| | |  Americas & Beyond | July 2008 
Drug Traffic May Shy Away From Houston
 Dane Schiller - Houston Chronicle
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 |  | It is getting real tough to get cocaine in this town for the first time. The information we're getting is that it is certainly working, the pressure is on.
- Stan Furce |  | | | |
Mexico's war on drug cartels might not change how much cocaine flows into the United States, but U.S. officials say Houston, long a major transshipment point for the underworld, could get a break as smugglers evade soldiers and police near the border.
A recent analysis by the National Drug Intelligence Center contends pressure by Mexican President Felipe Calderon on areas across the Rio Grande from South Texas may force drug traffickers to reroute smuggling pipelines, at least for the short term.
That would mean they'd be likely looking west to find holes in the U.S.-Mexico border and away from traditional routes that push tons of illegal drugs through an area that hugs the Gulf Coast, from Kenedy County to near the Louisiana border.
"What we are seeing is a temporary shift," said Stan Furce, director of a coalition of federal and state drug fighters assigned to a 16-county slice of Texas designated as the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.
"It is getting real tough to get cocaine in this town for the first time," Furce said of Houston on Thursday. "The information we're getting is that it is certainly working, the pressure is on."
A kilogram of cocaine was going for as much as $22,000 here as recently as last week, up from a norm of about $18,000, said Houston police spokesman John Cannon.
Furce said several factors are at play, but Calderon's push is a major contributor. He also said that given the weak U.S. economy, traffickers are also looking to Europe, where the Euro is strong, the market is wide open and law enforcement is less aggressive.
The 19-page analysis points to thousands of Mexican law enforcement officers and soldiers conducting operations in several Mexican cities bordering Texas, as well as the use of highway checkpoints, aerial flyovers and investigations of local police departments.
"These counterdrug measures may impact the flow of drugs as traffickers avoid smuggling through this area," reads the report, which focuses on Furce's territory.
The analysis, which was prepared in May, came as the Bush administration lobbied hard for Congress's recent approval of a $400 million aid package to help Mexico in the drug war.
Exactly where the traffickers may go next or for how long they'll stay there is unclear, authorities said.
Violence on rise
A drug cartel turf war that had long made a battlefield of Nuevo Laredo, across the border at the end of Interstate 35, appears to have shifted up the Rio Grande to Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso.
The death toll there has climbed past 500 since January as Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's forces battle those loyal to the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization.
"These things oscillate," said Bruce Bagley, a University of Miami expert who studies drug trafficking. "Juarez really picked up, they are finding the dead bodies everywhere," said Bagley, who added that the trafficking organizations fight over the best available transportation routes for getting drugs into the United States.
And the violence continues to flare up elsewhere. On Wednesday, authorities reportedly found four decapitated bodies in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, home to Guzman and many other traffickers. Near the bodies was a note threatening Guzman.
Appearance of progress
When the federal government focuses its attention on a particular area, such as the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which borders South Texas, there is a normal cooling-out period during which traffickers look for other places to work, Bagley said.
David Gonzalez, a West Texan who comes from a family of drug traffickers and has served prison time for drugs, said cartels have reached a deal regarding Nuevo Laredo, but the gang that came out on top is reducing the supply of the purest cocaine and charging the weaker groups taxes requiring them to sell for more if they want to maintain their profit level.
Traffickers who want to stay around for the long term know it is in their best interest to pull back in some areas and make it appear as though Calderon is getting the job done, he said. They've also turned to tipping off authorities to competitors' stashes and movements.
With time, more arrests and shifting of smuggling routes, the U.S. government will stop pressuring the Mexican government, and the cartels can get back to business as usual, Gonzalez predicted.
"They are cracking down on people and putting them in jail, but it is just the politics of the deal," he said. "Prices are going up."
dane.schiller(at)chron.com |
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