Quintana Roo: the revival of Mexico’s Caribbean cocaine trafficking route
Early this month, Mexican authorities made two large cocaine seizures in the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo that borders Belize and Guatemala. On July 5th, the Mexican Army seized 390 kg of cocaine after an emergency landing of a Hawker 700 jet on the Carrillo-Mérida highway that connects Quintana Roo with Yucatan. The plane was set on fire on broad daylight and the crew was eventually stopped after trying to flee the scene. On July 6th, authorities seized 210 kg of cocaine after it was left abandoned in sealed packages inside an SUV parked in a vacant field near the town of José María Morelos, in the central area of Quintana Roo. This second seizure may be connected to the first. These two cocaine seizures in a row -more than half a ton of pure cocaine between the two- are significant but they are hardly the largest given the high frequency of large cocaine seizures happening in the state this year. Open source information shows that the Mexican Army carried at least two different seizures this year of more than 1 ton each involving ultra-light jets and clandestine strips in Quintana Roo, in proximity of Chetumal, the state’s capital in the South and in Mahahual a tourist resorts 290 km far from the Mayan Riviera. In total, at least eight large cocaine seizures have been reported in the state involving air, sea (packages stranded on shore) and overland transportation accounting for a total of approximately 3.3 tons. This rise in the amount and size of cocaine seizures is considerable given that during the past three years total seizures were much smaller. Open source information retrieved from local newspapers, showed that total cocaine seizures in 2017 amounted to just 1 kg (one seizure). In 2018, the reported number rose to 291 kg (three seizures) and in 2019 the total amount seized was 314 kg (3 seizures). Given the large 2020 data on seizures, it could be argued that Quintana Roo is seeing a revival of the old times of the 1990’s when the state became the center of activity for drug trafficking and money laundering networks. The new large cocaine seizures of 2020 may indicate that Quintana Roo has not lost its attractiveness for traffickers moving cocaine from producing areas in South America towards markets in North America.
During the mid-1980’s interdiction efforts by the U.S. effectively closed-off Florida as a major entry point for cocaine arriving from Colombia, and Mexico, as a transit country, became a natural option for the Colombian criminal groups involved in drug trafficking thanks to its over 3,000 kilometers of porous border with the U.S., and lightly patrolled coastline areas facing the Caribbean Sea reachable via ships and small go-fast boats. Starting from the early 1990s, the redirection of cocaine trafficking through Mexico traced such new cocaine trafficking route, known as the Mexican Caribbean Route, representing a radical change for Mexican long-time established criminal networks involved in smuggling illicit drugs and counterfeited products. This new trafficking route reached the Quintana Roo coastline including the world famous tourist resort of Cancún. Newspaper reports from the 1990’s show that one of the most important Mexican organized crime groups of the time -the so-called Juárez Cartel- was able to move through the Quintana Roo coastline around 15 tons of cocaine coming from Colombia every month. In the late 1990s members of the Juárez Cartel actually moved to Cancún to oversee and orchestrate drug trafficking and money laundering operations. The drug trafficking operations performed by the Juárez Cartel could count on the protection of a network of unfaithful officials, mostly policemen and even of the then governor of the state, Mario Villanueva Madrid (1993–1999). After leaving office, Villanueva Madrid would spend two years as fugitive but Mexican authorities would finally arrest him in 2001. After several years in custody, Mexico would extradite Villanueva Madrid to the U.S. in 2010 to face criminal charges. In 2013, a federal court in Manhattan convicted Villanueva Madrid to 131 months of prison for “conspiring to launder millions of dollars in narcotics bribe payments that he received from the Juárez Cartel”.
Since the Juárez Cartel days and particularly since 2006, the Mexican Caribbean drug trafficking route may have lost its importance given that the Western Pacific and Central American routes are being used to ship almost 90% of all U.S.-bound cocaine. However, the porous border between Belize and Guatemala and a still weak air control system continue to make Quintana Roo’s position still attractive for cocaine trafficking. The state’s geostrategic attractiveness is evident given some of the seizures of this year including the seizure in April of this year of a trailer transporting 600 kg of cocaine in the proximity of the Chetumal-Escárcega highway apparently bound for the state of Campeche. The Chetumal-Escárcega highway is the only and the main overland infrastructure connecting coastal Quintana Roo to the central area of Mexico. Given the above, it is reasonable to believe that whatever organization, or individuals conducting cocaine trafficking in the state, needs to have some control along the Chetumal-Escárcega highway to move the drug to other criminal markets in Mexico and to the U.S. border in particular. At this time, open source information is not available to pinpoint exactly what criminal groups dominate the movement of large quantities of cocaine through Quintana Roo.
At the same time, the reactivation of this drug trafficking route could be one of the reasons why violent crime has been on the rise in Quintana Roo and along the so-called Mayan Riviera area in particular, whose municipalities of Solidaridad, Benito Juárez and Tulum concentrate approximately 66% of the entire state’s 1.5 million population. According to Mexican government official data homicides in Quintana Roo (including femicides) have started to rise since 2017, reaching record levels in 2018 in particular. In July 2018 homicides rate skyrocketed, registering a rate of 67.8 homicides per 100.000 inhabitants, scoring an increase of 324% compared to July 2015 rate of 16.0 homicides per 100.000 inhabitants. The high homicide rates throughout 2019 and until February 2020 has remained constant with no signs of decreasing. Along the Mayan Riviera, Tulum (32.000 inhabitants) seems to be the municipality witnessing the bloodiest crisis between March 2019 and February 2020. Tulum’s most current annualized homicide rate stands out with 130.5 for 100.000 inhabitants, according to elcri.men.en ranking of Mexico’s 50 most violent tourist destinations. Tulum is followed by Solidaridad (231.000 inhabitants), which is basically Playa del Carmen itself, with a rate of 61.7 and Benito Juárez (819.000 inhabitants), which is basically Cancún, with a rate of 45.2. Some recent assessments argue that the increase in violence can be attributed to turf battles between crime groups.
The reactivation of the old cocaine trafficking route and the fight for control of the territory, including the ‘plazas’ for drug dealing in Quintana Roo’s tourist resorts, can be factors contributing to enhance violent crime, but not the only reason behind it. The surge in violent crime in the state makes it timely to perform interdisciplinary fieldwork in order to detect causes and to identify adequate prevention and contrast measures. While such analyzing and establishing contrast measures may not yield immediate results, the same cannot be said as for the effects of interdiction measures. Apart from improving the air control and the collaboration with Guatemalan and Belize authorities, Mexican authorities could play a crucial role in monitoring the access to the federal highway Chetumal-Escárcega. Not only could they reinforce police car patrolling, but they could also recur to technology using cameras and drones. Finally, the rise in large-scale cocaine seizures urges to implement a crucial measure: a dedicated training to prevent corruption among law enforcement and public officials in Quintana Roo. As exposed above with the emblematic case of former Governor Villanueva Madrid, the collaboration of a high rank corrupt public official was pivotal to facilitate large-scale drug trafficking back in the 1990’s. While it is very difficult to compete with the monetary incentives offered by drug traffickers, a serious training involving the review of the value of the rule of law and of the relevance of respecting the norms could help a lot. Defining priorities is not easy given the levels of violence affecting citizens’ safety and the vulnerabilities to corruption of some public servants who should provide for their safety. In any case, some action needs to be taken. Neither high violence rates nor the abuse of the state’s territory to perform cocaine trafficking operations are problems that will be solved by themselves. Moreover, we should keep in mind what Karl Marx taught: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy and second as farce”. Has the farce phase begun?
