by Ioan Grillo
U.S. agents tracked cowboy Rafael Caro Quintero down to Costa Rica, where he was busted by special forces and deported to Mexico. He has been in prison since. DEA agents then thought they had struck gold when they tracked Matta himself by a telephone wiretap to a house in Mexico City. “I have paid my taxes,” Matta was heard saying, a presumed reference to paying off police. They passed the information to Mexican investigators, but the Mexicans stalled on going in. As DEA agents furiously watched the house on a Saturday night, four men drove off in a car. When the federal police finally kicked the door down Sunday morning, they found a lone woman. Matta had gone the night before, she said. DEA agents were livid.15
The curly-haired Matta next surfaced in the beach resort of Cartagena, Colombia. The DEA passed information to Colombian national police, and this time a unit was in time to catch him. But not even prison could stop Matta. The kingpin walked out of the Colombian jail through seven locked doors after reportedly spreading millions of dollars round the guards. “The doors opened for me, and I went through them,” he was later quoted as saying in a Honduran newspaper. Matta went back to his homeland to live in a palatial home in the center of Tegucigalpa. Honduras had no extradition treaty with the United States.
As the Camarena case dragged on, America’s war on drugs shot up to fifth gear. First in 1986, two American sports stars, Len Bias and Don Rogers, died of cocaine overdoses. Oh, God, cried newspapers, maybe cocaine can kill after all. Then the media discovered crack. It wasn’t a new story. Use of cocaine freebase had been rising under a number of names since it was developed in the Bahamas in the 1970s. But Time and Newsweek ran cover stories, and CBS unleashed its special report “48 Hours on Crack Street” to one of the highest ratings for any documentary in TV history. Crack definitely sold.
Ronald Reagan jumped on the issue just as the 1986 midterm election came up. “My generation will remember how Americans swung into action when we were attacked in World War Two,” he cried. “Now we’re in another war for our freedom.”16 His war talk turned to a shooting gun in the Anti Drug Abuse Act the same year. The law fought traffickers at the beaches and the landing bays by making it easier to seize assets while introducing mandatory minimum sentences, especially for crack dealers. The administration also hiked resources for DEA and Customs. The war on drugs went on steroids.
However, DEA still faced a major obstacle in Central America: the Cold War. Throughout the eighties, the region served as a front line in the fight on communism, an arena where spooks and conservatives believed they battled the Soviet threat at America’s doorstep. Within this conflict, the CIA invested most in the right-wing contra rebels of Nicaragua, who were armed and trained in neighboring Honduras. Both contra guerrillas and Honduran officers made money from cocaine.
CIA support of right-wing Central Americans linked to drug traffickers has since been well documented and should be moved from conspiracy theory to proven fact. However, some patriotic Americans still find it hard to swallow. The connections are complicated. And to confuse the debate, some writers make other unproven accusations against the CIA, while others misrepresent the charges.
One can follow various strands but the most notorious was exposed by journalist Gary Webb in his 1996 series Dark Alliance published in the San Jose Mercury News.17 Webb showed that a prominent Los Angeles crack dealer brought his product from two Nicaraguans, who in turn funded the contras. The story set off an atomic reaction. Suddenly, African-Americans were marching in Watts and shouting that the CIA was involved in the crack epidemic.
Dark Alliance was initially cheered as the scoop of the decade. But then major newspapers attacked it. Webb had made some mistakes. He said the Nicaraguan cocaine was the first major source of the drug into black Los Angeles. In reality, yayo had been dripping in for decades. Critics also attacked Webb for things he never said. They knocked him down for accusing the CIA of directly selling crack. He never wrote that. But with the conspiracy being a little confusing, it was easier just to say that the story was that CIA agents stood on corners selling rocks, then to accuse the writer of being stark raving mad.
The media pressure eventually forced Webb out of his newspaper, and in a sad final chapter, he committed suicide in 2004. Many have since vindicated Webb and said his media crucifixion was a dark moment in American journalism. While Webb may have made some errors, no one ever disproved the basic facts—that a major crack dealer brought drugs from men who gave money to a CIA-organized army. The Los Angeles Times and New York Times should have followed these leads rather than just looking for holes.
