 | ROSE PALMISANO/JOURNAL 2nd Lt. Roberto Gonzalez Mesa pulls marijuana plants from a field on the mountains of the Sierra Madre in Sinaloa, Mexico. Gonzalez is part of Mexico's stepped-up military effort to destroy marijuana and poppy fields. |
Cloaked in secrecy, Project Azteca's elite army units bring more muscle to the war against drug cartels
Copyright © 1997 Albuquerque Journal
By Richard Parker
Journal Washington Bureau
LA CAMPANILLA, Mexico -- The Mexican army has embarked on a new offensive to stem the flow of drugs and challenge the power of the drug cartels.
Launched almost secretly late last year, Project Azteca adopts a new strategy that has plunged thousands of troops into round-the-clock, search-and-destroy missions aimed at hidden marijuana and poppy crops in the rugged terrain of rural Mexico.
The military uses special elite units, a handful of helicopters and some other simple tools of modern warfare to carry out Azteca's mission.
Gen. Arturo Olguin Hernandez, chief of military counter-narcotics operations, said the military units are carrying out assignments as varied as running rapidly rotating roadblocks, flying surveillance aircraft and using night-vision equipment to chase traffickers.
Another key is giving greater control to local commanders as the military moves to the forefront of Mexico's attempt to curb the cartels.
The Mexican army is one of the most tight-lipped and secretive in the world. But last week it offered the Journal a glimpse of its new strategy and tactics in what officials described as a first for a news organization of any nation.
That glimpse revealed an army using more manpower, better technology and greater strategic flexibility. It also found commanders who need more equipment, and whose soldiers frequently find themselves facing armed resistance.
And there is a broader political challenge to this new strategy: How to minimize conflict between soldiers and civilians under difficult circumstances.
The new strategy, which followed a two-year review of anti-drug efforts, expanded the army's efforts out of three key states -- Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa -- and into the rest of the country.
Today, all 12 military regions are fielding permanent forces against the traffickers.
The new strategy marks the emergence of the military as, at least, a full partner with federal police in the struggle against the cartels. In many respects, the army has superseded police.
The new strategy is an acknowledgement that Mexican police, riddled with corruption, can't be trusted to bear most of the burden of fighting the cartels.
"It is a sign that the police have failed," according to Mexican diplomat Oscar Rocha, who has helped negotiate U.S. aid to Mexico.
The army wiped out 83 percent of the drug crops destroyed last year while federal police destroyed the remaining 17 percent. In Sinaloa and Durango last year, the army claims to have destroyed 14,365 marijuana plantations and 11,000 poppy fields.
Last year, army troops tore up more than 900 clandestine airstrips believed to be used by traffickers.
Changed battlefield
An olive-drab Bell helicopter touches down on a hardscrabble wash on the western slope of the Sierra Madre and Gen. Gregorio Guerrero Caudillo steps out.
After more than 45 years in the army, he is as experienced a drug fighter as any in the Mexican military. A paratrooper and pilot, he has returned to Sinaloa after a 20-year absence.
He found a changed battlefield.
Instead of the heroin trade that once dominated, the more flexible marijuana business has taken root in the dry soil. Instead of giant spreads of poppy and marijuana, countless small plots are scattered among the forbidding folds of the Sierra Madre nearly the length of western Mexico.
 | ROSE PALMISANO/JOURNAL Mexican army special forces work on a training exercise at the military base in Culiacan, Sinaloa. Many have been trained in the United States by the 9th Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, N.C. |
So the army is using helicopters to search for fields that cling to mountainsides, riverbanks and box canyons. The choppers allow observers to plot field locations on hand-held global positioning devices and commanders then dispatch troops.
Another change: replacing people who fled at first sight of the army are people who fight back with everything from AK-47s to .50-caliber machine guns.
Guerrero is said to be typical of the kind of officer leading the expanded struggle against traffickers.
In Sinaloa and Durango, he has fielded all eight of his infantry battalions, all 14 of his helicopters, an amphibious unit and two elite special forces units.
He estimates his troops are destroying, on average, 400 plots a day.
Built near to the ground, and given to an easy manner and laugh, he is a man who appears to love his work. He considers jumping out of an airplane a "passionate" experience and just recently spent 18 months chasing traffickers in the Sierra Madre.
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Mexico's generals Mexico has more than 300 generals who form the backbone of the officer corps and make field decisions that in other nations might be left to lower-ranking officers. They are the institutional memory of the Mexican Army. But in many cases, because of the army's long tradition of remaining silent about its work and separation from the rest of society, little is known about individual careers. Military officers with prominent roles against the cartels include Gen. Enrique Salgado, chief of Mexico City's police; Gen. Guillermo Alvarez Nara, in charge of federal police; and Gen. Tito Valencia Ortiz, head of the national anti-drug planning center. Valencia was an early graduate of the national defense college, modernized the army's ground transportation in the 1980s and later became a zone commander in Tampico and Hermosillo. Here are two other faces in the army's fight against the cartels: Brig. Gen. Arturo Olguin Hernandez AGE: 49 BORN: State of Durango BACKGROUND: Entered service as a cadet at the Heroic Military College in the 1960s. Second lieutenant in Sinaloa. Served as defense attache in Washington, D.C., in the 1980s. Commanded a battalion in Tamaulipas and for one year in Chiapas during the uprising in 1994 and into 1995. DRUG FIGHTING: First posting was in Sinaloa leading troops to destroy poppy fields. Later returned as a more senior officer. Named head of S-10, in charge of all military counternarcotics operations, just two weeks ago. Division Gen. Gregorio Guerrero Caudillo AGE: 60 BORN: Mexico City BACKGROUND: 40 years of service, becoming a cadet at the age of 15. Paratrooper and pilot. Taught an advanced weapons course, trained in jungle warfare in Panama. Served all over Mexico and in Colombia. Carried a .22-caliber rifle and shot iguanas for lunch. DRUG FIGHTING: One of the most experienced drug fighters in Mexico. Recently served 18 months in the Sierra Madre destroying drug plantations and chasing traffickers. Assigned five months ago to command army and air forces in Durango and Sinaloa, the historic heart of Mexico's drug country. |
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"And I didn't want to come down," he said with a grin about the sometimes deadly cat-and-mouse game that unfolds in the mountains.
