Imagine a world without cell phones or the Internet and how difficult it would be to go about conducting the normal tasks of living without those devices. Now try and imagine that you are a multinational transport organization trying to move your product in a timely manner to a waiting customer and suddenly your communications are gone. How do you track your product, communicate with your drivers or know if your product was delivered? Are we describing a transport company hit by an Internet virus? Not in this case — although when it comes to communicating, the similarities are strikingly similar between a civilian shipper and a drug cartel.
Our global society has developed a deep reliance on communications devices of every kind, and that need to communicate translates into a critical dependency for the drug cartels trying to move drugs into the United States from Mexico. “Command, Communications and Control” are the three elements of a system that allows any enterprise to function effectively in a fluid environment. To remove any one of these components — especially communications — is to deny any enterprise the ability to coordinate and succeed in completing the critical aspects of their business cycle.
While radios are the preferred method of communications for conducting smuggling operations along the border, the cartels have proved to be adept at using the various technologies available on the open market, including Internet blogs, video sites such as YouTube and others, to communicate their messages and instructions to their members, or to intimidate or threaten their enemies.
The mode of communications chosen by the cartels has almost always been tied to the message being delivered. In the case of YouTube, video images have been used to broadcast film clips that terrorize and intimidate, while blogs have been used to deliver communiqués such as “narcomensajes” (messages), the contents of “narcomantas” (threatening posters or banners) or “narcopintas” (text taken from graffiti or murals).
We know from an arrest and plea bargain conducted by the federal government in Houston in 2009 that the Gulf Cartel had established an extensive array of antennas, repeaters and other components that allowed both Gulf Cartel and Zeta traffickers along the Mexican side of the Texas-Mexico border to communicate with handheld radios between Ciudad Acuña in the northwest (across from Del Rio, Texas) and Veracruz, located southeast of the tip of Texas, almost halfway to the Yucatan peninsula.
This past September, Mexican military forces ramped up their continuing efforts to further disrupt or dismantle the cartels’ ability to do business by systematically destroying the traffickers’ communications network in areas. These networks had been described by “Tecnico,” the cartel technician who helped install much of that infrastructure and who provided the information as part of his plea bargain.
Two months ago, the Mexican Navy dismantled a telecommunications system in Veracruz that had been set up by the Zetas drug cartel and arrested 80 people, including six policemen. And, on Oct. 30, the Mexican Army seized 21 antennas, 22 repeaters, 18 duplex components and other communications gear that had been used by the cartels in Reynosa, Tamaulipas.
But as one method of communications is denied, another will be employed. The shift from unencrypted handheld radios to more secure modes of communication will likely cause trafficker communications to become less susceptible to interception by law enforcement or military counter-drug authorities. The use of simple technology like blogs, chat rooms and other similar services will allow drug traffickers to hide their communications among the multitude of users permanently exchanging information on the Internet, and thereby enable the cartels to continue their drug-smuggling activities.
More information on this subject and the significance of targeting communications as a counter-drug strategy can be found in the my recent Baker Institute paper, “Mexico’s Government Begins to Retake Northeastern Mexico.”
Gary J. Hale is the nonresident fellow in drug policy at the Baker Institute. From 2000 to 2010, he held the position of chief of intelligence in the Houston Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). From 1990 to 1997, Hale had various assignments in Washington, D.C., including serving as chief of the Heroin Investigations Support Unit, chief of the Dangerous Drugs Intelligence Unit and liaison to the National Security Agency. During this period, he also served a tour of duty at the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia. From 1997 to 1998, Hale was assigned as the DEA intelligence chief at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. In 1990, Hale received the DEA Administrator’s Award, the agency’s highest recognition.