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 News from Around the Americas | February 2007 
US Prosecutors Set to Take on Suspected Gulf Cartel Leader
 Dane Schiller - San Antonio Express-News
| | Osiel Cardenas Guillen is held by Mexican authorities last month before extradition to the U.S. (Pat Sullivan/AP) |
Chained at the wrists and ankles, the imprisoned Gulf Cartel boss shuffled toward U.S. federal agents and into a new chapter in U.S.-Mexican relations. He already has been convicted in Mexico of charges rooted in his running the cartel.
A chance at payback is coming for U.S. authorities after Mexico handed over Osiel Cardenas Guillen in January to face trial in Houston.
The U.S. government contends that for years Cardenas ran one of the most violent and powerful criminal syndicates in Mexico, at his peak pumping 6 tons of cocaine a month across the border and squaring off in a turf war over trafficking routes through the Laredo area.
He may be the highest-profile drug trafficker Mexico has extradited to the U.S.
A federal indictment also charges that in a standoff in 1999 he threatened to kill an FBI agent and a Drug Enforcement Administration agent.
"He is famous like the devil," said Beto Quintanilla, a scratchy-voiced recording artist who sings corridos — ballads often about drug trafficking.
Should prosecutors make their case, his days of trademark gold-plated guns will be replaced by a prison cell.
"He killed his way up the ladder to lead the Gulf Cartel," DEA chief Karen Tandy said.
Handing over Cardenas, 39, also is seen as a sign that Mexican President Felipe Calderon intends to take on the cartels by punishing their leaders and forcing them to go back to the days of killing less and doing business behind closed doors.
"Whoever sows instability, violence and death among Mexicans is the enemy," Calderon has said.
Among the other major criminals who are jailed in Mexico but are likely on a U.S. wish list are Benjamin Arellano Felix, who headed the Tijuana Cartel, and Rafael Caro Quintero, who is wanted in the 1985 torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena.
Extradition is a diplomatic maneuver, but it strikes a special fear for drug-cartel bosses because it removes them from their country and largely ensures they'll never again have contact with their soldiers.
Authorities hope Cardenas' extradition will remind traffickers: If they can get the man nicknamed, among other things, the "Ghost," they can get anyone.
"It sends a message to all drug traffickers that they will be pursued on heaven and Earth if they threaten, kill or assault a law enforcement officer," said Mike Vigil, a retired DEA agent who was head of the agency's international operations. "They will never be able to rest."
10 years in the making
A plan to apprehend Cardenas was crafted more than 10 years ago, when a group of U.S. drug fighters huddled in Brownsville, officials said.
Cardenas, who used to train drug-sniffing dogs, had made a lot of money and contacts by doing unofficial dirty work for a defunct, notoriously corrupt branch of the federal police.
"At that time, he was still up and coming," said Alonzo Peña, who was the chief of Customs Service investigators in Brownsville and is now head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona.
Thanks to that corruption, he made enough money to invest in cocaine and become a player, Peña said.
"He is strictly about violence and terror," said Ricardo Ravelo, author of Los Capos, a book on organized crime and drug trafficking in Mexico.
It is a sharp departure from the ways of some other drug gangs, which have been in business far longer than the Gulf Cartel and prefer to build alliances and keep a low profile.
Authorities contend Cardenas killed members of his own gang as well as police, rival smugglers and others to cement himself as the boss.
Cardenas had a private army of former Mexican special forces soldiers, known as the Zetas, who unleashed levels of violence never before seen in Nuevo Laredo.
Acting as hit men and bodyguards, the Zetas introduced new tactics among traffickers, and some are said to have been trained by the U.S. Army.
Mexico saw at least 26 beheadings in various parts of the country, including two policemen whose decapitated heads were stuck on a fence in Acapulco.
The rise
Cardenas is thought to have made his first contact with organized crime as a young man, when he regularly washed the car of Gulf Cartel hit man El Amable, or The Nice One, known to tell his victims it was nothing personal, just business.
Smuggling routes controlled by the Gulf Cartel grew more lucrative because of the free-trade agreement between Mexico and the U.S. More legitimate business traffic meant it was easier to hide illegal drug shipments headed north as well as bulk cash payments headed south.
As he held power, Cardenas is said to have gained the support of locals by committing good-samaritan-type acts.
Among the stories carried in 2004 by Mexico's government-owned news agency was one on Cardenas sending a tractor-trailer rig with supplies to the border city of Piedras Negras after it had been hit by flooding.
There are other stories of Cardenas, some painting him larger than life.
"Like with all drug traffickers, their lives and deaths are filled with stories and myths," the author Ravelo said.
Adding to Cardenas' notoriety, the U.S. government offered a reward of up to $2 million for information leading to his capture and conviction. The offer was stamped on his FBI wanted poster.
Time to fall
After that meeting in Brownsville, federal agents, state troopers and sheriff's deputies launched "Operation Cazadores" to go after Cardenas and the Gulf Cartel any way they could.
"The idea was to try and break his organization, diminish his effectiveness, seize their dope, seize their vehicles and arrest their guys that came into the United States," said Peña, the ICE director in Arizona.
Peña emphasized it could not have happened without a joint effort by Customs, the DEA, FBI and others.
Operations took them from the Rio Grande Valley to Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and other places. They spied on Cardenas' people and brokered deals with them by having officers go undercover as drug traffickers.
Cardenas, however, didn't truly provoke the wrath of Washington until he and about a dozen of his men, including several armed with assault rifles, were accused of surrounding and threatening to kill two U.S. agents protecting a confidential informant in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville.
Weapons were aimed. People were shouting. It seemed they were about to shoot, according to a government report.
In a last effort to save themselves, an agent reminded Cardenas of the border crackdown and relentless manhunt after traffickers in Guadalajara tortured for two days and then murdered the DEA's Camarena.
Killing them, the agent said, would be the greatest mistake of his life. Cardenas called off his gunmen and issued a chilling warning.
"You (expletive) gringos. This is my town, so get the (expletive) out of here before I kill all of you," Cardenas said, according to the document.
The agents later were given medals by the attorney general for heroism. Cardenas was indicted by a federal grand jury but could evade U.S. authorities by staying in Mexico.
He went on to become the DEA's No. 1 target in Mexico and was captured in 2003 during a daylight clash with the Mexican army in Matamoros. Three soldiers were shot and as many as 22 people were arrested, including Cardenas.
Fresh into his presidency, Calderon took a no-turning-back stride when masked federal agents stormed into Cardenas' prison cell and put him aboard a plane bound for Texas.
Cardenas could have been caught off-guard by a possible loophole in the law.
Mexicans sentenced to prison are required to serve their domestic sentences before they are eligible to be extradited to face trial in a foreign country.
Cardenas had been found guilty of organized-crime charges related to his running the cartel but had yet to be sentenced, leaving the door open for him to be sent to the U.S.
Although Cardenas speaks limited English, he knows American justice. In 1993, he was sentenced to five years in U.S. federal prison for a cocaine conviction but later was sent back to Mexico.
dschiller@express-news.net |
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