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Gulf and Tijuana Cartels (Osiel Cárdenas Guillén and Benjami N

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Gulf and Tijuana Cartels (Osiel Cárdenas Guillén and Benjami N UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY UNIVERSAL ADVERSARY ORDER OF BATTLE: GULF ALLIANCE - GULF AND TIJUANA CARTELS (OSIEL CÁRDENAS GUILLÉN AND BENJAMIN ARELLANO FELIX) 27 APRIL 2007 UPDATE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) in Mexico are under siege as 2007 begins. Felipe Calderón, inaugurated as president of Mexico on December 1, 2006, took immediate action against the cartels by sending Federal police and troops into the state of Michoacán. Within days, there were arrests of senior members of the major DTOs, including men affiliated with the Gulf Alliance. This group, an alliance of the Gulf and Tijuana Cartels (the Tijuana Cartel is also known as the Arellano Félix Organization, or AFO) and some smaller DTOs, represents one major side of the ongoing war between the cartels in Mexico (the other major antagonist is the Sinaloa Alliance, consisting primarily of the Sinaloa and Juarez Cartels). In recent years, the Gulf Alliance has been difficult to track, due to the imprisonment of its primary leaders, its volatile and fluctuating nature, and the growth of its enforcer branch Los Zetas. As a result of the recent government action, its situation is even more unstable. To survive, it will have to regroup and battle for its position. It is far more likely that Los Zetas or another element of the Gulf Alliance will become dominant. (U//FOUO) Many senior leaders of the Gulf Alliance have been imprisoned, and some, including the head of the Gulf Cartel, have been extradited to the United States. However, operations of the affiliated organizations continue. Within the partnership, the Gulf Cartel had been ascendant, largely as a result of the growing strength and presence of Los Zetas, which was begun by a group of former Mexican special forces troops who switched their allegiance from their country to the head of the Gulf Cartel, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén. The Gulf Alliance is battling for control of drug smuggling routes along the U.S.-Mexico border and routes and markets in Mexico. The violence that is characteristic of the cartels is now spilling over the border into the United States. The destabilization caused by the Mexican enforcement action is likely to increase the level of violence throughout Mexico, as the DTOs try to eliminate rivals, eliminate enforcement personnel, reestablish their primacy, and reorganize with new leadership, and as elements of this cartel battle each other. (U//FOUO) Besides the immediate issues of DTO violence, crime, and drug trafficking, there is also concern that their smuggling routes may be attractive to terrorist organizations for bringing materiel and operatives into the United States. While it is generally accepted that there is no ideological affinity between the DTOs and Islamist terror groups, it is possible that the DTOs would contract their services to other organizations for the right price, as they do now with affiliated traffickers and other smugglers. To date, there is no evidence that this has occurred. (U//FOUO) As with all such alliances, various groups and leaders may move in and out of the alliance umbrella. (U//FOUO) 1 UNCLASSIFIED// FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY COMPOSITION This alliance between the Gulf Cartel,1 which began operations out of Matamoros, Reynoso, Miguel Aleman, and Monterrey on the Gulf of Mexico (it once controlled nearly all trafficking into east Texas from Colombia around the Gulf of Mexico and the Yucatan peninsula), and the Tijuana Cartel,2 which has operated out of Baja California on Mexico’s west coast (and once controlled all drug routes into California), was created by the cartels’ respective leaders, Osiel Cardenas Guillen (“El Mata Amigos,” literally “the friend killer”) and Benjamin Arellano Felix, in a jailhouse agreement after their arrests.3 Until recently, the two had adjoining cells; to some degree, each has continued to exert influence, if not control, over their operations. (U//FOUO) Of the two, in recent years the Gulf Cartel has been more organized, more violent, and dominant. (U//FOUO) Each cartel has a corporate, hierarchical structure that includes state bosses, enforcers, transport bosses, and retail dealers, along with a host of support operations, including lookouts, surveillance, and communications. Structure is somewhat fluid given the vagaries of arrests, deaths, and injuries; this also allows for a steady flow of replacements and fairly constant upward mobility in the ranks. As of the first quarter of 2007, this alliance was particularly unstable, with most of the senior leadership of the Tijuana Cartel behind bars in Mexico or the United States4 and the Gulf Cartel’s Cardenas Guillen extradited and awaiting trial in the United States. (U//FOUO) IDEOLOGY The overriding interest of the alliance is to increase wealth and amass power in the interests of creating wealth. (U//FOUO) Despite the prevalence of