But however much it was shot down, Dark Alliance lit two major torches. First, it brought attention to an investigation by a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee back in the eighties on connections between the contras and cocaine traffickers. Second, it forced the CIA to hold its own internal investigation, the findings of which were released in 1998. So now we have government-stated facts to guide our history. Both reports confirm that cocaine dealers indeed funneled money to contras paid by the CIA. And a certain name flashes up in both reports—Juan Ramón Matta Ballesteros, alias El Negro.
To bring guns to its contra army, the CIA hired the Honduran airline SETCO—allegedly established by none other than Matta himself. The Senate report states, “The payments made by the State Department … between January and August 1986, were as follows: SETCO, for air transport service—$186,924.25.” Then a few pages later, the report says, “U.S. law enforcement records state that SETCO was established by Honduran cocaine trafficker Juan Matta Ballesteros.”18
Perhaps the CIA agents never knew they were working with drug traffickers. The agency’s internal report says there is no conclusive proof that they did, thus clearing them of knowing. However, it does state, in long-winded, rambling terms, “CIA knowledge of allegations or information indicating that organizations or individuals had been involved in drug trafficking did not deter their use by the CIA. In other cases, CIA did not act to verify drug trafficking allegations or information when it had the opportunity to do so.”19
In other words, see no evil, hear no evil.
What conclusions can we make about American spies and the development of the Mexican drug trade? To say that the CIA was the Dr. Frankenstein that invented the El Narco monster seems overblown. Market forces would create the Latin American cocaine trade, with or without the help of spooks. Furthermore, geography would ensure this trade would bounce through Mexico, whichever traffickers got a helping hand from smiling spies.
However, the role of the CIA is crucial in understanding the history of cocaine. It highlights how the U.S. government has failed to have a unified policy in its war on drugs abroad. While the DEA had a mission to fight trafficking, the CIA had a mission to bolster the contras, and they could not help but tread on each other’s feet. Fears are that such a situation has been repeated in various theaters of conflict, such as Afghanistan, with members of the U.S. ally the Northern Alliance accused of trafficking drugs. Furthermore, the affair shows that where an illegal drug trade worth billions exists, rebel groups are going to tap into it. Sometimes, they can be allies of the United States, such as the contras or Northern Alliance; in other cases they can be enemies, such as Colombia’s FARC or the Taliban. One day this money could fall into the hands of even more dangerous adversaries.
Unfortunately for the cocaine cowboys (and fortunately for Central America) the Cold War didn’t go on forever. On March 23, 1988, the contras and the Sandinista government in Nicaragua signed a cease-fire after some sixty thousand people had perished in fighting. Just twelve days later, American agents arrived in Honduras for Matta. They couldn’t arrest him legally because there was no extradition treaty. But they could grab him illegally. A pact was made for Honduran special forces to work with U.S. marshals to get the drug lord.
Just before dawn on April 5, Honduran “Cobras” and four U.S. marshals stormed Matta’s palatial home in Tegucigalpa. It took six Cobras to grab the squarely built
forty-three-year-old drug lord, handcuff him, put a black bag over his head, and throw him onto the floor of a waiting car. Even while in the vehicle, Matta was still struggling, and a U.S. marshal and Honduran officer pinned Matta down in the back as he was driven to the huge U.S. military air base nearby. U.S. marshals then flew Matta to the Dominican Republic and into the United States to be locked up in Marion, Illinois. During the flight, marshals beat Matta and stuck stun guns to his feet and genitals, he claimed. The quick kidnapping certainly beat a lengthy extradition process. Matta went from his home in Honduras to an American federal penitentiary in less than twenty-four hours.
