Narcoterrorism and Impunity in the Americas

Copyright © 2016 by Small Wars Foundation.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-5245-4562-8

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Contents

Acronyms

Foreword: Criminality, Impunity, and the Retreat of the State in Latin America

Introduction: Narcoterrorism and Impunity in the Americas

Chapter 1: Mexican Cartel Tactical Note #22:: Narco Tank Factory Discovered in Nuevo Laredo

Chapter 2: Colombian Peace Negotiations:: A Critical Juncture for Positive Change?

Chapter 3: Latino Gangs in Catalonia:: Latest Police Operations Expose Extent of the Problem, Signal Policy Shift

Chapter 4: Mexican Cartels as Vicious Firms

Chapter 5: Mexican Cartel Tactical Note #23:: Firefights Below the Border—Cartel del Golfo (CDG) Ciclones vs Metros

Chapter 6: Mexican Cartel Tactical Note #24:: Gendarmerie Ambushed in Ocotlan, Jalisco State by Narco Commando—5 Killed, 8 Wounded

Chapter 7: Human Security in the Digital Age:: A Relocation of Power and Control over Security from State to Non-State Actors

Chapter 8: Venezuela, Military Generals, and the Cartel of the Suns

Chapter 9: What Can a Country Do When its Most-wanted Man Escapes From a Maximum Security Prison—for the Second Time?

Chapter 10: Book Review: Bumerán Chávez:: Los fraudes que llevaron al colapso de Venezuela

Chapter 11: Mexican Cartel Tactical Note #25:: Ambush Kills 15; Injures 5 Police in Jalisco

Chapter 12: Book Review: Narco-Cults: Understanding the Use of Afro-Caribbean and Mexican Religious Cultures in the Drug Wars

Chapter 13: Book Review of Organized Crime in Mexico: Assessing the Threat to North American Economies

Chapter 14: Old and New Governmental-Criminal Relationships In Mexico: A Historical Analysis of the Illicit Political Economy and Effects On State Sovereignty

Chapter 15: Mexican Energy Reform: A Security Nightmare for Multi-Nationals Operating in Mexico

Chapter 16: The Specter of Ungoverned Spaces & How Advances in Network Analysis Can Assist Policymakers

Chapter 17: Colombian President Santos:: Success in an Inter-mestic Environment

Chapter 18: Operation Jalisco: The Rise of The Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Peña Nieto’s Militarised Security Strategy

Chapter 19: Citizen Security as an Informal Institution:: A Mexican Case Study

Chapter 20: The Mérida Initiative at 7 Years:: Little Institutional Improvement Amidst Increased Militarization

Chapter 21: Analysis Shows Links Between Food Security, Violence and Migration in North Triangle of Central America

Chapter 22: Film Review: Cartel Land—Competitive Control, Vigilante Justice and Autodefensas

Chapter 23: Terrorism and Organized Crime:: Exploring the Mexican Situation

Chapter 24: An Update on Narco Submarines and Maritime Law Enforcement Agencies’ Efforts to Thwart Their Operational Effectiveness

Chapter 25: Iran and Hezbollah in the Tri-Border Areas of Latin America:: A Look at the Old TBA and the New TBA

Chapter 26: Mexican Cartel Tactical Note #26:: Border Patrol Agent (& Gulf Cartel Cell Leader) Charged in US Torture-Beheading

Chapter 27: Small Islands, Big Problems:: Cybersecurity in the Caribbean Realm

Chapter 28: Gangs & Drug Trafficking in Central America Conference

Postscript: Insecurity, Impunity, and the Narcostate

Notes

Notes on Contributors

Front Cover Image: A frame taken from a Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) 2:19 minute narco video in April 2013 meant for the citizens of Jalisco state in Mexico as well as the Federal and municipal forces within it. The cartel is highlighting its combat power and impunity of action by showing off its masked and body-armored gunmen. Via the banner the cartel makes claim to the Mexican states of Colima, Nayarit, Jalisco, Veracruz, and Guerrero. The CJNG leader delivering the video narrative in Spanish explains that the cartel does not prey upon the local peoples within its lands by imposing fees and engaging in extortion or kidnapping as other cartels do. This is being done to create legitimacy with the local populations and as a deterrent to Mexican governmental operations against the cartel. CJNG Social Media [For Public Distribution]. For the actual video see Chivis Martinez, CJNG Releases New Video. Borderland Beat. Friday 5 April 2013, http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2013/04/cjng-releases-new-video.html.

