[NYTr] US Guns Behind Cartel Killings in Mexico

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Washington Post - Oct 29, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/28/AR2007102801654_pf.html

U.S. Guns Behind Cartel Killings in Mexico

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service

TIJUANA, Mexico -- Assassins blasted Ricardo Rosas Alvarado, a member
of an elite state police force, with a blizzard of bullets pumped out
of AK-47 assault rifles.

Alvarado crumpled at the wheel of his sedan, yet another victim of the
weapons known here as "goat's horns" because of their curved ammunition
clips, and which can fire at a rate of 600 rounds per minute. The
killing, Mexican authorities said, was a panorama of blood, shattered
glass and torn metal that brutally showcased the firepower of Mexico's
drug cartels. But that was just the warm-up.

Two hours later, a small army of cartel hit men descended on a federal
police office and bunkhouse in this crowded city at one of the world's
busiest border crossings. None of the officers, who had recently been
sent here to crush the drug gangs terrorizing the city, were killed in
the hail of more than 1,200 bullets, authorities said. But police
veterans understood the message delivered to the newcomers: "Welcome to
Tijuana. Our guns are bigger than your guns."

The high-powered guns used in both incidents on the evening of Sept. 24
undoubtedly came from the United States, say police here, who estimate
that 100 percent of drug-related killings are committed with smuggled
U.S. weapons.

The guns pass into Mexico through the "ant trail," the nickname for the
steady stream of people who each slip two or three weapons across the
border every day. The "ants" -- along with larger smuggling operations
-- are feeding a rapidly expanding arms race between Mexican drug
cartels.

The U.S. weapons -- as many as 2,000 enter Mexico each day, according
to a Mexican government study -- are crucial tools in an astoundingly
barbaric war between rival cartels that has cost 4,000 lives in the
past 18 months and sent law enforcement agencies in Washington and
Mexico City into crisis mode.

These drug traffickers, with their steady supply of U.S. weaponry, are
the target of President Bush's proposed $500 million U.S. aid package
to help Mexico battle cartels. Officials with the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms, or ATF, hope that some of the money will be used
to give Mexican police chiefs greater access to U.S. databases for gun
traces. Currently, the traces can be made only through federal police
headquarters in Mexico City. Many police chiefs do not even bother to
make requests because of the inevitable bureaucratic delays.

Corrupt customs officials help smuggle weapons into Mexico, earning as
much as $1 million for large shipments, police here say. The weapons
are often bought legally at gun shows in Arizona and other border
states where loopholes allow criminals to stock up without background
checks.

The arms traffickers have left Mexico awash in AK-47s, pistols,
telescope sighting devices, grenades, grenade launchers and
high-powered ammunition, such as the so-called cop-killer bullets
believed to be able to penetrate bulletproof vests.

"You're looking at the same firepower here on the border that our
soldiers are facing in Iraq and Afghanistan," Thomas Mangan, a
spokesman in Phoenix for the ATF, said in an interview.

Weapons have been smuggled into Mexico for decades. For instance,
the .38 Special used in 1994 to assassinate presidential candidate Luis
Donaldo Colosio here in Tijuana was traced to a gun sale in Arizona.
Mexico is a rich market for smugglers because it bans high-caliber
automatic weapons -- even police are prohibited from using them -- and
has strict gun laws that make it extremely difficult for members of the
public to buy handguns.

But law enforcement officers on both sides of the border have never
seen anything like the flood of guns now surging into Mexico. The
increase has been stoked by the cartel war and by the ease of buying
high-powered weapons since the U.S. assault weapons ban was not renewed
in 2004, William Newell, a special agent in charge of the ATF's Phoenix
office, said in an interview.

Arizona and Texas have become a "gunrunner's paradise," according to
Garen Wintemute, a professor at the University of California at Davis
who published a study on gun buying in the Southwest. Licensed dealers
must conduct background checks, but unlicensed sellers can sell
"personal collections" at weekend gun shows without background checks.

Laws on personal collections were established to allow people such as
the widows of avid gun collectors to make sales without having to go
through an elaborate licensing procedure. But unscrupulous sellers and
buyers have taken advantage of the system, Newell said, setting up
phony personal collections booths and making quick sales that are
difficult to trace.

