the court has considerable sympathy for the people of Mexico and none whatsoever for those who traffic guns to Mexican criminal organizations”, US law shields gun manufacturers from lawsuits based on crimes carried out with those guns.

​​Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard announced in a speech to the Mexican Senate on Wednesday that Mexico would file a new lawsuit.

“You have to start establishing criminal responsibilities because the companies that are selling these weapons in these counties [in Arizona], which are very few, of course they know where those weapons are going,” Ebrard said.

A former Mexican marine and ex-lieutenant for the infamous Sinaloa Cartel drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada is forming a new cartel, according to a series of official documents leaked by a hacker group.

Carlos Enrique Martínez Cuesta, known as “El Marino” or “El 5,” recently parted ways with the Sinaloa Cartel, where he served as one of the most trusted men under El Mayo, one of the original founders of the legendary crime group he ran with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, who is now serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.

“Martínez deserted the Mexican Marines where he served as the driver for the leader of the 6th Naval Region in Colima,” the report added.

The documents allege that due to differences between two Sinaloa Cartel factions—one led by El Mayo and the other by El Chapo’s sons, known as Los Chapitos—Martínez chose to go it alone, and formed a new group named “Los Exiliados” (the Exiled), according to the official documents leaked.

Martínez is currently operating in the coastal city of Manzanillo in the state of Colima, according to the authorities. The city’s port is one of the major entry points for illegal precursors coming from China to produce synthetic drugs like methamphetamine and fentanyl, both of which are a cash cow for the cartels.

Mexico has already a history of former military members forming their own criminal organizations. The Zetas, one of Mexico’s most ruthless cartels and now almost extinct, was formed mostly by a group of former soldiers with specialized training.

The leaked report, named “targets” and dated August 2022, includes an email exchange between an active Mexican Army commander in Colima and his peer in Mexico City. The email contains six top priority criminals for the Mexican authorities, including Martínez, whose full name and face are included.

Martínez is now one of the Mexican government’s priorities for arrest. Others included in the documents are Juan Carlos Valencia, known as “El Tres” and Julio Alberto Castillo Rodríguez, both related to the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.”

The report was leaked after a security breach at Mexico’s Defense Ministry, and published by a group called Guacamaya. The hack is one of Mexico’s biggest, and is composed of more than 4 million confidential documents, mostly emails, from inside the Mexican government.

Other information from the leak previously revealed that Mexico’s military sold hand grenades and tactical equipment to drug cartels.

“On May 31 2019 a military member offered 70 hand grenades to an operator of a criminal organization at 26,000 pesos each (roughly $1,300),” the leaked document showed. “The criminal organization confirmed the payment for eight [grenades] that were handed over at Atlacomulco, Mexico State.”

The hack last month released more than six terabytes of confidential information revealing criminal organizations, confidential military tasks, and personal information on Mexico’s president.

A Mexican politician says he’s acting as a middleman between drug cartels and the government in an unprecedented attempt to strike a peace deal amid a spike of violence related to the drug business.

Reaching a peace deal between the Mexican government and drug cartels could be Mexico’s only option to stop the violence, Manuel Espino Barrientos, a federal congressman from the ruling party MORENA said during a Senate security meeting last week.

“I handed over a proposal to the Interior Secretary to reach a pact with some of the organized crime groups in Mexico, and I reached out to them too,” Espino said. “Only two of them reached back to me, and said, ‘If this is really happening, we are in.’”

Espino did not specify which cartels he reached out to or which two agreed to the proposal.

The congressman said that the rate of violence in Mexico “is at its worst” and that there are only two options left: “To keep things as they are, with the consequences we know, or to open a dialogue with the criminal organizations.”

“I will not reveal more because it could jeopardize the talks, but this kind of thing always works out. I saw it myself in Ciudad Juárez and in El Salvador and also in Colombia,” he said.

Espino laid out his plan if the government were to agree: “We would give the criminal organizations guarantees for them to integrate into the legal economy, and in exchange they will stop working on all the illegal activities.”

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador denied the possibility of a pact during his daily morning conference on Friday.

“We don’t have any agreement or pact [with criminal organizations]. We have our limits very clear: On one side the authority, and on the other the criminals,” López Obrador said.

Espino’s proposal would be the first official agreement of its kind in Mexico, but it is an established strategy in Colombia, where several governments have negotiated or tried to broker peace pacts with criminal organizations and guerrilla groups, with mixed results.

Political and security analyst Alejandro Hope said that a peace negotiation could be a solution to Mexico’s chronic violence, but that Espino’s proposal was “at best, naive.”

“If you are going to have peace talks or a negotiation between armed groups and the government, you need to make them part of the constitution, provide a legal proposal for it with an explicit policy on how you are going to do this,” Hope told VICE World News.

