The Organization of the Honduran Drug Trade (Part 3 of 3)

In the first two installements of this series, we discussed examples of what a September 2012 UN report called a territorially-based crime group and a transportista crime group in Honduras.

The third kind of group involved in the international drug trade are what the UN calls tumbadores, disruptive groups that prey on crime families and transportistas opportunistically, to take their drug shipments and sell them to others.

Tumbadores often form from territorial groups, like crime families. In addition to hijacking shipments of drugs, they may also extort the transportistas who must cross their territory to move drugs along, and they may contribute to street crime.

In Honduras, Los Grillos, a group operating near La Ceiba, have been identified as tumbadores.  They've been competing for territory with Los Pelones, also headquartered in La Ceiba. That conflict generated over 373 firearm caused homicides in the first half of 2011 in La Ceiba.

Both groups are said to operate by trying to hijack drug shipments traveling from eastern Honduras through the La Ceiba area. They have reportedly heavily infiltrated the police in La Ceiba, and carried out contract killings on reporters in the La Ceiba region, including reporter David Meza Montesinos, who was broadcasting exposés on police corruption in La Ceiba when murdered.

More recently Los Grillos have expanded into the Bay Islands of Honduras, particularly Roatan where they're following the drug traffic in coastal waters.

Not included in these three main categories are street gangs, the Maras. The UN report concludes that they "have little connection to the transnational drug trade, and focus primarily on extortion and other local power struggles".  This goes against a powerful representation popular with the Honduran (and some international) media that links the street gangs and drug traffickers together.

The Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and the Mara Calle 18 are territorial organized crime units. but are not usually classified as organized crime units because their focus is not financial gain. They provide small amounts of security and distribute money to friends and family, but make no pretense of serving a broader public good as do the crime families.

Their territorial control is about identity, respect and their place in the world, according to the UN report.  This focus on identity causes them at times to work against their financial interests, feuding with others over symbolic incursions.

They are trans-national, but not organized trans-nationally.  They are present across the United States, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, but there is no central leadership that coordinates what each member organization is doing.  Both gangs operate as small territorial units, cliques, that control or dispute a small local territory.  Some analysts suggest there is a national structure made up of the leadership of the largest cliques. Both may have cliques that make opportunistic alliances across international boundaries but outside of this, there is no international coordination of activities.

While neither Mara is a major player in the international drug trade, both are involved in local distribution of drugs in Honduras. That doesn't mean they are benign; their primary activities are major sources of violence in Honduras: kidnap for ransom, extortion from transportation (bus, taxi), extortion of local businesses and individuals, murder for hire, and theft accompany their involvement in street trafficking of drugs within the country.

Their street level drug trafficking is mostly cannabis, with only a little cocaine these days.  Back when they arrived in Central America, they got their start by trafficking crack cocaine, previously not a problem in Central America. But today, the cocaine trade is international business of the cartels.

In Honduras, the way the Maras have articulated with the territorial crime families and transportistas is through murder for hire.  In the Bajo Aguan, there's evidence that a group calling itself Mara 61 has been hired by drug traffickers to provide security and logistical support for their operations.  Mara Calle 18 was hired by the Zetas to carry out contract killings in Honduras.

It is the activities of the Maras in extortion and murder for hire that produce the most violence in Central America.

In El Salvador, when politicians and the Catholic church negotiated a truce between MS-13 and Calle 18, it dramatically lowered homicide rates, while extortion and other gang related crimes continued unchecked. When the truce collapsed, homicide rates returned to their former, high, levels.

The UN report shows that violence in Honduras is a result of two primary forces, conflict between the various people involved in the drug trade, and the high level of violence promulgated by the Maras.

Collapsing these two sources of violence is a mistake that can lead to thinking strategies intended to fight the Maras are also countering drug trafficking, or that fighting drug trafficking will reduce the high levels of violence people endure in some Honduran cities. These are separate problems, even if each offers opportunities for the other.

The Organization of the Honduran Drug Trade (Part 2 of 3)

In the first installement of this series, we illustrated what a September 2012 UN report called a territorially-based crime group in Central America, with a discussion of the recently arrested Valle Valle family.