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In Memoriam:

George Wallace Grayson

July 23, 1938 - March 4, 2015

Small Wars Journal and El Centro is saddened to announce the death of George W. Grayson.

Professor Grayson was a founding SWJ-El Centro Fellow. Doctor Grayson passed away at the age of 76. He was 1938 Professor of Government Emeritus at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia where he taught for 40 years. An international recognized specialist in Latin American and Mexican politics, he served in the Virginia House of Delegates for 27 years. He was author of several books on Mexico’s political situation including: The Cartels: The Story of Mexico’s Most Dangerous Criminal Organizations and Their Impact on U.S. Security (Prager, 2013) and The Executioner’s Men: Inside Los Zetas (co-authored with Sam Logan, Transaction Press, 2012): Consequences of Vigilantism in Mexico for the United States (Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2011); Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State? (Transaction, 2010), La Familia Drug Cartel: Implications for U.S.-Mexican Security (Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2010); Mexico’s Struggle with Drugs and Thugs (Foreign Policy Association, 2009); and Mexican Messiah: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (Penn State University Press, 2007). Grayson was a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, D.C. and an Associate Scholar of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. Grayson earned his B.A. at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), his M.A. and Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins University (Nitze School of Advanced International Studies), and a J.D. at the William and Mary’s Marshall-Wythe School of Law. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Acronyms

Foreword

Criminality, Impunity, and the Retreat of the State in Latin America

Douglas Farah

Washington, DC

May 2016

Latin America writ large, and the Northern Triangle of Central America in particular, are undergoing multiple historic transformation processes simultaneously. The nation-state for centuries has not been strong in many parts of most countries in the hemisphere. Now the foundations of the weak and opportunistic traditional political power structures are imploding. Some are teetering on the edge of chaos (Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras) while others are collapsing (Venezuela, El Salvador), or undergoing deep social change (Colombia, Argentina).

As the Westphalian model is in retreat, new terrorist and criminal actors are emerging. Fueled by money from the drug trade and a growing array of other lucrative illicit activities, Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) are creating sophisticated, parallel power structures that are often more powerful than the nation state itself.

Another trend conceived of and financed by the Bolivarian Revolution founded by the late Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chávez is the participation of multiple states in a joint criminal/political enterprise in which the state seeks out terrorist and TCOs as instruments of state policy. Thus, within the alliance of Bolivarian countries known as ALBA (Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Suriname), the state itself is the predominant TCO and embraces groups such as the FARC, Hezbollah, ETA, and more local groups as allies.[1]

The authoritarian Bolivarian model of 21st Century Socialism has been disastrous economically, socially, and institutionally. The state alliance of those in the Bolivarian bloc with TCOs has undermined the legal economies, shredded the social fabric, and destroyed the toehold the rule of law had gained in the region. The fragile democratic institutions and processes were demolished and a generation of leaders decapitated.

The rule of law has largely been replaced by transactional relationships built on the exchange of goods and services among state and non-state actors. These exchanges include the right of passage for a cocaine load in exchange for cash; the support for a local political campaign in exchange for political protection of criminal activities; shifting party loyalties in the legislature on specific issues of TCO concern in exchange for luxury beach properties; court decisions not to prosecute cases or to deliberately let them languish in exchange for economic benefits; access to prisons to assassinate key witnesses in exchange for thousands of dollars; or payments to policemen to carry out executions in exchange for a share of criminal proceeds.