"I get obsessed. I'm a fanatic."
Human rights addressed
When Guerrero's helicopter alights, the general is met by the sun-browned face of a 21-year-old second lieutenant, Roberto Gonzalez Mesa.
The increased aggressiveness of the army is not without its risks for men like Gonzalez and his 15-member platoon. Just two weeks ago, on the slopes of the Pelican Mountains, a group of traffickers opened fire after being surprised by troops. A sergeant was seriously wounded.
Twenty-one Mexican soldiers were killed and more than 60 wounded in counter-drug operations last year.
Gonzalez and his men, many of them 17 or 18 years old, illustrate the hardships Mexican troops endure. Many have been in the mountains for five to six months, traipsing from one target to the next on foot. There are so few helicopters they are seldom used to transport troops.
These men live out of rucksacks and sleep on the ground. They never quarter in a town and are resupplied every two weeks.
But the new strategy raises broad risks for the government.
Mexico's army has been accused in the past of serious human rights violations, particularly during the Chiapas uprising in 1994. Even now, one of its youngest generals languishes in prison near Mexico City for having criticized the army's human rights record.
A massive deployment of troops to the northern state of Chihuahua last year in which soldiers took over virtually all police functions ended in failure. A State Department report called the so-called "Chihuahua Experiment" a disappointment, particularly because of widespread accusations of human rights violations.
The United States, however, felt more comfortable in providing special forces training and other drug-fighting aid to the military than to the police because of widespread corruption in police forces.
"We didn't want to have federales rappelling down ropes in the middle of the night from helicopters with all these weapons," said one U.S. diplomat.
And the army, particularly under counternarcotics chief Olguin, has tried to prepare itself for dealing with civilians in its new mission.
In the wake of Chiapas, it instituted human rights courses for troops and officers and is preparing a new manual on human rights.
The army also claims to have given troops specific rules of engagement. According to Olguin, they are to return fire only in self-defense and if fired upon more than once.
The army also has implemented a complex system of checks and balances designed to reduce potential flashpoints between troops deep in rural Mexico and the local people.
Gonzalez's troops, here in a box canyon destroying a small marijuana plot, all come from the distant southern state of Guerrero. None has any connection to local residents or local traffickers.
Rotations for officers and troops are brief. Tours in the mountains for junior officers and young troops are supposed to last three months -- but they sometimes extend to six months because the army is stretched so thin. Troops camp in the mountains instead of being billeted in towns in order to avoid everything from local romances to local corruption. Officers move from post to post -- often clear across the country -- every two or three years.
The temptations of corruption are real.
Even top officers, according to Tulane University political scientist Rod Camp, are paid only about $60,000 a year.
In addition to the recent arrest of Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, until recently head of the anti-narcotics agency, there have been previous U.S. intelligence reports of officers suspected of narcotics-related corruption.
"It's been demonstrated over and over again," said Camp.
Need for mobility
The Mexican military has modernized over the last decade, acquiring helicopters and fighter aircraft and 700 vehicles from the United States.
And it has also shifted focus to internal security concerns such as fighting guerrillas and drug traffickers.
These efforts increasingly bring the army into direct contact with civilians, and challenge the military to accomplish its missions without alienating everyday Mexicans.
"It's very important for us to have the respect of the people," said Olguin. "It's from the people that the state derives its sovereignty and we're mindful of that."
But that contact, Camp said, will only test the popularity of the army in a political environment in which other institutions -- such as the government or the ruling party -- are declining in popularity.
"The military has had greater respect," Camp said, "because nobody knows anything about it."
The army faces, in the mountains of Sinaloa and Durango, what Guerrero describes as a "subculture" -- generations of people who've grown marijuana and opium and who know no other way to make a living.
The subculture doesn't sit still, Guerrero said. It has advanced further down the foothills toward the Pacific coast.
On one flight last week, just minutes outside downtown Mazatlan, pilots in a pair of helicopters spied five poppy fields along a riverbank.
"The business has diversified," Guerrero said.
The intelligence provided by a handful of helicopters and the inexpensive, hand-held global positioning satellite devices have given his forces a new weapon.
What he needs now is greater mobility. That means more helicopters that can carry his troops instead of having them march slowly over difficult terrain from one plantation to the next.
"And that," he said, "would be a miracle."
Most U.S. officials seem to be unaware of the new Mexican strategy. But one Clinton administration official said the administration took notice of the increased army presence in deciding to certify Mexico.
The army claims to have destroyed nearly 10 percent more crops in 1996 than in 1995.
"The army is doing an outstanding job in eradication," the Clinton administration official said. He added, however, that the United States is privately pressing Mexico's army to move toward aerial spraying to destroy crops.
Currently, the army destroys crops only by hand in an effort to minimize environmental damage, according to a Mexican military planner.