The second kind of criminal group identified by the UN are the transnational trafficking networks, or transportistas.  Transportistas work like a legitimately subcontracted transportation company.  Their relationship to suppliers is contractual, but they are free to work with anyone.  They move drugs between point A and point B where A and B are frequently under the control of territorial crime families.

They don't seek violence, and indeed seek to remain unnoticed.

The Chepe Handal organization was described as a transportista organization when it was dismantled.  Chepe Handal allegedly moved drugs for the Cartel del Pacifico from the departments of Colon, Atlantida, and Cortes, to the border region with Guatemala.

While the organized crime family where the Chepe Handal organization picked up the drugs remains publicly unidentified, the newly arrested Valle Valle family control the area where the Handal organization allegedly brought drugs to smuggle across the Honduras/Guatemala border.

Transportistas need to be crime families with established ties into politics and participating in the corruption of government officials, and Handal's organization fits that description.  It was large and diversified.  It owned hotels, a zoo, construction companies, retail stores in San Pedro Sula, and transportation companies.  Chepe Handal also bred thoroughbred horses.
 
While many of the Honduran border area crime families go unidentified, across the border in Guatemala territory is said to be under the control of the Mendoza crime family.  They have extensive land holdings along the whole border in ranches and agricultural production.  They also own hotels, gas stations, construction companies, and transportation companies, and move cocaine from the border region into the Peten.  That makes them an example of a transportista group.

But they simultaneously fit the description of a territorial group: they are now allied with the Lorenzana family of Guatemala, that controls the border territory of Zacapa in Guatemala.  Together they control much of the Honduras/Guatemala border, from the Caribbean inland to Ocotepeque in far southwest Honduras.

Another Honduran example of an alleged organized crime family would be the Arnaldo Urbina Soto family, arrested in July. The head of the family is the alcalde (mayor) of Yoro. One of his daughters, also arrested, was the head of the Honduran Congressional committee on children.

The Urbina Soto family is alleged to have participated in drug trafficking, 137 murders, car theft, building landing strips for drug planes, and the forced displacement of people. They owned large cattle ranches in Yoro, many houses described as "mansions", and ran an aviary that included ostriches.

While 137 murders might seem like a lot, in the context of some parts of Honduras, that's just a month's worth of homicides. Crime organizations need to keep their profile fairly low in order to succeed.  Murders need to be strategic and uninvestigated.

The Urbina Soto family most likely worked for the Zetas, who US sources say are headquartered in Santa Rita, Yoro. Their drugs are transported through the western Honduran Department of Santa Barbara and points south, reaching the Guatemalan border near Ocotepeque, with a handoff to the Lorenzana family in Guatemala.

Diana Patricia Urbina Soto, a National Party Congressperson from Yoro when arrested, was later released.  Her political visibility produced an unusual piece of information: she answered the question posed to congress members "Are you in favor of, or against the legalization of drugs?" by saying "In favor, in this way it will reduce the violence and control the consumption".

Given the UN analysis, that might well be how a member of one of these crime families views things. Drug trafficking is a business; they provide security and governance to otherwise ungoverned territories. Violence is not their main goal; when it happens, it is a side effect of cartel struggles or is specially targeted.

The Organization of the Honduran Drug Trade (Part 1 of 3)

On August 20th of this year the Valle Valle family of western Honduras was named by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control  as "significant drug traffickers" under the Kingpin Act. This weekend, members of the family were captured in Honduras.

In the August statement, the US named Miguel Arnulfo Valle Valle and his brothers Luis Alonso and Jose Reynerio Valle Valle. Not included was their youngest brother, Jose Inocente Valle Valle. 

A UN report from September 2012 on the drug trade in Central America provides a context for understanding these developments. The UN identified three groups of actors in Honduras that are at least tangentially involved in the drug trade, and how each of these groups relates to violence.

First are the territorially based organized crime groups.  These impose order where the state government lacks control, offering security and protection in both city neighborhoods and the countryside.  They require an enforcement organization, and there must be a clear chain of command, often family based:

These territory-bound groups are intensely concerned with local affairs, and this limits the scope of what they can do. They can demand tribute (extortion), give credit at usurious rates (loan sharking), and dictate local employment conditions (labour racketeering) within their zones of influence. With their money and community standing, they can even affect voting outcomes and wield considerable political clout. They may move into high-level corruption, such as public procurement fraud. Once secure in their status as political patrons, they can engage in acquisitive crime at will, selling stolen property and smuggled goods with impunity.