This transactional activity is necessary because powerful TCOs function much like large multinational firms that produce and ship commercial goods along transnational supply chains that must either co-opt or evade the state. Critical social networks within these organizations coordinate to move products from the production zone to market, aiming to do so in as little time, and at as low a cost as possible. Organizational leaders concern themselves with rate of return, just like commercial CEOs, managing the flow of profits that accrue from retail sales, and outsourcing the risk where possible.

Nowhere are the consequences of this emerging paradigm more visible than in the Northern Triangle of Central America, where El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras comprise three of the top five nations in the world in homicide rates. The region’s geographic placement—between the cocaine producing South and the consuming North and in close proximity to rapidly-evolving Mexican criminal syndicates—makes it the preferred route for the massive circular flow of cocaine, human beings, weapons, money, and gold that now comprise a vast and parallel economic and political structure that competes with or coopts state structures.[2]

This flow of goods and services is not new. It is the volume of resources the TCOs and their state allies control and the level of complicity of government leaders in the extra-legal structures that has changed the equation of making TCOs a national crisis to making them an existential threat to the state.

This leads to what often seem like contradictions in assessing the situation of violence. For example, where statistics such as homicide rates show improvement, the explanation often has less to do with positive government actions than the ebbing and flowing of internal TCO dynamics. As a recent U.N. study on Central America noted, The key driver of violence is not cocaine, but change: change in the negotiated power relations between and within groups, and with the state.[3]

Thus, consolidation of the control of Los Zetas in certain areas of Guatemala leads to a sharp drop in killings—an indication of TCO power rather than law enforcement success. The same is true in El Salvador, where the homicide rate has dropped significantly from 2012 to 2014 as transnational criminal gangs have negotiated a truce among themselves and government in exchange for economic and political benefits and power. Thus, the drop in homicides is not a product of combatting crime, but of the gangs’ success in renegotiating their power relations with the state. This was clearly demonstrated when the homicide rate shot to historic levels in 2015—a staggering 104 murders per 100,000 people[4]—when the truce collapsed.

A major factor that has revolutionized the violence and decline of the state has been the transformation of transnational gangs from public nuisance actors involved in street crime and violent internal rivalries into political/military entities that control large amounts of territory and increasingly derive their income from transporting cocaine. The dynamics of these new structures is leading to profound political, economic, and social upheavals as the gangs acquire increasingly sophisticated weaponry and expanding access to corruptible power structures like the police and municipal offices.

The gangs began to find their political voice in the 2012 negotiations with the government of El Salvador, where they discovered that their most valuable bargaining chips were bodies on the street. When negotiations failed to yield the desired result, the gangs would simply put enough bodies on the street that the government felt obligated to capitulate. The coherence with which the gangs learned to negotiate from a position of strength with both major political parties in El Salvador has been demonstrated in a recently released audio recording of the negotiations by the gangs as their war against the Salvadoran state escalates.[5]

In addition to understanding the political power that territorial control confers on those who exercise power in specific geographic space, the three main gangs in general, and the Mara Salvatrucha (MS 13) gang particular, are maturing in their understanding of themselves as political actors.

In some parts of San Pedro Sula, the center of Honduran gang activity, some of the clicas of the MS 13 have become integrated into the chains of cocaine movement, greatly increasing their incomes. This development is not surprising.

What is revelatory is how these clicas used the new cash. Understanding how hated the gang policy of extortion of local businesses was and the political cost to the gang such a policy carried, these groups opted to forgo the forced payments. This bought them enormous goodwill in areas under their territorial control, as well as a flood of invitations from neighboring areas for the MS 13 to come and take over, in order to enjoy the same benefits.

The gangs in these areas also painted over its own graffiti, imposed new rules of discipline on its own members, banned tattoos, and now demand to be called La Familia (The Family) rather than a pandilla (gang). The changes, in their mind, are due to the gang’s maturing as an entity and leaving behind more juvenile behavior.