During the rule of the PRI political party—Mexico was governed by PRI for 70 years up until 2000—the rumor of a truce between narcos and officials prevailed, leading many to think that Mexico was less violent because of those unofficial agreements, where each criminal organization was allotted its own territory and stuck to it.

“But that was not a negotiation either. That was a complicit relationship where both government officials and criminals were sharing the illegal money,” Hope said.

“Another issue that a negotiation like this would face is who would be included in these negotiations? Who is and who isn’t a Sinaloa Cartel or Jalisco Cartel member?” Hope added.

Most recently, Mexico’s clergymen called for a “social pact” with drug traffickers after the murder of two Jesuit priests inside a church.

The bishop of Zacatecas suggested “directly speaking” with members of organized crime as a new means of trying to reduce the violence that has plagued Mexico for more than a decade.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Wednesday urged the United States to reveal the whereabouts of a notorious drug trafficker whose name has disappeared from the U.S. prison register.

Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a Mexican-American nicknamed "La Barbie" for his fair complexion, was captured by Mexico in 2010 and extradited to the United States, where he was sentenced to 49 years in prison.

Media reports recently revealed that the former henchman of the Beltran-Leyva cartel no longer appears in a search of the Federal Bureau of Prisons' online register of inmates.

"The United States government has to clear it up as soon as possible," Lopez Obrador told reporters, adding that Mexico was awaiting a response.

"We're going to continue asking them," he added, describing the case as "odd" since the trafficker still had many years to serve unless he struck a deal with the U.S. authorities.

The Bureau of Prisons told AFP that the Texas-born Valdez "is not currently in the custody" of the U.S. federal agency, which could be for several reasons.

"Inmates who were previously in BOP custody and who have not completed their sentence may be outside BOP custody for a period of time for court hearings, medical treatment or for other reasons," it said.

"We do not provide specific information on the status of inmates who are not in the custody of the BOP for safety, security, or privacy reasons," it added.

According to prosecutors, Valdez began his drug trafficking career in Laredo, Texas, and soon developed cocaine customers in New Orleans and Memphis. He eventually entered into a relationship with Arturo Beltran-Leyva, who was then associated with the Sinaloa Cartel and Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman in Mexico, prosecutors alleged.

Valdez, prosecutors said, then began coordinating shipments of cocaine into Mexico using speedboats and airplanes, while also paying bribes to local law enforcement officials. The cocaine was then allegedly transported across the border into the U.S.. Prosecutors said Valdez became a top-level enforcer for the cartel and coordinated a war against his rivals, the Gulf Cartel and Zetas in Mexico.

Ultimately, DEA agents were able to build the case against Valdez using wiretaps, seizures of over 100 kilograms of cocaine and $4 million of drug proceeds, and witness testimony, prosecutors said.

When Valdez was sentenced in 2018, the Justice Department said he was "ruthlessly working his way up the ranks of one of Mexico's most powerful cartels, leaving in his wake countless lives destroyed by drugs and violence."

MEXICO CITY, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Mexican capo Ovidio Guzman, the son of incarcerated kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, has been arrested by Mexican authorities, four officials familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.

Ovidio was briefly detained in the northern state of Sinaloa in October 2019 by security forces, but then quickly released to avoid violent retribution from his drug gang.

Cartel members set up 19 roadblocks including at Culiacan’s airport and outside the local army base, as well as all points of access to the city of Culiacan, Sandoval said, but the Air Force was able to fly Guzmán to Mexico City despite their efforts, and he was taken to offices of the Attorney General’s organized crime special prosecutor.

Sandoval said Guzmán was a leader of a Sinaloa faction he called “los menores” or “the juniors,” who are also known as “los Chapitos,” for the sons of El Chapo.

Other “little Chapos” include two of his brothers — Iván Archivaldo Guzmán and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán — who are believed to have been running cartel operations together with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

The Chapitos have been taking greater control in the cartel because Zambada was in poor health and isolated in the mountains, Vigil said. “The Chapitos know that if el Mayo dies, (the cartel) is going to break apart if they don’t have control.”

“It’s going to be very important that the U.S. requests Ovidio’s extradition quickly and that Mexico does it,” Vigil said.

U.S. Homeland Security Investigations had posted a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Guzmán early last year.

Alleged cartel members responded to Thursday’s operation by carjacking Culiacan residents and setting vehicles ablaze in the cartel stronghold. Local and state authorities warned everyone to stay inside.

Intermittent gunfire continued into the afternoon Thursday in Culiacan as Mexican security forces continued to clash with cartel gunmen and few people ventured out. Airports there and in several other Sinaloa cities remained closed.

Airline Aeromexico said in a statement that one of its jets was struck by a bullet Thursday morning as it prepared for takeoff. Passenger video posted online showed people cowering on the floor of the plane. The company said passengers and crew were safe.

