Traffickers Move Into Yucatan Peninsula

CANCUN, Mexico —  Tourists strolling down Cancun’s palm-lined hotel strip normally see nothing more scandalous than an undersized bikini. But recently they were startled by a novel sight: scores of Mexican soldiers and anti-drug agents roaring into a gated community of million-dollar homes on the lagoon across from the Sheraton Hotel.

The soldiers and black-clad drug agents swarmed through Isla Dorada, an enclave of Mediterranean-style villas with carved wooden doors and stained-glass windows, stopping to search three homes. The target: Ramon Alcides Magana, an alleged drug lord with a warrant out for his arrest.

“It was the first time in our lives we’ve seen such a dramatic mobilization,” said Rogelio Marquez, the owner of a nearby hotel. The soldiers, he said, arrived “like Rambo.”

The June raid underscored a trend that is alarming the U.S. and Mexican governments. The Yucatan peninsula, known in the U.S. as a holiday paradise of crystal beaches and Maya pyramids, is rapidly gaining a new reputation--as a drug-trafficking center.

The emergence of Mexico’s “cocaine coast” in recent months has been fueled in part by traffickers’ switch in recent years from planes to ships and small boats. But it also illustrates something more troubling, according to U.S. officials. They say traffickers, long notorious in northwest Mexico near the U.S. border, are expanding their reach to less patrolled areas, and using corruption to virtually take over states such as Quintana Roo, where Cancun is located.

“Quintana Roo has become a narco-state,” said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s corrupt from the traffic cop to the governor.”

The state’s governor, Mario Villanueva, denies any links with the narcotics trade and calls such allegations politically motivated “slander.” While acknowledging that drug trafficking is a problem, he has said it is less serious in Quintana Roo than in other parts of Mexico.

But U.S. and Mexican government officials, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, paint a picture of a region that has become a major drug crossroads. Tons of cocaine--as many as 15 tons, according to one U.S. official--move through the peninsula each month.

Authorities emphasize that tourists have been practically untouched by the drug activity. But some people fear that could change.

“Obviously, we are wondering if we will see ourselves involved in something like what happens in Colombia,” where traffickers have unleashed waves of bombings and assassinations, said Elba Capuchino, a federal legislator from Cancun for the left-of-center Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.

Amid the Glitz, Evidence Abounds

Amid the high-rise hotels and palm-fringed beaches, evidence of the narcotics trade abounds in Quintana Roo. In recent months, traffickers’ boats have been seized in such famed tourist sites as the island of Cozumel and the seaside village of Tulum. In downtown Cancun, authorities discovered a warehouse in June stuffed with 269 pounds of cocaine and boat equipment, the second such seizure in a year.

The traffickers themselves are joining the wealthy Mexicans and sunburned Americans enjoying Cancun. Last month, two Italians alleged to be Mafia drug traffickers were arrested in the city. Leaders of Mexico’s Juarez cartel also have moved in, officials say.

A glitzy resort whose first hotel opened only in 1974, Cancun has been a stop for drug traffickers in the past. In the most notorious case, a Mexican kingpin, Rafael Aguilar Guajardo, was gunned down in 1993 in the hotel district.

But the region’s importance has surged in the past few years, officials say, as authorities cracked down on planes ferrying cocaine from Colombia to Mexico, the main gateway to the U.S. drug market.

In response, traffickers have switched to sea routes, taking advantage of hundreds of miles of Mexican coastline pocked with coves and lightly patrolled by the government. Sometimes the traffickers use small boats that pick up bundles of cocaine from big ships or low-flying planes offshore, and zip to the coast. In other cases, speedboats carrying a ton or more of drugs make the 600-mile trip directly from Colombian islands such as San Andres to Mexico.

“This is the trendy route for drug traffickers,” said a senior Mexican justice official.

Tulum, a village 80 miles southwest of Cancun famed for its Maya ruins, offers a snapshot of the thriving cocaine route. Local fishermen say they frequently spot boats abandoned by traffickers who have hauled their valuable cargo through the woods to inland roads. From there, it heads by land to the United States.

“In 1997, we began to see strange boats. I think they’re from Colombia,” said Reynaldo Mas, a tanned Maya fisherman.

Local fishermen showed a reporter the hulks of two boats that were torched on the shore after having been stripped of their equipment. Several other drug boats have been seized by authorities, they say. They have 200- or 400-horsepower engines, far stronger than the sputtering 40- or 60-horsepower engines of fishermen, the locals say.

“They come at night. When it’s dawn, they’re abandoned,” Mas said. Sometimes, the fishermen said, they find Coke cans and cookie wrappers from Colombia in the water.

If Tulum offers one glimpse of the new cocaine crossroads, Cancun offers another. With 13 million visitors a year--compared with a permanent population of only 400,000--it is the perfect place for an outsider to fit in. Especially an outsider who likes new cars, $90-a-person restaurants and pulsating discos.

