Ap photo An undated file photograph published in the Tuesday, Jan. 16, 1996 issue of the Mexico City daily, Reforma, shows recently arrested drug lord Juan Garcia Abrego, top right, with the former head of the Gulf Cartel, Juan Nepomuceno Guerra, left,his uncle, who was jailed in 1991. More Photos » Real Video »

Rebirth of the Gulf cartel

Ring gains new head, narcotics power again

By Jeremy Schwartz

As the blistering June sun beat down on downtown Matamoros, more than a dozen men wearing black masks and carrying submachine guns surrounded the Tamaulipas State Prison.

They ordered the handful of state police officers to hand over their guns and lay on the floor. From within the compound they took Jose Ramon Davila, an accused kidnapper with links to drug trafficking, and fled in getaway trucks after exchanging gunfire with frustrated officers.

The raid lasted just minutes, but its significance is still echoing in Matamoros. For some observers, it signaled the rebirth of Matamoros' notorious Gulf Cartel, once considered the most powerful drug smuggling group along the U.S.-Mexico Border.

Headquartered just 150 miles from Corpus Christi, drug agents say the Gulf Cartel is responsible for much, but not all, of the cocaine and marijuana smuggled through the area to points north. The Drug Enforcement Administration reported in 1999 that 64 percent of the drugs seized within the country came from South Texas.

Fittingly enough, the raid came just a month after authorities referred to cartel members as remnants.

Official Influence

Since the early 1990's, the cartel had gradually been losing power to better known cartels in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, and was almost ruined following the arrest and sentencing of its leader Juan Garcia Abrego, according to law enforcement officials.

But in its prime, the Gulf Cartel was responsible for a third of the cocaine entering the United States, officials have estimated. It gained its power and reputation largely from Abrego's ability to bribe and influence military, police and government officials at a level above his drug smuggling peers.

"Abrego had connections at the highest levels of the Mexican government," said Phil Jordan, a retired DEA agent and former chief of the El Paso Intelligence Center, a multi-agency effort to track the border and drug trafficking. "In his heyday, he had indirect connection to Los Pinos (The Mexican White House).

"Abrego was considered one of the most powerful godfathers of the drug trade, whether Colombian or Mexican."

$20 billion a year

As the cartel hit its stride, the organization grossed $20 billion a year and extended its reach of corruption across the Rio Grande. Immigration and Naturalization Service employees and buses were used to move cocaine, two Texas National Guardsmen were used to smuggle drugs and there were unsubstantiated allegations that Border Patrol agents at the checkpoint in Sarita had been bribed to let shipments pass, according to published reports from Abrego's trial.

During Abrego's 1996 drug trafficking and money laundering trial in Houston, it was revealed that Abrego paid $1.5 million a month to the man in charge of bringing down the cartel, Javier Coello Trejo, Mexico's deputy attorney general. The federal police commander in Matamoros was responsible for collecting the money.

The drug lord's greatest contribution to Mexican smuggling was the creation of an arrangement with the Cali Cartel in Colombia to move their cocaine anywhere in the United States in exchange for 50 percent of the load.

New business model

Previously, Mexican drug lords had smuggled Colombian cocaine for a set fee as Colombians distributed the drugs once inside the United States. The new arrangement gave Abrego more risk, more responsibility and ballooning profits.

Within a few years, Abrego's deal became the norm in Colombian-Mexican relations, and the power and wealth of Mexican cartels mushroomed.

Abrego's decline began in earnest when he became the first drug trafficker ever named to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list in 1995. After his face went up on the list, Abrego spent much of his time eluding capture as Colombian associates became wary of dealing with a wanted fugitive, according to published reports.

Following Abrego's arrest on a ranch outside of Monterrey in 1996, and his extradition to Houston to stand trial, the cartel was laid low, law enforcement officials said. Members battled over leadership and the Juarez Cartel nipped at its edges, claiming its territory along the border.

"(Abrego's arrest) had a significant impact on the Abrego organization, but it did not stop other organizations from operating in the South Texas area," said Ken Magidson, Chief of the Drug Task Force and Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Houston.

A new leader

In Abrego's absence, the Gulf Cartel was left weak, but alive, despite U.S. and Mexican claims that arrests had killed any remnants of the group. Jorge Chabat, a Mexico City political analyst and expert on drug trafficking, said that most of the arrests had little impact because they were of mid-level members who are easy to replace.

"The Gulf Cartel supposedly suffered a bad blow with the capture of Abrego," Chabat said. "They've had a low profile, but it seems they never stopped functioning."

In August 1997, six months after Abrego was sentenced, a shoot-out in Matamoros over control of the headless Gulf Cartel left three dead.

When the dust had cleared two years later, a new leader was christened by American law enforcement: Oziel Cardenas-Guillen.

$2 million bounty

Like they did with Abrego before him, the State Department has placed a $2 million bounty on Oziel Cardenas-Guillen's head.

