US guns arm Mexico's drug wars
The Calderón government is asking for – and getting – more US support in cracking down on gun smuggling.
from the July 19, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 4
Some weapons seized from drug traffickers, such as grenades, are stolen from the Mexican military. But drug traffickers have little interest in weapons carried by the military, because they are of lower caliber than the semiautomatic weapons from the US, says Martin Gabriel Barron, a researcher at the National Criminal Sciences Institute in Mexico City. The semiautomatics are then often modified to fire like machine guns.
Most guns cross into Mexico via "ant traffic," three to five weapons at a time, stashed under car seats. Once over the border, weapons fetch double or triple the price paid in the US, says Mr. Benitez. There are plenty of buyers – kidnappers, thieves, people who simply want a gun without enduring the red tape to do it legally – but many contraband guns end up in the hands of drug traffickers. The only people who can afford matapolicias, at about $1,200 a pop, are the narcotraffickers, says a US official who asked to remain anonymous because he works in counterarms investigations.
US responds to Mexican pressure
Mexican presidents have long complained of US policies that they say make it difficult to cut off the weapons trade, but the Calderón government has been the most vocal critic, many say. In June, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora called US policies on guns "absurd."
"The Mexican government has been applying a lot of pressure on the US government," says Mr. Peschard-Sverdrup of CSIS.
As a result, cooperation is reaching new levels. The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is training Mexican federal and state police and customs officials to properly trace weapons to the US via a technology called E-trace, and is developing a version in Spanish that will leave less room for error. The US has donated dogs that can detect 19,000 types of explosive power. The ATF intends to provide X-ray scanning equipment for beefed-up inspection of vehicles entering Mexico from the US. Both countries are working toward sharing information in real time about organized-crime investigations.
Some worry, though, that Mexico is becoming too dependent on the US to correct the gunrunning problem and its related ills, instead of focusing on its own weaknesses. Mexico's decision in January to extradite 15 suspected drug-cartel leaders to the US is a case in point, says Erubiel Tirado, a security expert at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City. "It is an implicit recognition of the big failure of the whole prosecuting system to control the phenomenon," he says. "We decided to give up the effort and send the main cartels to the US."
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