It is too soon to say if this will become the norm for the MS 13 across the Northern Triangle or remain a relatively isolated phenomenon. What is clear is that gangs are now among the new political/military actors that control territory, votes, weapons and violent methodology—like more traditional TCOs—to impose their will over the will of the state. The state in much of the Americas is now just one power center among many, and often not the defining power. The rise of narcoterrorism and impunity across the Western Hemisphere could snuff out the last flickers of democratic governance and rule of law in much of the hemisphere.

Introduction

Narcoterrorism and Impunity in the Americas

Robert J. Bunker

Claremont, CA

August 2016

The fifth Small Wars Journal—El Centro anthology spans online journal and blog writings for all of 2015 with a thematic focus on narcoterrorism and impunity in the Americas. Narcoterrorism, as defined by SWJ Senior Editor Dave Dilegge on the back cover of this work, are terrorist acts carried out to further illicit narcotics trafficking pursuits. The term itself dates back to 1983. It originally referred to Shining Path guerilla attacks against Bolivian counter-narcotics police.

[1] It has principally been used to describe the extreme levels of narco violence Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel inflicted upon the Colombian government and its people back in the later 1980s and early 1990s. Assassinations of public officials and police and military officers were common occurrences as were large-scale VBIED (vehicle borne improvised explosive device) attacks that leveled public buildings and cratered out city streets. The campaign of terror even extended into the skies, with the November 1989 bombing of Avianca Airlines Flight 203 from Bogotá to Cali. In this attempted assassination against Colombian presidential candidate César Gaviria—who was not on the flight—all 107 individuals aboard were killed as were 3 people on the ground.

[2] Such ‘narcotics trafficking pursuits’ for the Medellín Cartel were political in the sense that they sought ‘impunity’ of action—essentially sovereign free autonomy—as a criminal empire within the Colombian state itself.

While Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel have long since met their demise, narcoterrorism as a component of organized criminal operations has not been relegated to the dustbin of history. In fact, quite the opposite is true as it continues to represent an integral component of the criminal insurgencies being waged throughout Mexico, Central, and Latin America, with instances of use even taking place in the United States and Canada. Recently, the increased ability to engage in such narco terrorist acts, and in so doing ultimately challenge the sovereign integrity of Western Hemisphere nation states, can be seen with the increasing firepower potentials of the narco gangs and cartels. Some recent examples are as follows:

• The Mexican Defense Department (SEDENA) is investing in ballistic shields and higher rated ballistic plate inserts for its special operation forces that are engaging in offensive operations against the Mexican cartels. The shields and Level III ballistic plate inserts are rated to stop 7.62mm AK-47 rifle type rounds given their prevalence in the hands of drug gang and cartel foot soldiers.[3]

• A cell phone remote controlled bomb was detonated on a bus in Guatemala in March 2016 by the Barrio 18 gang. This was the first time that gang had used a remote detonated bomb in a bus attack and portrays its growing technical sophistication—although the incident is said to have resulted in an internal gang purge for creating too much media fallout. A long tradition of gang extortion of bus lines and bus drivers exist in that country, with attacks on buses and their drivers are commonplace. In 2010, an earlier remote cell phone bombing attack was attempted against a Guatemalan prison official but the bomb failed to go off.[4]

• In mid-April 2016, Mexican authorities seized a rocket launcher from gunmen belonging to the La Linea cartel in Nuevos Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. The weapons system is, in actuality, a Redeye MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense System) and was the first such system to be visually identified in the possession of a Mexican cartel. This US system—the predecessor to Stinger—is capable of shooting down a Mexican federal helicopter.[5]

• In El Salvador, a 1,355-page indictment was recently submitted by the Attorney General Douglas Meléndez against dozens of members of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) as part of Operación Jacque, or Operation Check. As part of the indictment, it was made known that the gang had received grenades, rocket launchers, and body armor from the black market in Mexico. Additionally, Mara Salvatrucha was attempting to create a 500 man commando force to destabilize El Salvador.[6]