Cardenas-Guillen, nicknamed the "friend-killer," is not unknown to U.S. law enforcement. In 1992 he was arrested on drug smuggling charges along with two other men at a Bonanza restaurant in Brownsville. After coming to a plea agreement with prosecutors, Cardenas-Guillen testified at the trial of his co-conspirators, who both were found guilty and received 78-month sentences, according to court records.

Cardenas-Guillen, the alleged ringleader of the attempt to sell two kilograms of cocaine, served just a fraction of his 63-month sentence time at a federal prison in Hinton, Okla. before he was returned to Mexico as part of a prisoner exchange.

Today, the organization appears re-energized under Cardenas-Guillen. According to the Mexican Attorney General's office, the Gulf Cartel is now the fourth most powerful cartel in Mexico, operating in 10 Mexican states and as far south as the Yucatan. And law enforcement agents in the United States say that while not omnipotent, the cartel is responsible for a majority of the drugs coming across the South Texas border.

Ap photo Juan Garcia Abrego, third from top, Mexican drug lord who was arrested Sunday, is put onto a plane belonging to Mexico's Attorney General's Office, (PGR) Monday, Jan. 15, 1996 at the Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City. The prosecutor general said in a press release that Garcia Abrego, a U.S. citizen, would be sent out of Mexico. The U.S. State Department said Monday that Garcia Abrego would be sent to Houston, Texas. More Photos »

Propped up by lawmen

But despite the cartel's renewed notoriety, several observers in Mexico say Cardenas-Guillen has been propped up by law enforcement as the group's leader and that he may not be calling all the shots.

Luis Astorga, a sociologist at the Universidad Autónoma de México in Mexico City, said Cardenas' power may come from outside Matamoros.

"Oziel is a kind of heritage of Abrego, but I think he does not act alone," Astorga said. "I would rather say the group of Oziel is a branch of the Juarez group, and not so independent as some people say."

Astorga hypothesizes that the Gulf Cartel lost its vital connections to Colombian drug producers when Abrego was taken down. Other groups have stepped in to fill the void and he said it's likely Oziel Cardenas-Guillen is dependent on other groups for his initial supply.

"I can't imagine the (heads of other cartels) would allow some other people on that part of the border take control," Astorga said.

Like soccer teams

Chabat says it's an important cartel in terms of smuggling, but has seen its position of prominence knocked off by the stronger cartels in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. According to the Mexican Attorney General's office, both cartels have a presence in the state of Tamaulipas, once the unquestioned stomping ground of Abrego.

"The cartels are like soccer teams," Chabat said. "Some have good seasons, some are in the second division."

But perhaps more important than the rise of rival cartels, is the loss of political connections that Abrego cultivated during the Ernesto Zedillo and Carlos Salinas de Gortari presidencies. Abrego's power had begun to wane even before his capture because he no longer enjoyed the protection from the federal government he once did, Chabat said.

Cardenas-Guillen has yet to make similar connections and as a result is not as favored by federal police and the military, whose protection is so vital to building drug trafficking empires, Chabat said.

Untouchables

But according to U.S. drug officials and Mexican newspapers, Cardenas-Guillen does enjoy an untouchable status in Matamoros. Matamoros police, both local and federal, refused to talk about the Gulf Cartel, citing orders from superiors and the delicate nature of investigations into smuggling.

The June raid on the Tamaulipas State Prison was just one of a number of in-your-face incidents linked to Cardenas and his group.

In November 1999, Cardenas-Guillen and more than a dozen gunmen surrounded a car carrying a DEA agent, an FBI agent and an informer, demanding the informer and threatening to kill the agents.

The holdup occurred on a busy Matamoros street at midday.

According to reports, numerous vehicles, including trucks, surrounded the car and the men came out with machine guns. Some wore jackets identifying them as Tamaulipas State Police. The men ordered the agents out of the car, but left after the agents reportedly talked them out of killing them by warning them of the consequences of murdering U.S. agents. It's not clear what happened to the informant.

Public execution

Cardenas-Guillen and several others were indicted on charges of drug trafficking and assaulting a federal officer after the incident. One of the indicted cartel leaders, Juan Manuel Garza Rendon, surrendered to U.S. authorities in June and has pleaded guilty in September to the drug charges. Cardenas remains on the run.

Cartel members also are believed to have executed Matamoros' commander of ministerial police, Jaime Yanez Cantu, in July during a bold daylight shooting just blocks from police headquarters. According to press reports, Cantu and his assistant were shot while under watch of two police escort cars.

Thousands of dollars in cash were also found in a suitcase in Cantu's vehicle.

Cantu had headed the investigation into the prison breakout and had publicly accused the cartel of being behind it. Authorities said Cantu's slaying was retribution for his investigations as well as a spate of arrests on low and midlevel cartel members.

But dissenting voices on both sides of the border called Cantu a dirty cop who got too close to the cartel. Some theorized Cantu demanded too much for protection and so was eliminated.