Later, Mexico’s Civil Aviation Agency said in a statement that an air force plane in Culiacan had also been hit with gunfire. In addition to the Culiacan airport, the agency said airports in Los Mochis and Mazatlan were also ordered closed and all flights cancelled for security reasons.

David Téllez was aboard that flight with his wife and children, preparing to return to Mexico City after visiting his in-laws.

Their plane had been waiting for its chance to take off as two large military planes carrying personnel landed as well as three or four military helicopters. Marines and soldiers deployed along the perimeter of the runway.

When the commercial flight was finally preparing to accelerate, Téllez heard gunshots in the distance. Within 15 seconds the sounds were suddenly more intense. “We heard gunshots and threw ourselves to the floor,” he said.

MEXICO CITY, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Nineteen suspected gang members and 10 military personnel were killed in a wave of violence surrounding the arrest of Mexican drug cartel boss Ovidio Guzman in the northern state of Sinaloa, Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval said on Friday.

Mexican security forces captured Guzman, the 32-year-old son of jailed kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, in the early hours of Thursday morning, prompting hours of unrest and shootouts with gang members, the minister said.

Guzman was extracted by helicopter from the house where he was caught and flown to Mexico City, before being taken to a maximum security federal prison, Sandoval added.

The arrest spurred the powerful Sinaloa Cartel - once headed by El Chapo himself - to go on a rampage, setting vehicles on fire, blocking roads, and fighting security forces in and around Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa.

Twenty-one other people were arrested during Thursday's operations, Sandoval told a news conference, adding there were no reports of any civilian deaths.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said there were no immediate plans to extradite Ovidio to the United States, where his father is in a maximum security prison after being extradited in 2017 and found guilty in a New York court.

"The elements (of the case) have to be presented and the judges in Mexico decide," the president said. "It is a process...It is not just the request." No U.S forces had assisted in Ovidio's capture, Lopez Obrador said.

An enhanced security presence will now remain in place in Sinaloa, on Mexico's Pacific coast, to protect the public, with an additional 1,000 military personnel traveling to the region today, Sandoval said.

Passengers on an Aeromexico passenger flight at Culiacan airport crouched low below their seats as shots rung out around the runway on Thursday.

"As we were accelerating for take-off, we heard gunshots very close to the plane, and that's when we all threw ourselves to the floor," passenger David Tellez said. Aeromexico said one of its plane was hit by gunfire at Culiacan but that no-one was hurt.

The airport was due to reopen later on Friday after being closed due to the violence.

In 2019, a failed operation to arrest Ovidio ended in humiliation for Lopez Obrador's government. At the time, security forces briefly detained Ovidio, triggering a violent backlash from cartel loyalists and leading authorities to quickly release him to stave off the threat of further retribution from his henchmen.

His latest capture comes before a North American leaders' summit in Mexico City next week, which U.S. President Joe Biden will attend. Cooperation over security is due to be on the agenda.

THE EXTRADITION QUESTION

The United States has sought Guzman's extradition for years.

In 2021, the State Department announced a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

Guzman, known by the nickname "The Mouse," has been charged in the United States with conspiracy to traffic cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States. The State Department said he oversaw methamphetamine labs in Sinaloa responsible for producing "3,000 to 5,000 pounds" of the drug per month.

The State Department also said information indicated he had ordered multiple murders, including that of a popular Mexican singer who had refused to perform at his wedding.

Surging flows of the synthetic opioid fentanyl into the United States, where it has fueled record overdose deaths, have heightened pressure to capture Guzman.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration considers the Sinaloa Cartel, along with one other gang, to be responsible for most of the fentanyl inside the United Sates.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s capture of a son of former Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán this week was an isolated nod to a drug war strategy that Mexico’s current administration has abandoned rather than a sign that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s thinking has changed, experts say.

Ovidio Guzmán’s arrest in the Sinaloa cartel stronghold of Culiacan on Thursday came at the cost of at least 30 lives — 11 from the military and law enforcement and 19 suspected cartel gunmen. But analysts predict it won’t have any impact on the flow of drugs to the United States.

It was a display of muscle — helicopter gunships, hundreds of troops and armored vehicles — at the initiation of a possible extradition process rather than a significant step in a homegrown Mexican effort to dismantle one of the country’s most powerful criminal organizations. Perhaps coincidentally, it came just days before U.S President Joe Biden makes the first visit by a U.S. leader in almost a decade.

López Obrador has made clear throughout the first four years of his six-year term that pursuing drug capos is not his priority. When military forces cornered the younger Guzmán in Culiacan in 2019, the president ordered him freed to avoid loss of life after gunmen started shooting up the city.

