Mexico Is a Veteran in the Drug War : Military Drive in Mountains Is Permanent Eradication Effort

Mexico’s Sierra Madre Mountains, an impenetrable anarchy of convoluted canyons and abrupt walls of granite, are the lair of small farmers who years ago turned to the cultivation of marijuana and the opium poppy as the source of their livelihood. They are as much as a part of that wild area as the deadly snakes and scorpions that inhabit it.

Two weeks ago, after officials of the Reagan Administration blasted Mexico for “massive” corruption and complacency in the effort against drug trafficking, I traveled to the Sierra Madre to try to gauge the veracity of the charges. I also talked with both U.S. and Mexican government officials closely related to the effort to combat drug production and trafficking.

The findings were what we have come to see all too often: Washington’s viewof reality is at times colored by its own political interests, by its inbred prejudices and the particular ethos of the administration in power, and by its ignorance or distortion of what people in the field are saying. In the end it risks revealing a disaffection with other cultures or political systems and a resulting arrogance, which limit U.S. effectiveness abroad.

The truth is that there is corruption in Mexico, as there is in the United States and every other country. The truth is also that there is a major battle in Mexico, and has been for years, to eradicate drug production. It is an uphill battle, but more for the stoic persistence of the indigenous farmers who make their livelihood from the drug trade than for corruption in law enforcement and military agencies fighting it.

Another truth is that the money behind production comes from the United States--a market that draws the heroin, cocaine and marijuana of the world to it as inexorably as water flows downhill.

In a country beset by one of its most severe economic crises in memory, a country with virtually no domestic market for drugs, the lure of U.S. dollars is a strong magnet indeed.

Mexico’s battle against drugs began in earnest in the early 1960s, especially with the arrival of Drug Enforcement Adminstration agents invited here as advisers. By 1968 drug trafficking had become a felony, but the apparent lack of progress in curtailing production incurred the wrath of the Nixon Administration, which began pressuring Mexico in a way reminiscent of the present campaign coming out of Washington. By 1970 Mexico was giving more responsibility in the anti-drug effort to its own attorney general’s office, which was receiving helicopters for herbicide spraying and reconnaissance from the United States. The program had such an effect that by 1979 Mexico had become a leading example of success in eradicating drugs.

Then, U.S. government sources say, complacency set in. The United States, congratulating itself for its role in Mexico’s success, turned its attention to Afghanistan, then to the “Golden Crescent” poppy fields in Asia, and more recently to Colombia as cocaine grabbed the spotlight.

All that time, one of the remarkable military campaigns of this century in Mexico was under way in the Sierra Madre. Launched in 1976 as a permanent rather than a seasonal drug-eradication effort, the “Condor Task Force” was the military’s response to growing violence in the northwestern states.

An elite corps of veritable human mountain goats, the 1,500-man Condor force works in platoons of about 40 men. During the six months of their tour of duty, they move through every arroyo and ravine, over every pass, of the 70,000 square kilometers of their jurisdiction, destroying as they go all the small fields that they encounter. Their commander, Gen. Jorge Velazquez Fuentes, said that half of all Mexico’s military activity is dedicated to combating drugs, and half of that is done by the Condor force.

I spent more than six hours in a helicopter over a portion of that area--above the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua. In May the mountains are brown and bare. Even the oaks have lost their leaves. The only coolness is among the pines, up at 6,000 feet. There is not much cultivation left at this time of year; both the poppy and marijuana seasons end in April. Now the few deep green fields of drugs that are left on the upper slopes stand out like emeralds on a lady’s finger, easily spotted from the air. But many fields are hidden away in barrancas , camouflaged by other vegetation. It’s like roulette: A planter throws down a field here, another there; maybe half will be destroyed. It is all risk. The lone helicopter, dwarfed by the expanse, sees what lies directly below and little more.

When drug fields are spotted, the closest platoon moves in. To travel what by air is 10 kilometers may take two days on foot. Once there, the soldiers comb the area, leveling the drug crops as they find them. In my six hours I witnessed the destruction of one rich, fairly large marijuana field in a river valley and two small poppy fields much higher in the mountains.

Records are kept of what is destroyed. Even discounting the inevitable exaggerations, the Condor figures are impressive. So far this year, 29,222 fields of poppy covering 3,623 hectares and 2,837 fields of marijuana covering 378 hectares were destroyed. Forty-six kilos of poppy seed, 468 firearms and 400 kilos of loose marijuana were seized.

With so much money to be gained, corruption is a natural ingredient. The role that it plays is impossible to tell. But the military tries to limit it through a turnover of the entire staff, from top to bottom, every six months. Moreover, given the disappearing act of the local planters as soon as the platoons move in, it is hard to imagine much complicity.

A U.S. official in close contact with the Mexican effort gives the government relatively high marks. “They may not be setting the world on fire,” he said, “but they’re not doing at all badly, either. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give them a strong 5.” He cited the enormous difficulties, especially in the mountain areas where helicopters are shot at or brought down by cables suspended across canyons. He also calls the “dirty money” a powerful force in persuading judges and local police that traffickers may not be so evil after all.

Corruption, inefficiency and complacency bedevil Mexico’s fight against drugs, just as they do in the United States or Europe. “No nation is so pure that it can throw blame at another,” one Mexican official said. “If the United States is failing to curtail the market, it should not then accuse the supplier.” Mexico is irate as well at the exaggeration of testimony given during U.S. Senate subcommittee hearings last month. “It doesn’t relate to the truth,” Atty. Gen. Sergio Garcia Ramirez said. In this light, Mexicans have begun searching for motives that might lie behind the rhetoric, which will not improve relations.

The Reagan Administration must devise a clear and consistent Mexico policy based on cooperation and continuous airing of bilateral matters through forums designed for this purpose. Openness and frankness, as Sen. Jesse Helms says, are important, but that should not mean leaked innuendo and congressional witch trials. This kind of free-for-all will not serve either Mexico’s or the United States’ goals in the drug war.