Officials Quit Amid Mexican Drug Probe

Two top officials of the Mexican state of Morelos have resigned amid a wide-ranging investigation into possible involvement by police and government officials in drug trafficking.

The resignations of Secretary of State Eduardo Becerra on Monday and Atty. Gen. Guillermo Tenorio Avila on Saturday are the latest events in a probe into whether state police and other officials were complicit in the movement of Colombian cocaine through Morelos and on to the U.S.-Mexican border.

Although the government of President Vicente Fox has made strides in dismantling large drug-smuggling rings and arresting their leaders, the widening Morelos case suggests that Mexico continues to be a significant transshipment point for narcotics flowing to the U.S. market, experts say.

“We may be seeing in Mexico what we saw in Colombia in the mid-1990s, the smashing of huge Medellin and Cali cartels but their replacement by 10, 20 or 50 smaller cartels,” said Jorge Chabat, a professor and drug-trafficking expert at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City.

Morelos is hardly unique as a state besmirched by alleged drug ties. Entire law enforcement units in several states, including the federal force in Baja California and the attorney general’s office in Chihuahua, have been fired in recent years for allegedly providing aid and comfort to drug rings.

Officials at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration routinely say their trust in Mexican police at all levels is low to nonexistent.

The former governor of Quintana Roo state, Mario Villanueva, was arrested in 2001 after two years as a fugitive for allegedly having facilitated Colombian drug shipments through his state, charging $500,000 per planeload. He was convicted on drug-trafficking charges and is in prison.

The latest scandal broke April 6 when the federal attorney general announced the arrest of Morelos state police Chief Jose Agustin Montiel Lopez and his top aide, Raul Cortez Galindo, for alleged links to drug cartel capos Vicente Carrillo Leyva and Juan Jose Esparragoza Moreno, nicknamed El Azul.

The state’s top cop was alleged to have arranged and secured the arrival of planeloads of Colombian cocaine at the airport in Cuernavaca, the state capital, and its transshipment to destinations near the U.S. border controlled by the so-called Juarez cartel.

The two top Morelos officials resigned after the state assembly voted April 15 that they should remove themselves. The resolution also called on Gov. Sergio Estrada Cajigal to take a temporary leave of absence to ensure a thorough probe, but he has refused to leave his post.

Guillermo Lopez Ruvalcaba, a state deputy and leader of the Democratic Revolutionary Party contingent in the assembly, said in an interview Monday that local business and lawyer groups had been pressuring the governor to discipline the police chief and curb organized crime for more than two years.

“Many Morelos citizens suffered abuse at the hands of the police, and it was always inexplicable why the governor didn’t do anything about it,” Ruvalcaba said. “Now we think that for the citizens to regain confidence, the governor should step aside temporarily until the investigation is complete.”

The federal attorney general’s office disclosed that Estrada Cajigal had been questioned by investigators but that no evidence to incriminate the governor had been found. He has maintained his innocence of any involvement with drug traffickers.

Estrada Cajigal belongs to Fox’s National Action Party, and a link between him and drug trafficking could prove embarrassing for the president.

In a show of resolve, Estrada Cajigal on April 12 suspended 553 state police and replaced them with police academy graduates and public security personnel. However, 248 of the suspended police have been allowed to return to work, a spokesman with the governor’s office said Monday.

In a news conference Monday, Becerra told reporters he was stepping down as secretary of state to comply with the assembly’s wishes and that he was leaving office “calm and sure of having made my best efforts in the secretariat.”

Professor Chabat said research data show that Mexican arrests of major cartel figures under the Fox administration have not appreciably altered the flow of drugs into the United States.

Traffickers are also moving their operations to other countries, including in the Caribbean, to avoid tougher enforcement.

“It’s not the way to affect the market, which is still working in the United States. The panorama is still the same,” Chabat said. “If you arrest one capo, there are others standing in line to take his place.”

Complicity of Mexican state officials and police in drug trafficking has existed for decades and until recent years represented an “unwritten concession” for those officials, said Luis Astorga, narcotics expert at the Institute for Social Research at Mexico’s National Autonomous University.

With exceptions such as Villanueva, the ex-governor of Quintana Roo, arrests of government officials are rare in Mexico.

“I am disappointed with the range of the Morelos investigation so far,” Astorga said.