death images in Mexican culture (for example, annual Day of the Dead celebrations and profuse representations of skeletons in folk art), some recent reports have suggested a cultural connection between the DTOs and the worship of La Santa Muerte, usually described as a cult-like devotion to “Saint Death.”5 Statuettes of the figure—a robed skeleton holding a sickle—can be found in many Mexican shops on the border. Alleged worship of the figure, combined with promises made by DTOs that the family of anyone who dies in service of the cartels will be provided for, and recent use of beheadings as a tactic, have been cited in support of a cultural connection between DTOs and radical Islamist terrorism. (U//FOUO) However, this most likely reflects local cultural characteristics overlaid with traditional organized crime behaviors (e.g., caring for the families of dead “soldiers”) and the unwitting influence of news and electronic media. Television news reports have inadvertently proliferated tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) used elsewhere (i.e., in Iraq) to disparate groups around the world, even while censoring the most gruesome material. The Internet has been a mechanism for radical groups to disseminate to the general public unedited video of beheadings and other tactics, which may serve as inspiration for other criminal and terrorist groups. (U//FOUO) 2 UNCLASSIFIED// FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY OBJECTIVES AND STRATEGY The Gulf Alliance has aimed to expand its markets and control the drug supplies and routes to, through, and from Mexico into the United States. The strategy is simply to eliminate those who stand in their way by cooption, bribery, intimidation, and assassination. (U//FOUO) TARGET SELECTION Government officials, including police authorities and elected officials, may be offered bribes for assistance or for looking the other way when confronted with the group’s activities. In 1997, bribes were estimated at $6 billion annually for all DTOs;6 they have undoubtedly increased since then. Bribes may be monetary or goods and services. If bribery does not work, the next step is usually intimidation in the form of threats or attacks on the targeted individual’s property or associates, including family. Those who still resist are subject to kidnapping, torture, and execution. The choice for officials, and increasingly for journalists, is commonly called plata o plomo—silver or lead, money or a bullet, life or death.7 (U//FOUO) Examples of “plomo” carried out by Mexican DTOs include the following: • On 13 June 2005, Edmundo Fernández Corral was executed on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez. His assailants were not identified. He had been the Chihuahua Municipal Chief of Police Special Forces for less than nine hours. 8 • On 16 June 2005, Pedro Madrigal was shot and killed outside his home in Mexico City. Madrigal had been a member of the Policia Federal Preventiva (PFP, Federal Preventive Police) for nearly six years. In November 2004, he became Coordinator for PFP activities at the Mexico City International Airport. Subsequently, the PFP’s efficiency grew. In June 2004, Madrigal discovered 300 kilo of cocaine hidden in boxes containing winter clothing. The boxes had come from Colombia. Madrigal also developed a reputation for spotting illegal aliens and their traffickers.9 • In February 2006 the newsroom of the daily newspaper El Mañana was stormed by two gunmen with semi-automatic weapons and a grenade. A reporter was critically injured.10 The newspaper’s editorial director was murdered in 2004.11 • On Saturday, 21 April 2007, Durango state police commander Sergio Munoz was abducted as he left his house. At least 10 gunmen in two SUVs grabbed him. Following the abduction, two police officers manning a roadblock were killed in a shootout. Munoz’ body was dumped on a dirt road 250 miles north of Durango city.12 In early 2006, the Inter American Press Association rated northern Mexico along the U.S. border as the most dangerous place in Latin America for journalists. The Arellano Felix Organization is believed to have been behind the murder of Francisco Ortiz Franco, editor of the prominent magazine Zeta, which covered drug dealing extensively. (U//FOUO) 3 UNCLASSIFIED// FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Besides deterring enforcement, actions of this sort terrify the general population, discouraging them from going to the authorities and instead forcing them to cooperate with the cartels. (U//FOUO) In addition to the kidnapping, torture, and murder of government officials and journalists,13 the narcotraficantes have also attacked performers.14 In November and December 2006, singer Valentín Elizalde was shot and killed in Reynosa after performing a song sympathetic to the Sinaloa Cartel; Javier Morales Gómez, of the musical group Los Francisco Ortiz Implacables del Norte, was Franco murdered in Michoacán state (the group had recorded songs about the Arellano Félix family); and threats have been made against the Tucanes of Tijuana, who have sung the praises of Sinaloa traffickers.
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