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Frontera NorteSur
Mexican authorities have reported confiscating enough weapons to supply a small army. Cited in the Mexican press, unnamed sources with the Office of the Federal Attorney General (PGR) said more than 45,000 weapons were seized from 2001 to 2007. According to the PGR, the firepower included 17,361 assault rifles, 27, 461 small arms and 711 grenades. In the same time period, more than 3 million bullets were confiscated. According to Mexican Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino, 4,447 assault weapons and 4,451 small arms fell into the hands of the Mexican government in 2007.

The latest figures don't include the February 7 seizure of four tens of weaponry from a ranch in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. In the latest raid, authorities discovered more than 89 assault rifles and other military-style weapons at a property in Miguel Aleman, a municipality located across the border from Texas. Officials suspected the ranch could have served as a training facility for the Zetas, the paramilitary arm of the Gulf drug cartel.

Five coastal or border states led the list of hot spots for illegal arms confiscations in recent years. In order of importance, Tamaulipas, Michoacan, Chiapas, Veracruz and Sonora were the states with the richest troves of guns, grenades and ammo. Perhaps not coincidentally, all the states are zones where the Zetas either dominate or have a significant presence.

In multiple comments to the media over the past year, many Mexican officials have blamed arms trafficking from the United States for a "river of lead" flowing into Mexico, a country where sales and ownership of guns is strictly limited-at least on paper. Nonetheless, Mexican officials rarely if ever publicly disclose the exact origin of confiscated weapons.

In addition to acquisitions from the United States and other countries, Mexico supplies its own arsenal from local production. Some of the weapons confiscated from the Miguel Aleman ranch this month reportedly had the initials of the Mexican Defense Ministry stamped on them. As is routine practice, the most recent numbers released to the press did not shed light on the origin of illegal grenades.

In other revelations, Interior Minister Mourino, who recently took over the cabinet-level post after the resignation of Francisco Ramirez, told reporters in Mexico City that the first year of the Calderon administration was a highly successful one in terms of disrupting the illegal drug business and seizing dirty money.

According to Mourino, Mexican law enforcement seized 50.7 tons of cocaine, 2,262.5 tons of marijuana, 312 kilos of opium gum, 103,000 pills, 298 kilos of heroin, and 37.5 tons of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in 2007. Nearly half the cocaine recovered came from a single shipment busted in the Pacific port of Manzanillo last November.

As a result of Mexico's actions, Mourino contended that street prices in the United States for cocaine and methamphetamine rose 44 percent and 73 percent, respectively, last year. Mourino estimated the US retail value of cocaine seized in Mexico last year at slightly more than $7 billion.

On the cash front, Mexican authorities confiscated currency valued at almost $228 million in 2007, Mourino said. A review of earlier reports indicates that more than 90 percent of the money came from a single, joint US-Mexico operation linked to the detention of Chinese-Mexican businessman Zhenli Ye Gon, who is accused of importing large quantities of precursor chemicals used to make methamphetamines.

"We've damaged the structure of organized crime," Mourino said. "(Mafia) presence is no longer significant in places where it was, which are now no longer under its control."

Mourino added that more than 20,000 people "linked to organized crime" were detained in 2007, but he did not detail how many were legally processed or convicted of a crime.
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Sources: El Universal, February 9, 2008. Article by Silvia Otero. La Jornada, Feburary 9, 2008. Article by Gustavo Castillo Garcia. El Diario de Juarez, February 4, 2008.

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin
American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

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