May 15, 2002

The Tijuana drug cartel reportedly has broken up into smaller cells and scattered throughout northern Mexico since police killed the organization's feared chieftain, Ramon Arellano Felix, and arrested his brother Benjamin earlier this year. Meanwhile, the recent arrests of top leaders of the Juarez and Gulf cartels have triggered similar disarticulations of those organizations, according to Francisco Thoumi, a Colombian national and counter-narcotics expert who teaches at the University of Miami.

However, the breakdown of Mexico's three largest drug cartels into numerous smaller cells has not yet caused significant disruptions in the availability, purity and low price of cocaine and heroin in the United States. Instead, an increase in drug-related killings since January 2002 in Mexico's "Golden Triangle" region -- where the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua converge -- indicates that the remnants of these cartels are battling amongst themselves for control of Mexico's profitable international narcotics trade.

The "Golden Triangle" region, particularly the municipality of Tamazula in the Western Sierra Madre, gave rise to Mexico's biggest drug barons, including Rafael Caro Quintero and the Arellano Felix brothers. A new generation of Mexican drug kingpins likely will soon come out of this region, which has been Mexico's drug-trafficking heartland for more than 60 years.

Some of the disarticulated Tijuana cartel's members also have shifted operations south to the state of Oaxaca and Guerrero, where the Juarez cartel already is running narcotics into Mexico from suppliers in Colombia and Central America. Thoumi told Mexican daily El Universal that the geographic shift indicates that Tijuana organization is seeking to establish new positions along Mexico's Pacific Coast, in order to import narcotics shipped from clandestine ports in Colombia and Peru.

However, Thoumi also predicted that the new drug trafficking organizations that eventually will replace the Arellano Felix-dominated Tijuana cartel in northwestern Mexico would distance itself from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as a primary supplier of cocaine. Instead, Thoumi believes the reconstituted Tijuana cartel and other Mexican drug trafficking organizations will seek to negotiate new alliances with Colombian and Peruvian drug traffickers that are not involved directly with the FARC or other insurgent groups. By distancing themselves from insurgents, the cartels hope to get out of the way of an anticipated increase in U.S. military aid to Colombia.

Nevertheless, STRATFOR believes it will be difficult, if not impossible, for Mexican cartels to break off their narcotics supply relationships with the FARC and other Colombian groups. For example, if Mexican drug traffickers don't do business with the FARC, which dominates the upstream cultivation of coca in Colombia, they very likely will find themselves doing business with the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) -- which also finances its estimated 9,000 fighters through the narcotics trade.

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