Crackdown on La Familia cartel leads to more than 300 arrests across US
Project Coronado included raids in 19 states, showing broad reach of Mexican group's activities north of the border
Buzz up!
Digg it
Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 October 2009 18.36 BST
Article history
A Mexican federal police officer escorts Jose Roberto Sanchez 'El Chivo', 24, suspected member of the Michoácan cartel known as La Familia. Photograph: Jorge Dan/Reuters
US authorities have carried out the largest crackdown against a Mexican drug cartel, arresting more than 300 people across the country amid growing fears that Mexican gangs are steadily gaining power and influence north of the border.
The nationwide sweep, with raids in inner cities, suburbs and small towns across across 19 different states, highlights the extent to which Mexican gangs have spread their tentacles throughout the US. Several of the raids occurred in quiet neighbourhoods, where drug labs were found to be operating in houses with children present completely undetected by the surrounding population.
Project Coronado, as it was called, was launched on Wednesday and yesterday against the La Familia cartel, a relative newcomer to the Mexican-US drugs supply business that is renowned for being particularly brutal and for its bizarre cult-like religious practices. The cartel has risen quickly, setting up bases across the US, and is now thought to export more crystal methamphetamine to America than any other crime organisation.
The nationwide sweep was striking for its extraordinary reach. Cities from Seattle in the west, to Boston in the east and Dallas in the south were all targetted, with many smaller towns in between. The attorney general, Eric Holder, said the raids had disrupted La Familia's operations which "stretch far into the US".
Such a wide and high-profile strike is politically significant as the Obama administration came into office promising to take a more proactive approach to the Mexican cartels. The White House estimates that the gangs are now established in every state in America, and within at least 230 cities.
"These raids indicate that the US is beginning to role up at least one of its sleeves in the war with the cartels. They are moving from rhetoric to action," said George Grayson, a Mexico specialist at the College of William and Mary and author of the forthcoming book, Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?
In the past, the US authorities have tended to treat the activities of the Mexican cartels as an external problem for the Mexican government to deal with. But as the extent of the gangs' encroachment into the American hinterland has become clear, and as the threat to the stability of Mexico itself has grown with some 15,000 drug-related murders in the past three years, the issue has risen up the US political agenda.
Of all the drugs produced in and trafficked through Mexico - including crystal meth, cocaine, heroine and cannabis - only 20% is consumed within the country. The lion's share of the remainder goes to feed the insatiable appetite of Americans for illegal drugs.
Part of the difficulty for the FBI and other federal departments in combatting the cartels is that they have spread their web through communities of Mexicans living and working illegally in the US. Michoacan, the southwestern state of Mexico in which La Familia is based, is also a prime point of origin for illegal immigration to the US.
La Familia, like its more establsihed rivals such as the Sinaloa, Juarex, Gulf and Tijuana cartels, has tended to set up base in cities along the intersections of US highways that allow rapid transportation lines across the states. The impact is starting to be felt deeply in several of America's largest cities.
Phoenix in Arizona has become the kidnapping capital of America, recording 370 cases last year - more than any city in the world outside Mexico City.
Though most of the incidents involve Mexicans involved with the cartels, the fall-out is stretching the Phoenix police to the limit.
Atlanta in Georgia, where 35 people were arrested in this week's raids, has also been severely hit. It is now seen as a strategic operations centre for Mexican organised crime.
The sophisticated supply routes set up by the cartels are also used to traffic guns and cash. According to court documents in New York, La Familia members have obtained military-quality weapons and ammunition in the US and taken it back to Mexico for use in its extremely violent operations.
A huge challenge for the FBI is to catch the leaders of La Familia who have so far proved elusive. Unless they are apprehended, they will simply regroup and re-recruit foot soldiers from among the more than 8 million illegal Mexicans in America, many of whom are now desperate for work as a result of the recession.
Four suspected top members La Familia, including an alleged leader Servando Gomez-Martinez, have been indicted in New York, but no arrests have yet been made.
"Most of the arrests in this week's raids are probably of low-level dealers, couriers and look-outs," Grayson said.
Background: La Familia
La Familia is the newest of the trafficking groups currently battling to control Mexico's drug markets and supply routes into the US.
But in its short, brutal history, it has grown fast and is now believed to be the biggest supplier of methamphetamine to the US.
The group first emerged around 2004 as a vigilante organisation purportedly aimed at removing drug dealers from the central state of Michoacán, but its leaders had no such qualms at producing and selling drugs elsewhere. It gained wider notoriety in 2006 when Familia gunmen rolled five heads severed onto the dance floor of a Michoacan disco, with a note claiming, "this is divine justice".
Its alleged leader Nazario Moreno González goes by the nickname El Más Loco, The Craziest One. He preaches his organisation's divine right to eliminate enemies and carries a "bible" of his own sayings. Members - many of whom are recruited from religious-based rehab clinics - must attend church, and are forbidden from drink and drugs.
La Familia has been more willing than other trafficking groups to directly attack the federal forces deployed around the country in a massive anti-cartel offensive launched by President Felipe Calderón. After a top Familia operative was captured in July , the group retaliated with a series of assaults on federal police stations and left the bodies of 12 tortured federal agents piled on a country road. A spokesman for the group then phoned a local TV program and called on President Calderon to negotiate.
Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
10-25-2009, 02:58 PM
Crackdown on La Familia cartel leads to more than 300 arrests across US