Back in Tegucigalpa, anger spread through barrios, where the beloved Matta had built schools and handed out welfare. Students were also angry at their government’s defying the Honduran constitution to help the gringos. Two days after the arrest, about two thousand demonstrators massed at the U.S. embassy. After shouting “We want Matta in Honduras” and “Burn, burn,” they hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails. Private security guards from inside the embassy shot into the crowd, killing four students. But that couldn’t stop the blaze. The embassy burned to the ground, with the fire also torching a car and killing a fifth person. The Honduran government declared martial law throughout large sections of the country.20
Once in the U.S. prison system, Matta got slammed with a cascade of charges over cocaine trafficking, the Camarena kidnapping, and even his escape from Eglin air base back in 1971. However, according to his son Ramón, prosecutors offered him a deal. They said that if Matta became a witness against President Manuel Noriega of Panama, they would give him an easy ride. Noriega, a former CIA asset, had blatantly been aiding cocaine traffickers and was the target of a major operation. Matta evidently refused any such deal. Whatever he was, he was not a snitch.
Judges acknowledged Matta had illegally been taken from his homeland. “The government does not dispute that he was forcibly abducted from his home in Honduras,” the court heard. But they said that didn’t affect the trial. The Matta case is now cited as a precedent justifying kidnapping suspects from foreign countries. The charges against Matta also relied on dubious protected witnesses, including American cocaine dealers, who got various benefits for their testimonies.
Matta was nailed on several counts of conspiring to traffic cocaine and conspiring to kidnap a federal agent. However, he was acquitted of personally murdering Camarena. Rotting in the worst prison in the United States, he became a useful threat for U.S. prosecutors dealing with Latin traffickers. “If you don’t make a deal,” they could say, “you will end up like Matta.” The architect of the Mexican trampoline disappeared into the seething Colorado desert. But back in Mexico, a new generation of traffickers inherited the billion-dollar trampoline and built bigger, bouncier, and bloodier springs.
CHAPTER 5
Tycoons
He is a journalist, the senor,
He writes what is happening,
He goes on with his mission,
Although the mafia attack him,
He condemns the cartel,
He criticizes the government,
He is a man of much faith,
He seeks peace for the people.
He is very brave, the senor,
There is no doubt about it,
He makes the nation tremble,
With a simple pen,
The journalist is king,
So say the analysts,
He is at the top level,
Of the narco-news.
—“EL PERIODISTA,” LOS TUCANES DE TIJUANA, 20041
Amid the cool seaside breeze of Tijuana, south of Revolution Avenue with its table-dance clubs, tequila bars, and sombrero shops, sits a converted house with barred windows and a reinforced door. While it looks like it could be a safe house or police installation, the building is actually a magazine office. Stepping inside, you see a rusty classic typewriter below a redwood-framed photograph of the founding editor, Jesús Blancornelas, an old man bearing a thin, gray beard, round, gold glasses, and an intense stare.
Upstairs, reporters hack on with the journalism that Blancornelas started, pushing harder than anyone else into the murky world of drug trafficking. The magazine he founded has paid a dear price for such coverage. Two of its editors were shot dead and Blancornelas himself survived four bullets before dying of cancer, possibly caused by the embedded caps, in 2006.
The story of the rise of El Narco is also the story of Mexican journalists who risk their lives to cover it. The American and British press could get nowhere with their special features or Pulitzer Prize pieces on Mexico without building on the work done day in, day out by Mexican reporters, photographers, and cameramen up and down the country. The grunts’ digging and muckraking has even been the main source of investigations by Mexican police and American agents. For salaries as low as $400 a month, reporters resist attacks and intimidation to expose corruption and search for justice.
Of course, the story of Mexican media covering El Narco has not all been rosy. Some journalists take bribes from cartels. In return, they keep gangsters’ names out of their paper, put their rivals’ names in, or give special attention to narco propaganda. Some of these journalists are spotted riding round in new Jeeps and building plush extensions to their homes.
But in general, the Mexican media has been a crucial, critical check on the rise of drug traffickers and shown itself in a much more positive light than other Mexican institutions such as the police or politicians. No journalist embodies this critical spirit more than Jesús Blancornelas. Keeping his ear to the street, his nose to the halls of power, and his hands digging, Blancornelas churned out thousands of stories and several books on cartels, corruption, and carnage, setting the standard for Mexican reporting at the turn of the millennium. As well as getting him shot, his courage earned him a mass of international awards, including being named Hero of World Press Freedom by the International Press Institute. And how many journalists can boast they have a ballad about them?
