Mexican Narcos: Owners of the Pacific

Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: ElSol

Local Colombian criminal groups handed the cocaine trafficking to the US to Mexico's Sinaloa and CJNG cartels, and the violence grew.

Tumaco, Colombia: The boats carry the evidence above. Tanks and more gas tanks are driven deep and deeper into the Colombian Pacific jungle. Drug trafficking does not give in to the military offensive, and now Mexicans personally supervise shipments to the United States from Colombia.

Only a few dare to speak under reserve of the Mexicans. The silence continues to prevail in the wooden houses that rise on the banks of the Mira and Mataje rivers, in the department of Nariño. The Mataje River , part of the Rio Esmerelda which is the natural borderline between Colombia and Ecuador.

They "move with an enviable ease and our people see them in the towns of Guapi, in Timbiquí, in the municipality of López de Micay ;  they come, they keep coming, one and another," says a community leader of the region.

With the disarming of the FARC guerrillas, which for decades controlled these territories of blacks and Indians, Mexicans who previously only had to wait until the Colombian cocaine arrived for sale in the US decided to reorganize.

The cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación resorted to their own emissaries in the dispute that was opened over the control of the routes in Colombia.

"They come and supervise the cocaine hydrochloride, its purity," explains General Jorge Isaac Hoyos, commander of the Army Joint Task Force Hercules in the convulsed port of Tumaco, the territory of Nariño with the most coca leaf fields in the world. .

However, "Colombians are the ones who have the structure of drug trafficking," said the high official, who leads a major anti-drug offensive. In the naval base of Tumaco, the narco submersibles confiscated rest in the middle of this campaign that mobilizes thousands of soldiers.

It was the reaction to the record of 171,000 hectares of illicit crops that Colombia reached in 2017, when the potential for cocaine production also rose to 1,379 tons, according to the UN.

Cede the Business:

Mira River

Throughout the 1,300 kilometers of the coast line on the Pacific, ELN rebels, dissidents of FARC and bands of paramilitary origin operate. These organizations are fighting with blood and fire for the territorial control of this region, which concentrates 39% of the country's narco-cultures.

The arrival of the Sinaloa and CJNG Jalisco New Generation emissaries responds to the need to "ensure the flow of cocaine" after the death or capture of former allies, according to the expert on organized crime studies, Jeremy McDermott.

"Today, their partners are dead, imprisoned or invisible, and they have had to send emissaries to Colombia," adds the co-director of the InSight Crime organization.

In addition, Colombian drug traffickers do not want to sell to them because they prefer to send their shipments to more profitable markets, such as Europe, Oceania or Asia. In Spain they pay up to $35,000 per  kilo , in China to $50,000, in Russia to $60,000 and in Australia to $100,000, while in the United States they sell for $25,000, he adds.

"The Colombians have given the Mexican market to Mexicans, because it is not worth it , ie, the risk, for $25,000, with high risk of interdiction, extradition and expropriation of goods," he says.

ENEMY AT HOME

According to the DEA, last year for the Pacific, 84% of the cocaine entered the United States, the largest global consumer of this drug.

In Colombia, McDermott argues, the cartels' envoys even travel in speedboats or submersibles in which they transport the drug to Central America or the United States.

With the Mexicans violence and fear get worse. The Colombian state did not occupy the spaces left by the FARC nor was there a rapid institutional response in the areas where the rebels were present before the 2016 peace agreement, experts agree.

Up to November there were 7,800 displaced persons in the Pacific region, while in all 2017 there were 3,900, according to the Ombudsman, Carlos Negret.

"Violence has increased this year", he reaffirms.

Forty percent of the 343 activists and human rights defenders killed in Colombia since January 2016 have died in these lands, according to the Ombudsman's Office.

"The power of the money that Mexicans handle co-opts the armed actors, but also co-opts social leaders," explains the community leader of Guapi.      Right: Rio Mataje