"It can take less than a minute," said Wintemute, who has watched
unlicensed dealers wearing sandwich boards at gun shows and piling
weapons for sale into baby carriages.

Authorities have tracked smugglers who bought dozens of weapons at
various shows in a single weekend. The guns are often purchased by
middlemen, or straw purchasers, who sometimes get on-the-spot
instructions by cellphone from Mexican drug traffickers. The straw
purchasers often live in the United States, either legally or illegally.

A smuggler, or ant -- often the same person who bought the guns -- then
slips the weapons into car trunks or false vehicle floors. Among the
new weapons of choice for Mexican drug dealers are so-called variants
of AK-47s and AR-15 assault rifles, which are shorter than standard
models and can even be concealed in baggy pant legs, Newell said.

As in the drug trade, young women are often recruited as weapons
smugglers, Newell said, because they are less likely to be targeted by
inspectors. Smugglers frequently work in teams, he said, distracting
border inspectors by dispatching a man "who looks like he just got out
of prison" to stand in front of a young woman carrying a baby and
hidden weapons.

"She looks cute and she's nicely dressed," Newell said. "While they're
checking the guy, the young girl glides right through."

But some smugglers don't need to bother with diversionary tactics.

Jorge Gonz¿lez Betancourt, president of the national defense committee
in the lower house of Mexico's Congress, acknowledged in an interview
that "corruption in the customs system" allows guns and drugs to
transit Mexico. The customs agency is coming under greater scrutiny,
especially since the recent arrest of the head of inspections at the
port of Altamira, north of Tampico, who is accused of letting 12 tons
of cocaine enter the country.

In August, Mexican authorities in Nogales, across the border from
Arizona, seized 163 weapons in one of the largest busts in recent
Mexican history.

Mexican customs officials say they can inspect only a tiny fraction of
the 65,000 vehicles and 35,000 pedestrians that each day cross the
border at Tijuana, a city where countless underage Californians have
flocked for generations to drink and carouse.

Piles of guns make it through, many ending up in the hands of Tijuana's
powerful drug cartels. But other weapons bounce farther south, creating
what V¿ctor Manuel Zatara¿n Cedano, the Tijuana police director, called
the city's "trampoline" effect.

Mexican government arms-seizure figures show a dramatic shift in the
final destination of smuggled weapons. Once largely centered in border
states, the arms market appears to be concentrating in Michoacan, the
home state of Mexican President Felipe Calder¿n and a favorite of
tourists who flock there for the annual migration of millions of
monarch butterflies. In the first 10 months of 2007, more than 1,200
weapons were seized in Michoacan, four times as many as were seized in
border states such as Baja California and Chihuahua.

The smugglers are willing to take risks for the promise of huge
profits. An AK-47 that sells for $200 to $800 at an Arizona gun show
can be sold for four times that much in Mexico, according to Newell,
the Phoenix ATF special agent.

Not all of the guns are headed for drug traffickers. It is common for
migrants to pick up one or two handguns in the United States to sell
when they return to their villages, said Victor Clark, a human rights
advocate based in Tijuana. Some of the villagers want guns to protect
themselves against thuggish drug dealers who rule parts of rural
Mexico, but others have scores to settle.

"There are parts of the state of Oaxaca where they're always fighting
about land rights," Clark said. "You go to those villages and
everybody's got a gun."

Outside the office of Zatara¿n Cedano, the Tijuana police director, a
man always stands guard with an AR-15 rifle. Inside, Zatara¿n Cedano
wears a handgun strapped over his shoulder and is surrounded by armed
men.

Since taking over one of Mexico's largest police forces 20 months ago,
Zatara¿n Cedano has buried 18 officers, including three district
chiefs. His second-in-command went down last September, when killers
came at him on a city street with machine guns; he had only a pistol.

Zatara¿n Cedano, who equips most of his employees with handguns, has
just 150 AR-15 rifles to spread among 3,000 officers. Arms smugglers
bring more than that into Mexico in a typical two-hour period.

"We have to find a better filter," he said wearily. "We're losing."

© 2007 The Washington Post