Like many people, initially I was elated that the Mexican Marines caught Zeta jefe Miguel Angel Treviño Morales on Monday, July 15. Yet when I expressed a modest bit of that cheer to Mexican friends, I often got somber glances.
Most of these folks have family or close friends residing in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, or possibly even in the city of Nuevo Laredo, which is near where Treviño was captured. Yet, when the news hit that Treviño Morales had been captured, it was startling and produced pretty much a national sigh of relief and some cheering – though much of that tended to be cautious. The head of Mexico’s most lethal and terrifyingly brutal drug cartel sowed a lot of fear in pretty much all directions, even places that luckily hadn’t fallen under his consideration. He likes butchery, and the number of people he has killed personally, or has ordered killed hasn’t been precisely counted – in fact may never be. But the numbers are clearly large. We may never know, not a few Mexicans say, because such cases take years – often as long as six or more – for Mexico’s unique, often puzzlingly counterintuitive justice system to come up with a decision.
Talking about this bundle of contradictions with a knowledgeable Mexican friend seemed like a promising idea. “A knowledgeable friend” in this case meaning someone who once worked for the federal government and is now a notary public in a neighboring municipality.
For political, economic and philosophical reasons, this friend, like millions of other Mexicans, was deliriously happy when the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was kicked out of power – after 71 continuous years of bloody, predatory and oligarchic rule. That’s when he rushed to shift his legal skills from state to federal government. But he gradually, if reluctantly, became disillusioned by the widespread and merciless corruption that soon swept into almost every crevice of Mexico’s new rulers, the National Action Party (PAN). That was when he abandoned government work.Still young, bright, with a swift and nimble sense of Mexico’s law – both as stated and as practiced – and made wiser by state and federal government service, my friend, while pleased with the Marines’ bust of Treviño, instinctively sifted through the public’s seemingly promiscuous embrace of the first significant success of the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto. Much like those who know Mexico’s Zeta-led, loathsome culture of torture and mass butchery – and have little to say about this strike against the drug cartel world – my friend harbors a number of caveats regarding the take down of Treviño.
First, President Peña Nieto campaigned on the premise that his government would deal with Mexico’s drug wars differently than PAN’s Felipe Calderon: He vowed to reduce the violence of the nation’s drug war. No parading captured cartel jefes before TV and boasting grandly of such take-downs. No daily reports of casualties on both sides. He would put in place a quieter policy that didn’t concentrate on highly advertised “war” tactics but on quiet efficiency. But to a priista mentality that meant pulling the plug on the wide, deep swath of U.S. aid. Immediately after Peña Nieto was sworn in the Ministry of Interior, with its former power now restored, moved quickly. Nearly all U.S. personnel helping locate, track and target cartel chiefs (and their henchmen) were abruptly shown the door. Most unfortunately, said my friend, that also meant that the media, both domestic and international, was told to trim their cartel coverage. Censorship has clearly always been a part of the the PRI’s DNA, my legal-and-history-minded friend observed.
Then, just about 3:45 a.m. Monday, a Mexican Marine unit that included a Blackhawk helicopter stopped a pickup traveling along the Mexican side of the U.S. border near Nuevo Laredo. In it was the kingpin of the most feared of all the drug cartels, Treviño Morales, his accountant and a bodyguard. The Marines also found eight weapons, some 500 rounds of ammunition, and two million dollars in cash. The money Treviño was carrying was to bribe authorities if he were stopped and detention threatened. His photograph, handed out by the Marines, seemed to be everywhere.
After the showy “We don’t need the gringo’s help” display, drug war deaths began to spike. “Unrest” grew in Michoacan, and Peña Nieto sent in the military, just as his predecessor had. The difference has been that the result is generally unknown. Apparently, in the name of “calmness,” transparency disappeared.
Reports from Nuevo Laredo are simple: “We are waiting.” Locals there believe there will be a violent response to the take-down of Treviño, actually a number of them. This typically occurs when a leadership struggle seems to appear. In this case, it probably will as Treviño’s brother, Omar, settles in as Jefe Nuevo, or ”Z-41”. But others will joust lethally as they test the strength of the “new” Zetas.
“How organized crime responds to a blow like this has nothing to do with the government narrative of good guys against bad guys,” says Mexico City-based Laura Carlsen, an analyst for the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy. “It causes a shake up and resettling that can reduce violence in some places where another cartel achieves undisputed control, and produces violence in places where turf wars flare up. It causes corrupt government forces to realign and often participate actively in the turf wars. It does not, however, lead to the elimination of drug trafficking or organized crime.”
Like many Mexicans, Carlsen contends that while “in some cases a specific cartel could be fragmented or even knocked out of this lethal competition, with some 38 billion dollars in tax-free income at stake, as it is in the sale of prohibited drugs to the United States, people will find a way to keep up the business.” This knowledge is not new, but the present re-emphasis on it may prompt the United States and Mexico to coordinate their anti-cartel efforts, combine the “lessons learned” from the seven years of this Republic’s war on drugs to replicate July 15’s success. The constant trimming of the most vicious cartels’ ability to wage mayhem, to operate as freely as they have up to this point, should aid in giving these two nations the series of perhaps small, but consistent victories they both seek and badly need.