Savages

50

Dennis runs it down for them.

It starts not in Baja but in Sinaloa.

A mountainous region of western Mexico that has the right altitude, soil acidity, and rainfall to grow the poppy. For generations, the Sinaloan gomeros—Spanish slang for opium farmers—cultivated the crop, processed it into opium, and sold it to an American market, at first made up mostly of Chinese railroad workers, along the southwest border region of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.

The American government at first tolerated the trade, but then declared opium illegal and brought some, albeit ineffectual, pressure on the Mexican government to suppress the gomeros.

But during WWII, the American government did a complete 180. Desperately needing opium with which to make morphine, and cut off from the usual supplies in Afghanistan and the Golden Triangle, the government went down to Mexico to beg them to produce more, not less, opium. In fact, we built narrow-gauge railways for the gomeros to get their crop down from the mountains faster. The gomeros responded by putting more and more acreage into poppy cultivation. Therefore, during the 1940s, the economy of Sinaloa became dependent on the opium trade, and the gomeros grew into rich and powerful landholders.

After the war the U.S., faced with a bad heroin problem at home, goes back down to Mexico and insists that they stop growing the poppy. The Mexicans are, to say the least, a little confused, but also concerned because the Sinaloans—not just the rich gomeros but the campesinos, peasant farmers who work the land—are economically addicted to the poppy.

No worries, says the American mafia. Bugsy Siegel goes to Sinaloa and assures the gomeros that the mob will buy as much opium as they can produce. The pista secreta—the illegal drug trade—commences, and rival gomeros start to fight each other for turf. Culiacán, the major city in Sinaloa, becomes known as “Little Chicago.”

Enter Richard Nixon.

In 1973, Nixon creates the Drug Enforcement Administration and sends DEA agents—most of them former CIA—down to Sinaloa to shut down the gomeros. Then 1975 sees Operation Condor, in which DEA agents, with the Mexican army, bomb, burn, and defoliate vast acreage of poppy cultivation in Sinaloa, displacing thousands of peasants and wrecking the economy.

And get this, get this, the Mexican cop running their side of the operation—the man pointing fingers at what to bomb and burn, whom to arrest—is the second-largest opium producer in Sinaloa, a truly evil genius named Miguel Angel Alvarado, who uses Condor to destroy his rivals.

Alvarado gathers the chosen survivors in a restaurant in Guadalajara—guarded by the army and the federales—and he creates el Federacion, the Federation, and divides Mexico up into plazas, or territories, to wit—

The Gulf, Sonora, and Baja, with himself, based in Guadalajara, at its head.

Alvarado, a genuine business revolutionary, also takes them out of the opium business and puts them into delivering Colombian cocaine through the Mexican back door.

The front door being Florida. Miami. Where the DEA was putting most of its efforts. The poor schmucks left in Mexico were screaming about the cocaine deliveries—again, guarded by the army and the police—but DC told them to keep their stupid mouths shut if they knew what was good for them, because they’d already announced that they’d won the drug war in Mexico.

Mission accomplished.

El Federacion, in its three plazas, made billions of dollars during the eighties and nineties, gaining so much wealth and power that it became almost a shadow government, enmeshed into the police, the military, even the president’s office. By the time DC woke up and admitted the reality, it was too late. El Federacion was a major power.

“So what happened?” Ben asks.

It tore itself apart. Karma being karma, Alvarado became a crack addict and ended up in prison. A violent power struggle to fill the gap ensued and then gained a momentum of its own, with blood vendetta on top of blood vendetta. The plazas split into factions of a civil war, just as cocaine consumption drastically declined in the U.S. and the plazas found themselves fighting over a smaller pie.

And the Baja Cartel was taken over by Alvarado’s nephews, the Lauter brothers, after they broke away from its original patron in the revolution. The AFs were very smart businessmen. Originally from Sinaloa, they came to Tijuana and infiltrated the cream of Baja society. Basically, they seduced a group known as the Juniors, the sons of doctors, lawyers, and Indian jefes, and gave them opportunities as drug smugglers. They also came across into San Diego and recruited the local Mexican gangs as enforcers.

From the mid to late nineties, the Lauters and the Baja Cartel were the Mexican drug trade. They co-opted the president’s office itself, they had control over the Baja State Police and the local federales, they probably assassinated a Mexican presidential candidate and certainly gunned down a Catholic cardinal who publicly protested the drug trade, and got away with it.

Pride cometh before a fall. They pushed it too far. DC leaned all over the Mexicans to go after the Baja Cartel. Their patron, Benjamin, is now in the federal lockup in Dago; their chief enforcer, his brother Ramon, was gunned down in Puerto Vallarta by Mexican police.

Since then, it’s been chaos.

Where once you had three plazas—“cartel” is a rough equivalent—now you have at least seven fighting for dominance. The Baja Cartel itself, after pretty much a free-for-all, seems to have devolved into two rival factions:

“El Azul,” a former Lauter lieutenant, is backed by the Sinaloa Cartel, probably now the most powerful cartel. El Azul, thusly glossed because of his deep blue eyes, is a particularly charming guy who likes to drown his enemies in barrels of acid.

The remnants of the Lauter family, run by a nephew, Hernan, are allied with a group called Los Zetas, originally an elite counter-narcotics squad that went to the dark side and now work as enforcers for the Baja Cartel. Their particular party trip is lopping people’s heads off.

“We saw the video,” Ben says.

“Hence your presence here today,” Dennis says. “You want my advice, boys? And girl? I’ll miss you, I’ll miss your money, but run.”

Run far and fast.