The UN report goes on to say these groups often have to fight with rival outfits for control of contested territory, and this means they spend an "undue amount of time addressing symbolic infractions, sending messages to their constituencies about who is in control."

What this means is that they control the wholesale traffic through their region, and this often can include drugs as one of the sorts of contraband that flow this way.  They then subcontract risk, such as local distribution, to others. In Central America, because of these groups' geographic control, international drug trafficking is under their command.

These crime families are not interested in stirring up violence as part of their drug trafficking. Traffickers generally are interested in keeping the violence down and not drawing attention to themselves.  Thus they operate in remote areas with little state control.

The Valle Valle family fits this part of the UN model.

The US government alleges the Valle Valle family runs a business that moves thousands of kilograms of cocaine each month towards the United States, laundering the money generated through three coffee-producing companies (Inversiones Yosary, Inversiones Luisito, and Inversiones Valle), a cattle and dairy business (Finca Los Tres Reyes), and a hotel in La Entrada, Copan.

According to the US, the Valle family operates a drug business in the Honduran Department of Copan, in the municipality of Florida, Copan, along the Honduras/Guatemala border.  Here there are several legitimate border crossings, and other blind crossings between Honduras and Guatemala.  Florida is adjacent to the town of El Paraiso, Copan, where the Alex cartel, linked to the Sinaloa cartel, operates.

Once the Valle Valle brothers and their businesses were designated as "significant drug traffickers" by OFAC, the Honduran government in association with the US Drug Enforcement Agency confiscated their businesses, houses, bank accounts, hotels, and in the process located arms caches buried on one of their properties. However, the family had been tipped off, and their houses had been largely emptied of all possessions, just as other such operations have been leaked to the families about to be pounced on by the Honduran police and the DEA.

On October 3, Honduran security forces captured Jose Inocente Valle Valle in El Porvenir, Florida, Copan, about 30 minutes drive from the Guatemalan border,  and confiscated a gold plated AK-47,  many pistols of different calibers and over 600 rounds of ammunition.  Also confiscated was a picture of Jose Inocente with his arm around the former head of the Transit Police in Copan, Neptaly Aguilar Rivera.  Among his other possessions when captured was a belt containing 12 solid gold coins stamped "Sinaloa".

Sunday, the Honduran police captured two more brothers (Miguel Arnulfo and Luis Alonso) in El Espiritu, Copan, only a five minute drive from the Guatemalan border.

The Valle Valle family was  allegedly responsible for getting drugs from Honduras across the border to the right people in Guatemala, making up what the UN called a territorially based organized crime group. There others took over-- something we cover in the next installment of this series.

Geography of Cocaine Processing

Honduran news media have for the last two days been reporting the discovery of Honduras' "first cocaine lab".

Honduran newspapers are, in general, lurid tabloids that delight in the presentation of crime and violence, the bloodier the better. The coverage of this raid has been, in my reading, contaminated by a kind of dark celebratory tone-- sort of "we told you it would come to this" combined with "we're on the world map".

This may partly be my reaction to the fact that, of all the events that happen in Honduras, it is things like this that international media, even the more reliable BBC, find worthy of coverage.

Honduras has been stereotyped, and this time, it isn't the old "banana republic": it is the corrupt drug capital.

Considering the fact that the storyline comes straight from the Minister of Security, Oscar Alvarez, whose entire political career is based on promoting a sense of lawlessness, I find myself feeling somewhat cynical about the hype. When Alvarez is quoted as saying that they found

"a laboratory of the first rank, Colombian-style, which appears to me is very worrisome because it is the first time that we discovered a cocaine processing laboratory in Honduras"

I hear the next sentence that he didn't say: "so give me more money and more weapons and more ways to clamp down on the entire population under the pretext that everyone is really, to some extent, a criminal".