• A ‘coche bomba’ (car bomb) was interdicted and deactivated in Guanajuato state, Mexico in mid-August 2016. The car bomb was to be driven to La Piedad, Michoacán and then reinstalled onto another vehicle for deployment.[7] This incident is of concern because of ongoing grenade and IED (improvised explosive device) attacks by the gangs and cartels in Mexico and the potentials for narco car bombing to once again emerge. Historically, two earlier periods of car bomb based narcoterrorism in Mexico have existed—one roughly spanning 1992 through 1994 and the other spanning 2010 through 2012.[8]

Corruption of public officials, law enforcement and military officers, and corporate representatives is another mechanism to achieve impunity, in addition to the use of coercive violence and terror. When corruption and narcoterrorism are combined—commonly encompassed by the narco phrase ¿Plata o Plomo? (Silver or Lead), referring to taking the bribe or taking the bullet—they provide an irresistible method of promoting criminal insurgent outcomes. These outcomes are resulting in not only the retreat of the state in parts of Latin America but its replacement by narco enclaves, parastates, and even full nation state capture. Such concerns were projected years ago by this author in his description of the rise of BlackFor in a late 1990s Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College paper and in a much later work with John P. Sullivan. The later provided advanced concepts related to not only instances of city ferality but the rise of fully criminalized cities which have been reconfigured around social and political principles of human organization directly at odds with older nation state norms and values.[9] This process has even more recently been articulated by means of networks analysis in the Spanish language work Macro-criminalidad: Complejidad y Resiliencia de las Redes Criminales by Eduardo Salcedo-Albarán and Luis Jorge Garay Salamanca (editors) which is a Vortex Foundation and Small Wars Journal—El Centro Book published earlier this year.[10]

With that context provided, this anthology is composed of an about SWJ and Foundation section, a memoriam to our friend and colleague George W. Grayson, an acronym listing, a foreword, this introduction, twenty-eight chapters, a postscript, anthology notes, and notes on contributors. The foreword by Douglas Farah provides an overview of the retreat of the state in Latin America. He then goes on to specifically address the Northern Triangle of Latin America and the maras—such as Mara Salvatrucha 13—as …new political/military actors that control territory, votes, weapons and violent methodology—like more traditional TCOs—to impose their will over the state. These entities are equivalent to what John Sullivan and I term 3GENGangs, which have evolved political and mercenary attributes, and portray the fact that Farah’s fieldwork is complimentary to our own research. The postscript by John P. Sullivan, in turn, looks at violence and corruption, fragmentation and adaptation, resilience and the narco-political economy, and state confrontation that facilitates the rise of narcostates. Examples throughout Latin America play heavily into his postscript with mentions of the Zetas, Gulf Cartel, Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), and the maras (Barrio 18 and MS 13) touched upon as well as the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) in Colombia and the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) in Brazil.

Chapters of interest in this anthology dovetailing with its narcoterrorism and impunity themes include the inclusion of a number of popular Mexican cartel tactical notes (Chapters 1, 5, 6, 11, and 26) and an operational analysis—related to Mexican Federal activity in Jalisco by Hannah Croft—that portray the tactical sophistication of the cartels, their ability to engage in narcoterrorist activities such as CJNG’s targeting of Mexican police units, and even a Gulf Cartel related torture-beheading incident on US soil. Chapter 24, by Yalí Noriega Curtis, also specifically addresses terrorism and organized crime links in Mexico—from both the perspectives of Islamic terrorist links to the Mexican cartels and of the cartels themselves as being terrorists, although in her opinion it is still too soon to declare Mexican DTOs as terrorist groups.

Organized crime in Mexico as a threat to North American economies is reviewed by Roger Chin in Chapter 13 and the nightmare of Mexican energy reform vis-à-vis cartel and gang predatory activities such as oil theft, extortion, and kidnapping for ransom is analyzed by Gary Hale in Chapter 14. Additionally, other chapters—3, 8, 10, 21, 25, 27, and 28—provide coverage of gang, organized crime, and cartel activities spanning the Americas in Venezuela, in the Northern Triangle of Central America, in the old and new tri-border areas of Latin America, and in the Caribbean as well as gang penetration into Spain. Many other thematic related chapters exist in this fifth SWJ-El Centro anthology as well as ones related to supportive areas of focus including chapters looking at narco-cults, the Mérida Initiative, and the emergence of the autodefenses in Mexico as the state becomes hallowed-out in certain regions of that nation.