Blancornelas covered the rise of drug cartels for thirty years, but his best work was during the 1990s. In this dynamic decade, the Cold War ended and Mexico jumped into globalized free trade. State companies were sold by the dozen, and a new batch of Mexican billionaires appeared from nowhere. This entrepreneurial spirit was strongest on the Mexico-U.S. border, where assembly plants mushroomed, NAFTA quadrupled the flow of goods, and vast new slums emerged. In this period, the power of drug traffickers shifted from Sinaloa and Guadalajara to this border, especially to three cartels: one in Tijuana; one in Juárez; and one by the Gulf of Mexico. El Narco consolidated its power amid the gold rush of globalization.
Blancornelas worked most closely on the Tijuana Cartel, pursuing the mafia relentlessly and exposing its capos, the Arellano Félix brothers. His stories were so crucial that almost every single account of the Tijuana Cartel cites him—and those that don’t, should. In return, the Arellano Félix brothers ordered Blancornelas dead, sending ten gangbangers to wipe him off the map.
When I first arrived in Mexico in 2000, I worked in the shabby offices of the Mexico City News, an English-language daily run out of the capital’s historic center. For a handsome salary of $600 a month, other hungry journalists and I hammered out stories for the declining readership on old, coffee-stained computers using telephone lines that beeped loudly every three seconds. It was the best job I had had in my life. I got to cover the Mexico City crime beat, which involved chasing a plump female crack dealer nicknamed Ma Barker and sitting through a weeklong court-martial of corrupt generals.
I soon found myself reading Blancornelas and called him for advice on stories. The veteran journalist was incredibly patient with a green British reporter asking dumb questions. He always took my weekly calls, despite his harassing deadlines, and would clarify all issues I battled to understand. When I phoned to ask about a particular trafficker, he would answer with his usual sport metaphors. “Grillo, if that trafficker you are writing about were pla
ying baseball, he would be in the minor leagues.” “What about this guy Ismael Zambada?” I asked dimly. “Now Zambada,” he replied, “would be playing for the New York Yankees.”
Such metaphors were natural to Blancornelas, as he spent years covering sports before he wrote about gangsters. After graduating college, he became sports editor of a local rag in his native state of San Luis Potosi in central Mexico before moving more than a thousand miles to the budding town of Tijuana. People can reinvent themselves on the border, and Blancornelas was one of many who found a new life in the city that Californians call TJ. In 1980, at forty-four years old, Blancornelas partnered with two other journalists to found the first Mexican newsmagazine to specialize in coverage of El Narco. They baptized it Zeta—the Mexican spelling of the letter Z (and nothing to do with the Zetas gang).
The first blood was spilled at Zeta in 1988. It was about power, rather than drugs. Coeditor Héctor Félix wrote columns criticizing Tijuana entrepreneur Jorge Hank, son of one of Mexico’s most powerful politicians. Jorge Hank owned a popular racetrack and Félix wrote that Hank had fixed races and rigged bets. Hank’s bodyguard and racetrack employees followed Félix from work on a rainy afternoon. One vehicle blocked Félix in and another pulled up beside him. Blancornelas wrote what happened next:
“From the Toyota pickup, Hank’s bodyguard shot. Once, twice. Extremely accurate. Once near the neck, once in the ribs …
“This is not a soap opera line: his heart was completely destroyed.
“His gray Members Only jacket was shredded, smelling of gunpowder, soaked in blood and flesh.”2
Blancornelas and his team uncovered the killers and got them arrested and jailed. But the journalist wanted Hank himself to go on trial. Prosecutors wouldn’t touch the son of such a powerful politico, so Zeta printed a weekly letter on a black page demanding justice. “Jorge Hank. Why did your bodyguard kill me?” the letter starts, under Félix’s name. Zeta still prints it today. Jorge Hank has since served a term as Tijuana mayor. He denies anything to do with the murder.
