The Beginning of Hell: Mexican Cartels Negotiating Peace Agreements and Alliances

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Mexico’s warring cartels are negotiating a truce that, if it holds, could end one of the bloodiest eras since the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution, according to a U.S. official and experts familiar with the talks.

United States officials and experts have unofficially spoken of peace negotians between the Gulf and Sinaloa (El Chapo Guzman Organization/Federation) drug cartels. Although a similar agreement was made two years ago, it was short lived, leading some officials to feel the chances for a new treaty actually surviving to be slim, at most.

“In the end, greed prevails over reason,” a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On the other hand, one must consider this new treaty a very real possibility. Two years ago President Felipe Calderon had just entered office, although he had declared a war against drugs and corruption, it was far from effective. Returning to the present time, Calderon has made some notable advances arresting key cartel figures and high ranking corrupted officials in Operation Clean House. These advances, although small in the grand scale, have without a doubt created unease amongst the cartels as loss of informants and leaders creates internal power struggles and violence.

2008 was one of the most violent years in the history of our country with more than 5700 official cartel related deaths. Drug cartels have waged a multifronted war against rival cartels, the government, military, police and media news sources.

Some experts, including Howard Campbell, a border anthropologist at the University of El Paso, Texas and author of the upcoming book Drug War Zone, feel the possibility of a peace agreement is not only believable, but necessary and more than possible. Profesor Campbell has stated:

Violence will soon peak out because all the attention is bad for business. These guys are businessmen, violence hurts the bottom line, their profits.

What does all this mean? It means, if rumours are true, what we have seen this past year, in Mexico, is just the beginning. It must be duley noted the peace agreement is between the two most powerful, rival cartels; with that in mind, there can only be one common goal: To eliminate smaller cartels and counter attack Calderon’s war on drugs.

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Note: The Gulf Cartel now controls Veracruz, Michoacan, and the United States-Mexico border areas of Coahuila. Quintana Roo, which was once partiall controled by the Sinaloa Cartel has now become a territory in dispute. For an updated map please click on this link. Juarez, the most violent city in Mexico at present has it’s own cartel which is not shown on either map.

The Gulf Cartel traffics cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamime and heroin across the border to major cities in the United States.

In 2003, the Gulf Cartel leader, Osiel Cardenas Guillen, was arrested and sent to La Palma maximum security federal prison, in Mexico state, where he continued to run operations smoothly until extradited to the United States in January 2007. Although Osiel is still the symbolic leader, there are conflicting reports on who is presently in charge of the cartel. Some suggest it is Cardenas’ brother, Antonio Ezequiel “Tony Tormenta” Cardenas Guillen.

The Sinaloa Cartel (The Federation) is primarily involved in the smuggling and distribution of Colombian cocaine, Mexican marijuana and Mexican and Southeast Asian heroin into the United States. It is believed they pay foreign contacts to transport multi-ton quantities of cocaine from South America to Guatemala; from there it is smuggled north to Mexico and later in the United States. It is also believed the Sinaloa Cartel is in charge of cocaine transportation into the U.S. for the Colombian Cali and Medellín Cartels.

When the Sinaloa leader, Héctor Luis Palma Salazar was arrested on June 23, 1995 by elements of the Mexican Army, his partner Joaquín Guzmán Loera took leadership of the cartel.Guzmán was captured in Guatemala on June 9, 1993 and extradited to Mexico, where he was jailed in a maximum security prison. In January ,2001 Guzmán escaped and has resumed his command from unknown locations.

Conflict over territory and drug corridors to the border have been a constant between the two cartels. In the 1990’s Cardenas-Guillen recruited a group of the Mexican Army’s elite Airborne Special Forces Group to not only protect territory, but also to track down and kill rival Sinaloa Cartel members.

The Zetas, named after the Federal Preventive Police radio code for high-ranking officers, were trained in locating and apprehending drug cartel members. It is believed that they were originally trained at the military School of the Americas in the United States. It is also said foreign specialists, including Americans, French, and Israelis, helped train them in rapid deployment, aerial assaults, marksmanship, ambushes, small-group tactics, intelligence collection, counter-surveillance techniques, prisoner rescues and sophisticated communications.

The group is now over 500 strong and include ex-military specialists from Guatemala known as Kaibiles. They wear body armor; their weapons includes AR-15 and AK-47 assault rifles, MP5 submachine guns, 50 cal. machine guns, grenade launchers, ground-to-air missiles, dynamite and helicopters. They are known to operate with modern wiretapping equipment and purchase the cellular phone codes of their intended targets directly from the phone companies and providers. They are known for cold blooded, grotesque merciless killings.

