Washington DC Beltway Experts

I don't want to be sued, so let's make it clear that the following is only MY OPINION. I could be totally wrong about everything including what you'll read below. Make up your own mind.

There are a number of firms, mostly headquartered in the Washington D. C. Beltway, which are headed by professors and other pseudo professionals, who peddle their services to the equally unknowing USGOV bureaucracy. Some of them, like Southern Pulse --

"Southern Pulse is a decentralized, field-based investigations organization focused on security, politics, energy, and business in Latin America. Founded in 2004 by investigative journalist and author Samuel Logan, Southern Pulse presents clients with reports and training courses sourced from the ground up. This organization began as a private human intelligence network in the Americas. Southern Pulse is now based in Annapolis, Maryland, and runs its free online media monitoring service from Washington, DC. Senior investigators operate from hubs in Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Brazil, and Chile to leverage our network, unique access, and deep understanding of the region to mitigate risk for public and private sector clients with exposure to political, security, financial, or legal risk in Latin America."

-- feel that having somebody read on-line newspapers from Latin America, which they turn into their "educated opinion", lends some sort of twisted validity to what they put out. 

Here are some of their more recent opinions regarding Guadalajara (GMA)

• Los Zetas and rivals in the Sinaloa Federation are content with a non-confrontational coexistence in the GMA.
  Completely untrue. Los Zetas have NO significant presence in Jalisco and no infrastructure to support them if they arrived. 

• There are two, tier-two groups in the GMA; each has aligned itself with a rival tier-one group. 
Mostly untrue. They (like USGOV) separate CJNG from the Sinaloa Federation, and it's not. They assert that the Milineo Cartel is affiliated with Los Zetas and it's not. I am not going to source this thing out for you, dear reader.

• There are at least three, tier-three street gangs with specific areas of operation in the GMA. 
Partly true. But the "street gangs" are run COMPLETELY as wholly owned subsidiaries of (1) The Sinaloa Federation - two separate gangs and (2) La Resistencia, which doesn't call itself the Milenio Cartel anymore. 

• The GMA has seen a violence high-water mark that will likely not been seen under current conditions. 
Untrue. They put that out right before Guadalajara broke out in near civil war in September 2012 after SEDENA grabbed El Mencho (yes, they let him go and he's back).

• The relative low value of the GMA plaza has resulted in the increased importance of rural areas. Though this is true in other areas of Mexico, it is most salient in Jalisco among all areas of our study. 
Completely untrue. And this brings me back to the central point. These researchers with "people on the ground" would not seem to be on the ground in places such as Guadalajara. Or if they are, they lack significant access to the information that they report. Do they ever speak to Ruben Osegevera Cervantes personally? Did they ever have a sit down with Nacho Coronel (before SEDENA killed him at El Chapo's request) and pick his brain over the future of his mini-empire, centered in Jalisco and Guadalajara? Do they go to El Azul's rancho outside Guadalajara and speak to the great man, himself?  Of course not. What about the rift last spring between El Mayo and El Mencho and the impact that had on Guadalajara street gangs? You never hear these 'experts' discussing nuts and bolts because they don't understand how things work among the narcos. 

I'm sure that if somebody from Southern Pulse were to respond to this blog (and I'm not holding my breath), they would say that their information comes from 'reliable sources on the ground', which would mean that they read the newspapers. (then they sell that reading service to people as evaluated intelligence)

Who owns the Mexican newspapers and who tells the newspapers what to print (for the most part)? Sadly, the narco matas and related blogs seem to have better information than the newspapers do because they can publish with a degree of anonymity.

Don't bother going to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for answers or to the US El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC). HIDTA gets its information from USGOV so it's no more valid than DEA. Though they are right more often than they're wrong (maybe 60/40), they lack the real ground game in Mexico that one needs to understand what's going on and more importantly, why things happen the way that they do. Relying on the (now part of Gobernacion) SSP for reliable information is folly. I don't care how well USGOV asserts that its sources are vetted.

It's all ground game. My advice to private analysis groups: Go big or go home.

USGOV doesn't want my advice.

Decapitation Count in Mexico (2008-2012)

>> WARNING <<    

Some people may find this disturbing.

Before

The US policy that pushes that the drug war be fought (down there) to the last Mexican, has been disastrous and it will be felt in the new Mexican policy toward the United States. 

The United States fueled the fire through their Operation Gunwalker Scandal. We now know that the Obama Administration plans to keep Attorney General Eric Holder, architect of the Gunwalker Scandal wherein USGOV agents sold firearms through straw buyers to drug cartels without tracking them. Arming the cartels directly may not play on MSNBC, but the Mexicans take note.

After

There may be more this year so these are not final numbers, but you can use them as a fair guess. These numbers do not include decapitations where the heads were NOT displayed to the public for public relations value.

During the first five years of the Calderon administration, 1,443 decapitation cases were reported. 

Between January and November 2011, 493 cases were reported. 

-Chihuahua leads the pack with 171 reported decapitations since the start of the Calderon administration 

-Guerrero comes in second at 140. 

-Tamaulipas with 119 reported cases since the start of the Calderon administration  

-Durango almost tied for third with 115 reported decapitations. 

-Sinaloa came in fifth, which may surprise some people, with a mere 89 reported decapitations. (What happened to Sinaloa? There were a lot of murders in Sinaloa, but it would seem that the people in that area are less inclined to decapitate their victims.)