Former DEA agent Jordan said he thought that Cantu was actually a member of the Gulf Cartel.

"I think the greed got to him," Jordan said. "Whether he was executed by the cartel, I couldn't tell you."

Ap photo A Tamaulipas state police officer leaves a police station in the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, late Thursday, June 21, 2001, where a raid by a group of armed men Tuesday freed a man held for questioning. While authorities assured residents that Tuesday's assault was an isolated incident, it gave a sobering peek at the strength of organized crime in this border city, where such Mafia violence has become rare since the fall of reputed kingpin Juan Garcia Abrego. More Photos »

Corrupt police

If that is true, then Cantu was no different than the scores of corrupt law enforcement agents in Mexico that many say make shutting down the cartels impossible.

"Money makes people invisible," said Chabat, who argues that political will is not nearly enough to take down the cartels.

While Mexican President Vicente Fox has so far shown the will to go after high level traffickers, the same can't be said for local, state and federal police.

"The problem is Fox has the same police as Zedillo," Chabat said.

With such a deep core of corrupt police, Chabat said, drug lords like Cardenas-Guillen will no doubt be alerted to a special, Fox-ordered mission to capture them.

Chabat said what is needed is a new generation of police, trained and indoctrinated in honest ways, and that will take at least five to 10 years.

"We learn since we're young that the easiest way is to break the law," he said. "To change that won't take just a few months."

Pri role

Astorga said the problem of the Gulf Cartel and corruption in Tamaulipas runs even deeper. While other states, most notably Baja California and Chihuahua, have seen the rise of competitive political parties, Tamaulipas and Matamoros remain firmly in the hands of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had controlled Mexican political life for 80 years until Fox's election.

"The role of the opposition parties has created a more powerful civil society than Tamaulipas," Astorga said. "In other areas (drug trafficking) is not as easy or open because the PRI did whatever it wanted. Whenever there was a problem, they tried to arrange it among themselves, not through justice."

El Imparcial

In a middle-class neighborhood in Matamoros, mourners on a Thursday evening filed slowly into a small chapel, where air-conditioning units and ceiling fans struggled against the choking August heat.

In the middle row, sitting by himself, was Gonzalo Martinez Silva, the publisher of El Imparcial, an afternoon newspaper dedicated mostly to covering crime in Matamoros.

Five months earlier, Silva's son, an editor at the paper, was kidnapped, tortured and executed. "Everyone knows who it was," Silva said after the Mass was celebrated for his son, Saul Antonio Martinez Gutierrez.

"Everyone knows it was Oziel Cardenas, that assassin."

Ap photo Gonzalo Martinez Silva, publisher of the Matamoros daily El Imparcial, attends a Mass for his son Saul Antonio Martinez Silva, who was tortured and killed in March. Authorities believe Saul, an editor at the newspaper, was killed after writing a series of articles about Mexican drug traffickers. More Photos »

Journalist killed

Gutierrez's body was found in the back seat of his Ford Explorer in the neighboring border town of Rio Bravo. He had been shot four times in the head with a 9 mm gun and bruises on his body suggested he had been tortured.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, Gutierrez had been threatened by drug traffickers over articles about them in the newspaper, but didn't take them seriously.

What drives his father mad is that he sees Cardenas drive around Matamoros with impunity while police go nowhere in solving the case.

"The authorities don't do anything. They receive money. They are thieves," Silva said. "The cartels just change chiefs. Either they are killed or go to jail like Abrego, and the new one comes in and has everyone in his pocket."

Undaunted critic

Silva still uses his newspaper as a bully pulpit against the Cartel and on the day of his son's Mass he didn't mince words.

Officials know that Cardenas "travels tranquilly through the city in Suburban trucks with smoked windows and curtains," he wrote. "They also know that when they come across him, the ministerial agents salute him in military style."

The state attorney general for Tamaulipas denied police are turning a blind eye to the killers of Gutierrez and Cantu, cases which he insists have nothing to do with each other and is loathe to say are connected to the Gulf Cartel.

"We are looking for specific people," said Francisco Cayuela Villarreal. "We have two or three suspects, but we need to capture them."

No hope

The suspects, says Cayuela, have fled Matamoros and Tamaulipas and he needs the help of other Mexican states and possibly the United States to find them.

As for Cardenas, he says he doubts he is walking around with impunity. "I understand his pain," he said of Silva.

Silva says he is just rolling the dice with his outspokenness, to see what shakes out. He says he's not exactly afraid, but that he knows how risky what he's doing is.

But, perhaps paradoxically, he says he harbors no hope for things getting better in Matamoros. The situation he has known most of his professional life won't change, he says.

"I don't hope for anything," he said emphatically. "We talk in the vacuum, in the air."

Contact Jeremy Schwartz at 886-3618 or schwartzj@caller.com

November 19, 2001