Profile: Mexico
Mexico is, according to the U.S. State Department, "a major supplier or neroln, mernampneramlne ana marijuana ror the U.S. market and "the transit point for more than one half of the cocaine sold...
...with exports to the United States soon occurring through Mexicali and Tijuana...
...Analyst Andrew Reding points out that "even if that sum is exaggerated by a factor of two, [it] vast- ly outstrip[ped]oil earningsv-some $7 billion for the same year.' I* The amount of money laundered in Mexico is so great--esti- mates range from 47r to 20% of GDP-that if laundering were successfully stopped, it could touch off an economic crisis worse than that sparked by the 1994 peso devaluation.3 I* According to researcher Carlos Loret de Mola, the drug industry directly employs some 360,000 Mexicans...
...According to the DEA...
...It is also a major money Iaundering site: The State Department reports that "In recent years inter- national money launderers have turned increasingly to Mexico for initial placement of drug proceeds into the global financial system...
...l I* The Mexican attorney general's office estimated that the gross annual income of Mexican traffickers was about $30 bil- lion dollars a year in 1994...
...In the 19Ws...
...journalist Julia Reynolds detailed the tiec between Mexican banks and politicians and the drq trade in the era of PRI presidents Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo...
...Profile: Mexico 1. INCSR, 2001...
...This represented a major expansion of the Mexican role in the Latin American drug trade...
...36, http://www.unesco.org/most/astorga.htm His Elsiglo de las drgas, (Mexico: Espasa-Hoy, 1996), is a genera history rugs in Mexico...
...Astorga stresses that "since the beginning of the drug business" the best-known Mexican traffickers appear to have had close relations with high-ranking politicians and...
...marijuana production could already be counted in tons in states like Puebla...
...Available online at http://www.nacla.org/artdisplay...
...a situation that continues to this day...
...8. DEA, "Drug Trafficking in the U.S.," p. 8. 9. Julia Reynolds, "When Prohibition Meets Free Trade," NACLA Report, Vol...
...In this iswe, we report on how political power is linked to the drug industry in Guerrero and other centers of poppy rtncl marijuana production...
...2. The figure is cited in Andrew Reding, "Mexico's Timid Fight Against Drugs," Journal of Commerce, March 11, 1996...
...R-eding notes that 1994 was the last year the statistic was released...
...Mexico now produces about 2rF of the world's opium supply, most of this converted into heroin sold in the western part of the United States...
...Drug Enforcement Administration, 'The Mexican Heroin Trade," April, 2000, htt ://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/intel/20014/20014.html, 5. LuisAstorga, "Drug Trafficking In Mexico: A First General Assessment," Management of Social Transformations Discussion Paper No...
...as well as a significant increase in income for the Mexican tmfTickers...
...market and "the transit point for more than one half of the cocaine sold in the U.S...
...6. U.S...
...3. "Lesson for those who want to deny funding to terrorists," LatinAmerican Weekly Report, September 25, 2001...
...Controlled...
...By the 1930s...
...php?art=458...
...Opium poppy has been cultivated in Sinaloa since the 1880s...
...Nor should the work-generating capacity of the drug control forces he underestimated: The DEA reports that 20.000 Mexican soldiers take part in poppy eradication operations on any given day...
...Even more recently, the Mexi- cans reportedly hegan to work with the Colombians to import Colombian heroin into the United States...
...and to mnkc use of' morc sophisticated Colombian retining techniques to improve Mexican heroin prod~~ction.~ Mexicans are also increasinply involved in methamphetamine production, in the United States as well as in Mexico...
...XXXV, No...
...tolerated, or regulated by mighty politicans in northern [Mexican] states, clmg trafficking seems to have been a business that was developed from within the power stn~cture...
...Many smaller meth labs also operate in Mexican border states, particularly Raja Califor- nia...
...Mexican traffickers began to replace the Colombian cartels as the final importers of cocaine into the United States...
...Mexican sociologist Luis Astorga notes that "drug trafficking in Mexico began about sixty years before the Colombians got an important share of the [U.S.] drug market...
...Drug Enforcement Administration, "Drug Trafficking in the United States," http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/intel/01020/index.html 7. DEA, "The Mexican Heroin Trade...
...in 1994 Mexican groups began operating '"super labs' (laboratories capable of producing in evcess of 10 pounds of methamphetamine in one 24-hour cycle)based in Mexico and in California...
...It continues to be one of the top foreign suppliers of marijuana to the U.S...
...4. Loret de Mola interview, "Narcotrdfico: el motor de M6xico " La Prensa, Managua, July 16, 2001...
...In last year's NACU R~port on the Drug War in the Americas...
...1, July/August 2002...
...since the Mexican Revolution, with the state party system crmted by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI...
...Guerrero and Tlax~ala...
Vol. 36 • September 2002 • No. 2