Alvarez has been outspoken in recent weeks about lack of adequate US support for his activities. On March 5, a story in La Tribuna began:

The Minister of Security, Oscar Alvarez, in a sarcastic form stated yesterday that it made him happy that the State Department of the US is realizing that there is a serious problem of drug trafficking in the region, because then there might be more aid for the country to combat this scourge.

Alvarez was reacting to the 2011 State Department International Narcotics Control Strategy Report issued on March 3. The Honduras country summary there would not, at first glance, appear objectionable, although perhaps this passage stung a bit:

corruption within the Honduran government and its law enforcement elements presents obstacles to counternarcotics efforts. While law enforcement authorities made numerous arrests related to drug trafficking, prosecution rates remained low for all crimes and few convictions have been made, in part due to corruption at all levels of the prosecution process.

Oscar Alvarez complained particularly about Colombia receiving helicopters and radar that Honduras was not given. Clearly, his message was that the US was over-valuing the drug threat represented by Colombia and under-estimating the situation in Honduras. In fact, the US report began with a summary that concluded that organizations operating from South America and Mexico

use the remote northeastern region known as La Mosquitia and other isolated sites as transit and storage areas. Marijuana is cultivated in Honduras almost exclusively for domestic consumption. Honduran police have not detected any cocaine or heroin processing laboratories in the country. [emphasis added]

So I may be pardoned for wondering about the timeliness of Alvarez's find of "the first cocaine processing lab" in Honduras-- especially as there was no one to be arrested when the site was raided.

But my cynicism is not what motivated me to write this post (although it is what has motivated me not to write about this "discovery" until now).

What is driving me crazy is the complete inability of the international media to identify places in Honduras in any way other than by distance north of Tegucigalpa-- the capital city, yes, but not always the most relevant reference point.

The BBC describes the locale, Cerro Negro, as "a mountainous area north of the capital, Tegucigalpa" and as "about 175km (100 miles) north of the capital".

Boz, in a post about this story, citing the BBC report and reiterating the "100 miles north of the capital" description, was led to conclude

4) Also notable, this lab was in the middle of the country up in the mountains. It's not as if they moved it in by boat to some unoccupied coastal region. The people behind this lab had to get the coca paste in by air or land and a plan to get the processed cocaine out by land and sea. This required some significant logistics.

Well, yes and no. Significant logistics, maybe; but as in real estate, what matters here is location, location, location. Cerro Negro is not all that isolated, and it is in fact within easy reach of the Caribbean coast.

The Cerro Negro in question is up in the Montaña de Merendon, west of my beloved San Pedro Sula, and about 8 km south of Omoa, the little colonial town on the Caribbean coast where I spent June of 2009. Don't be confused by internet databases that show another Cerro Negro somewhat further inland; this one is called Cerro Negro de Omoa on topo maps, and Honduran press coverage makes it very clear that this is where the raid took place.

Topo maps made some time ago showed access via a dirt road up from Omoa to the aldea of Santa Tereza, then the closest inhabited place to Cerro Negro, again, about 8 km distance, although a rugged haul.

More recent topo maps show an improved road to a cluster of buildings at Cerro Negro itself, coming from the east, starting at a place called Bijao (along the Puerto Cortes-San Pedro Sula highway, north of Choloma, and location of major cement works). The road is visible and can be traced on Google Earth all the way up to the top of Cerro Negro, where the lab was apparently operating under cover of a coffee plantation.

While Honduran press reports say that local people indicated helicopters were used to transport drugs from the lab, the location lends itself to moving raw materials and equipment in from the Caribbean coast up into the mountains.

Even though I remain cynical about the timing of this raid, the bad luck that allowed all the people operating it to escape, and the convenient timing of finding "the first cocaine lab" just when Honduran authorities are airing their grievances about not getting enough support from the US to combat drug trafficking, I would still like discussion to take into account the actual geography of Honduras, and thus the actual effects experienced by actual people living there.

The laziness of the BBC and other major media substantively affects the ability of others to understand where this drug operation fits into the landscape of Honduras. I wonder what Boz would say about the implications of this location, with a more accurate geographic placement within a few hours drive (at worst) from San Pedro Sula and Puerto Cortes?