807 Cartel and others foolz!

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MEXICO CITY (8:02 a.m.) - A 40-year-old Mexican drug-trafficker known as "The Lord of the Heavens" is one of the most likely heirs apparent to Colombia's decimated Cali drugs cartel, experts say.

Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the head of a drugs gang named after the border town of Ciudad Juarez -- just over the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas -- shifts cocaine in stripped-out passenger jets and "handles $60 million in cash the way you and I handle $5," according to one U.S. official.

Following the arrest in Colombia on Sunday of Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, the sixth of the Cali cartel's seven leaders to be caught, experts say the once mighty Cali gang is practically in ruins.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Administrator Thomas Constantine said drug lords in Mexico and Southeast Asia who have already built international networks to smuggle cocaine, heroin and amphetamines to Europe and the United States, will now vie to take control of the international drugs trade.

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico James Jones has expressed similar concerns, saying even before the arrest of Rodriguez Orejuela that Mexico, rather than Colombia, may become the headquarters of choice in the coming years for regional drug-traffickers.

Although Carrillo has had close links with the Cali cartel which could lead to some disruption of his cocaine supplies and expose him to danger if the captured Colombians provide information against him, experts note that Carrillo has also learned a great deal from the Cali gang and rivals them in the sophistication of his smuggling operation.

"They rival the Colombian organisations in their sophistication...for the last 5 to 8 years the Colombians have been sending high-level coordinators to Mexico to set up infrastructure," a U.S. official, who declined to be further identified, said recently of the top Mexican drug gangs, adding that Carrillo's Juarez cartel was by far the biggest.

For example, Mexican officials calculate that Mexican rivals of Carrillo's -- Sinaloa cartel chief Hector "El Guero" Palma, now in prison, and Gulf cartel head Juan Garcia Abrego, now on the run -- could afford to pay $40-$50 million per month in bribes to police officers and government officials.

"Amado Carrillo is the biggest...he moves four times as much as other Mexican traffickers," the U.S. official said.

According to a Chihuahua state antinarcotics official quoted by El Financiero newspaper, about 30 tonnes of drugs a week cross the Juarez border to El Paso, "...and $200 million a week comes back. You can buy anything with that."

All in all, between 50 and 70 percent of the cocaine illegally entering the United States each year does so from Mexico, officials say.

Although Mexico does not produce the cocaine, which is smuggled in from South America, it does produce 70 percent of the foreign-grown marijuana consumed in the United States, and about 25 percent of the heroin, they add.

Carrillo, whose flashy nickname derives from his use of air smuggling routes, has a big slice of that traffic but maintains a very low profile in Mexico, sources familiar with his record say.

"He has an outstanding arrest warrant for weapons charges, which down here is like...spitting on the sidewalk," one source said. "He'd be out of jail in three days."

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TODAY'S MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS
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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.

Thomas Constantine, director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told a congressional committee this year: "These sophisticated drug syndicate groups from Mexico have eclipsed organized crime groups from Colombia as the premier law enforcement threat facing the United States today."

Because of the power shift, drug-related violence and corruption regularly spills over the U.S.-Mexico border, threatening historically sensitive bilateral relations.

Errol Chavez, DEA special agent-in-charge in San Diego, said, "They still haven't reached the sophistication of the Colombian networks of old. But unless we stop this new threat, we are going to have a big problem next door."

Mexico's drug gangs have tainted high government posts in a developing nation of some 93 million people that has recently teetered on the edge of political and economic crisis. American lawmakers cited that corruption in an unsuccessful fight to block certification of Mexico as a cooperating partner in anti-narcotics efforts.

U.S. intelligence analysts say that from heavily guarded homes south of the border, the Mexican kingpins use pagers, encrypted phones and fax machines to operate new distribution networks in America's heartland.

Documents filed in a federal trial this year in Miami against four alleged managers of the Cali cocaine cartel and two of its lawyers map the growth of the Mexicans' role in the drug trade. An affidavit says the Colombians shifted their routes from the Caribbean and Florida to Mexico after the cartel's top representative in Miami was arrested in 1992. It says the Cali cartel worked out a deal to use Mexico's Juarez cartel as a middleman for smuggling cocaine into the United States.

The Mexican cartels do, at times, work together -- perhaps to lesser extent now. There is evidence that the gangs employed corrupt officials to attack their rivals. Fifteen people with suspected drug ties disappeared in January in Juarez. Witnesses said the kidnappers had "INCD" on their black uniforms -- the Spanish acronym for the now-defunct federal anti-drug agency.

Many of the traffickers still work together on big shipments, taking advantage of the porous 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border and increased commercial traffic under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to ship hundreds of tons into the United States every year.

U.S. drug officials say up to 70 percent of cocaine entering the U.S. comes through Mexico. U.S. officials can search only about one of every ten vehicles crossing the border and just a fraction of cargo containers.

In the United States, the Mexicans are beginning to muscle in in the Colombians' East Coast strongholds. They have also had their own long-time distribution networks in the West and the Midwest.

The Mexican cartels move toward independence began several years ago when the Colombians began paying Mexican gang leader Juan Garcia Abrego with cocaine to smuggle loads of the drug for them. Convicted in Texas of trafficking and money laundering, he is now serving 11 life prison terms.

Other Mexican traffickers are now routinely paid with cocaine, which they distribute in the United States and in Mexico. They also produce and market their own marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine.

U..S. intelligence analysts say that now deceased Mexican drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes bypassed the Colombians several times to buy cocaine from producers in Bolivia and Peru. While the Mexicans will never match the Colombians' ability to produce cocaine, they can now compete for overall profits.

Phil Jordan, a former DEA agent and retired director of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), said: "To some degree, the Mexicans will always need the Colombians to monopolize the cocaine market. But profit-wise, they could totally eliminate the Colombian connection without suffering too much."