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Peru | 10 August, 2006 [ 14:41 ]

6 major Mexican drug cartels operating in Peru

Francisco Diez Canseco, president of Peru's Peace Council, said that currently six major Mexican drug cartels are operating in Peru; the Juárez, Guanajuato, Sinaloa, Guadalajara, Tijuana and the Gulf cartel.

Once they were merely known as "mules" for Colombia's powerful cocaine cartels. Today, Mexico's narcotics traffickers have grown into drug lords in their own right, and the front line of the drug war has shifted from the Andean jungles to America's front door.

Mexican gangs run their own distribution networks in the United States, and they produce most of the methamphetamine used north of the border. They have even bypassed the Colombians several times to buy cocaine directly from producers in Bolivia and Peru.

Drug traffickers in Peru have shifted their focus towards the sea lanes. The ports of Paita and Huacho seem to be two of the favorite embarkation points, many ship loads of white powder have recently been seized there.

Diez Canseco advanced that the Navy's Sea and Air Division has only two operative airplanes available for their fight against narco-trafficking. They would need at least 5 more to sufficiently monitor Peru's maritime borders. Canseco said that a 25 million dollar contribution would also allow installing more sophisticated radar and other equipment to patrol ports and the Pacific Ocean. An additional 30 million dollars are required to buy four airplanes with suitable radars for aerial patrolling of Peru's rain forest, a service that currently does not exist.

One arrested drug-trafficker collaborating with police revealed that they acquired two tons of cocaine for US$ 2 million and sold it for US$ 62 million. With these kinds of profits it is pretty easy to influence the conscience of port and airport officials.

Canseco informed that according to American ex- antidrug czar Barry Mc Caffrey, 130 cartels and criminal associations exist in Mexico, 100 of them concentrate their business at the borders to the United States.

According to numbers provided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), 92% of cocaine entering the United States comes from the Mexican mafias. The countries of origin are Colombia (60%), Peru (30%) and Bolivia (10%). Current estimates are that the U.S. drug market is a 70 billion dollar business annually.

tags : Peru law justice drugs cocaine USA Mexico cartel Tijuana DiezCanseco crime market

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