The only other big capture under his administration was the grabbing of a geriatric Rafael Caro Quintero last July — just days after López Obrador met with Biden in the White House. At that point, Caro Quintero carried more symbolic significance for ordering a DEA agent’s murder decades ago than real weight in today’s drug world.

“Mexico wants to do at least the bare minimum in terms of counter-drug efforts,” said Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations who spent 13 years of his career in Mexico. “I don’t think that this is a sign that there’s going to be closer cooperation, bilateral collaboration, if you will, between the United States and Mexico.”

While capturing a criminal is a win for justice and rule of law, Vigil said, the impact on what he sees as a “permanent campaign against drugs” is nil. “Really what we need to do here in the United States is we need to do a better job in terms of reducing demand.”

That was a key talking point when the U.S. and Mexican governments announced late in 2021 a new Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health and Safe Communities, replacing the outdated Merida Initiative.

The pact was supposed to take a more holistic approach to the scourge of drugs and the deaths they cause on both sides of the border. But underlining the frequent disconnect between diplomatic speech and reality, just two months later the U.S. government announced a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of any of four of El Chapo’s sons, including Ovidio, signaling the U.S. kingpin strategy was alive and well.

“The Bicentennial understanding was a change on paper with respect to attacking drug trafficking and violence with a more important focus on what were supposedly public health programs — (but) without any budget,” said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an associate professor at George Mason University. In reality, “Mexico is bending to the United States’ interests.”

For decades, the U.S. has nabbed drug kingpins from Mexico, Colombia and points between, but drugs are as available and more deadly in the United States as ever, she said. “The kingpin strategy is a failed strategy.”

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on Ovidio Guzmán’s arrest.

López Obrador took office in December 2018 after campaigning with a motto of “hugs, not bullets.” He shifted resources to social programs to address what he sees as violence’s root causes, a medium- to long-term approach that did little for a country suffering more than 35,000 homicides per year.

“Something that has characterized, in my opinion, Mexico’s security policy in recent years is that it isn’t very clear. It has been a bit contradictory,” said Ángelica Durán-Martínez, associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. That ambiguity makes it difficult to determine if there has really been a change, she said.

López Obrador’s government benefits from the detention of Guzmán in several ways. The arrest eases the armed forces’ humiliation after being forced by cartel gunmen to release him in 2019. It may sooth ill-feelings after his administration strictly limited U.S. anti-drug cooperation two years ago. And it may help diminish perceptions that López Obrador -- who has frequently visited Sinaloa and praised its people — has gone easier on the Sinaloa cartel than on other gangs.

For four years López Obrador has continued to shred his predecessors’ prosecution of the drug war at every opportunity. Experts say the respite allowed the cartels to get stronger, both in terms of organization and armament.

Guzmán during that time took a growing role after his father was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. The younger Guzmán was indicted in Washington on drug trafficking charges along with another brother in 2018. He allegedly controlled a number of methamphetamine labs and was involved as the Sinaloa cartel expanded strongly into fentanyl production.

Synthetic drugs have been impervious to government eradication efforts, are easier to produce and smuggle, and are much more profitable.

The Sinaloa cartel hardly missed a beat when Guzmán’s father was sent to the U.S., so the capture of one of the so-called “Chapitos,” as the brothers are known, is never going to shake the operation.

Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope said the detention of Ovidio Guzman probably came as the result of pressure or information from the U.S. government, and marks the tacit abandonment of López Obrador’s rhetoric about ditching the kingpin strategy.

For Hope, the detention is depressing, not only because it won’t fundamentally change the Sinaloa cartel’s booming export trade in meth and fentanyl, but because it reveals how little investigation Mexican authorities had done on Guzmán and the cartel since 2019.

“How great that they got Ovidio, applause, perfect,” Hope said. “What depresses me is that we’ve been at this (drug war) for 16 years, or 40 counting from the (murder of DEA agent Enrique) Camarena, and we still don’t have the ability to investigate.”

After Guzmán’s capture, Mexican officials said he was arrested on an existing U.S. extradition request, as well as for illegal weapons possession and attempted murder at the time they found him. On Friday, Interior Secretary Adán López Hernández said there were other Mexican investigations underway that they couldn’t talk about.

“We keep betting on the muscle, the military capabilities and not on the ability to investigate,” Hope said.

“We have decided to turn over those who were directly involved and responsible in the events, who at all times acted under their own decision-making and lack of discipline,” the letter reads, adding that those individuals had gone against the cartel’s rules, which include “respecting the life and well-being of the innocent.”

A photograph of five men face down on the pavement and bound accompanied the letter, which was shared with The Associated Press by the source on condition that they remain anonymous because they were not authorized to share the document.

State officials did not immediately publicly confirm having new suspects in custody.

A separate state security official said that five men had been found tied up inside one of the vehicles that authorities had been searching for, along with the letter. That official also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the case.