To combat the Gulf Cartel Zetas, the Sinaloa Cartel created their own narco-military. Los Negros, also known as Grupo Beltran, which is led by Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villarreal have been known to employ gangs such as the Mexican Mafia and MS-13 to carry out murders and other illegal activities including bribing of high ranking officials. While the group is controlled directly by Villarreal, it is overseen by the Beltran Levya brothers, Arturo and Hector(a smaller cartel within the Joaquin Guzman Federation).

In Mayo 2008 federal and local government officials confirmed that the Beltran Leyva brothers were cutting ties with . Arturo Beltran Leyva, is believed responsible for ordering the targeted assassinations of Edgar Millan Gomez and Roberto Velasco Bravo, two high-ranking federal law enforcement officials in Mexico City in retaliation for the arrest of another brother, Alfredo Beltran, in an operation led by Millan Gomez. It was reported the anonymous tip that led to Alfredo Beltran’s arrest came from their Federation leader Joaquin Guzman. Edgar Guzman Beltran, Guzman-Loera’s son, was killed shortly after in retribution for that betrayal. Zetas were reportedly present at the scene.

Less than one week later The Mexican press quoted U.S. counternarcotic sources as saying the rumored split of Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel was true. Reports began surfacing in mid May that Heriberto Lazcano, leader of Los Zetas, and Arturo Beltran Leyva have collaborated, to some degree, since mid-2007. It was reported the collaboration was deemed necessary as both Cartel boss’, Joaquin Guzman and Osiel Cardenas Guillen, were unable to lead normal business operations with one on the run and the other imprisoned and extradited to the United States.

This brings us to the present.

Calderon’s crack down has caused damage, especially to Sinaloa Cartel’s Federation. The disruption of drug trafficking operations has created conflict between the smaller cartels operating under the Sinaloa cartel, as the pressure is now forcing individual cartels to look out for their own interests.

Government pressure on one cartel can create opportunities for affiliated cartels to betray the pressured cartel for financial gain.

The Carrillo Fuentes organization also known as the Juarez cartel, is based out of the northern city of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state. The cartel is led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, who took over after the 1997 death of his brother Amado, the cartel’s former leader. Throughout this year, the Juarez cartel has maintained its long-standing alliance with the Beltran Leyva organization, which has been locked in a vicious battle with the Sinaloa Cartel for control of Juarez. Carrillo Fuentes has also made alliances with the Zetas to aid in the defense of Juarez.
More than 1700 deaths in Juarez were in 2008.

Since splitting from the Sinaloa Cartel, The Beltran Leyva organization has quickly become one of the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in Mexico. They have proven themselves more than capable of trafficking drugs and going toe-to-toe with the Sinaloa cartel quickly securing strategic narcotics transport routes in the states of Sinaloa, Durango, Sonora, Jalisco, Michoacan, Guerrero and Morelos. This attempt to conquer territory from their former Sinaloa partners sparked a wave of violence.
They also have demonstrated a willingness to order targeted assassinations of high-ranking government officials.

The Zetas, although still working with the Gulf Cartel, no longer take any type of orders from them. They are considered an independent cartel and buyable strong arm for all in need. With the government crackdown they have expanded their operations to include human trafficking, extorsion, and kidnap for ransom. They have gained control of large swaths of territory in southern Mexico, much of which formerly belonged to the Gulf cartel and are present in most interior states. Although not considered under their control, the Zetas are also Zetas are also present in disputed territories such as Durango, Sonora, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Guerrero and Michoacan due to their alliance with the Beltran Leyva organization.

It has been reported that the Zetas and Beltran-Leyva’s united to form a mega cartel of death aimed at destroying Guzman-Loera’s Sinaloa cartel and Federation, thus being the cause of the 2008 gruesome mass executions, decapitations, tortures and mutilations.

In the event of the Sinaloa and Gulf Cartel’s rumoured peace agreement and possible alliance, it is unclear as to whether the Zetas would continue any type of alliance for hire to the Gulf Cartel or would completly cut ties and wage war against the union with the Beltran Leyva’s.

In any event, President Calderon has promised to not only continue his crackdown, but increase military forces across the nation in 2009.

For those still thinking a cartel peace agreement means peace; think again. The war’s just beginning, brace yourselves and prepare for a one way ticket to HELL .

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