-Mexico State, Baja California Norte, Jalisco, Coahuila and Veracruz finished behind the pack.

The cost of Mexican President's US-Sponsored and funded drug war can be balanced by the embarrassingly low number of decapitations before he and his American allies "got the heads lopping". 

There were only 37 reported decapitations in all of Mexico in 2007.

During the first three years of the Calderon administration, 10.3 large-scale massacres were reported per month. During the second three years, an average of 23 were reported on a monthly basis. 

English Source: US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration
Spanish Source: El Universal

The Livable, Lovable, Port of Veracruz

The Sinaloa Federation is a practical organization. When you intend to take over a major hub or region, it's better to simply flip the current warlord to your team than it is to try and install somebody from outside (Sinaloa) than it is to keep the figurehead in place where he is. 

It's been over a year now since SEDENA assaulted Veracruz (very effectively) and drove out Los Zetas (circa September/October 2011). Within two weeks, the Sinaloa Federation moved in and installed the formerly #3 in the Los Zetas command structure as their man in Veracruz. Sure, Rafael Acosta Croda has people keeping an eye on him, but life is good. The police leave him alone. The Army leaves him alone, the politicians tip their hats to him and all is well with the world.

Rafael Acosta Croda - and one of his wives.

The drugs move through the port of Veracruz with the occasional seizure to insure that MEXGOV authorities take credit for their vigilance. [usually somebody else's dope - rarely is a load belonging to Gonzalo Inzunza Inzunza (Macho Prieto) bagged] DEA has been wondering how all of the drugs are moving through the East Coast. This is one route. There are others.

Zeta one day, Sinaloa Federation the next. Expedient moves are necessary for survival. But sometimes it's tough for USGOV to keep up with the program.

Mexican Methamphetamine

Americans are so desensitized to the drug trade that one photo of piles of drums containing precursor chemicals for methamphetamine, seized by Mexican and US officials, looks more less like all the rest. Thus, I won't bother to post a photo of a pile of chemical drums.

Mexican drug cartels are flooding U.S. cities with cheap, extraordinarily pure methamphetamine made in factory-like "super labs” located throughout Mexico. Although Mexican meth is not new to the U.S. drug trade, it now accounts for as much as 80 percent of the meth domestically, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. And it is as much as 90 percent pure, a level that offers users a faster, more intense and longer-lasting high.

Viewers familiar with the popular television series, BREAKING BAD, have a genuinely accurate view of the meth lab scene, combined with Hollywood drama. The only difference is that the really good stuff is made in Mexico these days. Various cartels expanded into the U.S. meth market very effectively, using the drug pipelines that they previously used for cocaine, heroin and marijuana. 

Mexican meth has a clearer, glassier appearance than more crudely produced formulas and often resembles ice fragments, usually with a clear or bluish-white color. It often has a smell people compare to ammonia, cat urine or even burning plastic.

http://youtu.be/vUaUFIPYzUQ

Seizures of meth along the Southwest border have more than quadrupled.

In terms of raw tonnage, the amount of seized meth jumped from slightly more than 4,000 pounds in 2007 to more than 16,000 pounds in 2011. The Sinaloa Federation, which keeps close tabs on these profit-and-loss numbers feels that somewhere around 8% of the methamphetamine product that they sent north was seized by law enforcement in their pipelines. Once it hits the street distributors, they don't track it. Though I don't have completely reliable numbers from the Sinaloa Federation (only, not considering other cartels), the best numbers I have is that they shipped 1,500 metric tons of methamphetamine products (crystal, ice, etc.) to the United States and Canada to date in 2012.

During that same period, the purity of Mexican meth shot up too, from 39 percent in 2007 to 88 percent by 2011. During that same time, the price fell 69 percent, tumbling from $290 per pure gram to less than $90. (Source: DEA)

The marketing format follows a well-established pattern. By simultaneously increasing the purity and cutting the price, the cartels get people hooked and create a new customer base.

Mexico has tightened laws and regulations on pseudoephedrine and occasionally the cartels have a problem obtaining commercial quantities from India and China. Today they arrive at the ports of Manzanillo and Lazlo Cardenas on the West Coast and they cross the Mexican border from Guatemala.

Some producers shifted their recipe from pseudo ephedrine to P2P, using the organic compound phenylacetone because it's easier to obtain and has some legitimate commercial applications. In 2011, 85 percent of lab samples taken from U.S. meth seizures came from the P2P process - up from 50 percent a little more than a year earlier.

Last year, Mexican authorities made two major busts in the quiet central state of Queretaro, seizing nearly 500 tons of precursor chemicals and 3.4 tons of pure meth with a street value of more than $100 million. In Sinaloa, investigators found a sophisticated underground lab equipped with an elevator and ventilation systems as well as cooking and sleeping facilities. The facility was reachable only by a nearly 100-foot tunnel with its opening concealed under a tractor shed. (Source: Univision)

In February, soldiers in western Mexico made a historic seizure: 15 tons of pure methamphetamine, a haul that could have supplied 13 million doses worth more than $4 billion.

The cocaine pipeline from Colombia to the United States has already been closed for this season and will reopen after the Holiday smuggling break, due to begin mid-January 2013. That is not true of the meth pipeline because it's produced domestically in Mexico and the profit margin is therefore much higher.