All-in-all, this anthology represents a first class work which highlights SWJ-El Centro’s twenty-three academic, governmental, and professional contributors associated with this document. I am sure that the reader will find this anthology very useful and informative in its illumination of the growing Western hemispheric security threat represented by ongoing gang, organized crime, and cartel developments related to narcoterrorism and impunity in the Americas.

Chapter 1

Mexican Cartel Tactical Note #22:

Narco Tank Factory Discovered in Nuevo Laredo

Robert J. Bunker and Byron Ramirez

First Published February 13, 2015

Key Information: SALA DE PRENSA, SEDENA ASEGURA BODEGA DONDE BLINDABAN VEHÍCULOS DE MANERA ARTESANAL; PGR INICIA INVESTIGACIÓN. Miercoles, 04 de Febrero de 2015, Boletín 027/15,

http://www.pgr.gob.mx/prensa/2007/bol15/Feb/b02715.shtm:

La Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (SEDENA) y la Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) a través de la Subprocuraduría de Control Regional, Procedimientos Penales y Amparo (SCRAPPA) por conducto de su Delegación en Tamaulipas, informan la puesta a disposición de trece automóviles, ocho de ellos blindados, los cuales fueron asegurados en una bodega utilizada como taller para blindar vehículos.

Previo al aseguramiento del inmueble y vehículos, elementos de la Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional notaron que en el tramo de la carretera federal número 2, con dirección Reynosa-Río Bravo, a la altura del kilómetro 74.8, un hombre huyó con radios de frecuencia al ver la presencia militar y al darle seguimiento, observaron que éste se introdujo a la bodega.

Al llegar al inmueble, se percataron de que en el interior de la bodega se encontraban 13 autos abandonados, algunos de ellos blindados de manera artesanal, los cuales se describen a continuación:

- Una camioneta color blanca, marca GMC, modelo Sierra, con placas del estado de Texas, con blindaje artesanal.

- Una camioneta Chevrolet, color gris, sin placas, con blindaje artesanal.

- Una camioneta color blanca, marca GMC, modelo Sierra, con placas del estado de Texas, con blindaje artesanal,

- Una camioneta color azul, marca Chevrolet, modelo Avalanch, con placas del estado de Texas, con blindaje en proceso.

- Una camioneta color gris marca Ford, modelo F-150, con placas del estado de Texas, con blindaje artesanal.

- Una camioneta color rojo, marca Ford, modelo King Ranch Lobo, con placas del estado de Tamaulipas, con blindaje artesanal.

- Una camioneta color negra, marca Ford, modelo Lobo, con placas del estado de Tamaulipas, con blindaje artesanal.

- Un carro color negro, marca Mercedes Benz, con placas del estado de Texas, con blindaje de fábrica.

- Una camioneta Chevrolet color negra, marca Silverado, con placas del estado de Texas.

- Una camioneta color blanco, marca Nissan, con placas del estado de Tamaulipas.

- Una camioneta color negra, marca Ford, modelo F-150, con placas del estado de Texas.

- Una camioneta color blanca marca Chevrolet, modelo Cheyenne, con placas del estado de Tamaulipas.

- Una camioneta color roja, marca Chevrolet, modelo 1500, con placas del estado de Texas.

Asimismo fueron asegurados ocho cargadores desabastecidos para alojar cartuchos calibre 7.62x39, 495 cartuchos calibre 7.62x39, 46 cartuchos calibre 3.08 y 4 cartuchos calibre 50 mm.

Cabe señalar que en diferentes partes de la bodega se encontraron máquinas para realizar soldaduras y cortes de metal, así como material diverso para realizar el trabajo artesanal de blindaje, lo cual también fue asegurado.

Todo fue puesto a disposición del Agente