Far-Flung Network of Corruption

Since the death last year of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the leader of Mexico’s Juarez cartel, several of his lieutenants have either moved to Cancun or appear to be spending more time here, say U.S. and Mexican authorities. Alleged drug lords such as Carrillo’s brother, Vicente, and Eduardo Gonzalez Quirarte have moved down to join Alcides Magana, who authorities say is the Juarez cartel’s man in the region.

“It’s like when the Mafia families in New York moved to Las Vegas,” the U.S. official said. “They [the Mexicans] moved and have taken advantage of an opportunity. The focus is not on that area as it was in Juarez,” on the U.S.-Mexican border.

The traffickers don’t just benefit from the anonymity of Cancun, however. According to U.S. and Mexican authorities, they have a far-flung network of government protection in Quintana Roo.

Mexican authorities are now seeking the former head of the state police in Cancun, Oscar Benjamin Garcia Davila. He was fired in April 1997 for not showing up for work, a government spokesman said. He had already found another job, U.S. and Mexican officials say: as an aide to Alcides Magana, the alleged drug lord.

“He’s the chief of [Alcides Magana’s] bodyguards,” said an intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In the past year, authorities have also captured the former commander and subcommander of the federal police in Cancun, accusing them of protecting cocaine shipments when they worked in the state.

In apparent response to their difficulties with police in the state, Mexican anti-drug officials have dispatched forces from Mexico City to conduct important raids like the one at Isla Dorada.

Governor Tainted by Allegations

Meanwhile, corruption allegations swirl around the governor. Two respected Mexican publications--the newspaper Reforma and the weekly newsmagazine Proceso--have cited official Mexican intelligence documents alleging that Villanueva is tied to drug traffickers.

A similar charge came up early last year in a Mexican court, according to confidential testimony published by the Mexican daily Universal, which was confirmed by a knowledgeable Mexican official. According to the testimony, a government witness, Tomas Colsa McGregor, said drug lord Carrillo had confided that he maintained “relations” with Villanueva and several other governors, officials say.

Colsa McGregor, a jeweler who acknowledged doing business with Carrillo, was killed in July 1997, on the same day the drug lord died following plastic surgery, a Mexican official said in an interview.

U.S. officials said the American government has credible information linking Villanueva to traffickers. But one official said there was not enough evidence for an indictment.

In a telephone interview, Villanueva denied the allegations. He said he had never met Carrillo and had no connection to drug traffickers. After the allegations appeared in the Mexican press, he said, he even asked the attorney general’s office to investigate him. Both that office and Interpol said several months ago that they were not conducting any probe of the governor.

“In all of this, there has been bad faith, and a political intention to slander me. This has no factual basis,” Villanueva said.

In addition, he noted that in Mexico, federal authorities are in charge of the anti-narcotics fight. “Governors in Mexico don’t have jurisdiction in issues of drug trafficking,” he said.

The governor said he had no information about corruption in the ranks of state police. A former assistant state attorney general had proposed hiring Garcia Davila, he added, saying, “These are low-level jobs that I don’t get involved in.”

Opposition politicians acknowledge that they have no solid evidence the governor is involved with traffickers. But they note that Villanueva, a member of the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, keeps a tight rein over the state’s politics and press.

“He has such control in the state it would be impossible for him not to know where the drug-trafficking problems are,” said Marquez, the hotel owner, who is also a Cancun city councilman for the opposition National Action Party, or PAN.

Federal authorities have begun to crack down on the cocaine coast. They are prosecuting several former police officers and have seized a Cancun hotel that they believe is owned by Alcides Magana.

Last month, authorities arrested two alleged Italian Mafiosi living in Cancun. The Italians, Oreste Pagano and Alberto Minelli, were deported to Canada, where they face charges of cocaine trafficking. Mexican authorities believe that they also were laundering money with members of the Juarez cartel.

Officials are also stepping up patrols on the coast. The increased military presence is obvious in Tulum. One recent afternoon, the village’s Paradise Beach was peopled not just by fishermen and topless European sunbathers, but by soldiers scanning the horizon from a jeep parked on the sand.

“There’s a lot of vigilance here--helicopters, planes,” said Mas, who was pulling in his fishing boat at the end of the day’s work. “We can’t even walk on the beach anymore. The [soldiers] say, ‘What are you doing?’ ”

Federal Authorities Outmatched, Outrun

More equipment is on the way. Federal authorities say they plan to use a giant X-ray machine to check the interiors of cars and trucks in the state. Another of the machines will be installed on the border with Guatemala.

Already, nearly four tons of cocaine have been seized in Quintana Roo this year, officials say--more than the amount recovered in all of 1997.

But few traffickers have been detained. With high-tech ships and equipment, they appear to easily outrun anti-drug authorities.

An anecdote reported in Proceso indicates how outmatched authorities are by traffickers.

In May, fishermen from Isla Mujeres, near Cancun, reported spotting an abandoned boat, which turned out to have nearly a ton of cocaine on board. Fausto Carrasco Aguirre, a federal justice official in Cancun, told Proceso that he and six agents went to investigate. But they had only one way to reach Isla Mujeres: the public ferry. Even then, they couldn’t afford the fare and had to haggle for a ride.